Eye of Sauron
| Sauron | |
|---|---|
| Tolkien's legendarium character | |
J. R. R. Tolkien's watercolour illustration of Sauron.
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| Aliases | See Names and titles below |
| Race | Maiar |
| Book(s) | |
Sauron /ˈsaʊrɒn/ is the title character and main antagonist of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. In the same work, he is identified as the necromancer, mentioned in Tolkien's earlier novel The Hobbit. In Tolkien's The Silmarillion (published posthumously by Tolkien's son Christopher Tolkien), he is also described as the chief lieutenant of the first Dark Lord, Morgoth. Tolkien noted that the "angelic" powers of his constructed myth "were capable of many degrees of error and failing", but by far the worst was "the absolute Satanic rebellion and evil of Morgoth and his satellite Sauron".
The Ainulindalë, the cosmological myth prefixed to The Silmarillion, explains how the supreme being Eru initiated his creation by bringing into being innumerable spirits, "the offspring of his thought", who were with him before anything else had been made. The being later known as Sauron originated as an "immortal (angelic) spirit". In his origin, Sauron therefore perceived the Creator directly. As Tolkien noted: "Sauron could not, of course, be a 'sincere' atheist. Though one of the minor spirits created before the world, he knew Eru, according to his measure."
In the terminology of Tolkien's invented language of Quenya, these angelic spirits were called Ainur. Those who entered the physical world were called Valar, especially the most powerful ones. The lesser Ainur who entered the world, of whom Sauron was one, were called Maiar. In Tolkien's letters, the author noted that Sauron "was of course a 'divine' person (in the terms of this mythology; a lesser member of the race of Valar)". Tolkien noted that he was of a "far higher order" than the Maiar who later came to Middle-earth as the Wizards Gandalf and Saruman. As created by Eru, the Ainur were all good and uncorrupt, as Elrond stated in The Lord of the Rings: "Nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so."
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