Maiar Spirits' Bodily Forms

[Elwe Singollo]

I've read all of the Silmarillion except the Akallbeth or however its spelt. It just wasn't very clear to me.

[Lachwen]

Actually, that subject pops up in the Akallabêth; when Sauron is taken to Númenor, he appeared to them in "fair visage," but after the destruction of Númenor (and Sauron's body with it), it is said: "But Sauron was not of mortal flesh, and though he was robbed now of that shape in which he had wrought so great an evil, so that he could never again appear fair to the eyes of Men, yet his spirit arose out of the deep and passed as a shadow and a black wind over the sea, and came back to Middle-earth and to Mordor that was his home. There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dûr, and dwelt there, dark and silent, until he wrought himself a new guise, an image of malice and hatered made visible; and the Eye of Sauron the Terrible few could endure."