originally posted by DancingSpawn of Ungoliant:
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After Sauron's defeat in the battle of Dagorlad, he wasn't able to embody himself. As we know, he didn't die but his spirit just couldn't take a new form.
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As Son of Numenor says, this isn't so - Sauron did have a body! He's just never described, since none of the protagonists have ever seen him.
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"Then Sauron was vanquished and his spirit fled and was hidden for long years, until his shadow took shape again."
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Someone has seen him, though: Gollum! He tells Frodo that
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He has only four (fingers) on the black hand, but they are enough.
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In letter #200 Tolkien wrote:
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....It was thus that Sauron appeared in this shape. It is mythologically supposed that when this shape was "real" (that is a physical actuality in the world and not a vision) it took some time to build up. It was then destructible like other physical organisms. But that of course did not destroy the spirit, nor dismiss it from the wolrd to which it was bound until the end.
After the battle with Gil-Galad and Elendil, Sauron took a long while to re-build, longer than he had done after the Downfall of Númenor. (I suppose because each building-up used some of the inherent energy of the spirit, which might be called the "will" or the effetive link between the indestructible mind and being and the realization of its imagination.)
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And a quote from letter #246
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Sauron should be thought of as very terrible. The form he took was that of a man of more than human stature, but not gigantic.
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