Morgoth's Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

Author:J.R.R. Tolkien [Tolkien, J.R.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0100-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

their bodies from many ills and assaults (such as disease), and

healing them swiftly of injuries, so that they recovered from

wounds that would have proved fatal to Men.

As ages passed the dominance of their fear ever increased,

'consuming' their bodies (as has been noted). The end of this

process is their 'fading', as Men have called it; for the body

becomes at last, as it were, a mere memory held by the fea; and

that end has already been achieved in many regions of Middle-

earth, so that the Elves are indeed deathless and may not be

destroyed or changed.(30) Thus it is that the further we go back in

the histories, the more often do we read of the death of the Elves

of old; and in the days when the minds of the Eldalie were

young and not yet fully awake death among them seemed to

differ little from the death of Men.

What then happened to the houseless fea? The answer to this

question the Elves did not know by nature. In their beginning

(so they report) they believed, or guessed, that they 'entered into

Nothing', and ended like other living things that they knew,

even as a tree that was felled and burned. Others guessed more

darkly that they passed into 'the Realm of Night' and into the

power of the 'Lord of Night'.(31) These opinions were plainly

derived from the Shadow under which they awoke; and it was

to deliver them from this shadow upon their minds, more even

than from the dangers of Arda marred, that the Valar desired to

bring them to the light of Aman.

It was in Aman that they learned of Manwe that each fea was

imperishable within the life of Arda, and that its fate was to

inhabit Arda to its end. Those fear, therefore, that in the

marring of Arda suffered unnaturally a divorce from their

hrondor [> hroar] remained still in Arda and in Time. But in

this state they were open to the direct instruction and command

of the Valar. As soon as they were disbodied they were

summoned to leave the places of their life and death and go to

the 'Halls of Waiting': Mandos, in the realm of the Valar.

If they obeyed this summons different opportunities lay

before them.(32) The length of time that they dwelt in Waiting

was partly at the will of Namo the Judge, lord of Mandos,

partly at their own will. The happiest fortune, they deemed, was

after the Waiting to be re-born, for so the evil and grief that they

had suffered in the curtailment of their natural course might be

redressed.

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