by Terry McCombs
Terry McCombs maintained the "God/dess of the Month Club" on soc.religion.paganism for several years, producing monthly profiles of deities drawn from across the world's traditions. His approach was comparative and eclectic, treating each deity as a window into a shared human experience rather than the exclusive property of any one culture.
His August 2003 entry examined Spider — one of the most surprisingly widespread divine figures on earth. Spider Grandmother of the Pueblo and Navajo peoples, Anansi of West Africa, Arachne of Greece, Uttu of Sumer, Areop-Enap of Micronesia — the web-spinner appears across cultures in roles ranging from creation deity to trickster to guardian of fate. McCombs brings the thread all the way to the present, connecting the ancient weaver to the World Wide Web itself, and to the fictional weavers of modern fantasy literature.
Preserved here from the Usenet archive as a working document of early internet-era comparative paganism.
Name: Spider Grandmother or Spider Woman (Navajo, Pueblo, Tewa, Kiwa, Hopi & Cherokee), Areop-Enap (Micronesia), Biliku (India), Arachne (Greek), Anansi (African), Nareau (Gilbert Islands, current Kiribati), Tule (Sudan & Zaire), Uttu (Sumerian spider goddess of weaving and of clothing.)
Symbols: Depends on the culture of the Goddess, God or folk hero. As would be expected in many the web, but also the loom is also common.
Usual Image: Again dependent on culture. Some show Spider to look like the more common eight-legged creature, while many show her as a human female.
Holy Books: Ovid's Metamorphoses, The Anansi Stories, Perdido Street Station by China Miéville, Silk by Caitlin R. Kiernan.
Holy Days: N/A
Place of Worship: N/A
Major Taboos: N/A
Relatives: Varies. Many, such as the African Anansi, seem to be singular entities, while others have known relations. Spider Woman of some Native American tribes — who invented weaving — had a husband, Spider Man, who invented the loom. In Micronesia there was Areop-Enap, who was called one God but was also known as two: Old Spider and Young Spider — though what their exact relationship was is unclear.
Synodeities: See Names Above.
This month is a bit of a departure from the norm, as the goddess of the month is not from a single culture but more of a holistic overview of an image — Spider as deity. Many people find it hard to attribute divine attributes to a creature they find so intrinsically creepy.
However, many ancient people found much of the divine to admire in spiders. While almost everything you can think of has at one time been given godly characteristics or at least some part to play in things divine, just how much prominence they are given among different peoples can be very interesting.
The sun, moon, fire, water, love, and war are understandable when they show up as major deities or as outstanding gods and goddesses. It might be a surprise to arachnophobics to see some of the glories to which the little spider has climbed.
In the West the most famous divine spider is most likely Arachne of the Greek mythos — a cautionary tale of divine jealousy and metamorphosis. In other cultures, however, spider has played a more prominent role.
This has ranged from all plant life being said to have come from sex between the Mesopotamian god Enki and Spider, to the very important part played by Spider Grandmother among a large number of Native American tribes.
It is worth considering Odin's eight-legged horse, or the large number of Hindu gods and goddesses who have six arms — with two legs making eight limbs. While this is done as a visual form of divine attributes, one wonders if at least on a subconscious level there might also be a link to Spider.
The main thing that draws metaphysical attention to Spider is the web — truly one of the most amazing things to be found in nature.
And speaking of webs: let us not forget that this is where you are reading this. Mixing our metaphors? The web has power; and if we give any sympathy to sympathetic magic, then somewhere, on some level, there is more than a bit of web to the Web we bounce around on most every day.
If that is the case, then where is the Spider here? The place to look might best be the minds of the humans who built this web.
Spider in Modern Fiction
Among the modern spinners of myth and folklore — writers of "fiction" — there are some very interesting works of fantastic Spider imagery.
In Fritz Leiber's The Big Time, a group of humans spends most of their time in a place outside of Time and Space, the pawns of a war between two powerful forces trying to change history for their own mysterious ends. While they are never shown, they are referred to as the Spiders and the Snakes. The hint is given that most people unknowingly work for one or the other.
In China Miéville's Perdido Street Station, a very remarkable character appears called The Weaver — a very large spider-creature that lives across a multiplicity of dimensions, never wholly in one place at the same time. One of the most alien characters in recent fiction.
Perhaps the strangest modern Spider book was published in 1977 by "James Vogh" under the title Arachne Rising, which proposed a thirteenth sign in a lunar zodiac — Arachne, the Spider, for people born between May 16th and June 15th. The book turned out to be a hoax written by science fiction author John Sladek, first as a way to mock astrology, and then as a money-making scheme at which it failed.
There are, however, a few people who have taken to Arachne as the thirteenth sign — knowing it was a hoax, saying that just because something is not real doesn't mean it isn't true.
I have to sympathize. I myself have always contended that just because something is not real doesn't mean it isn't true.
Colophon
Written and posted by Terry McCombs to soc.religion.paganism in August 2003 as part of his monthly "God/dess of the Month Club" series, which profiled deities from across the world's traditions. Original Message-ID: [email protected].
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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