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I suppose this opens up the question of the degree of 'feedback' we experience between the primary & secondary worlds. If our encounter with the secondary world feeds back into our experience of the primary, & that new experience of the primary affects out later experience of the secondary, does that increaingly enhance & deepen our experience of both? Or does it at the same time make the primary world more 'enchanting' (woods in the primary world seeming 'overshadowed' by Lorien, so that almost we expect to see Elves wandering under those once familiar trees but also make the Golden Wood less 'enchanting' by being too similar now to our experience of primary world woodland, so that we can't shake the memory of that pile of trash someone dumped under the trees?
Yet, if this world was once Middle earth, perhaps our reading will make us wish to do what we can to heal the natural world?
But I think this is different to bringing in ideas from myth, psychology, science & the like, because they are not things of the natural, primary world, but 'theories' & beliefs, & perhaps the problem is not taking natural objects of the primary into the secondary world, but these beliefs & interpretations in there.
The Shelob/Lilith thing is interesting because it brings up the question of what aspects of Lilith one applies & what aspects one leaves. Clearly the part of Lilith's myth referring to her marriage to Adam doesn't apply, for one thing. So, you're not bringing in Lilith qua Lilith, but only those aspects that you find 'applicable' - anything that doesn't apply is put on one side as not relevant to the discussion. Some would argue though, that the aspect I've mentioned is one of the most important & significant aspects of Lilith, because of what it reveals about the relationship of God to his creatures, & the way the culture which produced the myth understood the nature of the Feminine. Then again, the presentation of Lilith is not primal, anymore than the presentation of Hel in the Eddas is. They are, rather, biassed accounts of primal UnderWorld Goddesses of the culltures which were replaced by the makers of the current myths. The gods of one culture become the demons of the subsequent one.
Tolkien tended not to 'lift' mythological figures in any kind of complete way, & simply place them within a Middle-earth setting, but rather he would make use of what struck him in the stories he read. If Galadriel carries echoes of Mary, then it could be argued that Shelob carries similar 'echoes' of Lilith, but these 'echoes' would be of the aspects of those figures which he found relevant to his story. Rather than thinking 'I'll draw on Mary or Lilith here' I think it would have been more a case of him taking in 'bits & bobs' from the 'leaf mould' of his mind, which had become divorced from their original context & he made use of them to serve the story, rather than the story serving them. They are rather like the stones from which the tower was built. The man who built the tower didn't actually care about the origin of the stones - his only concern was being able to look out upon the Sea.
So, its not (in my opinion) about finding out 'how' Shelob or Galadriel came to be created, & what raw materials were used in their construction. They both stand or fall by what they are & the role they play in the story, & our experience of them.
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