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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 613761" data-attributes="member: 4937">Well, I counter your nit pick. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Ungoliant was certainly not a Valar, since that term is properly applied only to the Lords of the West and like Morgoth is forfeit of that title.  And quite equally, Ungoliant shouldn't be counted amoung the Maiar, for that term is applied to the chief vassels of the Valar.  However, Ungoliant is quite certainly a spirit of the class of beings called the Ainur, and those of the Ainur which made thier abode in Arda are in common usage called Maia - even often those who serve The Enemy who otherwise have no special name.   Now, the origin of Ungoliant is not known, but many of the wise have said that she was in being and nature like the consort of Morgoth, for Morgoth was certainly from the beginning intended to be of the Valar, and for each Valar there was a corressponding Queen - a Valier.   But as the love and devotion required for such a consort relationship is absent in both Melkor and Ungoliant it is not manifested in any mutual activity, save the one instance of agreed upon destruction described in story.  For both Morgoth and Ungoliant are equally manifestations of the same destructive impluse in its masculine and feminine aspects respectively.  For Morgoth wishes to consume the world by suffusing outward himself into all the world, making the substance of Arda, as it were, his 'ring' by which he may rule Arda, where Ungoliant wishes to consume the world by drawing all of the world into herself until there is not in the world but her self.   Both are expressions of the love of self taken to its furthest extreme, so that in the end, they like Gollum both love and hate themselves as they lust after and despise all things.Now it is not known by what manner the Valar spawn, for it is not given to them as of the Children of Illuvatar to have children.  For the life that comes from the Hidden Flame comes from The One only so that no other being has in himself the power to fashion souls having independent life of thier own.  So it is likely that in some fashion, the children of Ungoliant are shards of her former power, or that she corrupted some thing having independent life and caused it to splinter and recycle itself endlessly in spider like forms.  But whatever the cause, it is clear that some power of Ungoliant has passed into her progeny, which makes them at least in part inheritors of the power of the Ainur.</blockquote>

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