Phial of Galadriel
It is a gift from the Elf-lady Galadriel to the protagonist Frodo Baggins, who uses its brilliant light at several critical moments during his journey to Mount Doom.
[T 1] The mariner Eärendil is the holder of one of the three Silmarils preserving the light of the Two Trees of Valinor, and he travels the skies like a star aboard his ship, the Vingilot.
On the steps of Cirith Ungol, when Frodo is chased by a Nazgûl, and is about to give in to the temptation to put on the One Ring and reveal himself to the enemy, he holds the Phial instead, which restores his senses.
... then as its power waxed, and hope grew in Frodo’s mind, it began to burn, and kindled to a silver flame, a minute heart of dazzling light, as though Eärendil had himself come down from the high sunset paths with the last Silmaril upon his brow.
[T 8] In a summary of events at the end of the story, its light enables Frodo, locked in the tower of Cirith Ungol, to see Sauron's forces massing at the Black Gate to face the approaching army of the West a hundred miles away.
Christopher Tolkien, editing his father's mass of texts, comments: "Here the light of the Phial of Galadriel has considerable power, a true star in the darkness".
[4] Likewise, with its origin in Lothlórien, a forest with axis mundi characteristics, and its power derived from a star, the Phial of Galadriel helps to establish The Lord of the Rings in a mythical space-time.
[6] In the end, the Phial is used to defeat Shelob, a descendant of Ungoliant, the monstrous servant of Morgoth who had destroyed the light-giving Two Trees of Valinor.
[7] The link with The Silmarillion is explicit, as Samwise Gamgee evokes Beren on the stairs of Cirith Ungol, shortly before meeting the spider.
[12] Sarah Downey, in the journal Mythlore, likens Galadriel to a guide-figure such as Dante's Beatrice in his Divine Comedy, and the Phial "a continued guidance" for Frodo after he has left Lothlórien.
Downey comments that like Galadriel, the pearl-maiden in the medieval English poem Pearl is seen in white and gold, while Beatrice shimmers "clothed in the colour of a living flame".
[13] Jason Fisher draws a parallel between the water in the Phial and the Christian sacrament of baptism,[6] noting that Tolkien recognized the similarities between the character of Galadriel and Mary, mother of Jesus.
