Ungoliant — Why Darkness is Always Hungry for the Light

She was the epitome of Melkor’s own inner void, which he sought to fill up with the Flame Imperishable.

Ungoliant was a gigantic spider in Tolkien’s Silmarillion who was responsible for spinning the first “spiritual Darkness.”

She was always hungry, but for what?

She was hungry for the Light of the Two Trees, but no matter how much of it she consumed, she remained famished.

In a ravine she lived, and took shape as a spider of monstrous form, weaving her black webs in a cleft of the mountains. There she sucked up all light that she could find, and spun it forth again in dark nets of strangling gloom, until no light more could come to her abode; and she was famished.

What kind of creature was she? Apparently, she wasn’t even a creature in the proper sense of the word. Tolkien doesn’t even mention if she was a spirit. Among the Eldar, it was said that she came out of the darkness surrounding Arda when Melkor first looked down in envy upon the Kingdom of Manwe.

Ungoliant was a spawn of darkness itself but not of darkness which is the absence of physical light. She was a spawn of spiritual Darkness, which is the absence of spiritual Light. She was the spawn of…