*promote

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, February 9th, 2015 6:52am PST - promote requested by original submitter Grimm.

The Lord of the Rings Mythology Explained - CGP Grey has been added as a related post - related requested by Grimm on that post.

Tom Bombadil at 2:43.

I haven't seen The Hobbit 3 - do they talk about the Seven at all in the film? It would have been a great way to link the Hobbit films with the darker, bigger world of the LotR trilogy if Thorin had come into possession of one of them after Smaug was killed.

read the books before watching those moves

The one thing that I don't like about the One Ring explanation:

It turns you invisible, unless you are the one person for whom it was actually designed (Sauron).

To me, it seems like the rings of power and especially the one ring should grant a more consistent actual power than that. The three elven rings made by Celebrimbor outside the influence of the one are much better examples.

Narya is the "ring of fire", and in the timeline of LoTR it is held by Gandalf. Which makes sense, because he does a lot of fire-related stuff with his magic. Nenya is the "ring of water" held by Galadriel, and Vilya the "ring of air" held by Elrond. These are used less consistently in the books (or movies), but one movie example is the flood that helped save Frodo and get him to Rivendell. In the movie, the flood is shown as being made of water with horse shapes surging through it, which suggest the magical influence of both Nenya and Vilya (water and air) working together. Anyway, those 3 rings have a consistent and fairly well established list of powers associated with their "elemental" attachments, fire, water, and air.

But the one ring lacks that consistency. It is supposed to help Sauron with his urge to dominate, but it doesn't really explain how that works. It doesn't make him invisible; only others who wear it. Also, it helps him to control or at least influence the wearers of the other rings. That is probably the best, most established power of the one ring, but it is also a bit shaky because wearers other than Sauron don't get those abilities. It seems to make other wearers just more susceptible to corruption, greed, and lust for power.

To me, I think it would be more interesting if the one ring actually granted a more specific power, unique to the psychological state of the wearer. The consistently presented thing about the one ring is that it corrupts, and nothing corrupts more than power. So basically, I think that the one ring should be analyzing whoever wears it, and granting them a unique power that is specifically designed to provide them with their greatest source of temptation to abuse that power.

The invisibility power actually makes a lot of sense for hobbits. As presented in the video here, they generally aren't very ambitious. BUT, hobbits are established as being stealthy beings by default, so granting them invisibility is a good source of temptation to turn that stealthiness into more nefarious purpose. So, I don't mind that the three main hobbit (or hobbit-like) wearers (Gollum/Smeagol, Bilbo, Frodo) all consistently get the invisibility power out of the ring.

Human wearers like Isildur would have less consistent powers granted by the rings, because they have more diverse motivations than hobbits. Just as an example, I'd think that Isildur would be motivated by martial prowess and leadership after watching his father killed by Sauron and the human/elven armies decimated at the end of the second age. So, the ring could perceive that about him and grant him physical power and charisma to lead -- both of which would be very easily turned to corruption. Invisibility just doesn't logically provide the same level of temptation for someone like Isildur.

Finally we come to Sauron himself. He is already an exception to the "ring grants invisibility" concept. But for him, the ring should (and arguably does) represent power and control. Sauron had to put on a false face and play the role of deceiver to get Celebrimbor and the other elves to accept him and create the other rings. Having to stoop to that rather than simply crushing them made him despise that sort of approach; after creating the one ring he cast that aside and became all about sheer power and domination, rather than trickery and deception. So, I see the ring's powers granted to Sauron himself as being sort of a conversion of those cunning/deceptive abilities into might, self preservation, and overwhelming mental dominance that allows him to control his orc armies.


Sorry for the length of that -- I have just always felt that the established powers of the one ring would be a bit more interesting if they led to corruption through real power granted to the wearers, rather than "it makes them invisible, but not Sauron, and in general corrupts them, just because".

Invisibility isn't a power of the One Ring so much as a side-effect. It shifts mortal wearers a little into the spirit world, so they fade from view in the physical. Sauron doesn't disappear when he wears the ring because he already exists in both worlds and he can see other wearers for the same reason. It's not widely discussed, but this should also be true of other maiar; Gandalf, Saruman and Durin's Bane; and 'high' elves who've been to Valinor: Galadriel and Glorfindel would all also be unaffected by ringvisibility. It's this walking the threshold between worlds that's also responsible for the extended lifespan of mortal ringbearers and why Frodo can see the ringwraiths and they can see him.

The elemental character of the Three, I think, shouldn't be overstated. All of the rings, the One, the Three, the Seven and the Nine are very much alike. They were all made by or under the tutelage of the same creator to the same basic recipe, with independent elven flourishes rather than fundamental differences in the case of the Three. The One has to resonate (musical metaphors are always appropriate for Tolkien's magic) with the others in order to work on them, and that's Sauron's mistake: he is ultimately trapped and destroyed by his ring just as the dwarves and men were by theirs.

I agree with you, but to me it would still be more interesting if the power of the one ring was manifested in some more concrete way.

I guess that in general Tolkien wasn't big on allegory, which is why he looked down on interpretations of his work where people assume that the ring is a symbol for "atomic energy", or "technology" or "industry" or whatever. So, from his point of view it is probably better to make the ring more abstract. But, I still think that personally, I get more out of viewing the one ring as sort of an allegory for "power" in general, and the corrupting influence of that power. So, even though I know that your interpretation is correct to what Tolkien had in mind, I like to read his books with my own spin on things in that way.

Yeah, I read the Hobbit about 25 years ago, and the Lord of the Rings a few years later... what's your point?

I like the idea of what you're saying but as far as the ring goes I would look at it this way. Say you build a super weapon, the problem with a super weapon is if anyone else gets their hands on it they could use it on you, so you build it in such a way that it only really works for you. But you make it nice and shiny and encourage would be thieves to use it (sweet! I'm invisible!) so when they do it will quietly call the cops (or Ringrwraiths in this case) when it's logged on to a network like some stolen iphone from hell. Of course you never want them to have any real power, just the promise or illusion of it to keep them on the hook while security tracks down the stolen item, then you can eat them, "raw and wriggling" if that's your preference.

Regarding the ring and invisibility, do we ever see/read about anyone except Sauron or the hobbits (incl gollum) wearing it?

I could be wrong, but I don't remember any of the humans or elves wearing it. So it's possible it does grant other wearers different abilities.

Isildur wears it while escaping his ambush by orcs, and does indeed turn invisible before it slips off his finger. Unfortunately the argument is available that he, like the hobbits, has every reason to value stealth in that moment. It's notable that both he and Frodo are made aware (in Frodo's case by Galadriel) that the ring's real strength is beyond them.

Bombadil wears it briefly as well, of course, and doesn't vanish. But he's a pain in the ass. Others might say it's because he's an ainu, duh. Or shut up, he's a deliberate anomaly. I'd claim, not with a tremendous amount of canonical justification it has to be said, that it's because he's all physical; a personification of middle-earth and even the ring can't shove him into the shadow world.

When I originally saw the scene, in the theater, where Gandalf confronts the Balrog at the bridge of Khazad-dûm, I believe I saw a tiny flash of bright red light from Gandalf's hand right before he struck the bridge with his staff. I have not been able to identify that detail in any small screen viewing of the film but I'm almost certain I saw it in the theater. I believe that was the power of Narya being summoned.