Movement of the Ring

I'm sure this topic has been brought up in other discussions, but I would like to know how some you understand the following occurrence. Also, if anyone has any knowledge of how Tolkien explained the following sequence, please share.

During the fall of Numenor, Sauron fell into the abyss with the island and everything else. Taken from the end of Akallabeth, Mr Tolkien describes , "But Sauron was not of mortal flesh, and though he was robbed now of that shape in which he wrought so great an evil, so that he could never again appear fair to the eyes of Men, yet his spirit arose out of the deep and passed as a shadow and a black wind over the sea, and came back to Middle-earth and to Mordor that was his home. There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dur, and dwelt there, dark and silent, until he wrought himself a new guise, an image of malice and hatred made visilbe

Sorry, I must be doing something wrong because I lost the last half of my message.

My question is if Sauron lost his physical body during the fall island, and was only able to return to Mordor as a spirit, how was his spirit then able to carry a very physical object like the Ring out of the Abyss and take it to Middle-Earth?

Hmm, interesting question.

I can only guess that perhaps spirits can carry things. The Barrow-wights were evil spirits, and so was the Balrog. Did they have physical bodies? I can't remember.

Sauron's spirit did, indeed, carry the Ring. JRRT addresses the question in Letter #211: "Though reduced to 'a spirit of hatred borne on a dark wind', I do not think one need boggle at this spirit carrying off the One Ring, upon which his power of dominating minds now largely depended."

If the Jedi can move things around without touching them, with can't Sauron?

Thanks for the reply Eruve - very informative! You referenced a specific letter and I was wondering where I could find these (are there others?). Also, Mr. Tolkien conjures up an interesting mental image of the one ring flying through the air by itself with the aid of a spirit.

The explanation leads me to another question. If Sauron was able to find the ring as a Spirit during the fall of Numenor and then carry it back to Mordor, then why was he not able to do the same after Isildur lost it in the Anduin?

Stiegl, the letter Ervue was referring to came from a book entitled, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. It has been out of print for sometime, but I believe that it has be republished only recently. I believe that it is now available at books stores and most certainly from amazon.com.

In reply to your question Stiegl, I do not think Sauron `found` the Ring during the Akallabeth. I would rather say that managed to retain it, since I suspect that it never left his possession at this time.

However, I think you raise an interesting issue here. I made the point (on the thread "Why didn`t Sauron lead the battles?) that Sauron had lost much of his power during the process of forging the Ring and also during the Fall of Numenor. I think that his difficulty in locating the Ring during the TA was an example of this, and one which I had not considered before.

Perhaps the mere fact of Sauron's being separated from his Ring in a way brought him "lower" (ie. he lost more power) than the Downfall. As Taimar said, he was never separated from the Ring in the Downfall; the letter I mentioned above said he always retained the Ring, basically because the Numenoreans didn't know about it. So in the Downfall, he never lost this major source of power. But in the Battle of the Last Alliance he was physically spearated from the Ring. I imagine this was a greater blow to him than being disembodied.

edited to add:
No problem, anduin. The revised edition has been out since the beginning of June.

Eruve, I agree with you, you've distilled my opinion of the matter perfectly.

Thanks for the interpretations!

I guess the part that always threw me was the idea that if Sauron lost his physical form, how could he hold onto a physical object like the Ring. I assumed that this would necessitate him being separated from the Ring. I can see now that if he was able to maintain his contact and control of the Ring he would keep much of his power.

I'm still not sure that Mr. Tolkien effectively explains how Sauron as a spirit was able to keep control of the Ring, but I think the points everyone has made make a lot of sense.

Thanks, this had been bugging me for some time!

Stiegl, did you by any chance ask this same question in the Tor.n chat? I think Tolkien explains it very well, not too literally mind you, but a good sense of mystery is very important in a good story. It's sad that things like that go over so many people's heads today.

I have not read a lot of the background material that some of ya'll have, but perhaps this will help.
In our own boring real world, there are all sorts of reports of spooks, ghosts and poltergeists and they are able to move things(?) without having a physical form. I suppose that this follows from Conservation of Energy, where energy becomes mass and vice versa but can never be destroyed ( It has been a long time since high school physics, so I probably mis-stated that). Anyway, the point that I am floundering toward here is that the energy to move something must be inherent in the ghost, spirit, or whatever and must be an extension of the energy that keeps the spirit intact, though there is no physical form. This energy of movement would substitute for a physical inability to directly affect an object.
Clear as mud, huh? :lol:

Science can't explain everything, and just ends up making up silly ideas (like evolution [not trying to offend anyone]) to explain things it doesn't understand because it refuses to go on faith the way it used to.

I gotta tell ya, I'm havin a heck of a time with this board already...

This is just my own speculation, but I think that it is as correct as any other, and perhaps a bit more in keeping with the storylines of Tolkien's work....

Gandalf explains to Frodo, after his recuperation in Rivendell, that the reason he could see the Ringwraiths was that the wound he had suffered from the Morgul Knife had, through the magics bound to it, made him partly a wraith himself. Later, it is explained that the reason that Merry was able to wound the Witchking was that he himself wielded a magical blade that existed in the shadow world as well.

It seems, therefore, that many weapons forged by the Numenorians and the elves, as well as the elves themselves, existed both in the world of light and the world of shadow, and were thus able to be used against and by creatures of shadow. If this is accepted, it is a small leap to the assumption that the One Ring, probably the most potent artifact forged since the Silmarills themselves, would also posess this dual nature. It may well be that Sauraun, after the Akallbeth, could not pick up so much as a bit of down if it did not also exist in the shadow world. The Ring, however, would present no such obsticle to him.


Well, as I said, it is as good an explanation as any.

Ooh, I LIKE that! Mr. Spock would approve of that logic!

Ooh, nice! Makes sense too (of course I bet MM'll find some reason why it doesn't )