Aule's Shrine

Here have an elaborate sketch to go with my otherwise irrelevant headcanon babbling. XD

“Worship” isn’t a really predominating theme in Tolkien as far as I can tell; it seems to happen mostly amongst humans, who have had less contact with the Valar/maiar (it would be kind of redundant if the elves worshiped the Valar since they sort of know them personally and everything). The only time it makes a big appearance is in Numenor with the whole “hello do you have a moment to learn about the word of Morgoth?” debacle.

But on Beleriand/Middle Earth proper I imagine that there might be household shrines to relevant deities and ancestors, at least amongst the humans, dwarves, and Sindar.

The idea stuck with me because I wondered if any of the races of Arda remember when Mairon was still Aulë’s maiar. In my own headcanon (which I know for a fact does not line up with the finished Silmarillion timeline but wth) I like to think that there was at least a brief period in which Mairon was involved in the instruction of the Eldar or the Dwarves, and in some shrines he might be remembered in that capacity, regardless of what he becomes later.

So here is a shrine to Aulë, with three of seven dwarf lords that might denote a family’s ancestry (I imagine that Ëol might have a shrine like this in his forge too), an ornamental copper hammer with a verdigris patina, and a Mairon figure still pictured by the side of his maker.
(I imagine too that Sauron still holds some slight partiality for Dwarves, the children of Aulë, even if that bias was simply a preference to win them over rather than extinguish them entirely from Arda.)