Tolkien's T.C.B.S discussion

Tolkien explicitly says Aulë has a forge, but what exactly does he make in it? A forge isn't much use for making mountains, or dwarves. A forge suggests that the Valar can “work with their hands” in a way similar to created races.


Tolkien was hesitant about the Valar being able to create from nothing, since only Eru had that power. Creating waves, storms, mountains is probably more like rearranging existing matter, so it would not be a philosophical problem for Valar to do that.


Were Aulë's Dwarves foreshadowed in the Song? No one really knows. Eru would have known all in advance, but the Valar might not. There were subtleties in the Song that none of the Valar understood at the time.


Any large undertaking would require effort and concentration from the Valar. Why could the Valar not have created a new set of Trees, after Melkor destroyed the first ones? Are the Valar becoming less powerful as time goes on? Or is physical matter becoming more “fixed” are harder to shape?


How did the difference between MiddleEarth and the Undying Lands affect the Elves who lived in each place? How did living in the physical world, and living with Elves, affect the Valar? Certainly, by the Third Age, the Valar weren't directly using their powers much.


Why did the Valar use force against Morgoth, at the end of the First Age, but not against Sauron? Did they consider Sauron less of a threat? Or, more likely, they considered that Humans were now grown-up enough to handle Sauron themselves, with just a bit of advice and encouragement from the Wizards. Or, the Valar's influence was so subtle that the Humans and Hobbits in Lord of the Rings weren't aware of it. Some of the Valar's influence would have been in previous creations and events that they set in motion.


Manwë, Varda, and Ulmo, at least, keep informed of events in MiddleEarth. Although their information is not complete, and they need to make a deliberate effort to observe. There is a speculation that Tom Bombadil and Goldberry are Aulë and Yavanna in disguise.