[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Orphalesion

Declaring them to be basically the same character seems to me a gross exaggeration.

I never posted that. I posted only that “otherwise they are almost the same character” and later withdrew it as overspeaking.

Neil Gaiman's Death and Despair have no relevance to the discussion, a completely different mythology, a completely different writer. I know you wanted to make the point "Spirit of Death does not necessarily equal Spirit of Despair" but in this case Fui Nienna is both the Goddess of Despair and the judge of dead mortals.

They have as much relevance as Hel, Ereshkigal, and Elli. I wished to point out the differences of Despair and Death in a different mythology. So, point out where Tolkien actually calls Fui Nienna the “Goddess of Despair”. Fui Nienna sets many of her mortal prisoners free to dwell in Arvalin to the sound of their guitars to await the Great End. A smaller number she turns over to Nornorë, to dwell with the Valar until the Great End. So Fui Nienna is not only a Goddess of Despair. Blackening Fui Nienna by ignoring what Tolkien does say about her and exaggerating what he does not say is unconvincing.

And on a similar note, can you imagine Gandalf learning wisdom and compassion from a hag like Fui?

Gandalf took on the earthly form of an old man. Why should it matter if his teacher had the fana of an old woman? Tolkien makes no comments, so far as I am aware, on what appearance Fui Nienna or Nienna took?

Especially the comparison Inanna=Vana does not work. Inanna/Ishtar was the goddess of love and war, a self-indulgent, petty Goddess of Sex who most likely served as inspiration for Aphrodite.

Yes Ishtar/Inanna corresponds to the Greek Aphrodite, the Latin Venus, and the Norse Freyja, more or less. Tolkien naturally removes the self-indulgent and petty and adulterous qualities from his Vána. The name itself may reflect theories that the Norse Vanir were etymologically related to the Latin goddess Venus. In short, I thank Inanna/Ishtar/Aphrodite/Venus/Freyja=Vána works better than other comparisons with real mythological figures that I can think of. Inanna is the cloest counterpart to Tolkien Vána in Sumerian mythology. Most of Tolkien’s Valar are based mainly on divine figures from real mythologies, but modified to his own tastes.

I admit that jumping from Vana being the goddess of youth and Fui "breeding winter" to the conclusion that Fui is "a crone" was a bit of interpretation.

It is an interpretation not indicated by anything that Tolkien wrote.

Rather than Hell or Elli I was also thinking of Annis the Celtic crone goddess, I know Celtic mythology was not a primary inspiration of Tolkien, still the crone had by that time become part of our collective well of stories.

Stories of Annis are not part of my collective well of stories. You posted our. See http://www.merciangathering.com/black_annis.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Annis for what is available on the web, mostly a folktale and disputed theories.

You are splitting hairs with that, a opposite to a female character does not necessarily have to be a male (Fui Nienna and Vana were opposites in the primitive mythology after all)

Fui Nienna and Vána were sisters, not opposites necessarily. Many mythologies have characters that are in part opposites, but not complete opposites. Do not use a term that you have to struggle so hard to defend,

For example, Tom Bombadil is closer to a complete opposite of Fui Nienna than Nienna. I cannot really imagine a complete opposite of any of Tolkien’s characters. You can quite easily demonstrate that Fui Nienna and Nienna are different, without such a troublesome idea as complete opposite. You say that two characters could be further apart from each other than Fui Nienna from the BOLT and Nienna from the Silmarillion. This puts you in the absurd position have having to prove that Treebeard is not so far apart from Fui Nienna as is Nienna, or that Saruman is somehow closer to Gandalf than Fui Nienna to Nienna.

Any similarity that is undeniable you try to avoid by calling superficial. You have defined a position with which I mostly agree, but wrapped it in an envelope which makes it impossible for me to accept your whole package.