The Fall
"Men have ‘fallen’ – any legends put in the form of supposed ancient history of
this actual world of ours must accept that – but the peoples of the West, the
good side are Re-formed. That is they are the descendants of Men that
tried to repent and fled Westward from the domination of the Prime Dark Lord,
and his false worship, and by contrast with the Elves renewed (and enlarged)
their knowledge of the truth and the nature of the World. They thus
escaped from ‘religion’ in a pagan sense, into a pure monotheist world, in
which all things and beings and powers that might seem worshipful were not to
be worshipped, not even the gods (the Valar), being only creatures of the
One. And he was immensely remote.
The High Elves were exiles from the Blessed Realm of the Gods (after their own
particular Elvish fall) and they had no ‘religion’ (or religious practices,
rather) for those had been in the hands of the gods, praising and adoring
Eru ‘the One’, Iluvatar the Father of All on the Mt. of
Aman.”
Any comments on the contrast between the Fall of the Men of Middle-earth and
that of the High Elves? Do the Elves judge Men more harshly than they do
themselves in this matter?
The Fall of the Numenoreans
“They were forbidden to sail west beyond their own land because they
were not allowed to be or try to be ‘immortal’; and in this myth the Blessed
Realm is represented as still having an actual physical existence as a region
of the real world, one which they could have reached by ship, being very great
mariners. While obedient, people from the Blessed Realm visited them, and
so their knowledge reached an almost Elvish height.
But the proximity of the Blessed Realm, the very length of their life-span
given as a reward, and the increasing delight of life, made them begin to
hanker after ‘immortality’. They did not break the ban but they begrudged
it.”
Unable to travel West they went East instead and so came up against Sauron, who
was claiming both ‘kingship and godship over Men of Middle-earth’.
Hands up who’d like to see the arrival of Ar-pharazon and his armada and the
‘capture’ of Sauron make it to the big-screen sometime? Would the
Numenoreans have tried to break the ban without being persuaded by Sauron - was
it just a matter of time before they attempted it anyway? Perhaps being
often visited by ‘people from the Blessed Realm’ would have been enough to
continually remind them of the brevity of their lives? Is a ‘Fall’ always
inevitable in such idyllic situations?
“His armada that took haven at Umbar was so great, and the
Numenoreans at their height so terrible and resplendent, that Sauron’s servants
deserted him.
So Sauron had to recourse to guile. He submitted and was carried off to
Numenor as a prisoner-hostage. He was of course a ‘divine’ person (in the
terms of this mythology; a lesser member of the race of Valar) and this far too
powerful to be controlled in this way.”
What do you think that Ar-pharazon had planned to do with Sauron before
he fell under his sway?
“He finally induces Ar-pharazon, frightened by the approach
of old age, to make the greatest of all armadas, and go up with war against the
Blessed Realm itself, and wrest it and its ‘immortality’ into his own
hands.”
So what was Sauron’s motive in this?
After Numenor
“So ended Numenor-Atlantis and all its glory.”
A small number of faithful Numenoreans escaped the destruction:
“…and established a kind of diminished memory of Numenor in
Exile on the coasts of Middle-earth – inheriting a hatred of Sauron, the
friendship of the Elves, the knowledge of the True God, and (less happily) the
yearning for longevity, and the habit of embalming and the building of splendid
tombs – their only ‘hallows’: or almost so. But the ‘hallow’ of God and
the Mountain had perished, and there was no real substitute.
…
He had at the time of the War of the Ring no worship and no hallowed
place. And that kind of negative truth was characteristic of the West,
and all the area under Numenorean influence: the refusal to worship any
‘creature’, and above all no ‘dark lord’ or satanic demon, Sauron, or any
other, was almost as far as they got.”
On the one hand 'no worship is good worship', and on the other embalming is
still a popular hobby. Discuss.
The End
“But they were still living on the borders of myth - or rather this story
exhibits ‘myth’ passing into History or the Dominion of Men; for of course the
Shadow will arise again in a sense (as is clearly foretold by Gandalf), but
never again (unless it be before the great End) will an evil daemon be
incarnate as a physical enemy; he will direct Men and all the complications of
half-evils, and defective-goods, and the twilights of doubt as to sides, such
situations as he most loves (you can see them already arising in the war of the
Ring, which is by no means so clear cut an issue as some critics have averred):
those will be and are our more difficult fate. But if you imagine people
in such a mythical state, in which Evil is largely incarnate, and in which
physical resistance to it is a major act of loyalty to God, I think you would
have the ‘good people’ in just such a state: concentrated on the negative: the
resistance to the false, while the ‘truth’ remained more historical and
philosophical than religious.”
I've included this last section just as a nice little conclusion. It does
raise the point that it is an awful lot easier to arouse loyalty to God when
there is an incarnate Evil to look out for.
;)
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