What was Shelob, and more importantly, what was Ungoliant?

[Lord Gothmog]

In the later legendarium the Valar and Maiar did not mate and reproduce with each other. In fact the only certain exception to this is Melian. She is the only Ainu to have a child and this was with an Elf.

Melian did not simply incarnate a form similar to that of the Elves, she accually incarnated a form that was capable of having a child with an Elf. It may be that this exception was allowed by Illuvatar specificaly to allow something of the Divine Spirit of the Ainur into Men.

[Eönwë]

So does that mean that possibly Gandalf could incarnate? He is made like a man, with all susceptibility, and weakness of the flesh. He might be able to reproduce. He had to live as a man, so he had everything that goes with it.

Just thinking, what if Saruman had kids. Urgh!

[Bêthberry]

Interesting comparison with Tom and Goldberry. They are supposed to be a happily mated couple whereas S/U are rather rough with their partners.

Then again, spiders are a fear and nightmare from Tolkien's childhood. But when assimilated to the loathesome personification of unbridled female appetite . . . well, maybe that makes them a nightmare from Tolkien's adulthood (manhood not being quite the right word here.)

[Meriadoc1961]

I have always considered Ungoliant sort of the equivalent of Lilith in Jewish legend, a demon creature of darkness who took on her form as she allowed the evil to possess her.

Merry

[Lord Gothmog]

Originally Posted by Eönwë

So does that mean that possibly Gandalf could incarnate? He is made like a man, with all susceptibility, and weakness of the flesh. He might be able to reproduce. He had to live as a man, so he had everything that goes with it.

It is not impossible that the bodies of the Istari could well be capable of reproduction, though that seems to have been a very low priority to all of them.

[obloquy]

There's no reason to doubt the ability of Ainur to reproduce while they inhabited physical bodies. In fact, full incarnation doesn't even seem to be requisite: we're told that reproduction was one of the activities that strengthened the bond between fea and hroa. The Valar may be a special case, but it seems more likely that they were merely prohibited by some axan than peculiarly incapable.

Here's more regarding ealar, incarnation, and some about Ungoliante in particular: Ëalar and Incarnation.

[Lalwendë]

there in Avathar, secret and unknown, Un- goliant had made her abode. The Eldar knew not whence she came; but some have said that in ages long before she descended from the darkness that lies about Arda, when Melkor first looked down in envy upon the Kingdom of Manwe, and that in the beginning she was one of those that he corrupted to his service. But she had disowned her Master, desiring to be mistress of her own lust, taking all things to herself to feed her emptiness; and she fled to the south, escaping the assaults of the Valar and the hunters of Orome, for their vigilance had ever been to the north, and the south was long unheeded. Thence she had crept towards the light of the Blessed Realm; for she hungered for light and hated it.

There's a crucial point - that she came to the world even before Melkor, and 'out of the darkness'. She certainly wasn't a creature created by him, and this also suggests she wasn't one of the Ainur either or what was she doing there before the others?

There is also a very strong argument that metaphorically she could be an equal and opposite or even a necessary complement to Eru. He is symbolised by Light and in Arda Light is symbolic of Life. Ungoliant on the other hand symbolises more than mere darkness, she is Un-light. Read the following:

Yet no song or tale could contain all the grief and terror that then befell. The Light failed; but the Darkness that followed was more than loss of light. In that hour was made a Darkness that seemed not lack but a thing with being of its own: for it was indeed made by malice out of Light, and it had power to pierce the eye, and to enter heart and mind, and strangle the very will.

What Ungoliant does is not merely consume the Light but replace it with Unlight. She achieves something which Melkor simply could not do, even with his power. He has to enlist her to do this for him, and she does, but then she deserts him once again to be 'mistress of her own lusts'. Doesn't this suggest Ungoliant has a terrible power even Melkor did not possess?

Now, something for The Might...more on Moru:

Originally Posted by BoLT

for here dwelt the primeval spirit Moru who even the Valar know not whence or when she came, and the folk of Earth have given her many names. Mayhap she was bred of mists and darkness on the confines of the Shadowy Seas, in the utter dark that came between the overthrow of the Lamps and the kindling of the Trees, but more like she has always been;

Originally Posted by BoLT Commentary

In the tale her origin is unknown, and though this element may be said to have remained in The Silmarillion..., by the device of 'Some have said...' a clear explanation is in fact given: she was a being from 'before the world', perverted by Melkor...The original idea of 'the primeval spirit Moru' is made explicit in an entry in the early word list of the Gnomish language, where the name Moru is defined as 'a name of the Primeval Night personified as Gwerlum or Gungliont'

I suppose the thorny question of whether Ungoliant came about before or after Eru created the Ainur could be answered by considering that which you decide depends upon whether you are content that Eru could create Ungoliant? Or does it 'suit' that maybe she comes from outside Eru's creation?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

An interesting rather Gnostic-Manichaean idea, but:

1 "First of all" Iluvatar made the Ainur, "who were with him before aught else was made"

2 In Tolkien's very monotheist worldview, there was nothing before Eru, and nothing which Eru did not create

3 Eru has no equal. By definition. Besides, would Eru have been driven off by a few Balrogs?



Tolkien's treatment of Melkor is characterized by a *heavy* emphasis that this is *not* a dualist universe: Melkor is constantly being reminded that he is a created being (which he hates, and which drives him mad). Ungoliant does seem to be some sort of darkness-elemental, and a deliberate enigma. Tolkien doesn't want us to know exactly what she was, and perhaps never worked it out for himself_ but then (as with Bombadil) he was aware that in the 'real' world there are always bits that don't seem to fit: total systematic consistency is a hallmark of the artificial.

[obloquy]

Mysterious as she is, there's no reason to assume that Ungoliante is anything other than an eala with unusually vast latent power.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

An interesting rather Gnostic-Manichaean idea, but:

1 "First of all" Iluvatar made the Ainur, "who were with him before aught else was made"

2 In Tolkien's very monotheist worldview, there was nothing before Eru, and nothing which Eru did not create

3 Eru has no equal. By definition. Besides, would Eru have been driven off by a few Balrogs?

Tolkien's treatment of Melkor is characterized by a *heavy* emphasis that this is *not* a dualist universe: Melkor is constantly being reminded that he is a created being (which he hates, and which drives him mad). Ungoliant does seem to be some sort of darkness-elemental, and a deliberate enigma. Tolkien doesn't want us to know exactly what she was, and perhaps never worked it out for himself_ but then (as with Bombadil) he was aware that in the 'real' world there are always bits that don't seem to fit: total systematic consistency is a hallmark of the artificial.

Originally Posted by Legate

Whatever the case, I wanted to say that the "laws of the universe" do not seem to apply in the case of these characters or things (which, in fact, could even allow the "outside the One" possibility, but in the meaning that they don't have anything to do with the created universe itself and are "aliens" in the whole story, which could be applied very well in TB's case), but if we want to take Middle-Earth, resp. Arda, resp. the Void and everything around it as a consistent world (with inner consistence, and not a world from a story from the outside point of view), and we do not want to accept these characters as belonging to any of the known classes, we have to say, together with the Prof, that even in this world there are some mysteries and these are some of them. Which is not much of a help, definitely, but what can we do.

And there's the rub.

Tolkien deliberately leaves her origins a mystery. If she comes from Eru then he made her what she is. If she does not, then where does she come from? Your guess is as good as mine Whatever, it only deepens the mystery of the whole creation to have enigmas like Ungoliant and Tom wandering about. Tom is less difficult in that he is generally a good guy, Ungoliant is very difficult indeed as she's so shadowy, both literally and metaphorically.

Still, you cannot deny that there is something extremely powerful in the metaphorical contrast Tolkien sets up between Illuvatar/Light/Life and Ungoliant/Unlight/Death.

I don't have quite such a problem with accepting that there is the possibility that there is another existence besides the one Eru creates. We are told Eru is The One and is Omnipotent, and that is correct, but it might mean that he is Omnipotent within this creation. It does not mean there cannot be other creations, maybe created by Eru. Maybe not.

One thing you can say about characters such as Tom and Ungoliant is that there is someone above Eru. And that's Tolkien. He had the power to drop in these enigmatic characters, to create and destroy far more than Eru did. In answering the question "Well, who made Eru?" your answer is "Tolkien did". These enigmas are Authorial interventions made tangible. They certainly bring a large helping of irony into the work as their very existence calls into question the very cosmological structure Tolkien set up; he is the one who has the power to include or exclude them, they bring questions to his creation, but he still includes them. They also smell strongly of metafiction as they are stories within stories, characters which seem to exist outside this creation but which in reality can only be found within it...Tolkien the Postmodernist...

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

There's a crucial point - that she came to the world even before Melkor, and 'out of the darkness'. She certainly wasn't a creature created by him, and this also suggests she wasn't one of the Ainur either or what was she doing there before the others?

The problem is, what was she if Melkor "in the beginning (...) corrupted [her] to his service"; obviously whatever powers she had, he was able to get her to serve him (possibly in a similar way he did later when killing the Trees, which is somewhat strange service, nevertheless, she did what he wanted her to, though we know Melkor was a master of persuasion). But mainly, the point that she came before Melkor does not necessarily mean anything: the other Valar came before Melkor did, as far as I know, and there was no particular order in which Valar descended into Arda. So that's a thing I would not put much value to, and for this, she could still remain a perfectly plausible Ainu for me.

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I suppose the thorny question of whether Ungoliant came about before or after Eru created the Ainur could be answered by considering that which you decide depends upon whether you are content that Eru could create Ungoliant? Or does it 'suit' that maybe she comes from outside Eru's creation?

I think it's definitely overstretching to try to find any "besides Eru" thing in Ungoliant: the main problem would be in the words the One at the very beginning of Ainulindalë. Even Genesis is not that explicite in information, where Tolkien is strict (even in Eru's "name"). If we are not agreeing with the fact that she was an Ainu, I would say the best and balanced explanation would be by taking her "from where Tom Bombadil came", as it was suggested in the opening post. We have several things like that here: Tom Bombadil and also from the darker side these "Nameless things" underground - with the latter it is somewhat easier, because we don't know about their beginnings and with a little imagination they can be spawn of Morgoth or some other nonsense, nevertheless, they also do not fit the normal scheme and Gandalf refuses to speak about them (though, it is true he acts like that even in more "conventional" cases like Balrogs and Black Riders and other quite common everyday things). Whatever the case, I wanted to say that the "laws of the universe" do not seem to apply in the case of these characters or things (which, in fact, could even allow the "outside the One" possibility, but in the meaning that they don't have anything to do with the created universe itself and are "aliens" in the whole story, which could be applied very well in TB's case), but if we want to take Middle-Earth, resp. Arda, resp. the Void and everything around it as a consistent world (with inner consistence, and not a world from a story from the outside point of view), and we do not want to accept these characters as belonging to any of the known classes, we have to say, together with the Prof, that even in this world there are some mysteries and these are some of them. Which is not much of a help, definitely, but what can we do.