Varda

Nature

Varda is the Lady of the Stars, spouse of Manwë and Queen of the Valar. The light of Eru Ilúvatar lives in her face, and the Elves hold her in greater reverence and love than any other of the Powers. She is also the Vala whom Melkor hated and feared most. Before the Music she had known him and rejected him, and he never forgave the refusal; her light is the one thing in Arda that his darkness cannot bear. Her name in Quenya means the sublime or lofty one; the Sindar of Middle-earth called her Elbereth, Star-queen, and it is by that name that she is sung to in the woods of the Shire and cried out to in the pass of Cirith Ungol.

When Varda and Manwë are together, Manwë sees farther than any other being and Varda hears more clearly, so that between them the whole of Arda lies open. She dwells with him in Ilmarin on Taniquetil, the highest peak of the Pelóri. Her handmaid is the Maia Ilmarë.

The stars

Varda's chief works are the lights of the sky. In the beginning of the World, before the Lamps, she made the first stars, so that Arda was never wholly dark even in Melkor's day. When the Valar learned that the Elves were soon to awake in a Middle-earth that lay in darkness under the shadow of Melkor, Varda undertook her greatest labour. She gathered the silver dew that fell from Telperion, the elder of the Two Trees, and from it made new and brighter stars, and set them in patterns in the sky as signs: the Sickle of the Valar, Menelmacar the Swordsman, and others, and the Sickle she placed in the north as a challenge to Melkor and a warning of his doom. When the Elves first opened their eyes at Cuiviénen it was these stars they saw, and this is why they loved starlight above every other light and why they gave Varda the names Tintallë, the Kindler, and Elentári, the Star-queen.

She also gave form to the light of Valinor. The Two Trees were sung into being by Yavanna, but it was Varda who gathered their light into great vats, Kulúrien and Telimpë, so that it might be used and stored, and from those vats she later filled the vessels of the Sun and Moon.

The Silmarils

When Fëanor made the Silmarils and brought them before the Valar, Varda hallowed them, so that no mortal flesh, no unclean hands, and nothing of evil will could touch them without being burned. This blessing is what made the jewels unbearable to Melkor, whose hands were burned black by them for ever, and what drove Maedhros and Maglor to despair at the end of the First Age when the jewels they had sworn to recover scorched them because of the evil they had done.

The Sun and the Moon

After Melkor and Ungoliant destroyed the Trees, Yavanna coaxed a final flower from Telperion and a final fruit from Laurelin. The Valar gave these to Aulë to make vessels for them, and Varda filled the vessels with light and set them in the sky. She appointed the Maia Tilion to steer the Moon and Arien to guide the Sun, and she ordered their courses. Her first design was for the two lights to cross the sky together, but Tilion's waywardness and the pleas of Lórien and Estë, who wanted night for sleep and dreams, led her to change the plan so that Sun and Moon would each have their own time, and the World gained day and night as they are known.

Varda in Middle-earth

Varda never came to Middle-earth in person after the fall of the Lamps, yet she is the most present of the Valar in the later ages, because the Elves of Middle-earth called upon her constantly. The hymn to Elbereth sung by Gildor's company in the Shire, and again in Rivendell, is a prayer to Varda across the Sea. When Frodo faced the Witch-king at Weathertop and Samwise faced Shelob in the dark, each cried out to Elbereth, and in both cases something answered: the Witch-king recoiled and the phial of Galadriel, which held the light of Eärendil's Silmaril, blazed out at the name. Galadriel's farewell song in Lothlórien is likewise addressed to Varda, whom she remembered from Valinor and whose hands she hoped would lift the ban that kept her from returning.

Men too honoured her, though at a greater distance. The Númenóreans in their prime raised no temples, but the Faithful remembered the Valar, and the Elves of Lindon and Rivendell kept Varda's name alive among the Dúnedain.

Legacy

Varda remains in Valinor, seated with Manwë on Taniquetil. Her stars are the oldest work of any of the Valar to survive in Middle-earth, and every night sky in the Fourth Age is still hers. Among the Elves she represents the light that evil cannot touch, and the reverence in which she is held, expressed in song rather than worship, is one of the clearest windows the texts give onto Elvish religion.

Varda remains in Valinor with Manwë on Taniquetil, revered by the Elves until the end of the World.