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The Middle-Earth Prophecies

© Michael Martinez

Prophecy plays an important role in the Middle-earth stories. In fact, some people argue that Tolkien must have intended Middle-earth to have a predestined fate or timeline, because it seems like every prophecy mentioned comes true in some fashion. Well, false prophecies do occur in the stories, but they are rare. Or, if they are not false, they are at least unfulfilled. The question of whether there is power in prophecy or power behind it is virtually impossible to resolve to anyone's satisfaction. Many people believe that history unfolds according to the Music of the Ainur (which is not true, as it was Iluvatar who gave the Music its meaning through his Vision). Regardless of whether it follows the Music or the Vision, Time certainly unfolds much as the Ainur and Iluvatar wove their themes. But The Silmarillion tells us that each age reveals new wonders to the Valar which they know nothing of, and which are not foretold in the Music or Vision. In fact, much of the history which is foretold doesn't even occur in the Music or the Vision. After Iluvatar stops the Music, he speaks to the Ainur. "And many other things Iluvatar spoke to the Ainur at that time," Tolkien writes in "Ainulindale". "And because of their memory of his words, and the knowledge that each has of the music that he himself made, the Ainur know much of what was, and is, and is to come, and few things are unseen by them. Yet some things there are that they cannot see, neither alone nor taking counsel together; for to none but himself has Iluvatar revealed all that he has in store, and in every age there come forth things that are new and have no foretelling, for they do not proceed from the past." Iluvatar therefore placed many things in the Vision which the Ainur had not sung of, and even after some of the Ainur entered Ea, Iluvatar revealed new things. His freedom to alter Ea as Time unfolds leaves Iluvatar as the final arbiter of foreknowledge. That is, he can (if he so chooses) invalidate the foreknowledge that an individual Ainu may have derived from parts of the Music or Vision. But does Iluvatar negate anything which has been foretold? That's an interesting question, yet one which cannot be answered. We know of several occasions where Iluvatar intervenes. For example, when Aule creates the Dwarves, Iluvatar speaks to him and eventually accepts the Dwarves as his adopted Children. Iluvatar gives them true life and independent thought. There is, of course, no text which says that Aule's impatience and creation of the Dwarves either is or is not foretold or foreshadowed in the Music and Vision. But Aule wrought the Dwarves in secret. He can hardly have worked in secret if the rest of the Ainur knew about them through foreknowledge derived from the Ainulindale. Hence, Aule's creation of the Dwarves, and Iluvatar's intervention, are strongly implied to be new things, unknown to the Valar.