Spider: Any of an order of eight-legged arachnids having a body divided into two parts and often spinning webs to trap insects.
We are often taught to fear spiders, and for good reason. They are considered to be one of the most terrifying of insects, and as the creature grows in size, from the small house spider to the enlarged tarantula, so does the fear of spiders increase also. Of the earliest fears and phobias we are taught, one of the first we are told about is the fear of spiders, Arachnophobia. And there is indeed something particularly scary about their physical makeup, their rotund and heavy mid-sections, with their long and angular legs crawling along. There are other creatures like the spider that are multi-pedal in their movements, a horse for instance has four legs that it uses to move about, yet we do not fear horses. The legs of some spiders upon closer inspection are shown to have noticeable bristled and hair-like follicles that cover them which add to the terror of their physiology, while the length of the leg as it can be shown traced along, thins to a nice fine tip, like the pointed end of a needle or the spear-tip of a weapon. There is also something unsettling about their movements, when the eight legs of the spider are shown to be moving and bending all at once while they are seen crawling, many people find themselves cringing at the sight of this. There are those of us that do not seem to want an insect whose spindly legs we cannot keep track of, crawling all over our skin, in our eyes, or in our hair. The many eyes of the spidery beast also bother us, on such small heads some of them have six or more eyes to further enhance their frightful appearance. If you met a person with six or more eyes in their skull peering out at you, would you find yourself unnerved by their many eyeballs twitching and blinking as they set their gaze upon you? Perhaps. Aside from the scary form of the spider, the creature is also known in many tales as having craftiness and cunning as a character.
Greek Mythology: Edith Hamilton writes of the unfortunate figure of Arachne in her work Mythology;
"The fate if this maiden was another example of the danger of claiming equality with the gods in anything whatsoever. Minerva was the weaver among the Olympians as Vulcan was the smith. Quite naturally she considered the stuffs she wove unapproachable for fineness and beauty, and she was outraged when she heard that a simple peasant girl named Arachne her own work to be superior. The goddess went forthwith to the hut where the maiden lived and challenged her to a contest. Arachne accepted. Both set up their looms and stretched the warp upon them. Then they went to work. Heaps of skeins of beautiful threads coloured like the rainbow lay beside each, and threads of gold and silver too. Minerva did her best and the result was a marvel, but Arachne's work, finished at the same moment, was in no way inferior. The goddess in a fury of anger slit the web from top to bottom and beat the girl around the head with the shuttle. Arachne, disgraced and mortified and furiously angry, hanger herself. Then a little repentance entered Minerva's heart. She lifted the body from the noose and sprinkled ot with a magic liquid. Arachne was changed into a spider, and her skill in weaving was left to her."
Russian Folklore: From the collection of stories by Alexander Afanasyev, Tales from Russian Folklore;
The Spider
In olden times, long, long ago, after a beautiful spring, in a warm summer, a plague arrived that placed suffering on the world: mosquitoes and midges appeared and began to sting people and draw warm blood.
A spider, a brave creature, appeared, stretched his legs and began to spin webs, placing them on the paths and trails where mosquitoes and midges flew.
A dirty fly, an evil creature, flew past and fell into the spider's web. The spider pinched him behind the neck to try and kill him.
"Dear spider!" begged the fly. "Don't hurt me, don't kill me. I have many children who will be left orphan, to go through the yards and plague the dogs."
So the spider released him. He flew away buzzing, saying to all the mosquitoes and midges:
"Hey, all you mosquitoes and midges! Hide under the aspen tree bark: a spider has appeared. He is stretching his legs and spinning webs and putting them on the paths and trails where you fly. He will catch you all!"
They flew away and took refuge under the aspen bark, lying as if dead.
The spider went away and met a cricket, a cockroach and a wood louse;
"You, cricket, sit on a tussock and smoke a pipe of tobacco; you, cockroach, bang a drum; and you, woodlouse, crawl under the aspen bark and tell a lie about me. Say that I, the spider, so famous as a warrior and brave knight, am no longer alive. Say that I was sent to Kazan, and in Kazan lost my head on the block."
The cricket sat on a tussock to smoke, and the cockroach banged a drum. The woodlouse crawled under the aspen bark and said:
"Why have you hidden yourselves away, lying as if dead? You see, the spider-warrior, the brave knight, is no longer alive. They sent him to Kazan, and at Kazan chopped off his head on the block, and then chopped up the block."
They all rejoiced, made the sign of the cross three times, flew away and fell into the spider's web.
"How very tasty you are!" he said. "You should be my guests more often. We could have beer and wine, and feast!"
African Mythology: From the works of Carter Goodwin Woodson, African Myths and Folk Tales;
The Race for a Wife
A man had a daughter who liked all the creatures of the forest. Each of them was trying to secure the daughter for his wife and the daughter was unable to decide which one she wanted.
They all went to the father for his consent. Each one explained to the father how he was the best man for his daughter. Everybody was singing his own praise.
The father told them to wait, and that he would place his daughter in the old field, and that the one who reached there first should have his daughter. They all agreed to enter the race. Each one began to plan how he could do his best to reach her first. When they all assembled the fox said, "We must catch the deer and tie him, or he will win the race, as he can run much faster than any of us."
So they all combined and tied the deer and started on the race. After they had gotten on the way the spider came along and saw the deer tied fast.
The spider asked, "What are you doing tied?"
The deer told him how all the animals had combined to tie him in order to keep him from winning the race and securing the daughter of the old man.
The spider then said, "If I let you loose what will you pay me?"
The deer said that if he won the race he would give the spider their first daughter for a wife. The spider then untied him and jumped on the deer's horn.
The deer, then ran and ran and finally passed all the other animals. When he got in the old field near the old man's house the spider jumped down and ran to the girl before the deer could reach her.
The deer said that the girl belonged to him because he had brought the spider and without him the spider could not have got there at all. The spider said she was his because he was the first to go up to the girl and claim her, and if he had not untied the deer he could not have entered the race at all, so they submitted the matter to the judge, who decided that the spider won the race and therefore was entitled to the old man's daughter.
Indigenous Myth: In the work by Lewis Spence, Myths of the North American Indians, he writes of a figure known as Michabo who took inspiration from the spider;
"We discover one of the first class in Michabo, the Great Hare, the principal deity of the Algonquins. In the accounts of the older travelers we find him described as the ruler of the winds, the inventor of picture-writing, and even the creator and preserver of the world. Taking a grain of sand from the bed of the ocean, he made from it an island which he launched in the primeval waters. This island speedily grew to a great size; indeed, so extensive did it become that a young wolf which managed to find a footing on it and attempted to cross it died of old age before he completed his journey. A great 'medicine' society, called Meda, was supposed to have been founded by Michabo. Many were his inventions. Observing the spider spread its web, he devised the art of knitting nets to catch fish. He furnished the hunter with many signs and charms for use in the chase."
In another story from the Blackfoot, there is more mention of the adopted snares and webs of the spiders invention, as told in a day-and-night myth. It is an unusual tale with moments of violence and gore that have been unexpectedly woven peculiarly into the unfolding of the stories events;
"Many stories are told by the Blackfoot Indians of their creator, Napi, and these chiefly relate to the manner in which he made the world and its inhabitants.
One myth connected with this deity tells how a poor Indian who had a wife and two children lived in the greatest indigence on roots and berries. This man had a dream in which he heard a voice command him to procure a large spider-web, which he was to hand on the trial of the animals where they passed through the forest, by which means he would obtain plenty of food. This he did, and on returning to the place in which he had hung the web he found deer and rabbits entangled in its magical meshes. These he killed for food, for which he was now never at a loss.
Returning with his game on his shoulders one morning, he discovered his wife perfuming herself with sweet pine, which she burned over the fire. He suspected that she was thus making herself attractive for the benefit of someone else, but, preserving silence, he told her that on the following day he would set his spider-web at a greater distance, as the game in the neighboring forest was beginning to know the trap too well. Accordingly he went farther afield, and caught a deer, which he cut up, carrying part of its meat back with him to his lodge. He told his wife where the remainder of the carcass was to be found, and asked her to go and fetch it.
His wife, however, was not without her own suspicions, and, concluding that she was being watched by her husband, she halted at the top of the nearest hill and looked back to see if he was following her. But he was sitting where she had left him, so she proceeded on her way. When she was quite out of sight the Indian himself climbed the hill, and, seeing that she was not in the vicinity, returned to the camp. He inquired of his children where their mother went to gather firewood, and they pointed to a large patch of dead timber. Proceeding to the clump of leafless trees, the man instituted a thorough search, and after a while discovered a den of rattlesnakes. Now it was one of these reptiles with which his wife was in love, so the Indian in his wrath gathered fragments of dry wood and set the whole plantation in a blaze.
Then he returned to his lodge and told his children what he had done, a the same time warning them that their mother would be very wrathful, and would probably attempt to kill them all. He further said that he would wait for her return, but that they had better run away, and that he would provide them with three things which the would find of use. He then handed to the children a stick, a stone, and a bunch of moss, which they were to throw behind them should their mother pursue them. The children at once ran away and their father hung the spider-web over the door of the lodge. Mean-while the woman had seen the blaze made by the dry timber-patch from a considerable distance, and in great anger turned and ran back to the lodge. Attempting to enter it, she was at once entangled in the meshes of the spider-web.
She struggled violently, however, and succeeded in getting her head through the opening, whereupon her husband severed it from her shoulders with his stone axe. He then ran out of the lodge and down the valley, hotly pursued by the woman's body, while her head rolled along the ground in chase of the children. The latter soon descried the grisly object rolling along in their tracks at a great speed, and one of them quickly threw the stick behind him as he had been told to do. Instantly a dense forest sprang up in their rear, which for a space retarded their horrible pursuer. The children made considerable headway, but once more the severed head made its appearance, gnashing its teeth in a frenzy of rage and rolling its eyes horribly, while it shrieked out threats which caused the children's blood to turn to water.
Then another of the boys threw the stone which he had been given behind him, and instantly a great mountain sprang up which occupied the land from sea to sea, so that the progress of the head was quite barred. It could perceive no means of overcoming this immense barrier, until it encountered two rams feeding, which it asked to make a way for it through the mountain, telling them that if they would do so it would marry the chief of the sheep. The rams made a valiant effort to meet this request, and again and again fiercely rushed at the mountain, till their horns were split and broken and they could butt no longer. The head, growing impatient, called up in a colony of ants which dwelt in the neighborhood to tunnel a passage through the obstacle, and offered, if they were successful, to marry the chief ant as a recompense for their labors. The insects at once took up the task, and toiled incessantly until they had made a tunnel through which the head could roll.
The children were still running, but felt that the head had not abandoned pursuit. At last, after a long interval, they observed it rolling after them, evidently as fresh as ever. The child who had the bunch of moss now wet it and wrung out the water over their trail, and immediately an immense strait separated them from the land where they had been but a moment before. The head, unable to stop, fell into this great water and was drowned."
Fiction/Film:
The Lord of the Rings: In the second book/film many will remember the cave that the character Gollum lured Frodo and Sam into. It was the lair of a creature known as the female spider Shelob. Frodo and Sam enter into her cave unaware of what lurked inside, they trusted Gollum enough to lead them through a different path into Mordor other than by way of the Black Gate. Gollum of course had no intention of taking them any further than the cave and his hope was that the spider would devour the two hobbits so he could snatch the ring upon their deaths. Tolkien wrote of the spider creature in his work The Two Towers;
"There agelong she had dwelt, an evil thing in spider-form, even such as once of old had lived in the Land of the Elves in the West that is now under the Sea, such as Beren fought in the Mountains of Terror in Doriath, and so came to Luthien upon the green sword amid the hemlocks in the moonlight long ago. How Shelob came there, flying from ruin, no tale tells, for out of the Dark Years few tales have come. But still she was there, who was there before Sauron, and before the first stone of Barad-dur; and she served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness. Far and wide her lesser broods, bastards of the miserable mates, her own offspring, that she slew, spread from glen to glen, from the Ephel Duath to the eastern hills, to Dol Goldur and the fastnesses of Mirkwood. But none could rival her, Shelob the Great, last child of the Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world."
Tolkien writes of an unspoken pact that developed between Gollum and Shelob;
"Already, years before, Gollum had beheld her, Smeagol who pried into all dark holes, and in past days he had bowed and worshiped her, and the darkness of her evil will walked through all the ways of his weariness beside him, cutting him off from light and from regret. And he had promised to bring her food. But her lust was not his lust. Little she knew of or cared for towers, or rings, or anything devised by mind or hand, who only desired death for all others, mind and body, and for herself a glut of life, alone, swollen till the mountains could no longer hold her up and the darkness could not contain her.
But that desire was yet far away, and long now had she been hungry, lurking in her den, while the power of Sauron grew, and light and living things forsook his borders; and the city in the valley was dead, and no Elf or Man came near, only the unhappy Orcs. Poor food and wary. But she must eat, and however busily they delved new winding passages from the pass and from their tower, ever she found some way to snare them. But she lusted for sweeter meat. And Gollum had brought it to her."
There was also an unspoken relationship between Sauron and Shelob. And like many evil pacts that are made, they are done with the silent understanding of the other's beneficial exchange for each party, Tolkien writes;
"And as for Sauron: he knew where she lurked. It pleased him that she should dwell there hungry but unabated in malice, a more sure watch upon that ancient path into his land than any other that his skill could have devised. And Orcs, they were useful slaves, but he had them in plenty. If now and again Shelob caught them to stay her appetite, she was welcome: he could spare them. And sometimes as a man may cast a dainty to his cat (his cat he calls her, but she owns him not) Sauron would send her prisoners that he had no better uses for: he would have them driven to her hole, and report brought back to him of the play she made."
This relationship between these two heinous and evil characters, who both have different appetites in their aims and motivations is also seen in the work by Tolkien known as The Silmarillion. Shelob was spawned from the very first spidery character known as Ungoliant, who had her own devilish pact with the original supreme villain known as Morgoth, but theirs was not a lasting relationship, and in the like fashion of a spider, she left her master and crawled away into the darker crevices and corners of the world and hid away as monsters often do.
The Hobbit: In the film trilogy of The Hobbit, in the second movie The Desolation of Smaug, the spawn of Shelob and Ungoliant are seen as having infiltrated a forest that is home to the Mirkwood Elves. Their nests and webs have been spun in the many hundreds, and the spiders who have invaded act as a signal of the oncoming evil that is spreading across the land. The wizard Radagast is shown to notice the migration of the spiders to which he informs Gandalf of, and the elves are seen battling with them on the borders of their forests when they capture the dwarves who have been lost wandering in their woods.
Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire: In this recently released film the Harmada is a colonial empire that exerts control over the broader galaxies throughout space, the Harmada destroys and ravages every planet they come across and settle upon. One example of the many destructive acts by the Harmada that is shown is seen in the dominion of an alien-space-spider. The creature's lair has suffered severe environmental damage, and the character of a she-spider is introduced, she is angered by the toxic fumes that have flooded her den. None of her eggs will hatch and all of her progeny have been poisoned by the toxic air that has been released. In her anger over the demise of her spawn, she is shown having kidnapped a child and threatens to kill the young girl as retribution for the death of her own hundreds of eggs. The spider-woman is shown with a physical build similar to a centaur, where the upper half is like the body of a woman with a torso and head like a female, and the lower half has the abdomen and legs of a spider.
Leonardo da Vinci, who wrote about the creature in his Notebooks, in the tales and allegories section, had this to say about the spider;
The Spider and the bunch of grapes
The unscrupulous self-seeker who abuses the hospitality of others ends by being punished.
The spider found a bunch of grapes which for its sweetness was much resorted to by bees and divers kinds of flies. It seemed that it had found a most convenient spot to spread its net and having settled on its delicate web it entered into its new habitation. Every day, hiding in the spaces between the grapes, it fell like a thief on the wretched animals which were unaware of the danger. But after a few days had passed the vintager came, and cut the bunch of grapes and placed it with others that were trodden, and thus the grapes were a snare and pitfall both for the deceitful spider and the deceived flies.