The White Council

Re: Sauron - his ring-lore and prescience.

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

BTW, I will reply to your response to my post but I need to do some more checking of the texts.

:snip

: These were very powerful Elves, arrogant enough to take on nature itself and defy the laws of Iluvatar. I doubt any "sleight of hand" by Sauron would have gone unnoticed. They were instantly aware of him when he put on the One Ring, so they were highly sensitive, too.

Yet they were in fact deceived by Sauron. True, Sauron apparently underestimated his ability to conceal his motives after forging the One, but he was able to do so quite well before then.

: Tolkien says that Sauron corrupted the stolen Rings after he took them back to Mordor. That appears to be when the "evil" evil, so to speak, was added to them. There would be no point in saying Sauron had perverted them after taking possession of them if they were already fit to serve his purposes for Dwarves and Men.

I think it goes farther than that. If Sauron was not able to sully the Rings from their inception then the Three should not have been vulnerable at all to the One. However, the Elves were reliant on Sauron's teaching and instruction in the making of the regular Rings of Power as well as the Three. Sauron was personally involved in the forging of the regular Rings so his influence of more keenly felt there. But even the Three were vulnerable because the Elves used the plans, instructions and techniques taught to them by Sauron.

: Unless I'm misunderstanding you completely, I just don't see the benefit in arguing that the Seven and Nine were Trojan horses (as opposed to the Three). ALL of the Elven Rings, including the Three, would have enslaved the Elves once Sauron was wearing the One Ring. They were at least vulnerable to Sauron's control by their very nature. I can't see any basis for saying there was a deeper aspect than that, or that the Seven and Nine were more prone to Sauron's control than the Three.

Whether or not the Three were as or less vulnerable to the One is besides the point. The point is they were all vulnerable. This shows that the trojan horse theory is quite valuable because their vulnerablity is not tied to the "perversion" that occured later to the regular Rings. The Three were vulnerable without perversion. That tells me that Saurn was able to incorporate a trojan horse factor into these rings - directly in the case of the regular rings and by proxy with respect to the Three.

:snip

: : Though the basis of their creation was Sauron's, to my way of : : thinking, their "blue-print" was of Sauron's devising. The : : Elves believed they were creating them for their own purposes : : but that was far from the truth.

: I agree with this. But Sauron was manipulating the Elves. There is no indication that the Rings were being given inherent abilities the Elves didn't know about. What would have been the point? Sauron had no part in making the Three, but they were just as subject to the One as the others.

Ha! As I argued above, that is evidence to me that Sauron was manipulating from the beginning. The Three were vulnerable because the Elves were utilizing the faulty code learned from Sauron during the forging of the regular Rings. I'm no programmer, but I thought of it like a virus. Say you collaborate with another on a program. Then later you write another program using some of the same code as the first. If there are faults or virus' in the first code they will be present in the second program even though you worked on it alone.

: : : This is pure speculation. What am I to say that I don't : : : normally say about pure speculation? :)

: : The "Ring-Rhyme" known to the "Wise" tends to bring the "made : : only for the Elves" argument into some doubt. It incorporates : : a translation of the inscription appearing on the One Ring : : itself which argues for its veracity, but in all cases uses : : the word "for" not "held by" not "given to". Three "for" the : : Elves, Seven "for" the Dwarves, Nine "for" Mortal Men. This : : argues to me that the "Wise" may have realised in retrospect : : that the designs of Sauron for these rings encompassed, or : : allowed for, their use by these races as part of his deeper : : strategy. That they were created by Sauron's wiles FOR these : : races, at least as a contingency measure.

: The Ring-rhyme could only have been composed at the end of the Second Age. There is no indication that the Elves knew the Dwarves had the Seven until they all came together in the final war against Sauron. By the end of the Second Age, therefore, "for" makes more sense than "given to" (and works better metrically anyway).

: The Ring-rhyme is certainly no indication of the purposes behind the Rings of Power. None of Tolkien's explanations of the history of the Rings make any reference to the Ring-rhyme. It was obviously composed after the fact, when all the facts had come out.

Just for clarity, my understanding is that the final lines of the Righ Rhyme were quotes from Sauron, the prior lines were after written. I think you told me this,

:snip

Russ