Sauron the Necromancer

[TMA_1]

The name "necromancer" always bothered me a little in The Hobbit. Finding out more information in The Silmarillion and whatnot I still was bothered by it, finally figuring that maybe tolkien just used the name necromancer to give you the idea that Sauron is into the extremely dark arts.

But something hit me. When Sauron was taken to the island of the dunadan and eventually soured the numenor to his plots, he set up a grand temple in mockery of the Meneltarma (the mountain of Eru-Iluvatar, the Father Of All). In the temple that sauron built, they worshipped a spirit in the outer void, and what some didnt realize till it was too late was that they were directly worshiping Melkor, who is the great evil.

Obviously through my readings I believe that there is some sort of real contact made between morgoth in the outer darkness and with sauron, I think they are powerful enough to recieve some sort of basic essense from one another.

It got me to thinking, could Necromancer actually be a precise name? Could it mean more than just a basic idea of power? I have been to many websites like Encyclopedia of Arda to look at what they say, and my idea doesnt seem to have been thought of.

Could Sauron's name Necromancer come from some sort of way that he can talk to Morgoth in the outer darkness? In a sense if that is hte case he is speaking with the departed. Morgoth is obviously not dead, but he is outside of the realm of arda. I know a lot about these books, more than most which I can honestly say. I think that maybe he is called the necromancer because of this idea.

If not this, what do you guys think the name could mean?

[nemafakei]

Etymologically speaking, necromancy (*νεκρος/μαντις) is not necessarily raising or speaking to the dead, but prophecy by means of corpses. Corpse was generalised to mean a dead person, which gave rise to the meaning of speaking to spirits, while in parallel, the precise meaning of μαντις was lost and was used for any arcane endeavour, hence the idea of raising the dead.

[TMA_1]

hehe, I wasent trying to get at the direct term of what necromancer really means. In fact Tolkien didntreally use it to the exact technical terminology either, in fact tolkien twisted and changed words a lot for his own use.

[Tezcatlipoca]

Twisted I think is the wrong word here. I don't know as I can recall anything in which what he wrote wasn't *exactly* what should have been written; he was that detailed--pretty amazing given that he is the direct opposite of a minimalist. The original meaninings of some words might not have been applicable by common standards (today or at the time of the writing), but in his hands, they morphed to the shape of their use perfectly.

As for the Necromancy portion of the topic, remember, it's but one of his names, which indicates it's but one of his rolls. He's also Sauron the Sorcerer, when he dwelled in Dol Guldur, Lord of the Rings, Lord of Gifts, The Ring Maker, The Dark Power, The Abhorred One (if I recall correctly), and countless others, but written in Tolkin's writings, and which can be assumed anyway.

But as for more direct reasons for his title "The Necromancer" (the others are more or less obvious) there's a few places we can look. First, every Nazgul (Ring-Wraiths is a better term for our use right now) could easily be considered the undead minions of Sauron, and with such power as they held individually, it's easy to see that Sauron could and would be considered the most powerful Necromancer, for their existance alone. But aside from that, there's also to consider the Dead Marshes, a land enchanted with what one could only consider the evil magic of Sauron (certainly they and their nature exists, as an indirect result of Sauron's power at least), and a personal favorite (character wise) of mine, the Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dur. This is a mortal man, who has somehow survived since the time of the Black Numenoreans, as he was one of them. His extended life-span (somewhere between 1641 years old and 1190 years old, depending on if you take the earliest possible appearance of the Black Numenoreans in 1800 or the latest possible in 2251 until the War of the Ring in 3441. As you can see, this is a much longer lifespan then even the first (and longest lived at 500) of all Numenoreans),can logically be concluded as the result of necromancy--either his own, or Sauron's. My guess is Sauron's (apparently he was valuable, although his value certainly was never displayed in the books). Last, is a minor consideration (and probably a stretch); the Dead Men, which Aragorn raised from beneath the Dwimorberg to fight at the port of Pelargir, can probably be considered an indirect result of Sauron, despite it being Isuldur that cursed them (because they wouldn't fight Sauron). That one is a stretch, but people would be more apt to blamb Sauron for it, even if because of only indirect action, for that many men becoming undead.

[TMA_1]

Well for example.

The term Elf. Now in The Lost Tales they were also called Fairies and in the case of the noldoli, Gnomes. Anyways tolkien himself says that the term elf is misleading. The elf in mythology is a very small creature that lives along the tops of hills. The elves in the lord of the rings are obviously different. It comes with the territory, especially since tolkien's languages were so closely based on real languages.

Also the Mouth of Sauron was not that old. He was a descendant of the black Numenoreans that lived in the northern parts of Harad. Their haven lay at the Bay of Corsairs and from my studies the black numenoreans have actually kept their bloodline pure, using their status to the pleasure of sauron, and enslaving the natives of harad to do their bidding.

[Tezcatlipoca]

The elf in mythology is a very small creature that lives along the tops of hills. The elves in the lord of the rings are obviously different. It comes with the territory, especially since tolkien's languages were so closely based on real languages.

That completely depends on *who's* elves you're going with. There's large cultural gaps between the descriptions of such mythological creatures. We can probably assume he was talking about differences with the English form here, but to play devil's advocate, as I recall, Elves in Germanic folk lore tend to be more "human-like" (in size for example), but bestowed with magical abilities, and tend to enjoy mischivous actions (mischivous for them would be the equivilent of removing someone's legs with an axe while they're deep asleep under spell, so they wake up and find their legs gone; stealing human babies, children, and young females is also a favorite pass-time). That of course, is very un-English when it comes to their faerie descriptions, or even Tolkine's.

Also the Mouth of Sauron was not that old. He was a descendant of the black Numenoreans that lived in the northern parts of Harad. Their haven lay at the Bay of Corsairs and from my studies the black numenoreans have actually kept their bloodline pure, using their status to the pleasure of sauron, and enslaving the natives of harad to do their bidding.

Yes, I believe you're correct. The section in the book states "he was a renegade, who came of the race of those that are named the Black Numenoreans", which is where I assumed he was one of the original BNs, and thus a renegade of the Numenoreans themselves. It still can't be said for certain where exactly he came from, or how old he was, but it stands to reason he's a "normal" human age, given the quote later "And he entered the service of the Dark Tower when it first rose again". That of course doesn't give his age, but tells us he was only in Sauron's direct service since the reestablishment of Barad-dur. So if he is indeed very old (unlikly, but still possible), it would probably not be Sauron's doing (unless he plans way ahead; unlikely given that he never bothered to seal up holes in that pesky volcano).

[TMA_1]

Well When Sauron came back to the dark tower after fleeing from Dol Goldur, he summoned all of his allies for preparing war against middle earth. The Corsair navy was controlled by the Black Numenoreans and were still powerful. The Black Numenoreans were under direct rulership of sauron and because of this the Mouth of Sauron was probably one of the line that had extreme power. He probably came in when the wars started.