: For the past month, there has been an argument going on the other forum about what exactly happened when the Ring was taken from Sauron, especially with respect to the powers that Sauron had bound up in the Ring.

: One school of thought is that Sauron still had access to his power which he had placed in the Ring but could not use the Ring to control other (Elven) Ring-Wielders. The evidence which has been presented for this is mainly that Sauron is incredibly powerful, he can control Orodruin, snow on Caradhras, Saruman etc. The proponents of this theory believe that there is no way that Sauron could have been this powerful without having access to his full original powers.

: The other side of the argument is that Sauron could not access the powers which had been placed in the Ring unless it was actually in his possession. A number of quotes from the works of JRRT have been put forward to support this - Gandalf telling Frodo about "his [Sauron's] FORMER powers" [my emphasis] - (The Shadow of the Past - Fellowship), statements from the Council of Elrond, Unfinished Tales, etc. The main problem with this is, if most of Sauron's powers were tied up in the Ring, how was it that he was so powerful at the time of the War of the Ring.

: I would be interested to hear what views the august members of this learned Council have on this matter.

I do not believe there is any chance that Sauron had access to the One's power unless he physically had it. If he did then he would have won the war, pure and simple. Gandalf says as much in the same chapter you have referred to - The Shadow of the Past. It goes something like this:

"...he lacks one thing which would give power enough to beat down the last defences and cover all the lands in darkness, he lacks the One Ring."

I don't know whether they are the exact words (not having LOTR on me), but they are pretty close. If he did have access to the One's power, while not possessing, it would have taken a force the like of that which defeated him at the end of the Second Age to overthrow him and there was nothing even approaching the power The Last Alliance could muster left in Middle Earth at that time.

But of course in LORT Sauron was defeated by the destruction of the Ring. My point being that Sauron with access to the One Ring (in the Second Age) marched across Middle Earth smashing all in his path, including Ost-in-Edhil, which MUST have been on of the strongest Noldor fortresses of all time, after all they accomplished things there that only Feanor himself surpassed. Therefore with such power he could have simply pulled his skirts up and steamed the west a lot more effectively than he did and certainly swamped the lands with his minions and found the physical embodiment of much of his power, the One, before it had even left the West.

To think that Sauron had access to the powers of the One while not possessing it, I believe, is not credible.

As for the Nazgul, Gandalf again comes to our rescue when he comments on the other rings of power. "...so that their power was bound up with it..." when talking about the relationship the other rings of power had with the One. And Sauron was still master of the one, even if he did not possess it to weild it, so the Nazgul, being slaves to their own rings, were as slaves to Sauron himself. I'm positive Tolkien says this a number of times, I just can't think of any at present.

Cheers

Padster