[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Actually, do you know what the Meneltarma always makes me think of? The Kaaba at Mecca! And oddly, that itself is a pillar, maybe not in shape, but it is one of the Five Pillars of Islam.

Interesting...

Interesting indeed. But truly, it would be pretty clear even had not Tolkien written it down there, that he used mount Sion (or possibly mount Gerizim for the Samaritans) as inspiration for Meneltarma, even with the annual festival of coming up there and that even then not everybody could come to the very top. Hey, wasn't there even something like that only the King (in the function of "high priest" here) would make the prayer to Eru? That would be similar to the thing in pre-exile Judaism that only the high priest would call on the Name of God once a year there.

Originally Posted by Ibrîniðilpathânezel

And when he says "change of plan," I wonder if he might not mean "the plan as the Valar understood it," or perhaps even "the Valar's plan," since they were the ones who came up with the idea of fashioning Numenor as a reward. The other time Tolkien refer to a "change of plan" is, I believe, elsewhere in the same letter, when he talks about the resurrection of Gandalf, and Eru's widening of a plan which began as the Valar's. In both cases, Eru intervened to change the situation after it had failed, in one way or another. The magnitude of the necessary intervention is, perhaps, in correlation with the magnitude of the error of those involved -- or perhaps of the plan itself.

Well, I would say it was the way that there was certain "plan" laid down in the Music - the plan with which Valar counted; and that there were some "inner laws" of the world, some apparent on first sight, some more obscure, but still, they were set in some way, so to say, to the law of action and consequences. That quote from Ainulindalë

for to none but himself has Iluvatar revealed all that he has in store, and in every age there come forth things that are new and have no foretelling, for they do not proceed from the past

simply means that the inner laws of the world (which were "codified" by the Music) are not compelling to Eru himself, and that the chain of action and consequences is not the final thing (as said quite explicitely in the quote).