The Lord of the Rings — One Ring to Rule Them All -Part 2

For your information, this is not my first writing about this topic. In this part,I’m going to examine the different aspects and different symbolisms of the ring. And I will conclude the writing. Let’s begin. For the first part, you can click to the link below:

The Lord of the Rings — One Ring to Rule Them All

THE POWER OF ORNAMENT

The Ring of Power is not only a tool, not only akin to a covering or a clothing. Ultimately the ring is an ornament. The symbolism of the ornament participates in some of the most difficult and the most mysterious aspects of reality. To understand why the ring makes one invisible, we need to talk about the symbolism of the ornamentation. The ornament is the ultimate supplement. An ornament is something which we add to an object but plays no practical purpose in what it ornaments. It is an alien form for the nature of where it is. The ornament is only added to make the object stand out from other objects…

Writings on the One Ring.

…The ornament can be a way of increasing one’s influence and one’s power by marking how special one is. The mystery of the ornament has to do with the problem of showing and hiding. Imagine you put on makeup to enhance your natural beauty. It is there to increase your glow. We want to feature to attract attention to something but if you push the ornament too far, it begins to hide rather than show. It becomes a mask on your face. When does ornament become a mask? This is the process where the ornament pushed to it’s extreme can at some point make one dissappear.The ornament is only added to make the object stand out from other objects.

Frodo puts the ring on and becomes invisible.

THE POWER OF HIERARCHY

The Hieararchy in the Lord of the Rings is just like an aging women can let her become a slave to her makeup. And the dependence on the rings forged by Sauron becomes a kind of slavery. We see this most strongly in the Nazgul and in Gollum. Today in the world of smartphones, this should not seem like such a mystery by relying our capacity to increase our power by tools. We create a hierarchy because the tools we create always both makes us stronger and weaker at the same time. We are always in danger of becoming dependent. It can be the state, money, power, technology or it can be our bodily desires like sex or food. That is the paradox of the human endeavours and the lesson we learn from stories about magic…

Gollum holds the One Ring for the last time.

…This paradox shows itself even more clearly in the modern age where many of us who have often believed and advocated for all the development of science and technology thought that it would bring a kind of perfect moral world and hieararchy. But as we see, we find ourselves more and more dependent on our computers, our phones and gadgets. We discover ourselves to be on what seems like an unstoppable binding of our power in these tools that we have created. As we stand on the verge of the artificial intelligence, we notice that we have most probably already given our will and power to this ‘’Dark Lord’’ for having been seduced by the power of the One Ring. It possible that many of us have already become Nazgul (Ringwraiths).

THE POWER OF THE WORD

Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

These are the words written on the One Ring in the Black Speech of Mordor (an artificial language created by J.R.R Tolkien) and it’s English translation is as follows:

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.