The inconsistencies in Tolkien's texts are part of what makes his imaginings feel like myth. Real myths come from stories passed down and changed over time, having different tellings that clash with each other. We then collate these stories into the image of a myth for an entire civilisation. The Silmarillion is like a popular textbook discussing a mythos, creating the version of the myth that most people consider "canon".

Well, Eru did tell Melkor after the Music that all things have their origin in him and that anything Melkor makes only adds to the glory of His design. Perhaps the dragons on the door represent that; though born of Melkor's evil, they are ultimately still Eru's. Mayhap when the Second Music comes, even the lost and the damned, the twisted and the slaved, will be welcomed into Eru's loving embrace and counted among his Children. So glad I found this channel. Instant subscribe.

I can see the Valar explaining the Door to the Lore Masters trying to convey the terrible and mighty wards, glyphs, magiks that guard the door and much like you said, having to use the imagery of black dragons as a common reference point to beings who couldn't know how to process what they were being told. Like explaining a nuclear weapon to a 10th century farmer, the teller would have to use other imagery to make the point of its horrifying destruction. Thanks for the masterclass of thought, sir.

When I thought I knew everything about Tolkien. There is always more

I always loved that piece of John Howe artwork. The way Tolkien leaves it just adds to its ‘otherworldliness’, it’s as if we mortal men can’t comprehend it and it’s for the gods alone. Wether intentional or not, I really like the mysterious nature of the Door of Night. Great video, thanks!

I see the doors (of night and morning) also as giant construction, I like the thought of these "doors" at the etches of the world in east and west. I find it intimidating and mysterious, imagine a freshly born elf who doesn't know that much of the stories of old, wandering to the western etch of Valinor/Aman and seeing this.

Love the haunting background music.

Dragons likely existed in Arda before Morgoth made them larger, smarter, fiercer. the dragons he bred are described as "fire drakes", or later, the winged fire drakes but there is earlier mention of "cold drakes", smaller wingless dragons that are unable to breathe fire. I think that they were natural creatures living in the north & east, that may have not originally been evil. but like wolves and other predatory beasts, they were brought under Morgoth's influence, becoming more powerful and intelligent over time but also more "sinful" in nature: wrathful, greedy, vain, etc. I think the dragons on the door of night represents this sort of dichotomy. The door of night in many ways representing the unknown, the dragon gargoyles represent creatures of darkness. On the one hand, they are guardians wielding this secret power, and on the other, they are slaves or captives of it. This sort of symbolism makes extra sense when you consider it as Morgoth's prison, in many ways he can be likened to a dragon himself.

A while ago, I had a conversation with GirlNextGondor regarding the Music of the Ainur. Her position, which I agreed with, was that it wasn't really music as incarnate beings such as men, dwarves, or elves know it but something beyond that such that describing it as music was the closest the Valar and Maiar could come to explaining it to the elves. I think the Door of Night is something similar; it is a portal to a different reality that operates according to different rules than those of Arda. The description us mortals have been given is simply the best the Valar could come up to try and describe it. Perhaps if we could go there it would appear something like what has been described but that could be a case of us seeing what we expect to see. What the door actually is isn't something our senses can fully grasp.

I never thought of it as an actual door, as I always assumed that the ability to open it was in no way physical. Therefore the door itself need not be physical. For me, going through it would be something like how Saruman's spirit is described after Grima kills his physical body. Just disappearing in the wind.

One Lore channel to rule them all..wow great video. Sometimes I feel like I dont even have an imagination when I compare it to Tolkien

If we accept that the Door of night was expressly made to expel Morgoth, then there's one very simple reason why the Valar might have decorated it with Dragons: to rub Morgoth's nose in his defeat one last time, and mock at him on the way out the door. It might also be a reminder of Iluvatar's words, that there was nothing Morgoth could achieve that could not be turned to his creator's purpose.

This is the fourth video in my archives series, a favourite set of videos since I get to talk about topics that few others seem interested in making videos about! I have some other topics I'd like to cover - including one of my favourite stories that was left out of The Silmarillion (Melkor's early corruption of mankind). Is there any topic you think would be interesting to cover, something that changed over the course of Tolkien's writings? Feel free to share your ideas! Consider becoming a member of the channel for early access to videos and member only polls - kzfaq.info/love/POz2P0OxWp0ij0K4BsLsRwjoin

I was actually frightened by all that!

How many artists began to craft a creation only to end up with something unexpected? That is assuming the Door of Night was an actual physical object. If so, then Aulë would have had a hand in creating it. In such case, it is not unreasonable he could've been given a glimpse of things to come, possibly by Eru, and his vision could have thus been altered accordingly. That being said, if the Door of Night was something more mystical, even spiritual, in nature - then its appearance, its manifestation in the material realm, could vary through time, according to whomever approaches it.

You have achieved "I hit the like button before I listen to the video" status.

this just makes me think of Gandalf and his comment "300 lives of men I've walked this earth and now i have no time". How much more would Tolkien have written if he too had more time. He was gone mere months before I was born and yet he's had more influence on my life than my parents.

Maybe it's as astronomical or astrological structure. Maybe the dragons are dust clouds obscuring the light of distant stars or illuminated nebula. Or maybe the 'dragons" are black holes, and Morgoth is in the pit of a planet in orbit around one and... oh my goodness, did I just show how the Lord of the Rings and Doctor Who are in the same universe?

Excellent, excellent stuff. Now do the Gate of Morning :)

Great video. Suggestion to another theme: the steampunk Númenor version in History of middle earth.

So they added essentially a space-hatch to their upper firmament. That's probably the coolest thing I've learned so far.

Thank you for this enjoyable video! It is literally a meditation :) I like the way you sequence the facts, and great that you have mentioned the Warchers of Cirith Ungol - they clearly were inspired by the same mythology that the earlier Door of the Night. I also have an impression that the earlier version of the passage of the Sun through the two gates - on the East and on the West - and its travel through the Void, strongly resembles the Egyptian myths. Taking into consideration that first dragons in Tolkien's legendarium looked more like serpents, it seems to me that the dragon statues may refer to the Egyptian god Apophis. The way I see it, they may have been placed on the Door of the Night as a warning about the future return of Melkor and his attack on the Sun and the Moon, since Melkor plays the role of Apophis in Dagor Dagorath in some way. But that part about the guard set upon the Door of the Night, as well as the one about escaping the world and death itself through this Door, makes me think that those dragons could also have been inspired Nehebkau, the guardian of the gates to Duat (the underworld) and one of the 42 protectors of Ma'at (a kind of supreme or divine justice). May it be that Tolkien came up with the idea of Melkor creating the dragons way later than he first depicted the Door of Night in his mind? If it is so, than perhaps the dragons on the Door are not related to Melkor's dragons at all, and they may have the meaning not related to Tolkien's later consept of evil. Those are just guesses, of course, but I like imagining things that could inspire Tolkien to include one thing or another in his legendarium.

I find the whole concept of the Door of Night to be pretty fascinating to me. Metaphysical cosmology of JRR Tolkien has always drawn my curiosity. I really like that drawing of the dragons on the door so I am completely fine with it. For all we know Melkor may have been inspired by those designs and perverted them for his dragons. Or they could be symbolic similar to some Bibical descriptions that go that way are when referring to something.

I don’t really have a problem with dragon statues before they were actually made. Aule made dwarves based on the impression he got from the vision of the music. Why not the same for dragons?

Great stuff as always. I think one of the things that gives Tolkien's works such depth is the ability to ask these questions without getting easy answers. Thanks for a thought provoking video!

My take on the Door of Night: since it was made by the Valar in order to banish Melkor/Morgoth, then Mandos would have had a part to play. He would know that Melkor was not gone for good - the Last Battle would happen when Melkor broke the Door of Night and came back into Arda. The imagery of Dragons (being some of the most feared servants of Morgoth) on the Door would therefore be Mandos' addition - a Prophecy, a telling of Fate, that evil will come back through. Just my bit of head-cannon for this.

It's a fascinating idea. In my head I picture the walls of the world etc. from the description given as some sort of interdimensional Dyson Sphere. Outside of the walls is some sort of separate space cut off from what we would consider reality, much in the way that Eru is said to be isolated from the entire universe in his own personal space. For those of you not familiar with the concept, a Dyson Sphere is a theoretical construct built around a star allowing people to live on it and harness the stars energy for light heat and power. The description also somewhat matches up with the much later concept of the crystal spheres in Spelljammer Dungeons & Dragons. Though admittedly, that idea may have its origins in a world religion that I'm not familiar with.

A great video. It gave me goosebumps when the music accompanied John Howe.

Fascinating. I had not given much thought to this previously. On another perhaps related subject I’d like your opinion. My question is ignited by one of the representations of Arda you provided. I’ve often been struck, while reading LOTR that folks seem to be able to see things far off which, the earth currently being a globe, would be impossible for them to see. For example as I recall when the hobbits stood at the summit of Weathertop they could glimpse the peaks of the Misty Mountains in the Far East. Now, Weathertop couldn’t have been very high as it was climbed by the hobbits and Aragorn in less than a day, perhaps merely a few hours. The height of the Misty Mountains themselves isn’t (as far as I can remember) ever described with much accuracy, but in any event they were several hundreds of miles East of Weathertop and, unless spectacularly high, should have been completely beneath the curvature of the earth. It seems to me that, like in representations of Arda that I’ve seen, the world … at least up to the beginning of the Fourth Age … must have been flat, as that is the only way I can account for people to see over such vast distances. I’d like your opinion

Thank you friend! This was a very interesting and thought provoking video! Well done

Wonderful stuff Mellon! You give such an in depth look. It is much appreciated. KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK! ECTHELION!!

really awesome vid enjoyed looking forward to the next one mate

Such a fun video, just like all the others. Well done, my friend.

Just found your channel and subscribed, loved this video.

I just imagined the door to night being a black hole.

This is a great video! About the statues, I wondered if Morgoth created his dragons based off the dragons Erü created to guard the Door of Night.

I've never watched Tolkien lore videos on KZfaq because no channel has the depth of understanding or just discusses events from the books, your videos are far and away different and for a real Tolkien scholar.

Another great video! Your discussion of your chosen topic always rings true, always seems logical and congruent with the source material. I would love to see some of your work in book format as it would allow for a deeper examination of your respective topic. As it is, much of your work is vastly superior to the work published in the various Tolkien journals, keep up the good work!

I don't know if you have an only fans, or an asmr channel, but you have one of the most appealing voices on KZfaq. I could listen to you just talking, or reading...what corner of Scotland is your accent from?

I get the impression from some of Tolkien's later writings that he was making an effort to reconcile his cosmology somewhat with scientific cosmology -- abandoning the notion of a literal flat Arda, for example, or expanding timescales. But even in the Silmarillion, we get an image of Eä that is cosmically vast in scope, with innumerable stars and wheeling fires, and Arda being merely an island within. And Eä was separate from the Void without, which existed from at least the time of the Music, if not eternally. So I picture the Door as a cosmic or spiritual gateway out of our universe -- out of reality -- entirely, and not in any sense connected to Arda or even physical form. As another commenter here says, the wonderful thing about Tolkien's mythology is that it evolves, and has contradictions, and varieties of imagery and metaphor, like historical mythologies. Ambiguity and mystery are necessary elements.

The art used in this video is amazing

Cheers. A great subject,

Great video man, I think the mysterious concepts of Tolkien's world are the most interesting ones to explore especially through his old texts.

so glad to see this video up..i voted for this theme in a poll not long ago.. John Howe captured the Door of night very well..if you noticed he added Roman columns instead of bastalt pillar with his usual style intentionally to create a detachment from Tolkiens realm and throwing in an Imperial/ greek mythology style because he wanted the viewer of the illustration to subconciously see it as an exit to another realm... its done with that intention to remind us of divine judgement, gods,and divinità..a gateway out of Tolkiens realm and into another.. Genius. To me the door of night initially could had been a meraphore for death..or even a prison for evil.. As for the dragons my initial impression of them where Tolkien saw gargoils on a church..some looking like dragons n decided to incorporate dragons to give it more depth. in Dante Alighieri book inferno from the divina commedia there are dragon characters to simbolise evil within the inferno..and also in that book theres the "Door to inferno" with writing warning "Who enters to leave behind Hope"..maybe tolkien.knows of this story and the dragons on the Door are wordless symbols of that..a warning of what lurks beyond..( if they are linked to morgoth etc) but then that contradicts the phrase" oceans of the heavens" as though the door of night also leads to some place peaceful..instead of dark place...Who knows. But then again the dragons could of been added to the Door of night to guard It... gargoyles and dragon statues where added to gothic style cathederals in the medieval days( Duomo Milano is an e.g) not only to keep to water off the building but to keep evil spirits away..the (Valar May have carved the dragons like said in the video to keep morgoth or threats away). Maybe Tolkien knew this and may have added the dragons not as a warning but as guards against evil baced on gargoyles. These Doors are full of mystery and leaves each of us to our own interpretation..maybe its simple and I am missing Its true point because i read too much into it. Maybe Tolkien simply added the dragons because "theres no story worth telling if there arent any dragons in it"and if so i couldnt agree more with him. Goodness my comment is long..Sorry. Brilliant video.

If my memory serves, Morgoth was cursed to never be able to truly create, only twist. Mayhap this is where Morgoth got the idea?

Fabulous video, amazing work🔥✌️, "Beyond the circles of the world i will not pursue them for beyond the circle there is nothing"

This is clearly related to the Egyptian Book of Gates.

Just came across this passage in The Book of Lost Tales pt. 1. Loved your video on it. I took it as a door to some kind of Void where the gods go to die. Is that Howe painting of the door in one of his art books?

The original idea of The Door is fucking fantastic, my kind of thing and brilliantly inspirational. God, I wish he had finalised this particular one. I have extracted the audio from my fave of your videos, put them into my phone and listen to them on a.loop at work. This particular one taps deeply into my imagination. You got the stuff, dude. What do you speculate are the things that aren't meant for Earth-dwellers to hear, and who or what speaks them? #Fascinating

Such a cool video. Well done sir👌 Edit: this was the first time someone commented on an idea I put forth😊thx for answering

I never knew what this art was depicting before. Interesting.

Love Tevildo, have you any videos about him? And thanks for this video, this was a great listen as always, I kind of lean towards the dragons being warnings not to pass, and of the Dark-Lord hidden beyond the door. Though the mythological element in Tolkien's writing really sets him apart from all other fantasy authors.

Why did Tolkien choose to make his cosmology so seemingly geocentric when he probably knew we revolved around the sun? Just for a fantasy explanation or to emphasize Middle Earth? Couldn't the Door of Nght be gravity in a technical sense and that's why the sun (Arien) knows the word and uses the door? As for the dragons I think they re just meant to be manifestations of Chaos and/or darkness itself, paradoxically meaning you have to pass through the darkness to get to the light (oceans of heaven). Another excellent Tolkien content video 🤘

Tolkien clearly drew from Egyptean mythology and their Book of the Dead. Especially the daily journey of Ra as the sun after being merged with the last pharaoh's soul and the Book of the Dead. Which gives them spells to vanquish Apophis the Chaos Serpent. In the first version of the Door of Night and he drew upon Greek Mythology with the Sun passing through Tartarus every day at night when Nyx takes over the sky in the second version. A truly fascinating mythology that he has build.

Superb. 🙏🏿

Maybe one way of "forcing it to make sense", which I don't suggest because not everything has to be obsessively squeezed into something you can recap in a wiki page, is that the door had no carvings, Morgoth was shoved through and a brood of his dragons came to try and stop that and were frozen in place troll statue style. But really that's the kind of headcanon nonsense that kills off mystery in an effort to get/create answers. I think the door is moor interesting as some kind of metaphysical "good luck trying to describe it" mythical structure, an opportunity for artists to express something.

John Howe's picture influenced how people imagine the Door of Night, much like Peter Jackson's movies influenced how people imagine the story of The Lord of the Rings. Personaly, I imagine these "dragons" more like great serpents. Similar to eastern dragons, which are more like guardian spirits. Morgoth's dragons represents western dragons, the evil monsters we all know. A corruption of the image of the guardian serpents?

The story grows in it's telling

I like the idea that dragons were originally the unspeakably terrifying guardians of the Door of Night, perhaps only answerable to Eru Illuvatar's will. Morgoth corrupted their idea to make his dragons - lesser creatures, but devastating in Arda.

I would imagine that in melkors first emprisonment, a similar looking building or cage was used. Which might have held some dragon looking spirits or guarding statues of some sort. With melkor seeing them often while being enprisoned, he got inspired to make mockeries of them. And did so in the first age. In stead of guards, the dragons were made to be an attacking force. Which would be in line with the destructive nature of morgoth at the time.

ive always been facinated by the doors of night and i always thought warcraft stole the idea for the dark portal almost :P

I've been trying to read the Silmarillion for 25 years. Hopefully one day I'll make it past page 8.

The Valar and even the Maiar know a lot of what's to come. This also includes dragons.

this and girlnextgondor is easy the BEST channels on deep Tolkien lore, love it

what about the gates of morning beyond the east sea ive always wondered that.

the war of wrath lasted forty years? i thought it was just a few days since Morgoth armies were obliterated and Melkor himself greatly weakened. I would like to think of the dragons as creatures corrupted by Morgoth and so, some uncorrupted or redeemed specimens lived in Aman. But since we have no other mentions than thoses who were created by Morgoth, i guess i'll go with the symbolic : the Valars made the dragons statues as warnings of what lurks behind the Doors of Night.

It's all canon in my opinion, from the stories of the Lost Tales, the various Silmarillions, the completely different ethos of the Lord of the Rings books, the post LOTR-revisions to the Silmarillion, the Unfinished Tales and even the official Silmarillion. All are valid and each variation brings new things to consider about the entirety of Tolkien's world. In some ways Tolkien not fully completing Elfwine's stay in Aman and not completing all the stories and lore revealed in the Cottage of Lost Play is the chief reason why Tolkien could not fully finish the Fall of Gondolin, or fully integrate the Valar into the history of Arda, or complete the Silmarillion, or select the definitive version of Elven tales taken from the Years of the Trees and the First Age, or even work out how to end the history of Arda. I think the biggest issue impacting on story coherence was Tolkien's shift from fabricating a mythology for England (the Lost Tales and the character of Eriol) to fabricating an entire mythology and history for an alternative Earth- the Earth of our myths and legends. It's why the Lost Tales HAVE to be read as this is the original mythology for Arda which has been heavily used for everything that came afterwards.

Maybe it was intentionally written in the vein of understanding of how any living being in Arde would be able to put the door of night into words. It could be such a door that dragons would have to lift you to it up into the sky as only dragons could carry such great weight and fly so high.

So does that mean that everytime Earendil passes through the door, he has to deal with Morgoth for half a day?!?

But, on the other side, was the Door of Light, the closest realm to Eru, and it's "guardian" is a giant white tree of nimloth. If one passes through this door, instead of meeting Morgoth you meet Eru. This is the doom of men I think

Here is a great question to ask. If there are Dragons in the far North could it be possible that some of the larger great dragons from the War of Wrath survived and migrated North where they would be far away from the certain wrath and pursuit of the Valar and from there bred new generations of dragons which would lead to the current era such as Smaug's generation? Could it be possible that these ancient great dragons of the ancient world could be out there still somewhere lurking and slumbering in or beneath the unknown land barried under the howling tempest blizzards and hoarfrost?

Regarding canon, my general "rule" on such things is that what counts is what is in the *published works* of an author, and information disseminated in other ways, such as via speaking engagements at conventions and so on is not fully canon unless it is later expressed on the published page. This is how I approach my favorite urban fantasy series, "The Dresden Files," by Jim Butcher. Jim's spoken word has been gathered and is known as "the WoJ" (the Word of Jim). As I said, though, for me it represents second-tier information, and does not "trump" what's in the published stories. *However*, Tolkien represents a special case. In this case we have a great mountain of written material that was not published during Tolkien's lifetime, and we have had all that work pass through the hands of a curator and then made available. So while I still think it is *valid* for someone to take the position that only words actually written by J.R.R. Tolkien himself and then *published* are canon, I think it's also valid to contend that the later published material is also canon, and once there is a conflict within the tier-1 canon information, well, you have to resolve that somehow. How you do it is really up to you - all I would ask is that you try to be *consistent* and not decide various situations on your whim, using one strategy for one situation and another for another. In consistency lies beauty and grace. 🙂

If there were some “good” dragons in any of Tolkien’s writings I suppose everything might make more sense. Tolkien famously wrote of one of his early childhood memories being “yearning” for dragons, though I suppose this could be construed as allowing for only evil dragons. This whole business of discussing and debating this stuff is pretty self-indulgent in the end, and ultimately we of course need to stop and realize we are talking about text, not reality. We don’t really have the right to speak about a “cannon” in the end. My own self-indulgent tendency is to think of all the different versions as different myths that have come down to us filtered though many different preserving cultures from the deep past. And of course even Tolkien played with this metafictional perspective with the idea it all being a “translation” of The Red Book, which itself was a translation and Hobbity interpretation of sources that were themselves secondhand compilations of existing myths. So I would have no problem with squaring this circle by saying the guardian beasts of the statues might have been ones of a type nobody in middle earth had ever seen, and so they became “dragons” in later tales - as in “here be dragons”! But it also fits, leaving aside the chronology issues (just revert to the above, later - internal chronology - tales got it wrong - the gate was a primordial one created with Ea, perhaps the actual one the Valar used to enter it) to say that Melkor made his dragons in mockery, as with everything else, of the gate dragons. Remember the Valar themselves were said to not be allowed to leave Ea while the world lasted, and possibly the “thrusting” of Morgoth through the doors of night (and Arien and Earendil’s “teleportations”) were just special case dispensations.

For a brief moment I thought I could hear an echo from “The Garden of Eden” The Cherubim and the flaming sword. When man and the serpent “The Old Dragon” mentioned in another place revolted against “The One” and marred creation they were cast out of Eden and at the only way back into the garden to gain access to the ”Tree of Life” (a bad idea since if that were to happen imagine humanity in the undying lands…except worse because you can’t kill them) a cherub (NOT the baby look up real Cherubs and “May God have mercy on your soul and you don’t have nightmares) and a flaming sword were placed at the “gate/door” What I heard listening to this video was…like a soft bell far away: “Serpent, Dragon, Cast Out, Door, Living Creatures…Fire” All this for the revision. Hmm? Yes I did hear an echo for that one but it feels like a long story to actually pull out the diamonds and set them in rings so we can all ooo and aahh at them. Sssoo maybe some other time… Hmm? Spark notes? Ok fine. It’s poetry for The Dawn and The Dusk The End. 😂😂🤣

Such a good video! Wish there was a small section about the Gates of Morning as well.

I wonder if the Door of Night is still present in Valinor after the world is made round and Aman is removed from the earth.

You may have answered this question elsewhere and if so please direct me to it - but do we know why Tolkien himself left many of his ideas unfinished and unpublished? If it wasn't for Christopher we would have only had the Hobbit and LoTR.

Why was Melkor put there!

It is completely reasonable to assume that Morgoth's dragons are a corruption of true dragons who were noble guardians instead of destructive servants of a corrupt lord. A major theme is that Morgoth can only make a tainted mockery of something. He is incapable of making anything novel or pure.

Maybe they were images of things to come?

Being a Christian - I'm almost certain that Tolkien got the idea for the Sun passing through gates/gateways from the Book of Enoch.

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Did Sauron’s spirit go to Mandos?

Excellent video as always, to me as a Bible believing Christian it’s very easy to imagine the doors of night because similar things are described in the Book of Enoch, the great door and windows in the Firmament and the Waters above and around the Earth. When I read Tolkien I find myself never questioning but rather understanding 😊. I really love your delivery by far one of the best Tolkien channels.

Did Tolkien describe the door of night as having dragons, or did some illustrator put them there? If it was an illustrator, there's your answer.

Video idea: Minas Morgul

I think the door of night's dragons are Morgoth's influence and corruption from beyond the gates, and his malice pours our from the mouths of the dragons!

I thought those were real dragons in reference to the settings.

👍😈👏

I always thought that painting represented dagor dagorath and those are real dragons ready to sneak through and start ragnarok.. how wrong I was.

The entire silmarillion and early histories of Arda and Middle Earth in my opinion are always open to debate and interpretation..... I like to think that the door of night was created by the dark lord himself right after his defeat with Tulkas when he went to the outer darkness beyond Arda.... This might explain where Ungoliant came from and other nameless things...... Morgoth was going into the void before the music was even made and the void is where either Eru had discarded previous creations or his peers at their minions crawling around....Denizens.... The story of the silmarillion is always lopsided and out of shape and never connecting or making proper sense for example it talks about how morgoth put all his energy and power into Arda and was greatly weakened but what does not make sense is how was the other Valar able to keep their powers when they were much weaker in the beginning compared to morgoth who had all of their powers and attributes that's why he was chief among the Ainur... And he was able to wrestle and defeat them time and time again over timeless ages long before the elves came to being.... Long before his battle with Tulkas he battled with the other powers and defeated them consistently..... So how could the Valar have any power or energy left to even face more goth during the war of wrath let alone be able to create the gates of night..... I just don't buy it again I think morgoth himself created those Gates.....

Imagine Dragons

I get the feeling you're mistrustful of Christopher Tolkien's authoritative decisions on his father's works in that Christopher willfully misrepresented some of his father's ideas, no?