I am happy to post this interview what is binary option with author Benita J. Prins, fellow lover of all things Tolkien and a great writer in her own right too! I read her fantasy, Sea of Crystal, Sea of Glass recently and recommend … Continue reading
Tolkien's Silmarillion does not treat enchantment as a gift freely bestowed. From the first crafting of the Silmarils to the forging of the Rings of Power, every act of supernatural craft in his mythology carries a hidden invoice. The elves who wield this power, the maiar who descend in human form, and the dark lord Morgoth himself all discover that the luminous thing they desire will demand something in return, often the thing they love most. To read these stories is to recognise an old truth dressed in new cloth: that wonder, when pursued without humility, turns into a slow catastrophe.
For Australian readers, the reception of the Silmarillion has long had its own texture. The book has been carried for decades by Allen & Unwin, the house that still publishes Tolkien in this country, and it has become a fixture in bookshops from Melbourne's Readings to the Dymocks on Sydney's George Street. Generations of readers have grown up treating the book as a kind of mythic scripture, returning to its pages in university courses on medievalism. Understanding its quiet moral logic, the way enchantment costs the soul, can reshape how we read Tolkien's other works.
The story opens with the brightest deed in the Silmarillion: the crafting of three jewels that capture the light of the Two Trees. Fëanor, the most gifted of the Noldor, draws upon the light of Valinor and binds it into crystalline form. The act is breathtaking in its beauty, and it marks him as the supreme craftsman of his age. Yet the very skill that allows him to imprison light also gives him the means to pursue it, obsessively, beyond the boundaries of wisdom. Tolkien shows that power to create is not separable from power to corrupt.
When Morgoth steals the Silmarils and murders Finwë, Fëanor's grief curdles into the dread oath that will unmake his house. He swears to pursue the Dark Lord across the world, regardless of who stands in his way. The oath becomes the hinge on which much of the Silmarillion turns. Eight hundred years of exile, three kinslayings, the burning of the ships at Losgar, and the ultimate ruin of his sons all flow from that single utterance. The enchantment of the Silmarils becomes indistinguishable from their curse.
This pattern of creation-as-trap runs through Tolkien's wider legendarium. The rings that Sauron distributes in the Second Age, the palantíri that lure kings into tyranny, even the mirror of Galadriel, all carry this charge of double-edged beauty. Fëanor is not punished for being a craftsman; he is consumed by the failure to lay down his craft when creation turns into possession.
Long before Fëanor reaches for the Silmarils, Morgoth has already demonstrated what it means to pursue power without measure. He begins as Melkor, the most powerful of the Ainur, but chooses to bend creation toward his own will. He introduces discords into the Music of the Ainur, plants seeds of frost and flame, and gradually transforms his original malice into an industrial scale of cruelty. Every later enchantment in the Silmarillion is shadowed by his original act.
What makes Morgoth's portrayal remarkable is that Tolkien does not present him as a jealous outsider. He is the most gifted being in existence, and his gift is precisely what enables his corruption. The Ainur were given the power to shape Arda through their thought and voice, and Morgoth uses this power to mar the very substance of the world. Arda becomes his canvas for tyranny, and the enchantment he practises is parasitic: it feeds on the work of others.
This is one of the most uncomfortable lessons of the Silmarillion for a modern reader. Talent without virtue is dangerous, and the most beautiful gifts can become instruments of oppression when wielded by a corrupted will. Australian readers who study the book at universities like Melbourne have often noted how Morgoth functions as a warning about empires that justify their conquests through superior skill.
By the First Age, the three great hidden kingdoms of the elves, Gondolin, Nargothrond, and Doriath, each represent a kind of perfected enchantment. Gondolin is the city of stone and song, where Turgon has built a refuge against the dark. Nargothrond is a kingdom of water and craftsmanship under Finrod. Doriath is Thingol's realm, protected by the girdle of Melian, perhaps the most potent magic in the early Silmarillion.
Each falls, and each falls because enchantment breeds complacency. Turgon becomes so enamoured of his hidden city that he refuses to heed Ulmo's warnings from the sea. Finrod's people, having built halls of wonder beside the Narog, grow proud and forge arms in the manner of their enemies. Thingol's realm harbours a cursed treasure within: the Nauglamír set with a Silmaril, which becomes the cause of his death and the slaughter of his people.
Tolkien's point is that beauty divorced from generosity will not survive. Enchantment that turns inward eventually curdles. The hidden kingdoms read like cautionary tales about enclaves that mistake their own polish for permanence, a lesson that has not been lost on readers in any age.
The second great cycle of the Silmarillion deals with the rings, and it shows enchantment in a more mechanical mode. Sauron, in the years after Morgoth's defeat, takes on a fair form and goes among the elves of Eregion as Annatar, the Lord of Gifts. He teaches them the craft of ring-making, and his art is meant to bind the wearers to his will.
The power of the rings is subtle. They do not compel through force but through enhancement. They preserve, they magnify, they allow the bearer to hold back the decay of the world. For the elves, weary of the long defeat, the rings promise a kind of suspended stasis, the ability to keep their realms beautiful without effort. This is precisely the temptation enchantment always carries in Tolkien's universe: the offer to make beauty effortless.
The Three Rings of the elves, forged by Celebrimbor alone, are the noblest of these works. Yet they too are subject to the One Ring, and the moment Sauron puts it on, the elves perceive his intention and hide their rings rather than wear them. The cost of their enchantment is the long vigilance of bearers like Gandalf, Galadriel, and Elrond.
The rings also foreshadow Tolkien's critique of industrial modernity. The forge of Eregion, the volcanic forges of Mordor, the smithies of the dwarves, are metaphors for an age that mistakes technique for wisdom. In the end, Sauron's industry produces only ash, while the slow patient work of the ents and the elves, unglamorous and largely invisible, holds the world together.
One of the quiet innovations of the Silmarillion is Tolkien's distinction between two opposing kinds of enchantment. There is the magic of subcreation, in which a being participates in the ongoing making of the world by adding their own beauty to it. Fëanor's first inspiration, the lembas that Yavanna gives to the elves, the mallorn trees of Lothlórien, all belong to this kind. Such acts are dangerous because they partake of divine fire, but they are not evil in themselves.
Then there is the magic of domination, in which a being seeks to bend the world, and other wills, to its own design. Morgoth's marring, Sauron's rings, the corruption of Númenor under Sauron's shadow, all belong to this second kind. The first kind of magic can bear fruit, even when it costs; the second kind always ends in ash. Tolkien's mythic framework is essentially a meditation on which of these two forms of enchantment a culture chooses.
For Australian readers, this distinction can feel surprisingly contemporary. The country's literary conversation has long wrestled with the difference between art that invites and art that instructs. The Silmarillion offers a mythic grammar for thinking about these choices, in which the cost of enchantment is measured not in gold but in the kind of soul a community decides to keep.
Reading the Silmarillion in Australia has its own particular pleasures and difficulties. The book demands patience: it is less a novel than a scripture, a chronicle of ages, and its genealogies can daunt even the most devoted reader. Yet the patience is rewarded, and Australian readers have responded by building a quiet culture of return. In bookshops in Brisbane and Perth, copies of the Silmarillion sit on shelves beside works by local writers such as Garth Nix, who has spoken about Tolkien's lasting influence on Australian fantasy.
Tolkien reading groups, convened over coffee or, in classic Australian style, a flat white and a slice of lamingtons, gather in suburban libraries to discuss the Doom of Mandos, the nature of the Ainur, and the curious grace of Beren and Lúthien. In such rooms the Silmarillion reveals itself as a living text, still asking uncomfortable questions about the wages of wonder.
For those who wish to explore these themes further, Anne Marie Gazzolo has written thoughtfully about the moral logic of Tolkien's world on her own site at annemariegazzolo.com, where essays, interviews, and book discussions continue to deepen the conversation. The cost of magic in the Silmarillion is not a single price but a long reckoning, and Australian readers, with their own long reckoning with distance and identity, are well placed to hear it.
An essay I wrote about the desire of Tolkien and the TCBS to be a light to their darkening world. A century later, he still provides light. Thank you, Professor and God trade binary option bless! Art by Justin Gerard … Continue reading