Has anyone else been noticing a lot of spiders lately?

I’ve recently moved flat and there’s a huge one that lives behind my cupboard. Every morning, as I make my coffee, I check to see if the spider is home too. I always hope to see a gangly leg (or three, or five) peeking out from beneath the wood. Then, when I unlock my bike to go to work, I notice these beautiful, whisper-thin webs spun between my handlebars.

How awful I feel destroying their work!

Those of you who came to the misery meds nature weaving session in May might remember me talking about the centrality of spiders, and weaving more generally, to the lore of cultures all over the world. Weaving has often dismissed as “just crafts,” rather than art, and the patriarchal, Western devaluation of textiles directly devalues the work of weavers across time — who have typically been women and/or Black and brown.

It also dismisses the stories that have been spun in thread. These stories are not only actual stories literally woven into fabric, but also oral stories, origin stories, community stories, that connect people to land. Of course, there are very few animals, humans included, who can weave as well as spiders, hence their significant roles within lore across time and space. Really, spiders are some of the most cosmic animals there are. I’m very pro-spider.

I’m having the busiest summer imaginable so, in place of a developed piece, given that a few people have asked, I thought I’d share my notes on weaving and spider lore from the misery meds session.

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A few examples of some beautiful weaving traditions

Indigenous Maya weaving for jusice 

It’s said that Ix Chel, Grandmother of the Gods, passed the art of weaving onto Maya women at the beginning of time. Maya weaving uses cotton and natural dyes from plants, vegetables, fruits, animals, and minerals. It’s been handed down from mother to daughter, evolving over 3,000 years. For centuries, Maya women’s weaving has been a form of resistance. Spanish priests and authorities burned Maya books and destroyed cultural artefacts. Using a hidden language of symbols and colours, Maya women documented and preserved culture in their textiles. 

Pacific Islands tapa cloth and plant kinship

Tapa cloth is a barkcloth that’s actually not woven, but is made from trees and shrubs, often mulberry or fig, that has been softened through a process of soaking and beating. In oral history, it’s said that Maui trapped the sun because his mother was trying to make tapa and the Sun was moving too quickly for it to dry. So Maui wove a rope to catch the Sun and slow it down in order to give the tapa enough time to dry. For Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands, the traditional plants that they use for fibre arts are seen as sacred relatives that have actively shaped the world. 

T’boli dreamweaving for the plant goddess

Similarly, in the Philippines, the Indigenous T’boli people have a sacred relationship to the banana-like abaca plant. For at least three centuries, they’ve passed down the practice of dream-weaving, or T'nalak. Their textiles are made from natural fibres stripped from the stems of the abacá plant. They believe that the goddess, Fu Dalu (the spirit of abacá), communicates with women by appearing in their dreams as an animal or human figure. Master dream-weavers then interpret these visions into patterns that usually take three to four months to weave. The process is done entirely by hand with all-natural ingredients, it’s ultimately a collective effort by the community and is considered a sacred tribute to the goddess.

Kente cloth and the teachings of Anansi

Ghanaian kente cloth is said to have come from when two brothers came across a web made by none other than the beloved, cunning trickster-teacher spider deity named Anansi. The brothers were so struck by the intricacies of his woven design that they stopped and watched him for 2 whole days. They then took their newfound knowledge back to their community to create kente cloth. 

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Now, why look at lore?

Looking at lore and traditions can help to connect us: 

1.  across species boundaries by drawing us closer to plants and animals

2.  across time to ancestral wisdoms and cultural histories

3. to a sense of the sacred in the world around us

Weaving is one of the most ancient arts of human history. It’s telling that, in the West, weaving is often dismissed as “arts and crafts” when, in many non-white cultures, weaving has always been regarded with reverence. As above, weaving is a way of transmitting culture, paying homage to multispecies kin and deities, resisting colonial oppression, and more. Because weaving is so ancient and so integral to human cultures all over the world, weaving is heavily associated with creation and the cosmic. Consequently, spiders and their webs are often key characters in the lore of many cultures. 

Some spider and web symbolism is as follows:

• First, because weaving is seen as a sacred wisdom, spiders are often regarded as teachers, like Anansi and the Lakota people’s trickster spider. In ancient Egypt, the goddess Neith was often depicted with spiders to represent her wisdom. 

• Weaving and spiders are also symbols of destiny. This includes the 3 fates of ancient Greek and Roman mythology. These three sisters were said to control the thread of life for every mortal. One spun the thread of fate, another dispensed it, and the last cut the thread to determine the individual’s moment of death. 

• Webs are also reminders of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all living beings. Indra’s net, from the Atharva Veda, is a gorgeous, enormous net that extends infinitely in every direction. Decorated with brilliant jewels at each interconnection, like an expanse of stars, each jewel reflects every other jewel, symbolising the interdependence of all things. Every part of the universe can be seen reflected in the individual. Each individual is a microcosm and a macrocosm, every individual at once an individual and a universe. 

• Spiders are seen as the very creators of the universe, such as in the oral histories of the Hopi people and the Navajo people of Turtle Island, and in Nauru and Kiribati in the Pacific Islands. 

• Lastly, spiders and weaving symbolise transformation and the inherent power to shape our own lives. The ancient Aztecs believed that spiders symbolised the ability to adapt and change, and looked at how spiders use raw materials to weave webs and to create their own realities. 

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Bonus spider content (1): The uniqueness of each and every spider

While we’re on spiders, I want to mention the Black American zoologist and behavioural psychologist Charles Henry Turner, who died around a century ago. 

Nowadays, in 2024, we’re getting all these scientific experiments looking into animal cognition to see if insects and other animals could be said to have intelligence or sentience, but Charles Henry Turner was doing groundbreaking work like this over a hundred years ago. 

Turner’s experiments, which also looked at bees and ants, suggested that spiders have individual traits, a.k.a. these experiments suggested that spiders have their own unique personalities! 

Turner’s work was completely sidelined because he was Black and many people tried to credit his work as their own. So let’s remember Turner and his work - literally a hundred years ahead of his time!

Bonus spider content (2): The spider diviners of Cameroon

The Mambila art of spider divination, known as nggàm, is where spider oracles answer human questions with the help of a human translator. The human places leaves in a pot for the spider to move. These leaves have symbols cut into them and the human diviner then interprets the spider’s answer. The above screenshot is taken from this website. What would you ask the spider?

.❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。

✿°。 ✿°

✿°。 ✿°

.❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。

Alright! That’s it from me today. Hopefully you can glean something from these notes despite the lack of structure and, perhaps, if you weren’t already converted, I hope I’ve convinced you to not kill that spider next time you see them :D

I’ll be back with a proper newsletter about mystic spirals in the near-future. Until then, lots of love, soak in that sunlight, and eat well xx