Eldil

>  *A tornado of sheer monstrosities seemed to be pouring over Ransom. Darting pillars filled with eyes, lightning pulsations of flame, talons and beaks and billowy masses of what suggested snow, volleyed through cubes and heptagons into an infinite black void. "Stop it ... stop it," he yelled, and the scene cleared. He gazed round blinking on the fields of lilies, and presently gave the eldila to understand that this kind of appearance was not suited to human sensations.*
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**Eldila** (singular *Eldil*), also known as the **Light Ones** and the **Powers**, were super-human extraterrestrials. Similar to angels, or *devas*, and sometimes mistaken for gods, with the Oyéresu representing a higher order. Eldila were among the first sapient beings to be created by Urendi Maleldil although they are not referred to as hnau in the books.

## Description

The human characters in the trilogy encounter them on various planets, but the eldila themselves are native to interplanetary and interstellar space ("Deep Heaven"). In their natural forms, they are barely visible as pillars of faint, shifting light. The king of the Eldila is Urendi Maleldil. They normally consist entirely of psychic energy, but are able to take on physical bodies in the material planes. Since they see themselves as The Creator's early offspring, some of them feel a moral obligation to guide the evolution of hnau.

Their voices are also very unlike those of humans:

*"The sound was quite astonishingly unlike a voice. It was perfectly articulate: it was even, I suppose, rather beautiful. But it was, if you understand me, inorganic. We feel the difference between animal voices (including those of the human animal) and all other noises pretty clearly, I fancy, though it is hard to define. Blood and lungs and the warm, moist cavity of the mouth are somehow indicated in every Voice. Here they were not. The two syllables sounded more as if they were played on an instrument than as if they were spoken: and yet they did not sound mechanical either. A machine is something we make out of natural materials; this was more as if rock or crystal or light had spoken of itself. And it went through me from chest to groin like the thrill that goes through you when you think you have lost your hold while climbing a cliff.*"
Eldila are (usually) imperceptible energy beings whose forms exist on a radically different wavelength from our ours - for them, all matter is gaseous and barely exists for them, including liquids and solids, so the planets and moons of the Field of Arbol are like clouds to them. To them, light itself is the water through which they swim, and Arbol or the Sun is their wellspring. Because they are not subject to gravity as humans and other hnau are, they perceived the Sun as practically fixed, but the planets themselves as travelling as enormous speeds. In fact they have to fly in order to keep pace with the planets. "Visiting" a planet means moving into one of these moving clouds and then keeping pace with its orbit to maintain the appearance of standing still, while using some sort of projection to interact with wispy, ephemeral creatures they cannot fully see (i.e. hnau).

## Oyéresu and eldila

Certain very powerful eldila, the *Oyéresu* (singular *Oyarsa*), control the course of nature on each of the planets of the Field of Arbol. They (and maybe all the eldila) can manifest in corporeal forms.

Eldila were involved in the early days of the creation of the universe, and shaping the planets. A group of eldila arrived on Earth and Mars, and embedded it with spiritual matter so that the hnau and their culture could emerge. As chaos in the universe started to rise, the eldila intervened more in preserving civilization. Some of them would go on to become Oyéresu. The Eldila council later placed Earth under quarantine or a blockade, silencing it from the rest of the Solar System. Sulva or the Moon is within this blockade. The eldila resident on—actually, imprisoned in—Earth are the Dark Eldila, eldila where become bent. The *Oyarsa* of Earth was known as The Bent One.

## *Out of the Silent Planet*

In this novel, Elwin Ransom, Edward Rolles Weston and Richard Devine encounter eldila in oyarsa form at Meldilorn on Malacandra and also on the journey back to Earth in a spaceship when Weston and Ransom are told not to harm Ransom, because they are being watched by eldila. Ransom occasionally perceives them. The hrossa can see eldila, whereas most of the time, humans cannot.

## *Perelandra*

Ransom is sent to Perelandra by eldila. Weston is accompanied unknowingly by one of the Dark Eldila from Earth which ends up possessing him and becoming the Un-man. The Un-man then tries to tempt Tinidril the Perelandrian Eve, before being killed.

## *That Hideous Strength*

The Macrobes in *That Hideous Strength* which direct the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments are in fact Dark Eldila under the control of the Bent One, although few people in the organisation know that.

## *The Dark Tower*

The eldila do not seem to appear explicitly in this book, although since it is unfinished, it is possible that something similar may have appeared later in the book. As a possible early draft of *That Hideous Strength*, perhaps the Othertime social system is influenced by bent Eldila as the N.I.C.E are, but this is speculation. However, the omission of the Eldila (or something similar) in the existing material sets it apart from the Space Trilogy and lends credence to the forgery theory.

## Basis

Eldila are essentially Judeo-Christian angels, or their cousins, but apart from their obvious origins in human religion, as J. R. R. Tolkien wrote “*the Eldils ... owe something to the Eldar in my work*”

"Eldar" is probably cognate to "elder", so Eldila would mean literally "ancient ones", i.e. those created before hnau.

It is also possible "el" relates to one of the old Hebrew terms for God, which is often found in personal names such as Michael, Israel etc.

## See also

* Adam and Eve
* Bible
* Dark Eldila
	+ Un-man
* The Bent One
* Tower of Babel
* Urendi Maleldil

## References

Source: Wikipedia

1. ↑ Letter of 17 July 1971 to Roger Lancelyn Green, quoted in Green & Hooper, *C. S. Lewis: A Biography*, revised ed. 2002

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