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Old 08-16-2008, 12:35 PM   #1
Mansun
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The Eye The Palantir vs The Mirror of Galadriel

What are the similarities and differences between these seeing tools? Could Galadriel ever spy on Saruman and Sauron using the Mirror, and vice versa? Was Sauron aware of this Mirror? Could he see the watchers of the Mirrior through his Palantir?
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Old 08-16-2008, 11:56 PM   #2
Gwathagor
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I find it highly improbable that the Palantiri and the Mirror would have been able to communicate or spy on each other. The Palantiri were intended primarily for communication, whereas the Mirror was a sort of inanimate and unreliable sooth-sayer, so that the two instruments were operating in very different planes: the first in the concrete, and the second in the potential. , The Mirror could show the past, present, or the future, and sometimes things that did not happen, the Palantiri were generally limited in their sight to the present. For example, Sauron was able to manipulate what Denethor saw in the Palantir, but not show him things which were not there (kind of like lying with statistics...). And then, of course, there's the differing material composition of the devices, (which, in Tolkien's world, would have been closely tied to their respective natures and uses): stone-like on the one hand, and water on the other. They're just too different in too many ways. Overlap would have been impossible.

The only real similarity between the two devices is that they both had the ability to operate through images (the Palantiri, of course, could communicate in thought as well). Otherwise, they're as different as sharks and whales.
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