There was Another Way to Destroy the Ring and Defeat Sauron

In the Peter Jackson movies, Elrond recounts to Gandalf how he led Isildur into the heart of Mount Doom with the Ring.

To the one place where it could be destroyed, so it may surprise you to learn that in the books, there was in fact another way in which the Ring could have been unmade.

When this question arises, it is logical to wonder if there are any other sources of great heat or magical fire in Middle-earth.

Thus, you may wonder if the searing breath of a dragon would be hot enough to melt the One Ring.

And you would be right to ask this question, for Gandalf himself speaks of it in Bag End, when he tells Frodo of the Rings of Power.

Your small fire, of course, would not melt even ordinary gold. This ring has already passed through it unscathed, and even unheated. But there is no smith's forge in this Shire that could change it at all. Not even the anvils and furnaces of the dwarves could do that. It has been said that dragon-fire could melt and consume the Rings of Power, but there is not now any dragon left on Earth in which the old fire is hot enough.

It is this fragment of the quote that most people recall, the line that echoes in memory.

Yet Gandalf's words did not end there, he continued, revealing that the One Ring is in fact exempt from such a fate, for it was forged by means of a darker craft than the other Rings of Power.

Nor was there ever any dragon, not even Ancalagon the Black, who could have harmed the One Ring, the Ruling Ring, for that was made by Sauron himself.

As Gandalf alludes to here, the forging of the One Ring was unlike the making of any of the other Rings of Power.

All of the other rings were the creations of Celebrimbor and the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, crafted in the forges of Ost-in-Edhil.

Whereas the One was wrought in the oppressive heat and shadow of Mount Doom, a great volcano, raised in the Elder Days by the will of Melkor himself.

Gil-galad had by then discovered that Sauron was busy in Eregion, but had secretly begun the making of a stronghold in Mordor (maybe already an Elvish name for that region, because of its volcano Orodruin and its eruptions - which were not made by Sauron but were a relic of the devastating works of Melkor in the Long First Age).

Deep within its fire-lit heart, as Sauron labored alone, the mountain's molten veins became his forge, and he was no elf, but a Maia, a spirit who had been present at the very shaping of the world.

Who was capable of bending matter to his will and purpose.

And long ago Sauron had served under Aulë, the great Vala of craft and creation.

Thus, when at last he turned to his own dark designs, he possessed the power and skill to forge a ring unlike any crafted before or since.

This was why the One Ring stood alone and was no mere sibling to the other Rings of Power. It was not bound by the same limitations, nor was it made with the same purpose. It was a weapon of domination, saturated with the will of its maker, and in its potency, it eclipsed all others.

How could such an artifact, mighty beyond compare, be destroyed in any place other than Mount Doom?

Confusingly, in the same passage where Gandalf speaks of dragon-fire, he actually states that the Ring must be cast back into the heart of Mount Doom, suggesting that it is only there that it could be unmade.

There is only one way: to find the Cracks of Doom in the depths of Orodruin, the Fire-mountain, and cast the Ring in there, if you really wish to destroy it, to put it beyond the grasp of the Enemy for ever.

At first glance, Gandalf's words seem absolute.

Yet, as with much of Tolkien's language, the phrasing is precise and deliberate.

Gandalf declares that there is only one way for them to destroy the Ring.

He does not, however, say that Mount Doom is the sole place where it could ever be unmade.

What he means is that for them, Mount Doom is the only path available, for there was indeed another way.

Gandalf knew of it.

For this alternative route was spoken of during the Council of Elrond, and it is touched upon by Tolkien himself in Letter 131.

To understand it, we must journey far back into the Second Age of Middle-earth.

To the cataclysm that marked the Fall of Númenor.

In those days, the world was changed by the will of Eru Ilúvatar himself.

The lands were reshaped, the seas bent, and the Earth, once flat, was made into a sphere.

In this great transformation, the Blessed Realm of Aman vanished from the world, hidden forever, placed beyond the reach of mortal ships.

Yet the elves still knew the Straight Road, which led beyond the horizon to the Undying Lands.

And there in Valinor dwelt the Valar, the mighty Lords of the West.

And amongst their number, dwelt a great smith, who could have been able to unmake the One Ring.

We know that this is a possibility, because Tolkien himself tells us that only a smith of greater craft than Sauron could destroy the Ring.

The Ring was unbreakable by any smithcraft less than his own. It was indissoluble in any fire, save the undying subterranean fire where it was made.

And that was unapproachable, in Mordor.

Here Tolkien speaks of the only two ways in which the One Ring could be unmade.

It could, of course, be cast into the primeval fires, which lay beneath the world.

In the Third Age, such a place was only found in Mordor, at the heart of Orodruin, the Mountain of Fire.

The alternate path would require a smith of such surpassing skill that he could outmatch Sauron himself.

In truth, only two names remain in the Third Age who could be counted as contenders for that task: Saruman and Aulë the Smith.

The mention of Saruman at this juncture may come as a surprise to some.

Yet the truth is, the White Wizard had once been a great craftsman in his own right.

In ancient times, before he came to Middle-earth as the leader of the Istari, Saruman had served under Aulë.

And some may be unaware that Saruman actually forged his own Ring of Power, wrought in imitation of the One Ring.

And he came perilously close to reproducing Sauron's master ring.

Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a great ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled ruler of Middle-earth.

This passage reveals just how near Saruman came to forging a Ring of Power.

Yet, it also makes it clear that despite his cunning, Saruman was a lesser smith than Sauron.

To achieve his goal of forging a true Ring of Power, he required the Dark Lord's Ring-lore.

Without which, his craft fell short.

This leaves Aulë the Smith as the only known being who could have surpassed Sauron in skill.

Both Aulë and Sauron were of the Ainur, mighty beings akin to angels or demigods, who once sang the first vision of the world into being during the Music of the Ainulindalë.

Yet, there was a vast difference in their stature.

Aulë was one of the Valar, the highest order of the Ainur, while Sauron was of the Maiar.

The lesser order, who served as the aids of the Valar.

Therefore, it is clear that Aulë's power and skill in craft would have surpassed Sauron's.

And being one of greater smithcraft, Aulë would indeed have had the power to unmake the One Ring.

So, if he could destroy it, and the elves knew how to navigate the Straight Road to Valinor.

Why was this path not chosen by the wise?

This very matter is raised at the Council of Elrond.

Where the path west is set aside for two reasons.

The first is that the road from Rivendell, passing through Eriador and the Shire, all the way to the Grey Havens, was no longer safe.

It would have been closely watched, its every mile surveyed by eyes both seen and unseen.

Flight to the sea is now fraught with gravest peril. My heart tells me that Sauron will expect us to take the western way, when he learns what has befallen.

He soon will.

The Council shunned the idea of sending the Ring along any road that was being closely watched by the servants of Sauron.

And this fear was understandable, for spies and orcs were not the only peril on those darkening roads.

For the wise understood that the Nine had not truly been defeated at the Ford of Bruinen.

And that soon the Black Riders would take up new mounts.

The Nine have been unhorsed indeed, but that is but a respite, ere they find new steeds and swifter.

The phrasing of this passage hints not at the swift gallop of black horses.

But the terrible beating of the wings of the Fellbeasts.

The Nazgûl first took to horseback because Sauron desired the hunt for the Ring to remain cloaked in secrecy.

Being mounted upon horses, they could pass through the lands of men and scour the North for the Ring, without drawing any more attention than necessary.

But secrecy would give way to desperation if Sauron believed the Ring lay in Rivendell and was being carried westward toward the sea.

In such an eventuality, all caution would be cast aside, and he would not hesitate to unleash the Nine on their Fellbeasts.

And they would soon come, sweeping across the skies in open pursuit.

And Sauron would also rouse the Corsairs of Umbar, bidding them to blockade the Gulf of Lune.

No ship would leave Lindon without being searched or seized.

Thus the road to Aman was indeed fraught with gravest peril and must be abandoned.

But besides the danger alone, another barrier, less tangible and more philosophical, stood barring this road.

For the Lords of the West would never permit Sauron's creation to be borne unto the Undying Lands.

Valinor was no place for the instruments or artifacts of evil.

The Ring was a wound upon Middle-earth, and the Valar would not allow such a poison to pass their borders.

Elrond himself confirms this when addressing the Council in Rivendell.

But Gandalf has revealed to us that we cannot destroy it by any craft that we here possess, said Elrond. And they who dwell beyond the sea would not receive it; for good or ill it belongs to Middle-earth; it is for us who still dwell here to deal with it.

It may seem strange that the Valar would so adamantly refuse to take the Ring.

But the history of Middle-earth offers a sobering explanation.

The few times the Valar, or even Eru Ilúvatar himself, directly intervened in the affairs of Middle-earth, the consequences were vast and irreversible.

The first calamity came at the end of the First Age, when the Valar crossed the sea to wage war upon Morgoth.

In the destruction caused by the clash of these primordial powers, near all of Beleriand was swallowed by the ocean.

And in the Second Age, when Ar-Pharazôn, driven by arrogance and the fear of death, led his fleet to invade the Blessed Realm.

The Valar laid down their guardianship and called upon Eru himself.

In that moment, the world was changed, and Númenor too was dragged beneath the waves.

Then suddenly fire burst from the Meneltarma, and there came a mighty wind and a tumult of the Earth, and the sky reeled.

And the hills slid, and Númenor went down into the sea, with all its children and its wives and its maidens and its ladies proud.

And all its gardens and its halls and its towers, its tombs and its riches, and its jewels and its webs and its things painted and carven, and its laughter and its mirth and its music, its wisdom and its lore: they vanished for ever.

With such memories in mind, it becomes clearer why the Valar would hesitate to intervene in the affairs of Middle-earth once more.

However, reluctance to intervene was but part of their reasoning.

The Valar had ever guarded Aman with unyielding vigilance, for they would suffer no shadow to touch the hallowed realm.

To them, Aman was a sanctuary of light, a place where the unmared beauty of the world might endure.

Untouched by the creeping stain that lay heavy upon the rest of creation.

Accordingly, the Valar, in their timeless wisdom, would never suffer a thing so deeply infused with a powerful evil.

To breach the shores that they had long labored to guard from corruption.

For to allow the Ring into Aman would have been to invite into its heart a fragment of the very poison that they had sought for millennia to keep at bay.

Thus the notion of bearing the Ring westward to the Grey Havens, embarking upon the Straight Road, and delivering it across the Sundering Seas to the Blessed Realm was doomed from its first utterance.

Aulë the Smith, the only being possessed of the smithcraft required to destroy the Ring, would not accept it.

And so the choice was made.

Not by the councils of the wise, but by the nature of the world and the decrees of those who shaped it.

The Ring must return to Mordor.

Thus the Fellowship's road was set.

And the Ring-bearer ventured forth from Rivendell, not to the west, but to the south.

And began his long journey to the fires of Mount Doom.

Thank you very much for tuning into Realms Unraveled. I would like to take this opportunity to light the beacons and call for aid.

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