I was wondering if you know anything about any deities related to spiders. I keep seeing tons of spiders all around my house and I think it’s a sign, but I can’t figure out from who.

helvetica12point:

starsandepithets:

Hello lovely,

Spider deities seems to a rare bunch.
My initial response was to think of the story of Arachne and Athena. Arachne was a moral Greek woman who thought she was a superior weaver to Athena, the Greek goddess of weaving. A contest which Athena lost, causing her to in fury turn Arachne into a spider.

But weaving, spiders and destiny seem to be connected in a lot of Mediterranean cultures. Athena was connected with a few other deities, with similar attributes so you might be interested in looking up;
Inanna – Sumerian
Ishtar – Babylonian
Neith – Egyptian
Taneith – Libyan
Minerva – Roman

Because I’m kemetic, I’m going to talk about Egypt. So there isn’t much evidence of spiders used in mythology in Egypt. I couldn’t even find any examples of spider amulets. But you might find it useful to check out Neith. Neith is a goddess of weaving, and although her connection with Athena only really occurred in the Ptolemaic period, it might still be useful to check as she is still a goddess of weaving.

Also Selqet might be a potential goddess to look up. She is a goddess of protection and although she is mainly represented by scorpions, spiders may fall under her department. (Plus I kinda think the native Egyptian spiders look more like scorpions than house spiders from a quick google search anyway)

Another idea is Anansi, who was recently depicted as Mr Nancy in American gods. He is a shapeshifter god who is often a spider. However don’t know much about this deity at all, beyond his appearance in American gods. I think he might even be from a closed religion…

I hope this was helpful 🙂

🕷🕷🕷

This was a tricky ask, and I couldn’t have done it alone. Thanks @djehutydevo @djar-em-rekh and @anubianpagan for the brain storming session and the great ideas 🙂

I’ve actually been doing research on the Neith/spider connection. Here’s what I’ve found:

Every source on spiders will say she’s associated with spiders. I have yet to find an egyptological source for that. Most of the web sources cite Wikipedia, which cites a particular mythological animal book, and I’m still trying to figure out where that writer got it from (no footnotes, so I’m having to make guesses on the bibliography). The current general assumption is that she may have picked up the association from her syncretism with Athena (to the Greeks, Neith=Athena), as mentioned above.

That said, I have seen a few upgs where there was a sudden influx of spiders when Neith arrived, and I actually had that happen myself. In my own case, while my home is prone to spiders, the amount that appeared was biblical in proportion, to the point where I would find them on my side inside my husband’s car (he never saw car spiders without me), and I haven’t had such an influx since. When I find something definitive I do plan on posting it.

From an egyptological perspective, I would second @starsandepithets suggestion of Selket/Serket. As she said, spiders most likely got lumped in with their arachnid cousins the scorpions, which would also explain the almost compete lack of reference to them (I’ve seen one image referencing spiders and it was extremely dubious and suspect).

As for others, @starsandepithets mentioned Anansi, who is well attested to in West African folklore. I’m not certain if he is from a closed tradition or not, so I would tread very carefully if you do not have African heritage. Several Native American tribes have a Grandmother Spider or someone similar, but these, of course, are closed traditions and not recommended out of respect for those native peoples.