8. Farewell to Lórien
After a new formal meeting with The Lord and The Lady, where both conclude by wishing a good night, the Fellowship of the Ring holds council regarding their next steps. In general, they are uncertain, but Boromir is an exception. For his part, he intends to return to Minas Tirith and believes the entire company should follow him. He happens to express his opinion that it is folly to destroy the Ring.
We may have mentioned it already, but we can otherwise note that Aragorn was hesitant even when he led the hobbits from Bree to Rivendell – he was rarely entirely certain. Even now, as will be reiterated, Aragorn is uncertain. He thus manages to keep several possible options open; he does not feel compelled to choose one alternative and then stick to it as a kind of demonstration of strength or identity as an steadfast man. He does not always know, and he admits this. This is a sign of feminine wisdom. Boromir, on the other hand, is unwavering in his conviction. He is a man and a leader, and as such, he knows what is best, and that is the end of the matter as far as he is concerned. While this decisiveness is practical in, for example, a sudden battle, as an identity – meaning an attitude that cannot be relinquished even during a council among reasoning men – it is almost a sign of masculine folly. But we have already seen that Boromir is remarkably one-sided, while Aragorn, to a greater extent, reconciles opposites (Arwen, and so forth). In Tolkien’s world, “pride” is a negative, even destructive trait (this is often reiterated later in the book) because, as we understand it, it stands in opposition to openness, receptivity, and wisdom – primarily feminine values (yin).
The next morning, it is time for the Fellowship of the Ring to depart. They receive cloaks with hoods that have an almost magical, camouflaging property. Just as the Ring makes its wearer disappear, the elves give them cloaks that produce nearly the same effect. To disappear and return is a lunar symbol; all animals, for example, that figuratively have this quality (bears, snakes, turtles) are symbolically lunar animals. We see that the Ring-elves-disappearance is a recurring theme associated with the Mother.
Another interesting detail is that the cloaks are woven by none other than Galadriel and her maidens. That Galadriel, as a mother figure, weaves is not surprising, as weaving, along with spinning, is a distinctly feminine activity that she shares not only with goddesses like the Greek Athena and the Norse mother goddess Frigg, ancient literary figures like the longing Persephone, folktale characters such as “The Three Spinners”, but also mythical fate goddesses like the Norns and the Moirai.[1]
But we also have Arachne as a bridge to Galadriel’s shadow, so to speak – the girl who wove a tapestry she proudly proclaimed was more beautiful than any goddess could weave. This angered Athena, who, upon seeing the magnificent work, tore the tapestry apart and transformed the girl into a spider. As such, she can continue to spin. The weaver Athena’s rage and destruction create, one might say, a spinning and weaving she-monster. We have already seen spider webs appear both at the beginning of the Old Forest – the Terrible Mother’s domain – and in Rivendell, the Good Mother’s.
Spiders that spin and weave are typically seen as a symbol of the negative mother figure, particularly with an allusion to a inescapable fate, in which one is caught like a fly in the web. The web, with all its threads, is a symbol of life; it is a network of associations, one might say, that together form a person’s predetermined life. Marie-Louise von Franz argues that the fate-spinning (anima in her context) is the core of a man’s unconscious. “She is par excellence the fate-spinning core of the unconscious psyche of man.”[2] Frodo, for his part, is as we know caught in the fate that the Ring represents, while the story strives to free him from it. We have previously discussed how the story addresses themes like fate, necessity, compulsion, and paralysis – all mother images that, on the positive side, are expressed as the weaving Galadriel in Lothlórien, and on the negative side, the weaving Shelob in Cirith Ungol.
The company also receives food and boats. As they try out the nimble vessels, Galadriel arrives in her own swan-shaped craft. Since Galadriel is so closely associated with water, it is natural that they now see her on the great river, sailing on a waterfowl, but also that they leave Lothlórien by water, just as they followed the water to Galadriel’s domain and then dwelt by the sparkling fountain. There is no setting in the story as water-centric as Galadriel’s Lothlórien. As she comes sailing on the water, she sings of sorrow, longing, and the sea.
They share a final meal while Frodo experiences Galadriel as “a living vision of something that had already vanished far away in the fleeting streams of time.” That is, as an adult man might recall his childhood mother when they were happy together on a summer day in the garden.
Galadriel fills a goblet with mead, which she offers everyone to drink from, as if she were not a thousands-year-old elf queen but rather a servant. With this, she expresses not only a Christian ideal – we think of how Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, for example – but also assumes the traditionally feminine role by offering the men a vessel with drink, just as a fallen warrior, upon arriving in Valhalla, meets a valkyrie who offers him a horn of mead to drink.
We may recall that when the hobbits were first received by the elves, they went around offering food from platters and drink from goblets, and we noted then how the elves – who appear to be men – take on traditionally feminine roles to emphasize their symbiosis with the Great Mother. But now the image has evolved, become more differentiated, so here it is truly “a great mother” who hands over the goblet.[3]
Galadriel continues to give, but now gifts. Aragorn receives the “elfstone,” a special, ancient jewel passed down among noble elves. This, together with his closeness to Arwen and his belonging in Rivendell, suggests that Aragorn symbolically has traits of the elven image; that is, he is very close to the Good Mother, and we have already discussed his fate, which is so central to The War of the Ring.
Sam receives a small box of earth from Galadriel’s orchard. We see that “the gardener” (as he is called in this context) is once again associated with the earthy.
Frodo receives a small glass vial containing the light of Eärendil’s star, the very evening star that shone above Frodo and Galadriel at her mirror when Frodo saw her elven ring. This vial will, unsurprisingly, become central when Frodo wanders in the lair of Shelob, revealing yet another connection between the Good Mother in Galadriel’s form and the Terrible Mother in Shelob’s.
The other gifts are symbolically insignificant. However, it is noteworthy that Galadriel does not have a gift for Gimli (which, taken literally, is quite odd). Instead, she asks what a dwarf might wish for from an elf queen. Gimli struggles to express his heart’s desire but eventually manages to say that he would like a strand of hair from Galadriel’s head. He intends to encase it in a crystal as a “symbol of the friendship between the Mountain and the Wood until the end of the world.” Another coniunctio, in other words. Galadriel the wise, cannot, of course, deny him this and gives the dwarf three strands. She prophesies that “gold shall fill your hands, and yet gold shall have no power over you.” Once again, Galadriel, as a wise old woman, expresses the true value that the soul represents, in contrast to the ego’s notions of what is desirable. The wealth she foretells represents how Gimli, through his encounter with the Good Mother, has connected with his soul.
That Gimli, in particular, was so moved by his meeting with Galadriel may be an echo of ancient mythological notions about the mother goddess and dwarves, such as Demeter and the Cabeiri. She was the goddess of the grain that grows from the earth, just as dwarves (as mentioned) are said to emerge from the earth in various traditions. It is as if Gimli saw his idealized mother – or anima, soul – for the first time in his life, something he, as a dwarf, never thought he would experience. He later says, when sitting in the boat with Legolas, that in parting from her, he received his “deepest wound.” Happiness does not exist, as it always implies wounds and sorrow, which is exactly what the elves symbolize. How can anyone recall happy moments without feeling sorrow and loss? We might remind ourselves that nostalgia is a word composed of the Greek nóstos (homecoming) and álgos (pain).
The adventurers set off in their small boats on the great river, flowing with the current as a symbol of being in harmony with their fate, while Galadriel, increasingly distant, sings – nostalgically? – that all is lost. Neither Aragorn nor Frodo will see Lothlórien again. This was the third and final time Frodo was among the elves; he finally leaves behind his identification with the Good Mother.
The journey suddenly turns gloomy. The poor hobbit slips back into the darkness of the Terrible Mother. “Great trees passed by like ghosts, thrusting their twisted thirsty roots through the mist down into the water. It was dreary and cold.”
But he carries the light of the Good Mother with him in the thickening darkness, like a flame close to his heart.
Footnotes
[1] See Neumann, The Great Mother, p. 230f, on how mythical female figures are spinners and weavers; also with reference to the Great Goddess as "the one who clothes," just as Galadriel indirectly clothes the adventurers; and later literally Gandalf (see "The White Rider").
[2] Marie-Louise von Franz, Projection and Re-Collection in Jungian Psychology: Reflections of the Soul, ed. James L. Jarrett (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1980), p. 123.
[3] Éowyn, too, representing a more conscious femininity, offers a cup to drink from at the farewell.