Ainur in Middle-earth

Origins Before the Creation, Eru Ilúvatar made the Ainur or "holy ones". Valar The Valar included both good and evil characters. The Vala Melkor claimed the Earth for himself. His brother, Manwë, and several other Valar decided to confront him. Melkor fell into evil and became known as Morgoth, the dark enemy. The conflict between the Valar and Morgoth marred much of the world. According to The Silmarillion, the Valar and Maiar – with the aid of the Vala Tulkas, who entered the Creation last—succeeded in exiling Morgoth into the Void, though his maleficent influence remained ingrained in the fabric of the world. Among the evil were the Balrogs or fire-demons, who were some of the Dark Lord Morgoth's most powerful servants, and Sauron, the Dark Lord of the Third Age, a Maia who had been corrupted by Morgoth. ==Analysis==

, the strong and combative Norse gods of Asgard. Thor, for example, physically the strongest of the gods, can be seen both in Oromë, who fights the monsters of Melkor, and in Tulkas, the strongest of the Valar. Manwë, the head of the Valar, has some similarities to Odin, the "Allfather", while the wizard Gandalf, one of the Maiar, resembles Odin the wanderer. Christian angels s, intermediaries between the creator and the created world. Matthew Dickerson, writing in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, calls the Valar the "Powers of Middle-earth", noting that they are not incarnated, and quoting Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger's description of their original role as "to shape and light the world". Dickerson writes that while Tolkien presents the Valar like pagan gods, he imagined them more like angels, and notes that scholars have compared the devotion of Tolkien's Elves to Varda/Elbereth as resembling the Roman Catholic veneration of Mary the mother of Jesus. Dickerson states that the key point is that the Valar were "not to be worshipped". Judith Kollmann wrote in Mythlore that "the Valar are clearly the gods of Scandinavia, Greece, and Rome, and, as well, the angels and archangels of Judeo-Christianity." Maiar compared to Valar Grant C. Sterling, writing in Mythlore, states that the Maiar resemble the Valar in being unable to die, but differ in being able to choose to incarnate fully in forms such as men's bodies. This means that, like Gandalf and the Balrogs, they can be killed. He notes that Sauron's inability ever to take bodily form again after his defeat could be the result of having given his power to the One Ring, but that the fate of killed Maiar remains unclear. Jonathan Evans, writing in The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, calls the Maiar semidivine spirits, and notes that each one is linked with one of the Valar. He states that they have "perpetual importance in the cosmic order", noting the statement in the Silmarillion that their joy "is as an air that they breathe in all their days, whose thought flows in a tide untroubled from the heights to the deeps." Evans notes, too, that Arien and Tilion are central in Tolkien's myth of the Sun and Moon. He notes that this exactly matches the Old English view of luck and personal courage, as in Beowulfs "Wyrd often spares the man who isn't doomed, as long as his courage holds." ==References==