*

“You know of what I speak, Gandalf.

A great eye, lidless, wreathed in flame.”

*

I recall struggling to formulate this image when first reading Tolkien’s masterpiece.

Even with the help of the cover illustrations it seemed to me then an incredibly ‘difficult’ adversary to picture.

Subsequent artists and filmakers have done a pretty decent job of making the image real and sufficiently menacing.

But what of the symbolism?

What can it mean that Sauron only ever appears as an eye?

*

” I see you.

You cannot escape.”

*

From a psychological perspective the Eye of Sauron can be regarded as signifying the Super Ego.

The Super Ego is a manifestation of all those ideals and authority figures that the Ego seeks to impress in order to justify its existence, and look and feel good about itself, but is ever doomed to fail to impress because those ideals are as empty and groundless as the Ego itself, being ultimately, themselves, projections of that Ego.

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