XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: fwbrown@bellsouth.net   
      
   In alt.fan.tolkien Stan Brown  wrote:   
   >   
   > But the Valar didn't do that. Don't you remember that thrilling but   
   > mysterious passage in Appendix A, I, (i), "the Valar laid down their   
   > Guardianship and called upon the One"? This was written long before   
   > /Silm/ was published. Oldsters like me, first reading that, had only   
   > a faint idea of the Valar, and the nature of their guardianship was a   
   > mystery, as was the nature of the One. But it was clear at least that   
   > the Valar did not change the fashion of the world; an outside power   
   > did it.   
      
   The first time I read that, as a teenager in about 1970, I thought it   
   was saying that they called upon the power of the One Ring, and that   
   "laying down their Guardianship" meant they turned away from their true   
   mission and gave into the temptation to fight Evil with Evil (which   
   freaked me out a bit because it seemed so out of place in the story).   
   It was not until after the Silmarillion came out (while I was in college)   
   that I learned what "the One" really meant.   
      
   I drove several hours to buy the Silmarillion the first day it was   
   available, and read the Ainulindalë and Valaquenta while sitting in my   
   car in the parking lot before I drove back to my dormitory.   
      
   --   
   F. Wayne Brown    
      
         ur sag9-ga ur-tur-še3 ba-an-kur9   
   "A dog that is played with turns into a puppy." (Sumerian proverb)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)