As an avid Tolkien fan and an increasingly active member of this site, I cannot count the number of times I've seen people refer to the Valar or Maiar as gods, only to be corrected by other members (often of high reputation) that they are more like angels, etc.
Why?
Even if the Maiar are more like angels (a Gabriel/Gandalf comparison has a lot of merit), the Valar are almost exactly gods, taken from Greek or Norse mythology with barely even any alteration. They have specialties and spheres of influence, they are supernatural beings of incredible power, they are immortal (at least to the extent that Greek deities are), they live in a magical land just like Asgard or Mt Olympus, they were involved with the creation and shaping of the world before retreating back after the coming of men, etc. Aule in Valinor is practically interchangeable with Hephaestus on Mt Olympus, Yavanna with Demeter, Ulmo with Poseidon, and on and on and on.
Obviously Eru Ilúvatar rules over them as the utmost power in Arda, but hierarchical relationships are well-known in polytheistic traditions. Tolkien himself was a Christian, and he famously kept Middle-earth from having too much religious flavor in-universe, but he must have known that a lot of his creations would have been heretical if they'd been presented as more than fiction (e.g. "God gave dominion over the Earth to men, not men and elves!" or "God required no input from his angels to create the world!"), so why would this particular distinction be so important?
Where does this tradition of the Valar being absolutely, positively not considered gods come from? Did Tolkien himself insist on it? If so, did he ever comment on why he patterned them so clearly off of a polytheistic tradition (i.e. specialized nature-deities with their own kingdom, desires, and familial relationships), rather than a more monotheistic structure (i.e. angelic spirits of goodness without independent lives, serving as messengers of a single authority)?
Answer
They are.
That's a bit of a simplistic and sweeping statement, so I obviously need to expand some more.
First and foremost, in all of the early Silmarillion work, up to and including the 1937 Silmarillion (which Tolkien had sent for publication before writing LotR) the word "gods" is used for the Valar very liberally. I'll add some quotes to illustrate (the capitalization of "Gods" here is editorial and should not be seen as significant):
- Of all things which the Gods made they have most renown, and about their fate all the tales of the Eldar are woven.
- she set the crown of seven mighty stars to swing, the emblem of the Gods, and the sign of doom.
- Thus it came to pass that after long council the Gods resolved to make an assault upon the fortress of Morgoth in the North.
- In the North these shores, in the ancient days after the Battle of the Gods, sloped ever westward...
- Yet Morgoth whispered that the Gods kept the Eldar captive, so that Men coming should defraud them of the kingdoms of Middle-earth...
In the 1950/1951 revisions of the Silmarillion, carried out before publication of LotR, Tolkien began the process of removing references to the "gods" from certain works, but in a rather piecemeal fashion, and they still remain in the final versions of many of the stories; for example, the following quote from the last chapter:
...the host of the Gods were arrayed in forms of Valinor...
Compare with the published version:
...the host of the Valar were arrayed in forms young and fair and terrible...
So the conclusion is that the removal of references to "the Gods" was not an authorial one (i.e one made by JRRT) but rather an editorial one (i.e one made by CT).
Even so, references to "the Gods" do remain in the published Silmarillion, and I'll quote all of them that apply to the Valar:
- The Great among these spirits the Elves name the Valar, the Powers of Arda, and Men have often called them gods.
- ...westward shimmered the fields and pastures of Yavanna, gold beneath the tall wheat of the gods.
- Thither we cannot come where the Gods dwell in bliss.
- Which of you has seen the least of the Gods? Who has beheld the Dark King in the North?
So in summary, there is no "tradition of the Valar being absolutely, positively not considered gods". While the use of the word "Gods" to refer to them did drop out in stages, it was never fully abandoned, and even despite CT removing most of the references from the published work, he still retained a few.
Tolkien's actual intentions in this are given in various places throughout his Letters, so I'll quote from Letter 200 to provide one example:
...when the Creator made it real ... they desired to enter into it, from the beginning of its 'realization'.
They were allowed to do so, and the great among them became the equivalent of the 'gods' of traditional mythologies; but a condition was that they would remain 'in it' until the Story was finished.
So your observation that "the Valar are almost exactly gods, taken from Greek or Norse mythology with barely even any alteration" is in fact correct: that was Tolkien's intention, but with a modification to the theological framework that - while they were certainly involved in the creative work - they were agents of it rather than creators themselves. Any tradition of the Valar not being "Gods" comes from later interpretations by third parties, but has neither authorial nor editorial basis.
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