The Shrine of Arachne:

The Spider Woman

She Weaves the Web of Life

Greece

According to Barbara Walker, "classical writers misinterpreted old images of Athene with her spider-totem and web, and constructed the legend of Arachne, a mortal maid whose skill in weaving outshone even that of the Goddess. Therefore Athene turned her into a spider." ¹

As another version of the story goes, Arachne, the daughter of a dyer, was an exquisite weaver who challenged the Goddess Athene to a contest, "a presumptuous act, as Athene was the very spirit of the craft itself."² In her weaving Arachne depicted the entire Greek pantheon in sexual poses and embarrassed the Goddess who, in her fury, ripped up Arachne's clothes in anger. Arachne was so shamed, she hung herself and her spirit scurried away from her body in the form of the first spider.

Spiders engender some strange reactions amongst humans, despite the fact that they are almost always harmless (and probably more worried about us plopping them on the head with a rolled newspaper than entertaining thoughts of biting us or crawling on our bare flesh!). In fact Freud went so far as to say that "the capacity of the sight of a spider to precipitate a crisis of neurotic anxiety - whether in the nursery rhyme of Miss Muffet or in the labyrinths of modern life - derives from an unconscious association of the spider with the image of the phallic mother; to which perhaps, should be added the observation that the web, the spiral web, may also contribute to the arachnid's force as a fear-releasing sign." ³

Arachne the Spider was a totemic form of the Fate-spinner, otherwise known as Clotho or Athene or the Virgin Moera. In Hindu myth, the spider represented Maya, the virgin aspect of the Triple Goddess. The spider's web was likened to the Wheel of Fate and the spider to the Goddess as spinner, sitting at the centre of her wheel. The female spiders habit of devouring her mate led to her being identified with Kali, the Death Mother.

In Aztec myth spiders represented the souls of warrior women from the matriarchal, pre-Aztec societies. At the end of the world, these women will descend from the sky, hanging by silken threads, and devour all the men on Earth. There are other associations too. Odin's horse Sleipnir (Slippery) had eight legs and was gray.

The folk tale of the Spider and the Fly suggested the once widespread belief that flies are souls in serch of a female entity to eat them and give them rebirth. ⁴



Notes
1. Barbara Walker, The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Pandora, UK, 1995, p.54
2. Patricia Monaghan, The Book of Goddesses & Heroines, Llewellyn, USA, 1993, p.30
3. Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, Penguin Arkana, 1991, pp.73-4.
4. Barbara Walker, op.cit. p.958.

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