Tuor is the other exception and tradition has it he gained the immortality of the Elves.
I thought Eru was more like:
- Morgoth was trying to be a dick but look, he actually made things better because we can use his bullshit to improve things. Our perfect, harmonic view isn’t ideal. Morgoth’s dissonance makes things better…cuz reasons.
Minor pedantic phrasing quibble: I believe rather than gain immortality, he was judged to be one of the Eldar, despite his parentage. He never knew his mortal parents, Huor having died before his birth and his mother Rian gave her newborn son to Annael of the Sindar to raise amongst that people. She then wandered off to her husband’s last resting place and died there.
Minor hijack/question: is Moria related in any way to the biblical “ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriah”? The similarity in names seems too close but I’m not an expert in either the Ring books or Bible.
@Love_Rhombus Maybe JRRT was influenced by the biblical term, but in the Sindarin language he invented, “Mor” means dark/black, and “iâ” means void or abyss ( derived from: gaw “void” > i 'aw “the void”). So JRRT could have built that into the Sindarin tongue itself with that in mind. Or not.
“Mor” can be found in many terms he uses: Mordor, Morgul, Morgoth, Morannon,
“I can put it no plainer than by saying Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case, Frodo, you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.” (my bold). Another example of a smaller intervention (recognized by Gandalf, but not by others)
We were never actually told what happens to a Maiar, no less a Valar upon their death. If they can even die. The elves we know go to the halls of
Manwe and Iluvatar holds the fate of man close to his heart and not yet shared this. By his description, Gandalf did wander as if in the Halls, but in the end he ended up back on middle earth a changed man
The only instances we have of dying Maiar are the Balrog and Sauron. We see what happened to Saruman, although he’s a special case - a Maia in the guise of a wizard. When Grima Wormtongue stabs him, a mist arises from his body (his true non-corporeal spirit?), looks longingly to the West – “hey, time to come home, right guys? Bygones?” – and then a wind comes from the West and blows it to nothingness.
It is a good scene in the book, but on film? Nothing really happened. A couple of guys staring at each other, then one flies off.
Gandalf seemed to think that “Not by the hand of man” that included him, maybe because he was in the body of a Man?
" Do not pursue him! He will not return to these lands . Far off yet is his doom, and not by the hand of man shall he fall."
Two Balrogs were killed at the Fall of Gondolin as well, though there’s not a lot of detail given.
I believe the gold standard reference to Eru’s intervention with Gandalf was from what’s indexed as Tolkien’s letter #156…
He was sent by a mere prudent plan of the angelic Valar or governors; but Authority had taken up this plan and enlarged it, at the moment of its failure. ‘Naked I was sent back - for a time, until my task is done’. Sent back by whom, and whence? Not by the ‘gods’ whose business is only with this embodied world and its time; for he passed ‘out of thought and time’.
Was Ungoliant a Maia?
She’s something else, not specifically defined by Tolkien. The Valar apparently didn’t know where she came from.
Earlier Tolkien writings include a category of beings called “fey”, who are bodily manifestations of aspects of nature. Although he stopped using the term, it does seem to apply to some of the characters in the “finished” version of his legendarium, such as Ungoliant and Goldberry.
I read a Bombadil theory somewhere that the aspect of Nature that he embodies is Middle Earth itself, which explained why the Ring had no affect on him and could see the wearer: it is of the Earth, so it is of him.
That’s my second-favorite hypothesis for the nature of Tom Bombadil. My favorite is that he’s simply unique, the only member of his category.
I like the theory that Bombadil’s an avatar of Eru. But it really doesn’t fit the facts well. Then again neither do the other theories for him.
I like to think of it all as coming from the original Music. Sometimes, when a number of people are singing, the harmonics and overtones can blend in such a way that you can hear a note that no one’s actually singing. In my head, when that happens and the note harmonizes well, you get a Tom Bombadil or a Goldberry. If the note is dissonant, then you get an Ungoliant or the nameless things that gnaw the earth. Some things are just emergent properties of the action of creation.