Why Was Post-Downfall Sauron Unable To Take A Fair Form Again?

Why did Sauron lose the ability to assume a fair form again after he died in the Downfall of Númenor? The answer is simple, but the explanation is a bit complicated.

Q: Why Was Post-Downfall Sauron Unable To Take A Fair Form Again?

ANSWER: The short answer is that he was unable to focus his will sufficiently to control his self-incarnated form with such precision after his first death. I’ll cite the long answer below. But this question came from a group of questions submitted by a reader in June 2021:

It is said that Sauron could no longer take on a fair form after the Fall of Númenor. What do you think the reason behind that is? Was it a punishment of the Valar or Ilúvatar himself? Did he use up or spend all that was fair within in him in that body and he lacked the resources? With regards to that, wouldn’t he (and other beings) similarly run out of their capacity to create “evil forms” or is that considered a corruption of something good and thus not limited to any inherent capacity? Did he not just lose his capacity to appear fair or did he become less fair?

And now for the long answer.

The following citations are drawn from “Myths Transformed” in Morgoth’s Ring, specifically the section dealing with “Notes On Motives in The Silmarillion”. I’m clipping something I wrote many years ago in an online discussion. I provided some emphasis via italics at the time for reasons not relevant to your questions. But I’m not going to revise that markup. I’m correcting some typos from my original version.

The page references are to the first printing of the Houghton Mifflin editions of The History of Middle-earth (hardback), which may differ from other printings or editions of the books.

Begin Citation of Morgoth’s Ring

This passage was taken from section (iii) in “Notes On Motives In The Silmarillion”, and this section starts out with:

The Valar ‘fade’ and become more impotent, precisely in proportion as the shape and constitution of things becomes more defined and settled. The longer the Past, the more nearly defined the Future, and the less room for important change (untrammelled action, on a physical plane, that is not destructive in purpose). The Past, once ‘achieved’, has become part of the ‘Music in being’. Only Eru may or can alter the ‘Music’. The last major effort, of this demiurgic kind, made by the Valar was the lifting up of the range fo the Pelori to a great height….
(MORGOTH’S RING, p. 401)

The war was successful, and ruin was limited to the small (if beautiful) region of Beleriand. Morgoth was thus actually made captive in physical form [9], and in that form taken as a mere criminal to Aman and delivered to Namo Mandos as judge — and executioner. He was judged, and eventually taken out of the Blessed Realm and *executed*: that is killed like one of the Incarnates. It was then made plain (though it must have been understood before by Manwe and Namo) that, though he had ‘disseminated’ his power (his evil and possessive and rebellious will) far and wide into the matter of Arda, he had lost direct control of this, and all that ‘he’, as a surviving remnant of integral being, retained as ‘himself’ and under control was the terribly shrunken and reduced spirit that inhabited his self-imposed (but now beloved) body. When that body was destroyed he was weak and utterly ‘houseless’, and for that time at a loss and ‘unanchored’ as it were. We read that he was then thrust out into the Void [10]. That should mean that he was put outside Time and Space, outside Eä altogether; but if that were so this would imply a direct intervention of Eru (with or without the supplication of the Valar). It may however refer inaccurately (*) to the extrusion or flight of his spirit from Arda.”
(MORGOTH’S RING, p. 403)

The footnote denoted by (*) for the passage reads as:

Since the minds of Men (and even of the Elves) were inclined to confuse the ‘Void’, as a conception of the state of Not-being, outside Creation or Eä, with the conception of vast spaces within Eä, especially those conceived to lie all about the enisled ‘Kingdom of Arda’ (which we should probably call the Solar System).

Note 9 reads:

As, of course, had happened to Melkor long before, after the sack of Utumno.

Note 10 reads:

Cf. the conclusion of QS (V.332, $29): ‘But Morgoth himself the Gods thrust through the Door of Night into the Timeless Void, beyond the Walls of the World.’

Additionally, there is some information on Sauron in Note 11 referring to a passage a little later on in the essay:

…The Elves certainly held and taught that fëar or ‘spirits’ may grow of their own life (independently of the body), even as they may be hurt or healed, be diminished and renewed [11]. The dark spirit of Melkor’s ‘remainder’ might be expected, therefore, eventually and after long ages to increase again, even (as some held) to draw back into itself some of its formerly dissipated power. It would do this (even if Sauron could not) because of its relative greatness. It did not repent, or turn finally away from its obsession, but retained still relics of wisdom, so that it could still seek its object and indirectly, and not merely blindly. It would rest, seek to heal itself, distract itself by other thoughts and desires and devices — but all simply to recover enough strength to return to the attack on the Valar, and to its old obsession. As it grew again it would become, as it were, a dark shadow, brooding on the confines of Arda, and yearning towards it.

Note 11 reads:

The following was added marginally after the page was written:

If they do not sink below a certain level. Since no fëa can be annihilated, reduced to zero or not-existing, it is no[t] clear what is meant. Thus Sauron was said to have fallen below the point of ever recovering, though he had previously recovered. What is probably meant is that a ‘wicked’ spirit becomes fixed in a certain desire or ambition, and if it cannot repent then this desire becomes virtually its whole being. But the desire may be wholly the weakness it has fallen to, and it will then be unable to withdraw its attention from the unobtainable desire, even to attend to itself. It will then remain for ever in impotent desire or memory of desire.

Sauron and Other Ainur Compared to Melkor

Although Melkor had weakened himself by disseminating his native strength throughout Midle-earth to identify himself with it – that is, to “own” it – he was apparently exceptional, according to the above comments.

Sauron was said to be the greatest of his followers, more powerful (in the beginning) than other Ainur who became the Balrogs, Saruman, or Gandalf. And at the Council of Elrond, Gandalf said that if the One Ring were destroyed, “then [Sauron] will fall; and his fall will be so low that none can foresee his arising ever again. For he will lose the best part of the strength that was native to him in his beginning, and all that was made or begun with that power will crumble, and he will be maimed for ever, becoming a mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but cannot again grow or take shape.”

So I have always inferred (and stand by this argument today) that if Sauron could not have self-reincarnated without the anchoring of the One Ring, then less powerful Ainur could not have self-incarnated again, either, if their bodies were slain. Hence, when Saruman was slain by Wormtongue, I believe he was so weakened as to be unable to self-incarnate again.

We don’t know that to be the case. The faithful Ainur like Gandalf who were slain weren’t trying to pervert the natural order the way Melkor and his followers had. So it’s conceivable that Gandalf could have returned to the Valar and eventually recomposed himself enough to take form again on his own. But I don’t think that was ever a realistic possibility in Tolkien’s mind.

He says in Letter No. 156 that Gandalf was “sent back” by Ilúvatar:

…He was sent by a mere prudent plan of the angelic Valar or governors; but Authority had taken up this plan and enlarged it, at the moment of its failure. ‘Naked I was sent back – for a brief time, until my task is done’. Sent back by whom, and whence? Not by the ‘gods’ whose business is only with this embodied world and its time; for he passed ‘out of thought and time’…

When Gandalf told Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli about his battle with the Balrog of Moria, he concluded by saying: “…Then darkness took me; and I strayed out of thought and time, and I wandered far on roads that I will not tell.”

It’s generally accepted (I think) that “out of thought and time” means he left Eä (Space and Time) because Tolkien says that Gandalf was healed, strengthened, given new authority, and sent back by Ilúvatar to complete the Valar’s failed plan.

Conclusion

So when you put all the above together, and consider that it was only because the One Ring possessed most of his native strength, it seems Tolkien was being quite transparent about Sauron’s inability to assume fair form again. He simply didn’t have the strength of will to heal himself (spiritually) enough to be able to self-incarnate any way he pleased.

Or, to put it another way, his fixation on becoming incarnate again made it impossible for him to concentrate on how he might achieve that. Unable to heal himself, Sauron would have diminished capacity to focus his thought each time he was slain, until finally all his strength was spent. Theoretically, despite Gandalf’s warning that Sauron would not fall again if he recovered the One Ring, he could have been slain again and again and as long as the Ring existed he would be able to slowly reconstitute himself in some kind of physical form.

Personally, I think that would have resulted in his becoming more monstrous and horrific and eventually he might not even be able to assume even the dark humanoid form Tolkien said he could still take on at the end of the Third Age. Maybe there could eventually have been a Blob-Sauron, still capable of doing great evil in the physical world – assuming the One Ring could have been kept from him, and he kept dying.

See Also

Did Sauron Die When the One Ring Was Destroyed?

How Many Times Was Sauron Slain?

How Does Death Work in Middle-earth?

Could Saruman Have Recincarnated Himself the Way Sauron Did?

Did Sauron Really Believe the One Ring Had Been Destroyed?

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