Heget's Blatherings

Yes, I'm reposting these once more. Because if people in the Silmarillion/Tolkien fandom continue to use them, I want nice official links to them. And so another crosspost from tumblr project is born.

I decided to do the odd section. It's a bit of a hodgepodge of Valar sigil madness. What little Valar worship or set-up I had in my Sims 2 game (There are different approaches to set up the appearance of the practice of religion in Sims 2, especially those that play a more traditionally medieval/medieval-fantasy-esque games), I still needed a symbol for the Valar as a whole (and Silmarillion is unusual in the relationship of its “These are not gods” and the elves “They don’t actually worship them”. But then the first elves we meet in Lord of the Rings are singing hymn to Varda on a pilgrimage.). For individual Ainur I just use a color that fit their theme, but I needed a “Valar sigil” for a few rare occasions like the design to stamp the center of the Ring of Doom.

• So finally I came up with the above monochromatic thing. And quartered symmetry does not lend itself well to divisions of 14.
• If you’re wondering, yes, I’ve labelled in my head which of the dots corresponds to which Valar.

Now the real reason I needed a Valar sigil was because, if you’ve read about my world-building for my game, you’ll know I had something called the “Almaren Academie”, a college neighborhood. And any college campus is going to need a school symbol and school colors and a flag. Working off the Valar symbol I changed it to reflect the Isle of Almaren - and subsequently made the school colors bright blue and spring green. It’s a garish checkerboard. (I’m delighted).

The third image is one of the banners, the more flag-like designs that fit on square and rectangular meshes. This one is the adaptation of the white with gold banners of Ingwë and therefore the Vanyar. But because I see the War of Wrath, when Inwgë’s son leads all the Vanyar and Finarfin the Noldor that stayed in Aman to a 50-year war where, with Valar help, they utterly defeated Morgoth and all his armies, as something of a holy crusade on the part of the Vanyar. They do literally have their divine figures not only sanctioning but assisting it. So, like a crusader flag, I’ve added the symbol of the Valar to the banner, so this will be the banner of the Vanyar soldiers during the War of Wrath.

LATER, I made the colored and animated version:

Something fun for teamainur, because there’s a strong sense of pride I feel seeing my sigil for the valar showing up in places I would have never imagined and it makes me almost as happy as the fans celebrating and creating fanart and head-canon posts for the Ainur. I have always liked the Valar, and they are dear to me as much as any character from the Silmarillion (dearer than many).

Now when I made the Valar sigil, I noted that while making this symbol for all fourteen, I used basic color as my individual ‘heraldry’ for each Power, and that on the sigil itself I had assigned each Vala to one of the circles. So here, finally, is the full color version of the sigil, and because such things amuse me, two gifs of our rotating color wheel of doom*.

Bonus points to everyone that can correctly label which 'slice’ is which Valar.

(Originally Ulmo was in a different location, as I struggled between placing the Aratar at the four points and desiring to have spouses and siblings next to each other, as I also see this layout as the seating arrangement of their counsels.)

*yes, a Máhanaxar pun.

Eru Ilúvatar, if you were wondering, is the large white circle in the center. ;)