Related: scifi.stackexchange.com/q/19839/51379

He didn't need the Ring because he was weakened without it. He needed the Ring because his enemies would be made stronger with it. Though, reading the quote, it does look like the Ring enhanced his power relative to his original baseline, while he wore it. He simply was not diminished from his native power without the Ring.

Not so. The Ring would have provided a substantial increase to the native spiritual power of any individual. Note how Sam cowed an orc while wearing the Ring. If Aragorn, for example, wore it, he could terrify huge armies into obedience. Had Gandalf taken it, he might even have won its allegiance in a confrontation with Sauron, and become very terrible.

The answers to the question that I linked in my first comment explain most of this.

@Adamant he was weakened without it.

@ATB - Relative to how powerful he would be with the ring, certainly. Relative to his pre-Ring state, no. Tolkien's quote in the answer I linked to would seem to indicate that, anyway.

@Adamant the act of making the ring actually diminished him. In a similar way to Melkor corrupting Arda and eventually being stuck in one form

@ATB - Tolkien's quote seems to be rather explicit about that not being the case: " But even if he did not wear it, that power existed and was in ‘rapport’ with himself: he was not ‘diminished’."

@Adamant Tolkien is inconsistent here. For thousands of years Sauron was greatly weakened. His physical death after the Battle with Gil-Galad and Elendil took a lot longer to recover from than his physical death on the drowning of numenor. The biggest difference being at one point he had the ring and another he didn't.

I'll take Tolkien's explicit explanation over implication, I think.

There are various causes of weakness.

For example "expenditure of will in dominating inferiors."

Sauron had spent much longer dominating lesser minds by that point, I imagine.

No, wait, that was earlier.

Of course. The Ring does strengthen him.

He simply is not weakened relative to his baseline power.

So having the Ring in his possession could well have helped him recover after his death on Numenor.

Tolkien is again inconsistent.

He says in LOTR ‘This is the Master-ring, the One Ring to rule them all. This is the One Ring that he lost many ages ago, to the great weakening of his power.

@ATB Of course. He is stronger with the Ring - but not weaker than his native power without it.

That's really the only logical reading of the quote, since it says in the same quote that while he wore the Ring his power was "enhanced."

I disagree it's the only logical reading.

That's the whole point: the power that he placed within the Ring is in "rapport" with him. He still has access to it.

He poured his power into it, and was greatly weakened by its loss

@ATB I'm not really sure how you would read the line about him "not being diminished," then?

Authorial afterthoughts are not always consistent with the published work

@ATB Or the other way around. ;)

@ATB But there's not really much inconsistency here. He could certainly be weakened by its loss, while still not being weaker than he was when he created it.

Which seems the most consistent reading, to me.

Not to me

The author says Sauron was "forced" to pour much of his power into his ring to give it the power to dominate the others

If pouring his power into the ring had no negative affect on Sauron, why the prejoritive "forced"

@ATB Of course. And then he also says that the power was "in rapport with him" and he "was not diminished."

Afterwards he says that

After he's thought about it

@ATB Because it was necessary? I have to put money into the bank to open an account, but it is still mine and I can withdraw it if necessary. :P

No one (least of all Tolkien) is denying that some of Sauron's power resides in the Ring, and that putting it there was necessary to create the Ring and enhance his powers.

The point that Tolkien was making (rather explicitly, it must be said) was that Sauron still had access to that power while it was in the Ring.

He did not have access to the special enhancements that the Ring granted, unless he wore it.

with the use of the prejoritive "forced" to put "most" of his power into it, and being "greatly" weakened by its loss I'll stick with the original rather than the retconn

Maybe it was midchloroans 🤔

And yes, of course he was weakened by its loss: previously he had the enhanced power granted by the Ring.

This was, of course, considerable.

Given that there's a pretty reasonable interpretation of the word "weakened" (i.e. "relative to his power immediately before losing the Ring) that's also quite consistent with Tolkien's authorial statements, it seems an easy choice to me.

But I like your arguments too.

I hope you don't mind me jumping in, but I was under the impression that Sauron is effected by the same waning as the power in the world experienced as time increases, and therefore cannot be of the same power as he was before. However, although Sauron was "forced" to pour his power into the ring, he didn't expend any power creating the ring, and therefore, the power he had before has now been divided between himself and the ring, and he therefore was searching for it to regain his full strength

I'll try and look through my works later and get a quote.