Thread: Evil things
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Old 03-02-2004, 12:31 AM   #37
HerenIstarion
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Quote:
Sauron had no body, and yet he remained undefeated for One Age
Being uncorporeal, he was unable to interact with the mortals (and immortals) he craved to subdue. So, even being undefeated, there was no possibility for him to achieve his ends. Inability to do something is by definition the drawback on [alleged] omnipotency. He was 'dispersed', that is the thing hard to find to defeat, after all.

Logical deduction:

1. Sauron is seeking to rebuild his body to renew the war for the ME
2. It takes him an age to do so

Conclusion - Diembodied [evil] Maia is not omnipotent, and needs a body, though it is hard to have a real body once one looses it.

In case logic is not enough, let me back myself up with references, than:

Quote:
Osanwe-Kenta

Melkor alone of the Great became at last bound to a bodily form; but that was because of the use that he made of this in his purpose to become Lord of the Incarnate, and of the great evils that he did in the visible body. Also he had dissipated his native powers in the control of his agents and servants, so that he became in the end, in himself and without their support, a weakened thing, consumed by hate and unable to restore himself from the state into which he had fallen. Even his visible form he could no longer master, so that its hideousness could not any longer be masked, and it showed forth the evil of his mind. So it was also with even some of his greatest servants, as in these later days we see: they became wedded to the forms of their evil deeds, and if these bodies were taken from them or destroyed, they were nullified, until they had rebuilt a semblance of their former habitations, with which they could continue the evil courses in which they had become fixed".
The 'good' Maiar/Valar retain ability to 'clothe' themselves at will, but even when 'unclothed' by their own choice (and not deprived of habitual body (see below)) they are not omni-potent (even flight is only for Manwe and Varda). As far as textual evidence shows, the best they contrive, is teleportation:

Quote:
HoME XII, Later Writings

and who [Maiar and Valar when not clothed - H-I] could move/travel simply by an act of will when not arrayed in a body___ which they could assume when they reached the places [presumably which they wished to reach - H-I]
as of habitual body, in case of good maiar Osanwe-Kenta again:

Quote:
It is said that the longer and the more the same hröa is used, the greater is the bond of habit, and the less do the 'self-arrayed' desire to leave it [...] if a "spirit" (that is, one of those not embodied by creation) uses a hröa for the furtherance of its personal purposes, or (still more) for the enjoyment of bodily faculties, it finds it increasingly difficult to operate without the hröa. The things that are most binding are those that in the Incarnate have to do with the life of the hröa itself, its sustenance and its propagation. Thus eating and drinking are binding, but not the delight in beauty of sound or form. Most binding is begetting or conceiving.
What do you define as omni-potent, by the way? As far as concept goes, the only omnipotent being is Eru.
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