The White Council

Re: Sauron - his ring-lore and prescience.

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: : The deception is not said to have included hiding any : : special abilities of the Rings. Tolkien never attributes to : : the Rings while they are in the Elves' possession which : : are "Sauronic" AND "evil" (in the view of the Elves). The : : powers of invisibility and over the Unseen are Sauronic, but : : not "evil".

: The whole enterprise was evil:

Yes, but I'm talking about what the ELVES perceived to be evil. The Mirdain wouldn't have thought they were doing something wrong, even if other Elves warned them not to do it.

: Look at Letter 144. Referring to the Three, Tolkien : writes, "Though unsullied, because they were not made by : Sauron nor touched by him, they were nonetheless partly : products of his instruction, and ultimetely under control of : the One.

: The first clause is instructive. The Three were not sullied : because they were forged without *direct* aid of Sauron. That : means the generic Rings of Power were sulled simply by : Sauron's being involved in their forging.

No. The other Rings were "sullied" because Sauron perverted them. "Though unsullied, because not made by Sauron NOR TOUCHED BY HIM...." Sauron didn't make the Seven and Nine. He only assisted in their making. Only the One was made by Sauron. Yet Sauron took the Seven and Nine and perverted them.

The Seven and Nine were not "sullied" before he perverted them, except in that he had had a part in their making (which conferred upon them no unncleanness or evil in the eyes of the Elves -- they would not have accepted such Rings).

: : This is an unrelated point. The issue (as best I can : : understand it) is whether Sauron was able to pervert the : : Rings before he took possession of them. Tolkien says he : : perverted them AFTER he took possession.

: We may be debating semantics. But they were "sullied" before : he took possession...

No. See above.

: ...More than that, the Three themselves were subject to the One : merely because the Mirdain relied on Sauron's lore. If the : Three could be so vulnerable imagine what Sauron did with the : other Rings.

Vulnerability is not the same as a hidden ability.

: : Tolkien was no programmer, and he didn't think of it like a : : virus (and, besides, what you're describing is a mole, not a : : virus -- a virus reproduces itself but a mole is a program : : hidden within another program).

: : The programming analogy has never been good because that is : : a technology well beyond Tolkien's experience. He wasn't : : describing a computer application.

: That's why it's an analogy ;-)

I think a lock analogy would work better, such as with the chastity belts, where the women paid the locksmiths to put in secondary opening mechanisms or whatever it was that enabled them to get out of the infernal devices after their husbands had left home.

Sauron knew more about how the Rings worked than the Elves. Hence, he was able to exploit the weaknessess or vulnerabilities of the Rings to external control. It was a security issue, not an issue of "programming".

Of course, he could have just blatantly uttered some song in Valinorean or Black Speech or something which was unintelligible to the Elves (assuming he masked his thought while doing so) which conferred upon the Rings some inclination toward accepting the control of the One Ring, but if Celebrimbor were to blindly repeat the song while making the Three, what good would it do, since his intention would not be the same as Sauron's?

I think logic argues that Sauron merely used his greater knowledge to devise a One Ring capable of controlling all the others, and that Tolkien's words about Sauron perverting the Seven and Nine after he captured must mean he had done nothing untoward in their making.