The Eye of Sauron...

''Of old there was Sauron the Maia...'' (The Silmarillion, Part V, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age).

One of the most obvious discrepancies between The Lord of the Rings and the film trilogy which shares that name is that of the form of Sauron. In the film he is depicted as a gigantic floating eyeball wreathed about with fire and lightning. I imagine that this is because the people who made the films took this quotation out of context:

''In the black abyss there appeared a single Eye that slowly grew, until it filled nearly all the Mirror. So terrible was it that Frodo stood rooted, unable to cry out or to withdraw his gaze. The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat's, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.'' (The Lord of the Rings, Book II, Chapter VII, The Mirror of Galadriel).

The Lord of the Rings itself contains no physical description of Sauron. I believe this to be a literary device of some sort; a means of perhaps making the Dark Lord seem more menacing. So what did Sauron look like? This largely depends on which Age of the Sun one is thinking about. I think it is here worth going through the three Ages of the Sun since it is a cogent question.

As I have quoted above, Sauron was in origin a Maia, of the people of Aulë the Smith, and is thus akin to both Gandalf and Saruman. As a Maia, he had certain inherent abilities, which to Men would appear ''magical,'' although to the Maiar they were just as natural as the ability to walk or to run. One of these abilities was the ability to change shape at will. In The Silmarillion, Sauron's ''own accustomed form'' seems to have been human - it was customary for the Ainur to imitate the Children of Ilúvatar in this regard. In the battle between Sauron and Huan the great Wolfhound of Valinor, Sauron was pinned down, and in his endeavour to escape he shifted shape, from wolf to serpent and to ''monster,'' and upon his defeat, fled in vampire form, ''great as a dark cloud across the moon,'' dripping blood from his throat upon the trees. Dismayed by the downfall of the Diabolus Morgoth, Sauron abased himself and assumed the most beautiful form he could devise, and did obeisance to Eönwë the herald of Manwë. He would not, however, return in humiliation into the West to abide the judgement of the Valar for his evil deeds, and he hid himself. His temporary repentance, therefore (which was probably genuine, if only out of sheer fear of the Valar), caused a greater relapse, until slowly, beginning with good motives (the re-ordering of Middle-earth after the tumults at the end of the First Age, the rehabilitation of the wild Men ''neglected'' by the Valar, etc), he himself became a ''dark Lord.'' As one of the Maiar, however, he still had the ability to change his shape.

Early in the Second Age of the Sun, the age of Númenor, Sauron appeared to the Elves of Eregion, exiled Noldor who refused to return into the West, in his most beautiful form and assumed the name Annatar, Lord of Gifts. His counsels were especially enamoured of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, the Jewel-smiths who followed Celebrimbor, for Sauron was skilled in craft, and under his teaching, they wrought the Rings of Power. To all but the most wary he seemed fair and wise, but not all saw through his fair seeming, and Galadriel rejected him, as did Elrond and Gil-galad in Lindon. In this form he was taken to Númenor as hostage of Ar-Pharazôn, the last king, and there corrupted the already estranged hearts of the Men to idolatry. In the tumults of the Downfall of Númenor, Sauron's fair form was dragged down and destroyed, and his spirit fled back to Mordor on a cold dark wind. In the Dark Tower, he dwelt in darkness and silence until with the Ring he fashioned for himself a new form, terrible to behold, and he could never again appear fair to Men. Interestingly, this mirrors Morgoth's declension from beauty and splendour into impotence and hatred - Morgoth, who in the earliest days of Arda was brighter than the Sun and could drive all the Valar into retreat, and towards the end of the First Age duelled perforce with the Elven-king Fingolfin. Tolkien saw the physical forms of the Ainur in terms of the raiment of Men. In a certain sense, the appearance of one of the Ainur was the self-manifestation of their thoughts. Be they dark and sinful, as were the hearts of the Dark Lords, then they would appear so to Men the more evil they became.

At the end of the Second Age, in the great Battle of the Last Alliance, Sauron came forth himself after the seven year-long Siege of Barad-dûr, and faught with Gil-galad and Elendil, slaying them both, and was himself overthrown, Isildur cutting the Great Ring from his hand. In this case, he lost his physical form altogether, and we are told that: ''...he forsook his body, and his spirit fled far away and hid in waste places; and he took no visible shape again for many long years.''

During the first millennium of the Third Age, Sauron remained impotent and invisible in waste places, until he returned to Dol-Guldur in southern Greenwood the Great. We know nothing of his appearance at this time, the ''Shadow of Sauron,'' except that he exerted vast influence and dark things crept back to him, and the great forest was named anew; Mirkwood it became. It would appear that without the Ring, which was lost, he could not quickly fashion for himself a new form.

Towards the end of the Third Age, when Bilbo found the Ring in Gollum's cave, Sauron was driven out of Mirkwood by the White Council and returned again to Mordor, long-prepared by the Nazgûl. He must, by this time, have created for himself a new form. By the end of the Third Age, with the onset and duration of the War of the Ring, Sauron did indeed have a physical form. As I have said, there are no descriptions given anywhere in The Lord of the Rings, and people are often confused by constant references to the ''Eye of Sauron,'' and the ''Eye of Barad-dûr.'' There are cases in which this is clearly figurative, but others it would appear that Tolkien equates the Eye with Sauron himself - as seems to be the case with Frodo's vision in the Mirror of Galadriel; ''the Red Eye will be looking towards Isengard'' and all that.

However, Sauron clearly had a real physical form. Gollum, who had seen the Dark Lord in person, said: ''He has only four [fingers] on the Black Hand, but they are enough.'' Furthermore, there are other references which indicate Sauron's abilities to travel around freely such as, curiously, Aragorn's command that the lord of the Black Land must come forth to receive judgement from the King.

Tolkien's Letters, however, provide the answer, as they do in a lot of other cases. In Letter 246, Tolkien writes:

''Sauron must be thought of as very terrible. The form that he took was that of a man of more than human stature, but not gigantic.''

My supposition is that the ''Eye of Sauron'' is merely a metaphor for his constant vigilance - it could even refer to the Palantír of Minas Ithil which he had seized in the overthrow of that city. It would certainly explain why Denethor was driven mad, and Frodo saw the glazed yellow eye - for Sauron exerted great command over the Palantíri, and could make those who foolishly dared to look into them see only what he wanted them to see - unless they had greater will-power than he. The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien are an indispensible trove for any Tolkienist, or even someone with a routine interest in Tolkien, his work and his faith.