Morgoth's Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien

globed amid the Void, and it was sustained therein, but was not of it' (repeating the words of B, though they were here written out anew). But then it is said in C (§14) that 'amid all the splendours of the World, its vast halls and spaces, and its wheeling fires, Ilúvatar chose a place for their habitation (i.e. the habitation of the Children of Ilúvatar] in the Deeps of Time and in the midst of the innumerable Stars.' This habitation is 'Arda, the Earth', which is
    'in the Halls of Aman' (§15). When Ilúvatar gave Being to the Vision, he said (§20):
    'Let these things Be! And I will send forth the flame imperishable into the Void, and it shall be at the heart of the World, and the World shall Be; and those of you that will may go down into it.' Some of the Ainur 'abode still with Ilúvatar beyond the confines of the World' (§21); but those who 'entered into the World' (§22) are the Valar, the Powers of the World, and they laboured 'in wastes unmeasured and unexplored ... until in the Deeps of Time and in the midst of the vast halls of the World there came to be that hour and that place where was made the habitation of the Children of Ilúvatar' (§23). It is also said (§24) that the lesser spirits who aided Manwë 'went down into the Halls of Aman'. It is clear that 'the Halls of Aman' are equivalent to 'the World' (and indeed in the following text D the reading of C in §23
    'the vast halls of the World' becomes 'the vast halls of Aman'). I am unable however to cast any light on the use of the name Aman in the later Ainulindalë texts. In The Drowning of Anadûnê , where it first appeared, it was the Adûnaic name of Manwë, but that meaning is surely not present here.
    It emerges then that the word 'World' is explicitly used in a new sense. In the Ambarkanta diagram I (IV.243) Ilu is 'the World', the Earth and Sky, two halves of a globe itself globed within Vaiya. In C Arda, the Earth, the habitation of Elves and Men, is within 'the World', 'the Halls of Aman'. The evident fact that my father also used 'World' in another sense in C (the clearest case being 'that land upon the borders of the World which is called Valinor', §32) does not make matters any easier, but does not contradict this distinction.
    In order to understand the implications of this change, it must first MORGOTH`S RING - AINULINDALË - Version C - 29

    be asked: What can be said of the nature of Arda in this new conception?
    In the Ambarkanta diagram I my father long afterwards changed the title-word Ilu to Arda (IV.242). He would scarcely have done this if the conceptions behind the two names did not continue to bear a substantial resemblance to each other. Arda , then, retains major characteristics of the image of Ilu , and this is shown by what is said in the text of C itself: as that Ulmo 'dwelt from the beginning of Arda in the Outer Ocean' and the echo of his music 'runs through all the veins of the Earth' (§37), or that the spirits flying from Manwë's halls in the shape of hawks and eagles were borne by their wings ' through the three regions of the firmament ' (§36).
    On this basis it may be said that the major difference in the new conception is that while Arda is physically the same as Ilu, it is no longer 'the World globed amid the Void': for Arda is within 'the World'-which is itself 'globed amid the Void'
    (§11).
    But we at once meet with a serious difficulty - and there was no second Ambarkanta to help in resolving it. For 'the World', 'the Halls of Aman', which surrounds Arda, is not the Void: though Arda 'might seem a little thing to those ...
    who consider only the immeasurable vastness of the World' (§14), the World is spatially defined ('globed', §11), and it contains 'splendours . . . and wheeling fires'; and Ilúvatar chose the habitation of the Children, which is Arda, 'in the midst of the innumerable Stars'. How can this possibly be brought into agreement with the idea (IV.241, 243) of the Tinwë-mallë, the path of