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Sacred Correspondences
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Weavers, and the Spiders of Specific Nations

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Weavers, and the Spiders of Specific Nations

Where spiders are creators, it is almost always because of the web, and the traditions involved are specific enough that generalising them does damage.

Hopi. Kokyangwuti, Spider Grandmother, is a creator figure who in Hopi emergence accounts assists in the making of people and guides them upward through the worlds. She is small, lives underground, and gives counsel. She belongs to Hopi tradition and to the particular clans and ceremonies that hold those accounts.

Dine. Na'ashjeii Asdzaa, Spider Woman, taught the Dine to weave, the loom itself is traditionally understood as her gift, and appears in the Hero Twins narratives as a helper who gives the twins the means to survive their father's tests. Weavers have historically left an intentional flaw or a small opening in a rug, a practice explained in relation to her. Spider Woman Rock in Canyon de Chelly is named for her.

These two are not the same figure and neither is a pan-Indian archetype. Popular writing that merges them into a single Native American Spider Grandmother is doing exactly what Indigenous scholars object to.

Egypt. Neith, a very ancient goddess of Sais associated with weaving and with war, is sometimes connected to the spider through the weaving attribute; the connection is an interpretation rather than an Egyptian statement.

Greece. Ovid's Metamorphoses gives Arachne, the Lydian weaver who challenges Athena, produces a tapestry depicting the crimes of the gods, and is beaten and transformed into a spider to weave forever. It is a story about presumption and about the danger of being right in public.

Japan. The jorogumo is a spider that takes the form of a woman and devours those it lures, a yokai rather than a deity.

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