NAZGÛL, THE RINGWRAITHS
Chief among the greatest servants of Sauron the Ring Lord in the Second and Third Ages are the Nine Black Riders, who in the Black Speech of the Orcs are known as the Nazgûl, meaning “Ringwraiths”. Once these were kings and sorcerers whom Sauron corrupted by the power of the Nine Rings of Mortal Men. In his creation of the malignant and terrifying Ringwraiths, the greatest of the servants of Sauron, Tolkien taps into rich lodes of mythology and legend.
A “wraith” is a phantom or spectre, either a manifestation of a living being or the ghost of a dead person. In English, it is a relatively recent word, first attested around 1513, but the notion it conveys is of vastly greater antiquity. For humans, the primal mysteries are birth and death, and, of the two, death is much harder to comprehend. Fear of the dead is a powerful force in all cultures. For the dead to return is almost invariably a harbinger of evil and disaster.
Sauron’s Ringwraiths have immense powers over the minds and wills of their foes, but they themselves are Sauron’s slaves in their every action. They barely exist except as terrifying phantoms, lethal extensions of the Ring Lord’s eternal lust for power and his desire to enslave all life.
The Nazgûl pledge allegiance to Sauron the Ring Lord
A Nazgûl mounted upon Winged Beast
Possession of the Nine Rings of Mortal Men give the Nazgûl the power to preserve their “undead” form as terrifying wraiths for thousands of years. Tolkien’s Ringwraiths have similarities with zombies – the mindless reanimated corpses set in motion by a sorcerer. However, in the Ringwraiths, Tolkien has created beings far more potent and malevolent. Even before they were possessed by the will of Sauron and became the Dark Lord’s thralls, these were sorcerers and kings of great power among the Easterlings of Rhûn, the Southrons of Harad and the mighty Men of Númenor.
We should not overlook the fact that the Ringwraiths are nine in number. It is a mystic number in both the white and black magics of many nations – from the proverbial nine lives of the cat to Pythagorean numerology in which nine is the number of the tyrant. In Norse mythology, nine is by far the most significant number, from the nine worlds of its cosmology to the nine nights Odin the Hanged God suffered on the World Tree. The most important Viking religious ceremonies, held at Uppsala every nine years, lasted nine days. Nine is the last of the series of single numbers, and as such, in Norse mythology and others, it is seen as symbolizing both death and rebirth. And, in Tolkien’s world, the Nine Rings were Sauron’s payment for the purchase of those nine eternally damned souls who became the Ringwraiths.
