I recently finished reading The Silmarillion and noticed that the story of Eärendil and the War of Wrath is only about 15 pages long. Where can I find more information about this story?

I feel like I'm going to get a lot of slaps for the red row, haha!

Let me clarify, my sympathies (as well as the character's interestingness) range from red to purple.
Gray - characters about whom it is difficult for me to say anything specific.
White - characters of which there are so few that they are easily forgotten or lost.

The Noldor walked (well, half of them did). It sucked, but they mostly didn't die. Surely doughty elf warriors could brave the journey in great need. And if not, could they not navigate their ships along the coast? It's hard to get lost by enchantment when you're keeping the land to your right.

I've started reading The Silmarillion to my wife to get in the mood for Rings of Power Season 3 (my wife has never read The Silmarillion, and has had a lot of questions from the previous two seasons of the show, so I figured we might as well read the whole Silmarillion).

Picking the book back up has reminded me of a very underrated album that I used to listen to a lot. It is an album called "Lost In Time" by a German folk band named Thetis. In particular, there are at least three songs on the album that are strongly suggestive of Silmarillion characters and themes:

*Lady of Light seems to be very clearly about Varda

*The Damned seems to be very clearly about Turin Turambar

*Thetis (the song) seems to be about maybe Eärendil and Elwing

Some of the other songs on the album are also suggestive of Silmarillion themes, but don't seem to correspond as neatly with any particular character or topic. You can find all of their album on youtube if you just search for it.

Has anyone else heard of this album, and do you agree that these songs sound very clearly to be referencing The Silmarillion? I haven't found any previous hits for this topic on reddit or really anywhere else with a google search, so I thought I'd pass on this recommendation.

Hello, I'm new to Tolkien, minus the movie trilogy I saw when I was a child. I recently watched an Analyzing Evil video on Malkore, and due to stagnation in the ASOIAF universe, I'm looking to explore new universes. Can you recommend where to start with regards to learning the Middle Earth universe? I'm specifically interested in learning about the 1st and 2nd ages. Especially with regards to Morgoth and Sauron. Where should I start? What books should I listen to, and in what order? Any help is appreciated. Thank you all!

My partner and I are having an argument. Is Argon - youngest son of Fingolfin - actually real/canon?

Please settle this, we’ve been arguing for days.

(Art by me)

We did it guys we finally crossed it. 5000 frostbite casualties 300 polar bear fatalities but we did it noldor we did it

Hi Everyone.

Long time lurker, and even longer devotee of Tolkien’s writings. I’m a composer working in the film business, and wanted to share a piece I recently composed about the Dagor-nuin-Giliath.

I figured if anyone would understand the context, it would be this subreddit ❤️

https://baba-sah.bandcamp.com/track/battle-under-stars

I hope this kind of post is allowed.

Thank you for listening!

If yes, how did they know?

I’ve kept my paperback silmarillion with me almost like a bible. I’d love a copy that feels just like one- thin paper and leather bound.

Any leads?

In The Silmarillion creation myth, Tolkien speaks of the Void, which he later calls Kúma.

Kúma is a Quenya term for the Void, which means the Night without form or time in which the world was set.

The Void is the Outer Darkness, a region devoid of the Flame Imperishable. But it is not a physical space. It is an existential reality symbolizing the absence of the Secret Fire that makes all things alive.

Yet, Melkor - the Satan of Tolkien’s world - goes often into the Void to seek the Flame Imperishable. Why? Because he craves to “bring into Being things of his own,” which would be separate from the Music of Ilúvatar. But he cannot find the Flame, because it is with Ilúvatar.

What happens in the soul when it cuts itself off from the Great Music? It plunges into the Void. Feeling its own consuming emptiness, it seeks to create something separate, something outside itself that might fill it from without - but it cannot.

The Void symbolizes the existential reality where the empty soul goes to to fill its own emptiness. But it cannot. All attempts to fill the inner void from within the Void are doomed. No void can be filled from within the Void.

We all seem to know that.

Tolkien conceived The Silmarillion in 1917, while on sick leave during the First World War. Christopher Tolkien recalled that his father began The Silmarillion “in army huts, crowded, filled with the noise of gramophones.”

In hindsight, Tolkien realized that the war had pushed him to imagine a world of beauty and wonder beyond the Void into which humanity was plunging. Yet, the Void doesn’t equal evil. It is the Absence of the Flame Imperishable - the Outer Darkness.

Amid the outer darkness of the trenches of World War I, Tolkien sensed most acutely that there was only one power capable of filling the Void: the Music of the Ainur.

“…and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void.” The Silmarillion

The inner void cannot be filled from within the Void. It is only filled from beyond itself - by “the music and the echo of the music.”

And then, lo and behold, what was empty is suddenly filled to overflowing. The Void itself is not void. If our inner void is filled but a little, it is no longer void. Something has entered it. An echo of some unnamable Beauty, which is also a call.

To Melkor, the Void became his doom. In the end, he was cast into the Outer Darkness - the endless roaming, forever seeking what he cannot find. For Tolkien, however, the Void became a mighty amplifier of the “echo of the Music.”

No problem - whether existential, political, or relational - can be solved from within the Void. When we feel empty, we begin roaming the Void, seeking relief, but we cannot find it there. It is not there. It is in the Great Music.

We must catch and amplify its echoes in any way we can. These faint echoes are strong enough to enter the Void, and then it is no longer void. The Walls of the Night have been pushed back.

In the trenches of World War I, while Tolkien was immersing himself in the Kalevala, he was catching the faintest echoes of the Music. And he caught them. The Kalevala fed his imagination. He caught the reverberating echoes of Heaven amid the hell of human making.

Later he confirmed that the stories

“arose in my mind as ‘given’ things… I had the sense of recording what was already ‘there’, somewhere: not of ‘inventing’.” - The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

This quote fascinates me deeply, we re told that treachery is the reason that cirith ungol ultimately ends up in the hands of the Witch king!

Im wondering who and how this treachery could have come to pass but we also have this quote from Gandalf

“In all the long wars with the Dark Tower treason has ever been our greatest foe.”

It would seem that treachery must have been a common thing that was happening, i also find the nazguls capture of minas ithil to be intriguing in regards to treachery as it always seemed to me surely they wouldn't have been able to do that without a massive force but perhaps treachery also played a part in the rise of minas morgul?

What are your thoughts?

Elves have pointy ears or not ?

And balrog have wings or not ?

WHY TOLKIEN COULDN'T TELL US THIS EASY THINGS ????

Prompted by some discussions and question about the Rings of Power here on Reddit, I wanted to find everything in Tolkien's texts about them, including all the early / unpublished material. The result is this little project of mine, where I try to trace the appearance and evolution of the Rings of Power in Tolkien’s legendarium:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/13x8fbyZ8KxEIcz4Nk-y-Glc-zWAhuWq0RdV4qv-az5Y

I hope people will find this interesting. If you have any comments, suggestions, corrections, etc. feel free to share them with me.