The Spell of Bottomless Dread

Tolkienian Existentialism and the Perils of Nihilism

I have been thinking about dread a lot lately, for reasons that will undoubtedly be obvious to most people living in these dark times. In an age shadowed by uncertainty, crisis, and remarkable cruelty, the weight of dread is an almost daily companion for many of us. Naturally, in such times, I often turn to Tolkien, whose work closely and masterfully deals with such themes. For Tolkien, dread is not merely a transient emotion; it is a metaphysical force, wielded as a weapon by powers that seek to dominate and corrupt. In Tolkien's mythology, dread is more than fear; it is the hollowing out of hope, the slow strangling of the will, and the corrosion of the individual’s capacity to resist despair. But importantly, it is in the confrontation with this dread that Tolkien's vision of recovery emerges most powerfully. In this essay, I will explore how Tolkien not only mythologises existential despair but also maps out the fragile and necessary paths to hope—even in the face of bottomless dread. His Legendarium does not merely reflect our contemporary anxieties (including those of his own time); it provides a cartography of recovery, a guide to re-enchantment amidst encroaching shadows.

In early layers of Tolkien’s Legendarium (namely the Book of Lost Tales), frequent reference is made to the ‘spell of bottomless dread’, an evil enchantment placed by Melko(r) upon his thralls to bind and control them. This enchantment, later refined by Sauron, serves as a mythopoeic manifestation of existential despair, one that draws heavily upon themes of nihilism and the loss of agency.

In ‘Turambar and the Foalóke’, we are told that, under Morgoth’s spell, the Noldoli “wandered as in a dream of fear, doing his ill bidding […] and they felt the eyes of Melko burn them from afar” (BOLT II, 77). This dark enchantment is, notably, what was placed on M(a)eglin to keep him in check after his betrayal of the Gondothlim: “Melko wove about him the spell of bottomless dread, and he had thereafter neither joy nor quiet in his heart […] A dread possessed him that Melko was ever at hand” (BOLT II, 169).

Both Morgoth and Sauron employed such strategies so that even if their prisoners were released from physical bondage, their minds remained plagued by their masters’ domineering influence. For this reason, free Eldar often mistrusted refugees who had escaped from Angband, even those who did so of their own volition, thus sowing further discord amongst the elves. It seems that, in early layers of the mythology, Voronwë was one of these figures; but it is said that, upon coming to Gondolin, he was able to cast off “the yoke of Melko” so that “no longer did he dread that Evil One with a binding terror” (BOLT II, 159).

While the explicit language of Melkor’s “spell of bottomless dread” was ultimately removed from later layers of the Legendarium, it is evident that the notion was not altogether lost. In The Silmarillion we are told that, in the years following the Dagor Aglareb (the ‘Glorious Battle’), Morgoth’s forces captured elves and brought them to Angband, “and some he so daunted by the terror of his eyes that they needed no chains more, but walked ever in fear of him, doing his will wherever they might be” (Silmarillion, 116).

Existential Dread and the Fear of Death

Morgoth’s spell of bottomless dread is not just a technique of domination—it is a metaphysical prison, binding its victims in despair even when physical chains are shattered. In this, Morgoth’s successor, Sauron, would prove an able apprentice, taking up the dark legacy and perfecting it through more insidious methods—provoking intense existential dread, especially the fear of death, to get others to do his bidding. A key example is his manipulation of the Númenóreans, whom he compels to assail Valinor in order to seize deathlessness from the gods. Sauron’s strategy in Númenor is perhaps his most profound accomplishment in wielding the fear of mortality as a weapon. This fear became the keystone of his domination, convincing the Númenóreans that death was not a gift, but a curse—a punishment that could be overcome if only they submit themselves to his power.

Sauron’s mastery over existential dread culminated, of course, in the creation of the One Ring. Whereas Melkor’s spell of bottomless dread was an enchantment imposed directly upon his thralls, Sauron’s One Ring was its perfected form—a mechanism of internal subjugation, a self-propagating device of metaphysical bondage. It amplified fear, heightened paranoia, and made its bearer acutely aware of the fragility of life and the closeness of death. This was particularly evident in Gollum, whose centuries of possession of the Ring left him a shattered husk, dominated not just by physical addiction but by a metaphysical bondage to Sauron’s will. Gollum’s endless muttering of “my precious” was not merely obsession, but a desperate clinging to existence and egocentricity—a fear of annihilation so profound that it eroded his very identity.

Moreover, the Ring operated on a principle of dread magnification. It did not simply create fear; it deepened existing fears to the point of madness. For Boromir, it magnified his anxiety over the fall of Gondor, twisting his noble desire for protection into obsession and betrayal. For Frodo, it also heightened his fear of failure, pressing upon his heart the belief that his journey was doomed, that resistance was futile. Sam himself experienced its weight briefly, feeling its pull towards domination and the terror of losing all he held dear. This mechanism of the Ring is a continuation of Melkor’s legacy—an echo of that bottomless dread, refined and made portable, able to be carried like a seed of despair by whomever bore it.

In these diverse figures—the Númenóreans, Gollum, Boromir, Frodo, and others—we see many faces of despair and the mechanisms by which dread fractures the spirit. The Ring, like Melkor’s spell, binds not with chains but with shadows of the mind: fears of death, loss, failure, and meaninglessness that echo through every heart it touches.

Nihilism

This ‘spell of bottomless dread’ can clearly be thought of as pathological nihilism. Nihilism is, most essentially, the philosophical conviction that life is fundamentally meaningless, and that existence lacks any intrinsic purpose or value. Friedrich Nietzsche famously described nihilism as the devaluation of all values, a state in which the structures that once conferred meaning—like religion, morality, and tradition—are rendered void. Morgoth himself may be regarded as a god of nihilism, and his impact on others a kind of projection of his own existential misery. As Tolkien writes in ‘Myths Transformed’:

“when Melkor was confronted by the existence of other inhabitants in Arda, with other wills and intelligences, he was enraged by the mere fact of their existence, and […] His sole ultimate object was their destruction […] Hence his endeavour always to break wills and subordinate them to or absorb them into his own will and being, before destroying their bodies. This was sheer nihilism, and negation its one ultimate object: Morgoth would no doubt, if he had been victorious, have ultimately destroyed even his own ‘creatures’, such as the Orcs, when they had served his sole purpose in using them: the destruction of Elves and Men.” (Morgoth’s Ring, 395-96, emphasis added)

Despite its grim nature, nihilism is not always considered to be inherently negative, nor is it necessarily misguided. In a world in which countless religious and philosophical systems have asserted their own (often mutually exclusive) truth claims regarding the absolute meaning of life, we must conclude that, if there is such a thing as absolute meaning, we have so far failed to definitively identify it. Nietzsche regarded the confrontation with nihilism to be a necessary phase in human development, providing us with a ‘clean slate’ upon which we can begin to forge our own sense of meaning through authentic self-determination. Rather than tacitly accepting whatever values and meanings have been imposed upon us by our forebears, social conventions, or divine overlords, nihilism forces us to take a more active role in creating a life worth living.

But while Nietzsche viewed nihilism as an opportunity for the revaluation of values, Morgoth’s nihilism is utterly consumptive. It is not merely a renegotiation of meaning but its utter erasure. His spell of dread does not provoke reflection; it obliterates it, leaving only obedience and fear. Both Morgoth and Sauron exploit the nihilistic tendencies of their victims in order to subjugate and enslave them. If we are unable or unwilling to take the cue to construct our own meaning, then the voidness of nihilism can easily lead us into experiences of ‘bottomless dread’.

This is not merely a philosophical stance but a pathology—one which erodes the spirit and shatters the will. In this pathological nihilism, the perception of an absence of absolute meaning can cause any and all motivation for action or resistance to be extinguished. In Tolkien’s early tale of ‘The Fall of Gondolin’, this is portrayed with striking clarity: Melkor's thralls, under the weight of his oppressive enchantment, are so consumed by despair that they cannot even muster the instinct for self-preservation. Under the spell, we are told that “Their hearts quaked and they fled not even when they could” (BOLT II, 159). Here, dread functions as a mental and spiritual prison, rendering escape unthinkable even when the possibility is present.

This mirrors what Irvin Yalom describes as vegetativeness—“a severe state of aimlessness and apathy" where the individual, rather than seeking out meaning or expressing rage at the apparent futility of existence, simply sinks from depression into indifference (Yalom, Existential Psychology, 451). In this state, one’s very sense of self becomes hollowed out, resulting in a kind of psychic stasis where the mind is trapped in a loop of dread and resignation. For Tolkien, this is not mere metaphor; it is woven into the metaphysical fabric of Middle-earth. Under Melkor's spell, the thralls are not only stripped of their liberty but of their capacity to hope or imagine escape.

Escaping the Void

A nuanced discussion of ‘escape’ and ‘recovery’ is most lucidly laid out in Tolkien’s essay ‘On Fairy-stories’ (one of my favourite pieces of writing ever produced), where he reminds us that ‘escape’ is not always about fleeing reality or responsibility. It is common to hear the ‘escapism’ afforded by fantasy described as a kind of escape from reality, but it may indeed be closer to the escape of one who is wrongfully imprisoned. Tolkien asks, “Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than boilers and prison-walls?” (OFS, 69).

There are many things from which we might reasonably wish to escape, according to Tolkien, including the ruthlessness and disenchantment of modernity. But there are also “hunger, thirst, poverty, pain, sorrow, injustice,” and most importantly, “death” (73). The desire for escape is, in a way, what ultimately compels the existentialist. But in order for us to pursue escape in a meaningful and healthy way—to seek the escape of a prisoner, rather than the flight of a deserter—we must first undergo a process of recovery. Tolkien writes:

“Recovery (which includes return and renewal of health) is a re-gaining - regaining of a clear view. I do not say ‘seeing things as they are’ and involve myself with the philosophers, though I might venture to say ‘seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them’ - as things apart from ourselves. We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity - from possessiveness […] This triteness is really the penalty of ‘appropriation’: the things that are trite, or (in a bad sense) familiar, are the things that we have appropriated, legally or mentally. We say we know them. They have become like the things which once attracted us by their glitter, or their colour, or their shape, and we laid hands on them, and then locked them in our hoard, acquired them, and acquiring ceased to look at them.” (OFS, 67)

Tolkien’s concept of Recovery is not merely a lifting of despair, but a radical re-enchantment of reality—a eucatastrophic moment of clarity where the world is seen with new eyes. It is precisely this re-enchantment that defies Melkor’s legacy of dread and pushes us towards leithian (the ‘release from bondage’). But without recovery, the desire for escape is often pathological, if it manifests at all. We may wish to ‘escape death’, if only symbolically, by seizing power and control. Many, like Ernest Becker, have argued that our desire to ‘leave something behind’ (be it progeny, a legacy of prestige, or creative output) ultimately arises out of a desire to transcend death. It is notable that so many people consider death—and impermanence, more generally—as a primary cause of meaninglessness. This is, interestingly, a key normative claim made in Buddhism, which posits that all experiences ultimately lead to suffering, specifically because they are impermanent. The Buddhist solution is to abandon worldly concerns and relinquish all attachments, so as to avoid being stricken by the sufferings of loss and change.

But is this a reasonable solution? Must experience be unending in order to be meaningful? Interestingly, Tolkien provides us with some valuable models to explore this question: namely the Eldar who, despite being functionally immortal, still grapple with questions of meaning; and the Nazgûl, whose “serial longevity” is anything but liberatory. Deathlessness cannot save us from existential despair, and in some cases it may even make nihilism more pronounced. While the desire to escape from death is certainly a perennial desire amongst us mortal humans, it is somewhat of a fool’s errand. Far more important is an escape from the bottomless dread of nihilism.

Recovery from Nihilism

Nihilism abounds in Middle-earth, and not only among the enslaved Eldar or minions of darkness. Particularly at the end of the Third Age, the war against Sauron is very much also a war against despair. Not everyone survives this war—Denethor being a noteworthy example. Frodo, too, regularly falls into periods of existential darkness, being negatively enchanted by Sauron’s portable ‘spell of bottomless dread’. In the end, of course, he does indeed succumb to the One Ring—but because of the tools he had already employed in his path through the existential void, his lapse into nihilistic despair failed to undermine the success of his quest. Chief among these tools was an earnest concern for the ‘other’ — exemplified in his pity and compassion for Gollum.

Tolkien’s notion of recovery in "On Fairy-stories" is crucial here. It represents the regaining of a "clear view," a reawakening to the splendour and significance of things that had become draped in the banalities of everyday existence. At the core of this renewed vision is an earnest appreciation for, and re-enchantment with, the ‘other’—in many ways the antithesis to Morgoth’s existential posture of extreme egocentricity. As Tolkien writes in his ‘Smith of Wootton Major Essay’:

“Faery represents at its weakest a breaking out (at least in mind) from the iron ring of the familiar […] More strongly it represents love: that is, a love and respect for all things, ‘inanimate’ and ‘animate’, an unpossessive love of them as ‘other’ […] This compound—of awareness of a limitless world outside our domestic parish; a love (in ruth and admiration) for the things in it; and a desire for wonder, marvels, both perceived and conceived—this ‘Faery’ is as necessary for the health and complete functioning of the Human as is sunlight for physical life.” (Smith, 144-45).

When the weight of despair threatens to collapse all possibility of meaning-making, the reclamation of empathic care, love, and wonder can be a powerful act of rebellion. This is precisely what counteracts the state of vegetativeness that Yalom describes, and which Melkor’s thralls so starkly represent. Recovery, for Tolkien, is not just a philosophical idea; it is a lived and active experience, enacted through love, fellowship, and the willing embrace of hope in the face of overwhelming darkness.

There are many strategies that we can employ to ‘recover’ from the bottomless dread of nihilism. One is to disrupt our solipsistic woe by focusing on care for others. This can be love for a specific ‘other’, as Sam does with Frodo, or a more generalised altruism towards all ‘others’, as Frodo himself exemplifies. Each has their virtues. It is sometimes said that it is impossible to feel that life is meaningless when you are deeply in love. But Frodo’s altruism is something quite special and distinct. Frodo undertakes his quest not because he has been instructed to by some holy book or transcendent god, nor because he has been promised that undertaking such a quest will earn him ‘merit’ or a paradisiacal afterlife. Despite having no promise of existential reward or absolution, he carries his burden out of earnest love for the ‘others’ in his midst.

Another strategy for overcoming nihilism is to allow it to transform into absurdism, as discussed by the French philosopher Albert Camus. Despite the seeming meaninglessness of the world, Camus argues that we are nevertheless hard-wired to search for meaning, thus giving rise to a kind of ‘absurd’ tension. To deal with this absurdity is an intrinsic part of what it means to be human.

According to Camus, we essentially have three options when confronted with the absurdity of life:

1. The first is, naturally, to revoke one’s consent for life—a choice which Camus (and most others) consider to be both tragic and counterproductive. Rather than meaningfully escaping suffering, suicide merely produces more of it, ultimately robbing us of any possibility for meaningful recovery. A far more powerful exercise of agency is to choose to confront the absurdity of life on our own terms.

2. The second option is to commit what Camus regarded as ‘philosophical suicide’: to essentially give up on the pursuit of truth and pretend that life has absolute order and meaning to alleviate the burden of existential dread. Brittney Hartley describes this as “grabbing onto whatever life raft offers relief from the sense of meaninglessness and chaos […] akin to a child lost in the mall, with no blanket or pinky, trusting the first person who offers their hand” (Hartley 2024, No-Nonsense Spirituality, 99). This is a compelling choice for many people, driving them from nihilism right back into the lap of eternalist religion, but it is ultimately a concession—an acceptance of defeat.

3. The third option, which Camus regards as the only sensible choice, is to embrace the absurd: to do, as Nietzsche recommended, the difficult but necessary work of confronting the apparent meaninglessness of life by asserting our freedom and creating a life worth living on our own terms. Camus’s famous illustration of this approach is the mythic figure of Sisyphus, who is fated to push a boulder up a mountain over and over again, only to have it roll back to the bottom before reaching the summit. An absurd fate, to be sure, but one which seems to closely mirror our own lot in life. When viewed from outside, it would appear that Sisyphus’s life is irredeemably absurd. But Camus argues that, despite the absurdity, “one must imagine Sisyphus happy”. After all, he has a purpose, inane as it may seem, and his choice to continue pushing the boulder up the mountain can be seen as an embrace of our limited (but significant) agency as human beings.

We, of course, have examples of all these approaches in Tolkien’s work. One could describe Denethor’s suicide as a revocation of his consent to life—albeit made much more complicated by his attempted homicide. Likewise, the wilful corruption of ‘Saruman the Wise’ might be described as a kind of ‘philosophical suicide’. Despite his wisdom and erudition, he nevertheless succumbs to the darkness because it seems, to him, to be his only viable option. But we have examples of the last path, as well: the very willingness of Frodo and company to undertake their quest, against all odds and with no promise of reward, is akin to an embrace of the absurd. “I will take the Ring […] though I do not know the way” (LOTR, FOTR, 288) is a rather tidy existentialist mantra—embracing a responsibility to pursue goodness and create meaning, despite having no preordained roadmap for achieving it.

Embracing the absurd can take many forms. Nietzsche argued that the existentialist’s path is ultimately to become a kind of Übermensch, an individual who transcends the limitations and expectations placed upon them by society to create their own set of values, carving out their own sense of meaning in the apparent absence of absolutes. Feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (whom Tolkien quotes in this BBC interview) expanded upon this idea, arguing that pursuit of a life worth living involves taking personal responsibility for our actions and relationships on the basis of ethics, rather than inherited morals. Acknowledgment of the proverbial ‘void’ is essential, but acknowledging it is not the same as succumbing to its bottomless dread.

An Archetype of Joyful Absurdity

All of this most serious work can certainly be approached as a sombre journey through the darkness of reality, but it needn’t be without joy. Indeed, the high drama of The Lord of the Rings is a perfect backdrop to the kind of intense joy that Tolkien speaks about in ‘On Fairy-stories’: “Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief” (OFS, 75). Creativity and artistic expression can be an important part of this process, as argued by Arthur Schopenhauer (sometimes called the ‘artist’s philosopher’). Tolkien’s own mythopoeic project is itself an excellent encapsulation of such a process. But within the Legendarium itself, the character who perhaps most perfectly exemplifies this joyful embrace of absurdity is Tom Bombadil.

Bombadil is a famously enigmatic figure in Tolkien’s Legendarium, one which I have discussed at length elsewhere. Among his many noteworthy qualities, he seems to be uniquely capable of resisting the power of the One Ring. When Frodo hands it to him, he examines it casually and slips it on his finger, but remarkably, nothing happens. He does not disappear, nor does he succumb to its addictive and diabolical temptations. He simply laughs, tosses it into the air, and makes it vanish with a playful sleight-of-hand. Tom’s immunity to the Ring is not merely an oddity—it is a profound statement on his philosophical and spiritual orientation to the world. Bombadil embodies (in our present ‘application’ of the work) what Camus might describe as a perfect embrace of the absurd. He quite clearly lives in the moment, unburdened by a fear of death or lust for power, and untouched by the shadow of dread which is spreading across Middle-earth. His joy is untroubled, his songs unending. He exists beyond the grasp of existential dread because he is perfectly at peace with what is: he is the “master”, we are told, not because he has power over others but “because he belongs to himself” (Shadow, 117).

The kind of existential freedom that Tom exemplifies is precisely the kind of self-determination praised by philosophers like Nietzsche and Camus. While he is wont to gather water-lilies for his love rather than roll a boulder up a mountain, Bombadil is nevertheless content to create his own meaning within the borders of his diminishing wilderness. He is certainly happy—absurdly so, given the circumstances. And as such, he does not fight evil directly; he simply exists beyond its reach. This, perhaps, is Tolkien's most subtle message: true recovery from the ‘spell of bottomless dread’ is not merely the absence of fear, but the presence of joy. In Camusian terms, he has confronted the absurdity of the world and embraced it with laughter and song. Where Morgoth’s enchantment severs beings from hope and freedom, Bombadil’s joyous absurdity represents a metaphysical liberation—a being untouched by dread precisely because he is wholly at peace with existence.

There are other moments, of course, which encapsulate the reclamation of joy and wonder in the darkness of nihilism, including in Frodo and Sam’s journey through Mordor. Though despair threatens to overwhelm them, their ability to press forward is deeply rooted in simple acts of care and the memory of light. When Sam looks up and sees the single star piercing the clouds above the wastes of Gorgoroth, we’re told:

“The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.” (LOTR, ROTK, 957).

This passage perfectly encapsulates Tolkien's mythopoeic argument: that recovery is not about conquering despair with brute force, but about reclaiming a clear view, rediscovering beauty and hope even in the darkest of places. In the heart of a land dominated by Sauron's pervasive shadow, there is still light that remains untouched. Because of this experience, Sam's perspective shifts: the Shadow, for all its terror and enormity, is suddenly recontextualised as "small and passing" in the grand scheme of things. The darkness is vast, yes, but it is not absolute. Light endures beyond it, shining undiminished.

A Fool’s Hope

In Tolkien's mythology, the ‘spell of bottomless dread’ is more than just a dark enchantment—it is a concretisation of metaphysical despair, an extension of Melkor's own nihilism projected into the hearts and minds of his thralls. This dread is not merely fear; it is the suffocation of hope, the erosion of will, and the severing of the capacity for recovery. Sauron, inheriting Melkor's legacy, refines this weapon into subtler, more psychologically devastating forms, most notably through the One Ring and his manipulation of the Númenóreans. His power is not just the domination of flesh, but the enslavement of spirit, a mastery over existential fear that leaves its victims hollow and compliant. The Ringwraiths are the fullest expression of this subjugation, lingering in twilight existence, neither living nor dead, suspended in perpetual terror and ‘serial longevity’.

Through recovery, we can escape the prison of nihilism and reawaken to the wonder and beauty of existence. This recovery is not just the lifting of despair—it is the re-enchantment of the world, the rediscovery of beauty and meaning even amidst the shadows. It is, in essence, the true antidote to Melkor’s spell of dread. While Morgoth and Sauron use fear to sever their thralls from hope and joy, Tolkien’s heroes demonstrate that it is precisely in the refusal to abandon hope that the consolation of a happy ending becomes possible.

Through Sam’s unyielding loyalty, Frodo’s compassion, and Gandalf’s insistence that even the smallest acts of kindness can hold back the darkness, Tolkien crafts a vision of defiant hope—a fool’s hope, perhaps, but one that powerfully endures. In The Lord of the Rings, the antidote to despair is not power or domination, but fellowship, empathy, and the recognition that light and beauty persist, even in the deepest shadows. It is, perhaps, an embrace of the absurd: a choice to see beauty, to seek joy, and to love in the face of apparent cosmic indifference.

The ‘spell of bottomless dread’ is Morgoth’s legacy—one that perhaps even has echoes in our own time (subjunctively speaking)—but it is not absolute. Tolkien's mythos insists that there is always a path to recovery, always the possibility of redemption. Even at the very edge of despair, there is still light, however distant, which makes escape not only possible but profoundly necessary.