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Russian priest blasts plans to light Dark Lord Sauron's eye above Moscow

The ten-meter eye of the Dark Lord of Mordor will light up the Moscow skyline on December 11 before Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies hits the screens

Moscow's City Center skyscrapers AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko

Moscow's City Center skyscrapers

© AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko

MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/. Plans to unveil the Eye of Sauron light installation on a Moscow skyscraper on the day of the latest Hobbit movie premiere may cause outrage among Muscovites, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin said on Tuesday.

The ten-meter eye of the Dark Lord of Mordor will light up the Moscow skyline on December 11 before Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies hits the screens. The installation is a project of the Russian art group Svechenie.

Chaplin, who heads the Moscow Patriarchy's department for the cooperation of church and society, said that Muscovites should have been asked whether they wanted to see this ominous emblem of evil.

"Sauron was Tolkien's symbol of evil forces. Many people will not like it [the eye] glowing above the city," Chaplin said.

He said that if someone wanted to install a glowing cross, the authorities would have refused as not all Muscovites were Christian believers.

Chaplin said that the decision to set up the installation on the Moscow City business centre pointed to "double standrads of local officials and businessmen involved in the project."

The Eye of Sauron first appeared in The Fellowship of the Ring, the first part of The Lord of the Rings trilogy based on the books by J.R.R. Tolkien. In the trilogy the eye was engulfed in flames and stationed atop a dark fortress from which Sauron kept his watch over Middle-earth.

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