# Eä or Arda?



## ArwenStar (Oct 17, 2019)

What is the name of the world which ME is a part of? Eä or Arda or something else entirely?


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## Olorgando (Oct 17, 2019)

Middle-earth is a part of Arda, certainly. The other part was Valinor (in the flat-earth time); the commute there has gotten a bit more complicated since the Númenor incident … 
Too lazy to dig after the precise meaning of Eä; 😴 though the Beatles song "Let It Be" is suddenly buzzing around my cranium … 😊


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## Erestor Arcamen (Oct 17, 2019)

Eä is the universe itself and Arda was contained within it. From TolkienGateway.com:



> Eä was conceived in the Music of the Ainur and then visualized in the beautiful Vision that Ilúvatar showed to the Ainur to see for themselves what they sang. The Vision showed a World sustained inside the Void, but without being part of it, and developing life on its own. The Ainur desired all this to be real, and Ilúvatar brought this into actuality by saying Eä and sent His Flame Imperishable into the Void to burn at the heart of the World. Thus Eä was set amid the Void.[3]
> 
> When the Valar entered Eä they become part of it and could not leave it willingly or not, until the End.[3][4] At the beginning of Time, Eä was dark and unshaped, and the Ainur who entered it had to labor in the vast wastes for ages beyond knowledge or reckoning to fulfill the Vision.[5] During their labors, Varda created the stars[6], and Manwe, Aule, and Ulmo chiefly worked for the formation of Arda at the beginning of its existence.[3][7][8] Other spirits wandered around Eä, and Melkor gathered some to his service.[7]
> 
> ...


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## ArwenStar (Oct 20, 2019)

Thanks...
Still confused 
But makes a little more sense...


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