There’s something so ominous about the repeated notes throughout Tolkien’s histories that Ungoliant took the form of a spider, the obvious implication being that she isn’t one, she’s something else, something worse.
In Morgoth’s Ring it says she takes the form of a spider so she can weave “webs of strangling gloom” to catch light.
We actually get similar language with Glaurung who is repeatedly described as a spirit in the form of a great, wingless dragon. But though this does raise fascinating questions about Glaurung’s nature and the precise mechanisms through which he was created, we do at least know he was created in Angband by Morgoth
With Ungoliant, there is so such detail. Her first mention in The Silmarillion speaks of her through heresay, what is believed of her without offering a definitive answer. It was said that she “descended from the darkness that lies about Arda” and while Melkor sought her service early, her lack of allegiance to him began long before the darkening. Indeed there are similarities in the way Ungoliant’s “unlight” and the Shadow Morgoth casts are described
Ungoliant’s horror comes primarily from her relationship to light and her hunger. The Unlight she creates is not just darkness, it is thick with a paralysing, venomous despair
It’s worth noting that this phrasing, that the Eldar knew not where she came from, is repeated in every draft of the darkening as well as the official Silmarillion. And of course this unknowing only adds to the horror she inspires
Anyways just something I’m thinking about; I really love entities like Ungoliant and the Watcher in the Water, and what their existence means about the larger legendarium
