Melkor and the Flame Imperishable

Before Melkor is named the great Enemy of the peoples of Arda, and the Valar, and before his Discord, and before he builds Utumno, he is a seeker and observer. We are told that Melkor had oft gone alone into the void places, away from the Timeless Halls, seeking the Imperishable Flame, showing us the depth of his earliest desire to originate and create ex nihilo.

Melkor’s Longing in the Void

This desire of Melkor’s is not initially for destruction nor domination, but rather a longing for an independent authorship (something I reference very often), that is, to bring forth being from within himself as opposed to merely elaborate what has been given by the One. As mentioned in the post on Melkor’s Discord, the other Ainur are content to participate and to adorn what Ilúvatar has placed within them, but only the Ainu Melkor grows restless. His yearning carries him outside of the harmony, into the chaotic nothingness beyond, with a belief that perhaps the Void can be filled by a will guided by the Flame, and one that is strong enough to shape it.

This is not yet an evil. Although typical Catholic readings that attune themselves to Tolkien’s original desires declare Melkor’s search even for the Flame as evil, I cannot find agreement within me. The Catholic reasoning follows the breadth that Melkor has innate desires & lusts for pride and power, and these are Christian vices; Melkor displays no outset virtues at his ‘birth,’ unlike his lieutenant Sauron, who, as Mairon, displayed Christian virtues of obedience & love. But I feel that Melkor’s seeking the Flame was not yet in full elaboration of his later vices, though I do believe they were still within him. Melkor exercised his curiosity and desire for goodness in seeking the Flame, but was motivated by his pride and lust for power, therefore, at this point, I hesitate to call him evil. In his act of seeking, Melkor suggests that he intuits something sacred, a spark of creative essence that transcends his place in the given order of the Valar. But this is the precise moment where the fracture of Melkor from the One begins, for what he seeks—the Flame Imperishable—is not a thing that is capable of being subjugated to a will other than Eru Ilúvatar’s, nor a power or tool, for it is “with Ilúvatar,” and cannot be found by wandering.

“He had gone often alone into the void places seeking the Imperishable Flame… but he found it not; for it is with Ilúvatar.” The Silmarillion, p. 16.

We see Melkor’s first fall that is not in a direct rebellion but in a metaphysical impatience. He wants to create as Ilúvatar does in rivalry as opposed to simple likeness; the other Ainur are well accepting that their thoughts and gifts are imposed upon them by a greater thought, but Melkor begins to question whether such higher order is necessary at all. He no longer sees the beauty of the world in harmony but in mastery; he exhibits a diabolical turn in a split from harmonization to observation without communion—that is, the will to perceive and manipulate reality without adherence or submission to its source. Melkor’s dissonance is no desire to utterly destroy creation yet, though he will wish to in order to make way for his own creation, but to replace creation, a formation of some greater lifeforms that are only greater for their origination in Melkor.

The Flame Imperishable

The Flame Imperishable is desirable for Melkor as it is, in Tolkien’s cosmology, the principle by which thought becomes reality as opposed to a symbol or creative force in and of itself to be wielded; its nature likens itself to the Holy Spirit’s behavior in Trinitarian doctrine, which Tolkien took as inspiration when imagining the Flame.

“Professor Tolkien talked to me at some length about the use of the word ‘holy’ in The Silmarillion. Very specifically he told me that the ‘Secret Fire sent to burn at the heart of the World’ in the beginning was the Holy Spirit.” Kilby, Tolkien and The Silmarillion, p. 59

The Flame is not a power or substance that can be transferred nor grasped, but the divine act that grants existence itself; where the Ainur participate as composers and performers of themes, only Eru Ilúvatar possesses this Flame, the ultimate source that transforms thought into being.

“Therefore Ilúvatar sent forth the Flame Imperishable into the heart of the World; and the World was.” The Silmarillion, p. 20

The Flame is that very indispensable link between the eternal Mind and the temporal world. I have always seen it as the very enactment of divine permission without which no being can truly be. Only Eru Ilúvatar can “sen[d] forth” the Flame Imperishable into the “heart of the World,” Eä, and create the World only by its admission, which creates a lust within Melkor; Melkor understands that without the Flame Imperishable, his creation is naught in comparison to Eru Ilúvatar’s, for he can never create the World nor any being that is sustained by the Flame and instead only cruel imitations, such as Orcs and dragons, that are manipulations of beings sustained by the Flame—with Orcs coming from the Children of Ilúvatar, the Elves. The Flame is very much theologically Johannine in this respect, for just as the Logos is “with God” and “was God” (John 1:1), the Flame is “with Ilúvatar,” inseparable from the divine source, and coexistent yet distinct from all subordinate beings, Melkor included. All attempts that Melkor has to replicate or appropriate this Flame, which is the act of divine origination, is doomed for a futile failure, for it is the prerogative of the One who alone can grant reality.

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Part of a larger thread: Tolkien Masterlist