Sauron

Who or what was Sauron, the great enemy of the tale of "The Lord Of The Rings".Tolkien tells us that Eru  whom the Elves called Iluvatar created Middle Earth and then created beings called the Valar who were essentially Gods in their own right but all servants to Eru and did his bidding,some came to Middle Earth and created the Blessed Realm where they lived and worked to carry out the designs of Eru.There were lesser Gods that served the Valar. In the Quenta Silmarillion it states"With the Valar came other spirits whose being also began before the world, of the same order as the Valar but of less degree.These are the Maiar,the people of the Valar,and there servants and helpers".The two greatest of the Valar were Manwe and Melkor, of the two Melkor fell into evil.Among those that were his servants the greatest was that spirit that the Valar called Sauron, or Gorthaur the Cruel. In his beginning he was of the Maiar of the one  the Valar named Aule. It says that he was only less evil than Melkor in that for long he served another and not himself. but in after years,when Melkor had been overthrown by the Valar, Sauron rose like a shadow of Melkor and walked behind him on the same ruinous path down into the void.So, what we know of Sauron was that he was a lesser God,but a God nevertheless, and so could not die as mortal men and Elfs do.The question arises that if when Frodo destroyed the Great ring was Sauron then destroyed utterly and completely, I think not.I believe that his spirit was not destroyed but that he could no longer take any shape of being and could not therefore communicate with any being of MiddleEarth, that is he could no longer command by his physical presence as he no longer had shape or voice, he had been unmade.Was he foolish to have placed so much of his powers into an animate object like the one ring and therefore open himself to possible destruction, my goodness yes of course he did.He was,as they say, hoisted upon his own petard.Why was he not destroyed when the one ring was cut from his hand,because the ring still existed and over time( four thousand years) he was able to reanimate himself all be it not wholly,for that he needed to reclaim the ring to once again give him a physical body.So in the end,like all great evil,Sauron made mistakes,proving that even a God when overcome with greed and evil can make decisions that will lead to their doom.These are of course my own view of things.If you feel I am wrong then please feel free to make a comment,I would love to hear them.