Appendix III.
The World Centre.
In the early conceptions of Tolkien’s mythology the Valar first descend into Arda at the centre:
“Now it is said that the Valar coming into the World descended first upon Middle-earth at its centre, save Melko who descended in the furthest North”. (The Shaping of Middle-earth. V.238)
Christopher Tolkien comments:
“There are some interesting points in the Ambarkanta account of the first days of the Valar in the world. Here it is said for the first time that Melko ‘descended in the furthest North’, whereas the Valar, coming to Middle-earth at its centre, made their island from ‘a portion of land’ and set it in the Western Sea” (The Shaping of Middle-earth. V.256).
If the centre is Eden, a paradise on Earth, at the top of the mountain, this makes sense. Over the broadest conception of the histories the Elves leave the bliss of their original habitation with the Valar much like Adam and Eve leave Paradise. We can see that Taniquetil represents this mountain we see in Eeeriness with its peak representing the centre, rather like Mount Olympus of the Greeks. Of the gods we read:
“Manwë and Varda are seldom parted, and they remain in Valinor. Their halls are above the everlasting snow, upon Oiolossë, the uttermost tower of Taniquetil, tallest of all the mountains upon Earth. When Manwë there ascends his throne and looks forth, if Varda is beside him, he sees further than all other eyes, through mist, and through darkness, and over the leagues of the sea. And if Manwë is with her, Varda hears more clearly than all other ears the sound of voices that cry from east to west, from the hills and the valleys, and from the dark places that Melkor has made upon Earth”(Sil. 28).
In addition:
“Ingwë Leader of the Vanyar, the first of the three hosts of the Eldar on the westward journey from Cuiviénen. In Aman he dwelt upon Taniquetil, and was held High King of all the Elves”(Sil. 405).
Likewise Lóthlorien at the centre, the top of the mountain, is described as the “heart of elvendom on Earth”(LotR 2.VI.352), occupying the same location as the heart in Eeriness.
At the destruction of the Two Trees by Melkor and Ungoliant we read:
“Valmar had foundered in a deep sea of night. Soon the Holy Mountain stood alone, a last island in a world that was drowned”(Sil. 89).
This is echoed later in Lóthlorien, described as we observed as an island surrounded by sea. Lóthlorien is at the centre and therefore we can pinpoint its location in Eeriness to be on the mountain by the blue wash of sea in the surrounding three triangles. These states are echoes of the original drowning in the Music of the Ainur:
“The other had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a few notes. And it essayed to drown the other music by the violence of its voice, but it seemed that its most triumphant notes were taken by the other and woven into its own solemn pattern”(Sil. 17).
