Aulë

Nature

Aulë is the Vala of the earth and of making. Every substance of which Arda is built, its metals, stones, gems and soils, lies under his mastery, and every craft that shapes them is his gift. He is counted among the Aratar, the eight greatest of the Valar, and his spouse is Yavanna, so that between them they hold the earth and everything that grows from it. Aulë is nearest in nature to Melkor, for both delighted in skill and in making things of their own; the difference is that Aulë stays faithful to Eru Ilúvatar, does not envy the works of others, and does not hoard what he makes but gives it away and moves on to the next task. Melkor envied him for it and undid his works whenever he could.

Works in the shaping of Arda

In the first ages of the World Aulë raised the mountains and hollowed the seas with Ulmo, and he built the two great pillars, Helcar in the north and Ringil in the south, on which the Lamps of the Valar were set. When Melkor cast the Lamps down, Aulë and Yavanna suffered most, for their work was undone. In Aman he raised the Pelóri and helped build Valmar. After the Darkening of Valinor it was Aulë and his people who made the vessels to carry the last fruit and flower of the Two Trees, which became the Sun and the Moon.

The making of the Dwarves

Aulë's most famous act was also his greatest fault. Impatient for the coming of the Children of Ilúvatar and longing for pupils to whom he could teach his crafts, and knowing that Melkor's darkness still lay over Middle-earth, he made in secret, in a hall under the mountains, the Seven Fathers of the Dwarves. He made them strong and stubborn to endure the Enemy, and he made them as he imagined the Children would be, since he had seen them only in the Vision. But he could not give them life of their own; they moved only as his thought moved them. Eru spoke to him, asking why he had tried to exceed his power. Aulë answered that he had made them as a child imitates his father, not in mockery but in love, and he raised his hammer to destroy them in repentance. Eru stopped him: he had accepted the Dwarves, and they shrank from the hammer and begged for mercy, which showed that they already had wills of their own. The condition was that they should sleep until the Elves, the Firstborn, had awakened. Aulë laid them in their places under the mountains of Middle-earth, and the Dwarves ever after called him Mahal, the Maker, and believed that he gathered them after death into halls of their own in Mandos.

When Aulë told Yavanna what he had done she was troubled, foreseeing that the Dwarves would love only the things of their own hands and would fell her trees. Their argument led her to Manwë and to the granting of the Ents, so that Aulë's children and Yavanna's would each have their guardians.

Aulë and the Noldor

Of the Elves, the Noldor were closest to Aulë. They loved him, learned from him, and in the end surpassed his teaching: Fëanor was the greatest of his pupils, though the Silmarils were Fëanor's own work and not Aulë's. Aulë grieved bitterly at the fall of the Noldor, but he did not withdraw his friendship from those who remained in Aman, and it was his people who taught the Elves of Valinor the making of gems and the working of metal. His Maiar were the most skilful of all the lesser Ainur and also the most dangerous. Sauron was of his people before Melkor seduced him, and in the Third Age Curumo, later Saruman, was chosen by Aulë for the mission of the Istari. Both fell by the same road that Aulë himself had walked to its edge and turned back from: the love of one's own works, hardening into the desire to control.

Later ages

Aulë does not appear directly after the First Age. His legacy is in the Dwarves, who are his in every stubborn, secretive, craft-loving fibre, and in the Noldorin craftsmanship that made the Rings of Power, the palantíri and the gates of Moria. The friendship of Dwarves and Elves in Eregion, and the trust between Gimli and Legolas, are in a sense reconciliations of Aulë's people with Yavanna's.

Aulë remains in Valinor at his crafts, and the Dwarves believe he will gather them at the end of the World.