Moon

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Moon
File:Legolas arrow ringwraith viv lotr.JPG
Other names	Ithil, Rána, Isíl, Phainakelûth, Nîlû
Location	the sky

"The round Moon rolled behind the hill,
as the Sun raised up her head.
She hardly believed her fiery eyes;
For though it was day, to her surprise
they all went back to bed!"

― The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late

Ithil, the Moon, was a celestial object seen in the skies of Arda at night.

History

After the Darkening of Valinor and the destruction of the Two Trees, Telperion the White Tree bore one last Flower of Silver before its end. Aulë and his people made a vessel to carry to the silver flower aloft, and Tilion, one of the hunters of Oromë; was granted the task of steering the new Moon through the sky. Tilion guided his charge up into the western skies just as the Noldor were returning into Middle-earth, and so marked the beginning the First Age. The Moon first rose above Valinor in the far West of the World, but Varda came to change this arrangement, so that the Moon would pass beneath the World, and arise in the east instead, as it does to this day.

According to the legends of the Elves, Tilion was an unsteady steersman, sometimes dwelling overlong beneath the Earth, or appearing in the sky at the same time as the Sun. He was drawn to the bright new Sun, launched from Valinor shortly after his own vessel, and his coming too close to his fiery companion was said to account for the darkening of the Moon's face.

Legacy

The Moon remained important to the inhabitants of Middle-earth and Númenor throughout their long history. This is perhaps most evident in Elendil's famous son Isildur, whose name means "Servant of the Moon". In Middle-earth, he dwelt in Ithilien, or Moon-land, in a tower he named Minas Ithil. Though that tower was later captured by the creatures of Sauron, and renamed by Men as Minas Morgul, the symbol of the Moon remained powerful there. Even at the end of the Third Age, its inhabitants still used the Moon as their emblem, though they corrupted that sign with a face of death.

The Hobbits had their own tales about the Moon as well, singing songs about a jolly but unpredictable being they named the Man in the Moon. This peculiar figure seems to be an echo of the being described in the Elves' stories, the Maia and hunter Tilion, wayward steersman of the Moon.

Other versions of the legendarium

Early concepts

In the early versions of The Silmarillion as described in The Book of Lost Tales Part 1, a part of the History of Middle-earth series, the Moon was described in great detail as an immense island of crystal. It was also said there that the youth Tilion was said to secretly be in love with Arien, the maiden who guided the Sun, and that because he steered the Moon too close to the Sun the Moon was burned, causing the darker spots on the Moon which in reality are caused by the great basalt plains known as Lunar maria.

The Man in the Moon is even described in those writings, as being an old Elf who secretly hid on the island of the Moon, and built his minaret there. This is alluded to further in Tolkien's Roverandom, where the Man in the Moon also lives in a Minaret.

In writings which are older than the material from which the publised Silmarillion was drawn, the Moon was described at one point rather as being created by Morgoth as a mockery of Arda the world, but this notion was abandoned.

Later concepts

In the Round World version of the legendarium, the Sun and the Moon were not the fruit of the Two Trees, but actually preceded the creation of the Trees. Instead, the Trees preserved the light of the Sun before it was tainted by Melkor when he ravished Arien.

See also

• Man in the Moon