[davem]

‘This thing all things devours...’

I suppose Shelob & what she symbolises has been discussed so often that the subject is almost redundant. She is the ‘last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world’. In fact, in the early drafts Shelob was called ‘Ungoliant’. Like Ungoliant she consumes light itself & vomits out darkness. In fact, it seems it is not only light, but time, sound & memory that she eats.

"Well," said Frodo, 'Orcs or no, if it's the only way, we must take it." Drawing a deep breath they passed inside, in a few steps they were in utter and impenetrable dark. Not since the lightless passages of Moria had Frodo or Sam known such darkness, and if possible here it was deeper and denser. There, there were airs moving, and echoes, and a sense of space. Here the air was still, stagnant, heavy, and sound fell dead. They walked as it were in a black vapour wrought of veritable darkness itself that, as it was breathed, brought blindness not only to the eyes but to the mind, so that even the memory of colours and of forms and of any light faded out of thought. Night always had been, and always would be, and night was all.

It seems she is like some kind of Black Hole, moving through her tunnels & taking into herself all living things, all light, all meaning, all hope. Yet she is conscious & filled with desire. She welcomes, apparently, Gollum’s ‘worship’ of her:

Already, years before, Gollum had beheld her, Smeagol who pried into all dark holes, and in past days he had bowed and worshipped her, and the darkness of her evil will walked through all the ways of his weariness beside him, cutting him off from light and from regret. And he had promised to bring her food. But her lust was not his lust. Little she knew of or cared for towers, or rings, or anything devised by mind or hand, who only desired death for all others, mind and body, and for herself a glut of life, alone, swollen till the mountains could no longer hold her up and the darkness could not contain her.

One difference between Shelob & Ungoliant though is that Shelob fears the Light of the Silmaril which blazes from the Star Glass, whereas her infamous ancestor sought it greedily.

As to the Star-glass itself, I was struck by a few things: In the darkness of Shelob’s Lair Sam first thinks of the Barrow & Tom Bombadil, & wishes Tom was nearby. It is at this point that he recalls Galadriel’s Gift to Frodo. I wonder if Tom played some part in this remembrance of the Golden Wood. Its odd that Sam ‘invokes’ Tom & then suddenly remembers the one thing that can aid himself & his Master - the Star-glass. This makes me wonder about the ‘relationship’ of Tom & Galadriel. Is it simply a matter of Sam thinking of one supernatural helper & being reminded of another, or is there something more going on?

Another couple of passages that got me thinking:

Slowly his hand went to his bosom, and slowly he held aloft the Phial of Galadriel. For a moment it glimmered, faint as a rising star struggling in heavy earthward mists, and then as its power waxed, and hope grew in Frodo's mind, it began to burn, and kindled to a silver flame, a minute heart of dazzling light, as though Earendil had himself come down from the high sunset paths with the last Silmaril upon his brow.

&

From sun and moon and star they had been safe underground, but now a star had descended into the very earth.

I’m not sure why, but this image, of a star descending into the earth, seems very symbolic. The Light of Earendel is a ‘Holy’’ Light, & its difficult not to think if the ‘Harrowing of Hell’ at this point, & some interesting lines from ‘Piers Ploughman’ spring to mind:

I will bear witness
That tho this bairn was ybore ,there blazed a star
That all the wise of this world in O wit accorded-
That such a bairn was ybore in Bethlehem the Citee
That man’s soul should save & sin destroy.
And all the elements ...hereof bearen witness.
That he was God that all wrought the wolkne (heavens) first showed
Though that were in Heaven token Stella Comata
And tended her as a torch to reverence his birth;
The Light followed the Lord into the low earth

(Spelling modernised by Matthews in her essay ‘The Rosicrucian Vault as Sepulchre & Wedding Chamber’ in Stewart: The UnderWorld Initiation). Without following Ms Matthews into the realms of Rosicrucianism & Alchemy it is clear that there is an ancient tradition of a heavenly light shining in the depths of the earth - a ‘Light shining in the Darkness - one account of the Holy Grail depicts it as a stone which fell from Heaven & embeded itself in the heart of the earth.

This ‘Light’ is powerfully symbolic - the Light itself is of ‘Heavenly’ or Divine origin, but it has been given physical form by a woman & I can’t help wondering if this is one of those ‘consciously so in the revision’ moments Tolkien mentioned in his letter.