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Lord of the Rings Vraag

Is Valinar the place u go when u die in middle-earth?

I mean Valinor is pretty much the equivalent of heaven. Some of the fellowship sailed there and some didn't. when the people that didn't go died did they go to Valinar of some place else?. I remember Gandalf describing death to pippin so was he telling him of Valinor?
 StarPotterRings posted een jaar geleden
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Lord of the Rings Antwoorden

Book-Freak said:
For the most part, no. This, door the way, is going to be a rather long explanation, so I hope you’re sitting comfortably.
Basically, Valinor is a region of a continent called Aman, which lies to the west of Middle Earth. It used to be part of the physical world (and it took 36 days to kruis the sea between Aman and Middle Earth door boat) but due to some really complicated circumstances (which would take forever to explain, so I won’t) it was completely removed from the physical world. It still exists, but u can’t travel there anymore unless u are an elf of a mortal under very special circumstances.
Valinor is used as a generic titel for the entirety of the continent and its regions, and is, in very simple terms, the homeland of the Gods and the Elves. In a way that is very like heaven, I suppose, it is a beautiful and much perfected version of Middle Earth and is, for the most part, totally peaceful. However, it isn’t like heaven in that u don’t have to die to go there. As Valinor is the homeland of the Elves, they are allowed to travel there but they cannot return (another desperately long story). There is an almost total ban on any mortals in Valinor: it is the realm of the immortals only, with very few exceptions.
Now, death comes into this in a rather strange and very complicated way, which I’ll try to explain as simply as possible, but it goes into all sorts of complexities regarding souls and mortality. Basically, ‘mortals’ (which include Humans, Dwarves and Hobbits) have very short life spans, at the end of which they die. (Here’s the really complicated bit) The soul of a mortal is in no way tied to the earth. In Tolkien’s theologies, he stated that after death, a mortal’s soul travels out of all the circles of the world, and not even the gods know what happens to them. When a mortal dies in Middle Earth, their soul travels to what are known as ‘The Halls of Mandos’. Mandos is the god of death and his ‘halls’ are basically where departed souls go. The mortal souls pass straight through these halls and out of all knowledge, but this does not happen for elves and other immortals (I’ll explain who these other immortals are in a minute). When as Elf dies, their soul travels to the Halls of Mandos but unlike the mortals, their souls stay there. Elves are immortal, and their souls are tied to earth in a way that humans’ souls aren’t: basically, the elves will live until the end of the world.


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posted een jaar geleden 
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Now, once an Elf’s soul enters the Halls of Mandos, they will stay there for centuries in what is basically rehab. They spend this time totally recovering from anything that ‘weighs down’ their soul: any grief, any sadness, any hatred, ect. They recover from and accept all the bad things that have ever happened to them. Once they have gone through this, they are ‘reborn’. This means that their souls are taken from the Halls of Mandos and gegeven new bodies to inhabit. These bodies are exactly the same as the ones they died in, but brand new; things like scars aren’t there, for example. The reborn elf will find him-or-herself in Valinor where they can live the rest of eternity in peace.
Book-Freak posted een jaar geleden
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Elves are not the only ones who go through this: there are other immortals. I am referring to the gods. Gandalf is a god (well, one of the lesser gods, anyway) and therefore immortal. When he died fighting the Balrog, his spirit departed his body and went to the Halls of Mandos (this is the part he tells Pippin about in the siege of Minas Tirith: when he dies he sees a white light, and then his spirit sees the shores of Aman as his spirit travelled there). Now, this is the part I am slightly unsure about. What we both know for certain is that Gandalf was reborn into a new body: his ‘Gandalf the White’ form. However, we don’t know if he was reborn in Valinor and travelled back to Middle Earth, of if a new body was created there and then on Caradhras. Personally, I think a body was created there and then, but I might be wrong, Whatever is true, he had a new body which he broke in spectacularly in the battle of Helms Deep.
Book-Freak posted een jaar geleden
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No problem! Yes, Tolkien certainly knew how to write in detail - his works are just ... Incredible :)
Book-Freak posted een jaar geleden
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