: The other, of course, is Sauron, who walked amongst elves
: appearing good and like them for a hell of a long time
: before his body was lost in the chasms during the
: changing of the world.
: Some people think Tom Bombadil was a Maia too, but that
: doesn't make a lot of sense to me unless he was even
: more powerful a Maia than Sauron. Personally I think
: he was an actual Vala living in Middle-earth, but I
: can't remember which one he seemed to correspond to.
: Something about a horses and being a kick-assed
: warrior in some war or another come to mind.
This is just my personal opinion (not really based on anything, mind you), but I think that Tom is really just a strange old man living in Middle-Earth. After all, the only reason we have to base the theory that he might be more powerful than Sauron on is that the ring doesn't have any power over him. My theory is that the ring has power over people because it can corrupt them, and since Tom Bombadil seems to be free of any of what one might call "worldly desires" (mb he's a Buddhist), he's probably uncorruptable. Therefore, as Gandalf (or sum1, I forget; it really stinks that Tom wasn't in the movie, don't you think?) points out, the ring has no power over Tom, and Tom has no power over the ring... And after all, if we were to assume that the reason that the ring doesn't have power over him is because he's more powerful than Sauron, we'd have to assume that, since the ring isn't more powerful than Sauron himself, that Tom would be able to have power over the ring. It sort of makes sense, don't you think?
: All the Valar and Maiar are just different castes of
: Ainur. They're all the same race, some are just better
: than others.
Yes, I know. I guess I was just sorta pointing out it's not like this system of castes is ultimate; after all, the Valar obviously can't be too much more powerful than Sauron, otherwise they would never have allowed his evil to spread across Middle-Earth (whether they're far off to the west or not) in the first place. The force is strong in this one =)
-Doom 0^)
