The Problem with the Creation of the Rings of Power - Valinor is Still Part of the World

Tolkien didn’t think this through carefully

This is an essay about Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings. An earlier essay on the question of why doesn’t Sauron have any dialog, can be found here.

J.R.R. Tolkien came up with a detailed backstory for the origin of the One Ring in the years between 1935 and 1940.

Background to the Ring

Initially, Tolkien created a ring of invisibility for Bilbo, which Bilbo the Hobbit uses to good effect in Tolkien’s children’s story, The Hobbit. However, that’s all Bilbo’s ring was, it’s just a ring of invisibility which was a direct copy of a ring invented by Aristo in his magnum opus, The Madness of Roland (Orlando Furioso - 1532). In The Madness of Roland, the main female character, Angelica, owns a magic ring which makes the person who wears it invisible. It’s a very nice ring and quite useful but that’s all it does. Tolkien had no great concern about the magic ring which Bilbo obtained in The Hobbit, it was just a tool which allowed Bilbo to accomplish some heroic deeds later in the story.

As Tolkien explained, when he began work on the sequel to The Hobbit, he began to consider the philosophical implications of a ring of invisibility and he came to the rather interesting conclusion that it was a ring so powerful, that it made a Hobbit invisible. In a real sense, the invisibility it granted to it’s wearer was a side effect of the ring. Tolkien believed that if a very powerful being put on the ring, he would not disappear.

Having come up with this idea, Tolkien decided he needed to explain where this powerful ring came from and who made it. In this, Tolkien was clearly influenced by Wagner’s Ring Cycle of operas, which every cultured person in Europe was familiar with in the 1930s.

In Wagner’s Ring Cycle, the Ring of Power does not make people invisible but it does - in theory - grant its wearer great power over other people. The Ring’s maker, Albrecht, uses the Ring of Power to command all the other people of his race (Nibelung Dwarfs). Albrecht also has a helm, the Tarnhelm, which grants him either invisibility or the ability to change his shape. Tolkien, who really didn’t like Wagner’s Ring Cycle of Operas, nevertheless latched onto this idea of the Ring of Power, which made very weak people invisible.

Next, Tolkien had to figure out who made the Ring of Power. After a good deal of thought, he came up with the character Celebrimbor, a ruler of a now vanished kingdom of Elves called Eregion, located near the Dwarven kingdom of Moria. Tolkien decided that the Elves began work on Rings of Power for plausibly good reasons but then their plans were upended by Satan, renamed Sauron for obvious reasons.

Who was Sauron? He was an ancient evil spirit who once served Morgoth, the great fallen Angel/God who was destroyed at the end of the 1st Age. Sauron survived his master’s fall, somehow, and remained in hiding for hundreds of years. Then Sauron showed up at Celebrimbor’s kingdom, called Eregion, with a new name - Annatar - and a new look. With Sauron’s assistance, Celebrimbor created a number of rings of power. Sauron then created the One Ring, which controlled most of the other rings and so betrayed Celebrimbor. This provoked a war which lasted for many years, and resulted in Eregions destruction and the subsequent torture and death of Celebrimbor by Sauron.

This is a good backstory, unfortunately, there is a subtle problem.

The Problem: The Gods Are Still on Earth

The problem is: the Valar (Gods) are still living in the world, on the islands of Valinor, and Elves routinely sail from Middle Earth to take up permanent residence in Valinor.

Why is this a problem? Because when Sauron showed up in Eregion, and befriended Celebrimbor, Sauron was not an Elf, nor a Man, nor any mortal creature. He was, without doubt, one of the immortal spirits/angels known as Maiar. It is true that Sauron fooled Celebrimbor, and all the other Elves he met, including Elrond and Galadriel in that they thought he was a good Maiar but Sauron can’t fool the Valar.

The Valar, knew every single Maiar that existed. They were all created at the beginning of time and no new Maiar ever came into existence later.

Here is what should have happened: shortly after Sauron, posing as Annatar, comes to Eregion, some Elves who knew him would have left Middle Earth and sailed to Valinor. Once there, they would have talked with the Valar about Middle Earth and mentioned this new, friendly Maiar who had recently come to Eregion and was helping Celebrimbor make new and powerful magical items.

At this point, the Valar would know - without any doubt - that all their servants were accounted for. There were no Maiar working for the Gods still active in Middle Earth. Therefore, this new Maiar had to be one of the servants of Morgoth, in disguise. Remember, the Valar are Gods or Archangels. They are beings of superhuman wisdom and intelligence. They know all their servants and they know where and what each of their servants are doing. They must have known Annatar was not one of their Maiar, therefore, he must be one of Morgoth’s servants, not all of whom were destroyed when Morgoth was defeated and cast out from the Earth.

The Valar care about Middle Earth because they are the guardians of Middle Earth. The same sea which washes the shores of Middle Earth also washes the shores of Valinor. There is no difficulty for the Valar to send a ship back to Middle Earth with one or more of their servants on board at this time.

The wise, kind, and caring Valar would not sit by idly while a servant of Morgoth corrupted their Elves. No. This is impossible. Instead, the Valar would have responded by sending emissaries back to Middle Earth with haste to warn Celebrimbor about Annatar.

These emissaries, likely the same ones who ended up going to Middle Earth at the start of the Third Age, would have arrived in Middle Earth, ridden up to Eregion, and told Celebrimbor, “Annatar is an agent of evil. He does not work for the Valar.”

It is nearly impossible to imagine that Sauron and Celebrimbor would have had the time to create the Rings of Power before Sauron was revealed as a servant of the evil god, Morgoth.

Tolkien could have fixed this problem by having Sauron work in secret, only visiting Celebrimbor when he was alone, but that’s not what Tolkien wrote, instead he wanted Sauron/Satan to appear fair and well spoken at this time, and to fool everyone before his sudden betrayal of Celebrimbor. There is a comment from Tolkien that Galadriel and Elrond both mistrusted Annatar soon after meeting him, but not enough to send word to the Valar asking about this previously unknown Maiar.

Are the Valar Good?

We know the Valar will do important good things. They did come, in person, to Middle Earth, leading armies of Elves from Valinor. They did destroy Morgoth’s orcs, goblins, dragons, and Balrogs. They did capture Morgoth, break his crown, and expel him from the Earth for all time. This happened at the end of the First Age. It is also the case that they sent five Maiar to Middle Earth at the start of the Third Age to help the mortals defeat Sauron. What possible reason might they have to not send emissaries to Middle Earth in the middle of the Second Age to warn the Elves about the danger posed by the evil Maiar, Annatar?

No reason comes to my mind, not if the Valar are good, wise, and caring. Of course, if the Valar aren’t good, or wise, or if they don’t care, then their lack of action when Sauron appears is perfectly reasonable.

If the Valar were good, they would have acted in the Second Age and the Rings of Power would likely never have been made. That’s the bottom line.

Tolkien the author needed the Rings of Power to be made. How to accomplish the creation of great evil under the watchful eye of beings of power and goodness? Well, the question of the existence of evil has troubled European philosophers for more than 2,000 years.

Tolkien explained the problem of evil in the Third Age by saying that the Valar had withdrawn from the Earth near the end of the Second Age when the army of Numenor attacked Valinor in a doomed quest for eternal life. This is a clever solution to the problem of evil: the great and powerful Angels have withdrawn from day-to-day intervention in the world; they were forced out by the actions of evil mortals. However, that event takes place hundreds of years after the creation of the Rings of Power. It does not solve the problem of why the Valar allowed the Sauron to enlist Celebrimbor in creating the Rings of Power in the first place.

Conclusion

If the Valar aren’t good, or don’t care, there is no problem with this story.

If the Elves never sail from Middle Earth to Valinor there is not much problem with the story.

If Sauron never met openly with Celebrimbor and thus no other elves knew about him, then the story can still work.

The problem is with the story which Tolkien wrote.

As the Sonoma Sage said at the beginning of this essay, the back story for the Rings of Power is very detailed and very well done. Tolkien put more work into this backstory than most authors put into their main story. The Sage doesn’t think Celebrimbor is ever mentioned in the main text of the Lord of the Rings, and yet Tolkien thought out a very plausible story line for how it came into existence. No man is perfect.