Tolkien Tide: Of Aulë and Yavanna
Quenta Silmarillion
Of Aulë and Yavanna
It's not surprising, but I still find it a little odd that this is one of the most memorable chapters for me personally. I first read The Silmarillion in high school; my senior English teacher lent me her copy when she saw I'd finished LotR and was basically feral for more. And this chapter, short as it is, has stuck with me more than Beren and Luthien or the tale of Turin -- I've read those more, as I read the "history" books, so I know them well now, but this little piece from my first reading has stuck with me the entire time.
It's simple; it's just the origin of dwarves and ents. Aulë made the dwarves, though Iluvatar had to imbue them with soul; they're hidden away in the mountains around the world until after the elves appear. Yavanna is so concerned they will destroy her trees she speaks to Manwe and they end up convincing Iluvatar that tree guardians would be ok, though, and this is something I didn't specifically remember...
When the Children awake, then the thought of Yavanna will awake also, and it will summon spirits from afar, and they will go among the kelvar1 and the olvar,2 and some will dwell therein, and be held in reverence, and their just anger shall be feared.
Dwarves are ensouled somewhat similarly to the elves and humans, but ents are... enspirited versions of the things in question; I mean, yeah, fair enough? Where the hell do the spirits come from?
I was researching last week at some point about Tolkien's use of Paracelsus and despite a lot of claims on places like quora, Tolkien actually directly calls a set of spirits "sylphs" in some early accounts of Manwë's halls. So there was clearly an idea of a spirit world of some sort, a kind of ecosystem of spirits that is reduced by the time of the published Silmarillion to the maiar, "lesser" spirits that often don't take bodily form and help things to grow or function correctly. That's a lot like the post-Paracelsan conception of elemental spirits, and given that Olorin is probably a fire spirit and ends up as, you know, Gandalf, that tracks. That kind of remains while it's unstated.
Manwë also says they will wane in power and fearsomeness, that they will only be significantly powerful in the time of the elves and the beginning of the time of humans -- so not in our time, basically. Hence not seeing trees walk around, one assumes.