Oxonmoot 2021

Tolkien's precious stones made by Fëanor, and stolen by Melkor, are so important to the Legendarium they hardly could escape critical attention. Verlyn Flieger considers them as a reflection of the Two Trees of Valinor, but only Alexander Lewis and Elizabeth Currie tried to find a source for them, and identified it in the Holy Grail as a stone from Paradise, formerly set in the crown of Lucifer. Without necessarily contraddicting either of them, I propose as a source for the Silmarilli another rare stone from Paradise which was instead given to Alexander the Great according to medieval legends Tolkien certainly knew.