Valar and Maia abilities?

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Ivriniel

About whether or not scanning for deception, is essentially a 'negative' event, I have pondered this. For beings that do not see the potential for the dark side in their own creations, then, it is the failure to scan for deception and vulnerability that is the act of inadvertently disguised evil. Said another way, the need to see the world as pure, because of one's own need for bathing in one's own creations and beauty, is then, perilously lazy and undisciplined. It is the act that inadvertently births evil by denial of evil.

The most obvious example, and the one to which I assume you are referring, is Manwë failing to perceive the continuing evil in Melkor after his imprisonment. Isn't the fault with Melkor for dissembling his intentions? I don't see Manwë as someone who (intentionally or otherwise) is trying to revel in some self-satisfied perception of the world's goodness. I see a being capable of great love who wishes for his brother to be redeemed, and who has faith in Eru that good will out. I'm not sure what example you're referring to, though, when you talk about "beings that do not see the potential for the dark side in their own creations."

Originally Posted by Ivriniel

I see, though, that Eru's will was not entirely undone or [not] not (double not) respected in regards to Morgoth and Sauron. [And a double 'not' has not the same implications as its inverse 'to be respected'. The former is 'the least worst choice of two seemingly ill choices' compared to the situation where one looks for 'the best choice']. In Morgoth's inverted universe, his variation on 'initiator', was begun by providing the inadvertent vigilance to the Valar to take more heed of their own creative acts.

Which is because Eru incorporates all things, good or evil, into the music, and from evil greater, unforeseen good arises, which is why Arda Healed would be a greater thing than Arda Unmarred. It would also be a different thing, hence there is no need for time to "run backwards." Arda Unmarred is not the same thing as Arda Healed. The latter proceeds from the former via Arda Marred (the intermediary stage). I assume I'm interpreting your rather complex thought processes correctly in providing that response...

[Ivriniel]

Although that is the most obvious example, it is one in a repetitious cycle. The Noldor, most appreciably, replicate the lapse in what I term "UN"sight--unsight. Unsight is the capacity of a being to discern how to position a greed-dead-lock in their crafting of items (The Rings), which would have prevented the disaster of the Mirdain. The Elves had very poorly developed Unsight--what an Elvish Creation looks like to The Corruptor.

Each creation by a being seemingly 'good' casts a shadow. Sauron and Melkor most cleverly (and stupidly) understood this. For example, I suspect that Sauron figured out what the Shadow side of the Elvish Spiritual World would be like in the metaphysical sense (Spectres, Shades, Wights and so on). This would seem to be that metaphysical dimension where life *runs out* from that plane, and back into the Void--the other way around. C.f. The Flame Imperishable - Life - From The Void. As such, Melkor's and Sauron's creations - discerned by Unsight - run the system the other way around. Metaphysical energy in the inverse, but in an inverse relationship to the Void when compared to life - The Two Trees, the Silmarils, etc.

So -- myy post looks more closely at what it means that a Vala such as Manwe was not, immediately, able to discern a way to work with Melkor. Or another way--the Valar were blind to the shadow relationships of their works with creation. And so, this is a Vanity. For, creators have the responsibility of knowing how their works look in the Shadow World. Without that Knowing, they create gross vulnerabilities in everything they create.

Another way to try to get the point across is that the Valar needed Melkor's gross, overt Vanity (to defile Eru's creations as toys), in order to see the Shadow Side of the Valar's denied Vanity. Melkor and Manwe are twin mirror image opposites. Two faces of existence, and the one cannot exist in some relationship with[out] the other.

However, how the relationship is manifested, does come down to the manner, mode, style and nature of consciousness, and to a preparedness to look at Melkor's inverse universe, without sacrificing the Flame Imperishable...

[Ivriniel]

@Zigur

Arda healed is, in this casting, compared to Arda unmarred is a good analogy. But is not quite the analogy, because in The Second Making, there is an expected reorganisation of The Powers, in a very fundamental sense, to prevent repetition of vulnerabilities the powers built into reality.

To elucidate, it's not "Manwe versus Melkor", in a divisionist casting of 'good and evil', but instead Manwe (The Flame Imperishable) conjoined to Melkor (The Flame Imperishable running in its Inverse--UNcreation--deadlock.

They have to establish means of satisfying seemingly opposed goals. The paradoxical joining of the two requires that seeming opposites coexist in reconciliation of opposites in all expressions of creation. I do not believe that simply 'teaching' Melkor how to 'behave' would ever be fruitful.

One way around the problem is have Melkor existing in a conjoined Universe where time always runs backwards. So, all his marring runs backwards--from the end of time to its beginning. And so, Manwe and Melkor handball each others manifestations in inverse time flow.

Another way around the problem is to establish creations where what is selflessness to one Vala *is* selfishness to the other. For example, the greed of a baby is what is behind the suckling of its mother's breast, but to the mother, her baby's healthy feeding greed is an expression of her love.....

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Ivriniel

Arda healed is, in this casting, compared to Arda unmarred is a good analogy. But is not quite the analogy, because in The Second Making, there is an expected reorganisation of The Powers, in a very fundamental sense, to prevent repetition of vulnerabilities the powers built into reality.

According to whom, exactly? Or is this a theory of your own invention? Evil originated with Melkor. In a world in which Eru has incorporated the evil of Melkor to produce greater good, what likelihood is there of repetition? There is no more evil. It has become good.

Originally Posted by Ivriniel

To elucidate, it's not "Manwe versus Melkor", in a divisionist casting of 'good and evil', but instead Manwe (The Flame Imperishable) conjoined to Melkor (The Flame Imperishable running in its Inverse--UNcreation--deadlock.

I don't think this dualistic interpretation is very consistent with the established understanding of Good and Evil according to Professor Tolkien's account. Melkor wanted to destroy, but he was not an "uncreative" force by nature or power. He was originally an initiator and later merely a corruptive force, and it was not within his power to even annihilate matter: "even left alone he could only have gone raging on till all was levelled again into a formless chaos. And yet even so he would have been defeated, because it would still have 'existed' independent of his own mind, and a world in potential." Good and evil were not "equal and opposite" Newtonian forces in Arda or something like that.

Originally Posted by Ivriniel

One way around the problem is have Melkor existing in a conjoined Universe where time always runs backwards. So, all his marring runs backwards--from the end of time to its beginning. And so, Manwe and Melkor handball each others manifestations in inverse time flow.

I also don't find this scenario to be especially likely. For reasons I've already stated, I don't think Melkor ever existed in the way you describe, either in the mind of Eru or as an evil being.

Originally Posted by Ivriniel

Another way around the problem is to establish creations where what is selflessness to one Vala *is* selfishness to the other.

I don't believe this kind of moral reversibility is consistent with Professor Tolkien's view. According to Professor Tolkien's metaphysics, if Melkor believed the Valar were evil, then he was wrong. He was evil.

I am not just making up "Arda Healed" incidentally, it's actually a concept explained in the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth. I assume we can perceive Finrod's understanding of the matter to be reasonably reliable. I apologise if any of what I am saying is not strictly relevant but I'm finding this theory of yours quite difficult to understand and am struggling to see much substantiation for it in the texts.

[Ivriniel]

It's not all about Professor Tolkien's view as it was captured to that critical point when he died. There is more to this than meets the eye. In part, it's also about where the imagination roams when one reviews the mythology and looks at Arda as the meandering river of wishful thinking takes you--'what would it have taken for the Two Trees to have survived" "why couldn't they figure out how to work with Melkor". Having said that--consider what my work does extend--and where speculation does have a place, and what we cannot know, is what principles of care would go into the Second Making.

The Second Prophesy of Mandos hints at a number of ideas.. We know from Tolkien's divisionist thinking in how he bifurcated good and evil that there were numerous points of great suffering in Arda caused by Melkorian and Sauronic thinking. Sauron's Necromancy (and how he made Spiritual Planes of unlife, death, fear an life-bleeding) are, I would expect, rents in reality fabric that would be attended to in the Second Making.

My adaptation of the terms unsight, unlife and so on, are just extensions of what Tolkien did do so prolifically. Ungoliant's unlight (was not just darkness). Feanor and Galadriel as unfriends. Ungoliant is another tantalising hint at what rents in reality and metaphysical planes Melkor's monsters made. Unlight was some kind of syphoning of light, or some kind of event horizon where things were, once drawn into, were lost for all of time. Presumably, for example, Ungoliant swelled from the gobbling up of the Light of Teleperion and Laurelin and that she holds or houses something in that bottomless well waiting to be -- inversely manifested and flushed right on out. To put this another way, if an inverse of a 'good' thing is an 'evil' thing, then what's an inverse of an already inverted, perverted thing? Presumably, there is a way, from Eru's point of view, of applying an inverse to Ungoliant's Unlight.

Presumably, much as at The End of Time (Second Prophesy stuff) where all things 'lost to the end of time' are kept, stored, or wherever they 'go', as that applied to things of The Flame Imperishable, equally, unlight has some kind of role in any reformulation--in a repair or revision of Arda's fabric.

We will never know, I suppose, what the evolution of the mythology would have entailed.

[Ivriniel]

...about Evil as a singularity, I don't think that is possible without splitting the mind in two in the Tolkien Universe. So, in my earlier posts, I hint at the moral culpability of the Valar, by their refusal to see the shadow side of their own creations. This was what I termed the inadvertent evil that is borne of a basking in one's own beauty, truth and creations, without heed for how such things look to their shadow side (with unsight). Melkor, in his great and overt Vanity, is then a Vanity Mirror for the Valar, who denied (and did not resolve) their own Vanity in so much of their creations, but to their great peril. Humility resolves Vanity. Only Nienna had that.

As such, Melkor, as initiator (in a revised role of the context of 'initiator') unmakes his bretheren's creations enough times such that the Valar do, indeed, grow aware of their fallibility, and Vanity. So, Melkor does have an important place in Arda, and I suspect Eru knew this--the Second Great Music and then the Third Theme. I believe Eru placed Melkor into Creation knowing what he was going to do. Nienna, the perpetually weeping Maia who spared no tears for any part of creation, looks to Middle Earth, and she, alone of them all, has sufficient humility to sit with the marring of Arda and grieve for it.

The rest of the Valar, to be honest, do remain fairly much entrenched in denial. Shifting them to compassion is pretty difficult and takes a tumultuous event. They, in the end, are bound to their own fates, and know that any further tampering with reality would achieve naught. For, they never solved the problem of evil, and how to manifest a creation without embedding their creations, inadvertently, with great vulnerabilities implicit in Arda's reality fabric. Elves--Orcs (beings that are bodily antithetical), Elves--Nazgul (spiritually antithetical as life and unlife), The Three Rings (Extending the Flame Imperishable, just to extend the Unlife of the Wraith Realm, by proportion).

A repair in the Second Making would apply what I term a greed-dead-lock to protect a creation....

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Ivriniel

The rest of the Valar, to be honest, do remain fairly much entrenched in denial. Shifting them to compassion is pretty difficult and takes a tumultuous event.

Is this true? Manwë may have been capable of believing that Melkor was rehabilitated, but "Ulmo was not deceived, and Tulkas clenched his hands whenever he saw Melkor his foe go by." Now in Tulkas' case this may have derived from sheer mistrust, but Ulmo specifically was "not deceived" - but mighty as he was (and he was mighty indeed among the Valar, second only to the Elder King himself among the male Valar) he had to obey the judgement of Manwë "for those who will defend authority against rebellion must not themselves rebel."
I actually wanted to talk about Ulmo, because he seems to be quite compassionate, giving advice to Turgon and Tuor. He was also the leader of those Valar who counselled against the Eldar being brought (or rather invited) to Aman - and he definitely had a point there.
Incidentally, Manwë was not blind. As is stated in Morgoth's Ring (and I quoted in a recent thread) he knew that letting the Noldor fight Morgoth would cause Morgoth to waste his power until he was weakened to the point where he could be dealt with in a way that would not risk the destruction of Arda. The Valar did not lack compassion - they actually avoided fighting Melkor because that was the lesser of two evils: wait, and allow Melkor to become manageable, or go to battle, and risk Arda being destroyed and the death of all Eru's children.

Originally Posted by Ivriniel

they never solved the problem of evil, and how to manifest a creation without embedding their creations, inadvertently, with great vulnerabilities implicit in Arda's reality fabric

But the Valar were not "creators", only "makers" - they had no control over the Flame Imperishable - and since everything in Arda had a Morgoth-element they had no choice but to work within those limits. Also, they could not "solve" the problem of evil for two reasons: 1) because they lacked the power to do so (not because they were too incompetent) and 2) because Eru had already solved it: "Arda Healed," which would arrive in the fullness of time. Professor Tolkien observes that "no created thng or being in Arda, or in all Eä, was powerful enough to counteract or heal Evil: that is to subdue Melkor (in his present person, reduced though that was) and the Evil that he had dissipated and sent out from himself into the very structure of the world. Only Eru himself cold do this."

Originally Posted by Ivriniel

I believe Eru placed Melkor into Creation knowing what he was going to do. Nienna, the perpetually weeping Maia who spared no tears for any part of creation, looks to Middle Earth, and she, alone of them all, has sufficient humility to sit with the marring of Arda and grieve for it.

Eru permitted Melkor into creation, but I do not believe he placed him there with the intention of having Melkor commit evil even with the belief that it would bring about good. I believe Eru gave him the choice. He reconciles the evil, but I don't think he intentionally enables it. Regarding Nienna (who is a Vala, by the way, not a Maia) her tears are compassionate yes, but isn't the message of so much of Professor Tolkien's work that we should do what we can against evil without the expectation of managing to completely overcome it? This was of course something the Valar had to learn, and is the attitude embodied in Gandalf, who learned compassion from Nienna.

My point is I think the Evil of Melkor could be, and was, reconciled to Eä in order to improve it, but I don't believe it was part of a necessary dynamism of metaphysical forces, at least not in this dualistic way. Your theories are interesting but I think they're largely precluded by a lot of the content of Morgoth's Ring which I heartily recommend reading in full for a more complete understanding of Professor Tolkien's theodicy (the technical term for answering the problem of evil).