Re: On the Ainur

In message
<news:20070416074655.9B6.1.NOFFLE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Dirk Thierbach <dthierbach@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> spoke these staves:

Larry Swain <theswain@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Dirk Thierbach wrote:

Larry Swain <theswain@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


<snip>

What does affect his ability to reincarnate is the complete
*destruction* of the Ring: With that, all the power he has
transferred into it originally is lost, and hence he is really
weakened beyond the point where he can reincarnate.

Which is what Larry has been saying, since every comment has been
directed specifically to the situation where the One Ring was
destroyed.

But the point is not the *transfer*, the point is the
*destruction* of the transferred power.

I don't agree. The point is the transfer itself leading to the risk
of losing access to the power, not necessarily by its destruction. We
learn specifically that in dissipating his power into the substance
of Arda, Morgoth lost the ability to control the power, to access it
specifically.

Sauron retained that ability as long as the Ring existed and no-one
else had mastered it. The last is important, and we learn in letter #
246 that if Gandalf had succeeded in winning the mastery of the One
Ring 'the result would have been for Sauron the same as the
destruction of the Ring; for him it would have been destroyed, taken
from him for ever.' Further development can be found in letter #131:

But to achieve this [being 'almost supreme in Middle-
earth', TFo] [Sauron] had been obliged to let a great part
of his own inherent power (a frequent and very significant
motive in myth and fairy-story) pass into the One Ring.
While he wore it, his power on earth was actually enhanced.
But even if he did not wear it, that power existed and was
in 'rapport' with himself: he was not 'diminished'. Unless
some other seized it and became possessed of it. If that
happened, the new possessor could (if sufficiently strong
and heroic by nature) challenge Sauron, become master of
all that he had learned or done since the making of the
One Ring, and so overthrow him and usurp his place. This
was the essential weakness he had introduced into his
situation in his effort (largely unsuccessful) to enslave
the Elves, and in his desire to establish a control over
the minds and wills of his servants. There was another
weakness: if the One Ring was actually /unmade/,
annihilated, then its power would be dissolved, Sauron's
own being would be diminished to vanishing point, and he
would be reduced to a shadow, a mere memory of malicious
will. But that he never contemplated nor feared. The Ring
was unbreakable by any smithcraft less than his own. It
was indissoluble in any fire, save the undying
subterranean fire where it was made -- and that was
unapproachable, in Mordor. Also so great was the Ring's
power of lust, that anyone who used it became mastered by
it; it was beyond the strength of any will (even his own)
to injure it, cast it away, or neglect it. So he thought.
It was in any case on his finger.
[Letters #131, to Milton Waldman, ?late 1951]

In this is a parallel between Morgoth and Sauron, though also a
difference. While they both lessened their core being, weakened
themselves in the effort to control Middle-earth, Morgoth immediately
lost the 'rapport' with his power, and so was immediately weakened in
his ability to exercise power in the physical world, while Sauron,
only wishing to control the /conscious minds/ of Middle-earth,
externalized his power in such a way that it remained in rapport with
him, and he could access it, but he nevertheless had to weaken his
core being in doing so.

Sauron was "weakened" in his substance because he transferred
it into the Ring.

No, he was weakened because he lost an incarnate body, and had
to rebuild a new one. This is explictely described in letter
#200:

Actually he was weakened /in his substance/ by both actions, but by
far the most because he transferred the majority of his power into
the Ring.

Could you (or I?) be misunderstanding what Larry means by
'substance' here? As I read it, he refers to the 'core being' of
Sauron: that which was left to him when you remove all external
devices (Machines), including the One Ring. After Sauron had
transferred most of his power into the One Ring, he had dramatically
weakened his own 'substance', but that had been the cost of
strengthening his ability to exercise power in the physical world,
which he did through the external 'Machine' of the Master Ring.

<snip quotation from letter #200>

This point is not disputed,

If the point is not disputed, then why do you say that Sauron was
weakened because he transferred power into the Ring, when we know
explicitely a different reason for it?

No we don't. We know that he also lost a small amount of power in
other ways, but the truly significant weakening of Sauron's
'substance' was in the /transfer/ of power into the One Ring.

<snip>

In a general context, of course it wasn't "special". It was
special only as far as the mechanism is different from the other
cases:

In the final victory over Sauron, the Ring was destroyed, which
lead to the loss of power transferred to the Ring, which lead to a
weaking beyond the point where Sauron could maintain a body, or
reincarante into a new one.

The weakening of Sauron's substance had occurred with the transfer of
power into the One Ring. After that time, Sauron could use the One
Ring as an /external/ Machine, but the power he had transferred into
it was /not/ a part of himself any longer, but subject to being
'stolen' by another, or even destroyed.

The differences between Sauron and Morgoth are that Morgoth was
immensely more 'powerful' than Sauron in their beginning, and so,
even after dissipating nearly all of his power into the matter of
Arda, still possessed greater power than Sauron in the Third Age,
when compared 'core substance' to 'core substance'. But Sauron had
managed to delay his loss of rapport with and control over the power
he had externalized, and therefore Sauron had /access/ to more power
than Morgoth, even if he didn't hold the Ring (but it still wasn't
mastered by someone else).

In the other cases, the body was destroyed, which in turn lead to
a weakening as described in letter #200.

This would also obviously have happened when Sauron was killed at the
end of the Third Age, leading to a further diminishment of his core
being.

The difference is that the direction of causality in the one case
is the opposite of the direction of causality in the other cases:
Loss of power leads to loss of body, vs. loss of body leads to
loss of power.

It is not clear that it was the loss of power that led to the death
of Sauron's physical body. It is quite possible that Sauron was
killed in the collapse of Barad-dûr after the foundations crumpled
that were only sustained by the destroyed power of the One Ring. One
might argue that the body he inhabited was 'made or begun with that
power' and hence would also crumple upon its destruction: such would
even be consistent with the statement that without that power, he
would be unable to rebuild his body, but it is not because he didn't
have enough power to sustain his body.

However, whether Sauron's body was destroyed in the fall of the Black
Tower, or because it was made with the power of the One Ring, his
body was still 'killed' by external events, not involving any change
in Sauron's core being.

That's what I meant by "special". If you don't like the word
"special", fine with me, but it was the above difference I wanted
to point out.

Basically I disagree that this is a significant difference between
Sauron and Morgoth. We can agree that their situation /after/ being
violently disembodied was significantly different from that of
Melian, because they had deliberately squandered the majority of
their power in their bid for control over Middle-earth, but I don't
think that this affects the actual disembodiment itself.

There is, of course, also a difference in the situation of Morgoth
and Sauron after they were last killed: Because of his much greater
stature in the beginning, Morgoth was able to eventually gather again
most of his power, and so rise against the Valar once more, but that
is only on the very long term ;)

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.

Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the
world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!
- Aragorn, /The Lord of the Rings/ (J.R.R. Tolkien)
.

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