O! what a tangled web we weave, when first we practiced to deceive! Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, A Tale of Flodden Field, canto vi,1808
Spider's Web
A spider is a connector of threads. One Greek word for web is hyphe, hyphos. And a hyphen, not unlike a strand of a spider's web, joins together words. Hyphen is from the Greek hyphen, from the adverb form of the word meaning "together, in one," literally "under one," hypo "under" + hen "one". Because of the internet we are now able to access the World Wide Web, a.k.a. "the web", and connect in ways we were not able to before. The web has brought us together and made us more unified in thought and communication. We, like spiders, can sit at the center of our web and feel movements from across the globe, almost as fast as they occur.
The Latin word for "spider's web; spider" is aranea. The spider's web in the picture above even looks a bit like an arena, which is a similar sounding English word. Below are a couple pictures of the Colosseum arena in Rome.
Model of the Colosseum
It is also interesting how much a stadium or arena looks like a knitting loom.
Knitting Looms
Modern Four Shuttle Knitting Loom
Neith/Nit/Net/Neit (nt/nrt) was a predynastic Egyptian goddess whose name is thought to be connected to the root word for "weave" ntt. Neith was goddess of war and hunting. She was fashioner of the weapons of warriors and guarded their bodies when they died.
Various Portrayals of Neith with Desheret, arrows & bow, papyrus sceptre, and shuttle
Neith's name was also associated with water as well(think "wave", i.e., water in motion, back and forth like a weaver), and she came to be associated with the primordial waters. Think of her name here, written as Net, as in the woven grid-like nets of fishermen.
Neith was the mother of all the gods and wove the world on her loom. Starting with the four directions. The pointer in a modern compas often looks like a type of weaving shuttle.
Oddly enough, Neith's connections with weaving seem to be associated with her role as goddess of war and hunting. Two of her symbols were crossed arrows and bow. The arrow and bow are not only weapons used for war, but are also words used for weaving instruments. The word shuttle in Old English scytel means "a dart, arrow." So the swift movement of the shuttle in weaving is like an arrow being shot. The word for both a beam used in weaving and the stock of a crossbow is tiller from Latin telarium, from tela "web, loom".
So, Neith or Nit used instruments, like the instruments of war, to then weave the bandages and burial shrouds used in mummification.
Athena, goddess of wisdom, just warfare, and crafts, et al., was the Greek counterpart of Neith. She famously had a weaving competition with the mortal woman, Arachne. Arachne's insolence toward the gods caused Athena to curse her, and Arachne ended up hanging herself, but was then resurrected in the form a spider(maybe her name means, ar-Akh-Neith, i.e., pertaining to the Akh["living spirit"] of a weaver).
A Cosmic Looking Web with a Spider at the Hub
Both the center of a web and a wheel, or shield can be called a hub. It was Arachne's hubris/hybris, "insolence toward the gods", perhaps, connecting herself to the center, that caused her demise. For she was, in fact, an excellent weaver, but she did not act with respect towards the ones more powerful than she. Arachne did not act wisely toward, Athena, the goddess of wisdom.
To be wise is to be sagacious, and like an arrow, to be quick and sharp. The Latin word for "arrow" is sagitta, said to be of unknown origin, however, the word sagacity is said to be ultimately from the proposed PIE root *sag, "track down, trace, seek." This does seem very arrow-like. Words can pierce like weapons, like Athena's words to Arachne, and even wage wars. Thus we have the saying, "The pen(from Latin penna, 'feather')is mightier than the sword."
Neith was associated with spiders due to her weaving abilities, but she was also associated with bees. Neith's temple in Sais was called per-bit, "house of the bee", and the title of the king in lower Egypt was bit, "he of the bee".
However, what, if anything, do bees have to do with weaving?
As we are all painfully aware, bee's have stingers which are a kind of spine or quill. Spinning wheels also use a quill.
A quill spindle from a spinning wheel.
Neith was also patron goddess of the Red Crown of Lower Egypt, in which Sais is located, called the Desheret.
It is an odd shape and there are many speculations about what it is supposed to symbolize. However, it seems to me that there probably is some truth in the proposal that the Desheret is related to the honeybee. It is stated in Momonism, that in the Jeredite language deseret means, "honeybee". If you think about it, the Red Crown does look to be a sort of spine, or thorn(Latin spina, originally "thorn), or nail(Old Norse, nal "needle". Latin nere, "to spin". English root *(s)ne-, "to sew, to spin"), or in other words, "a spinner", or . . . stinger.
I don't know how the Egyptians described a bee stinger, but this one definately looks red, and the ancient Egyptian word for "red" was desher, thus desheret, the Red Crown. Desheret, dsrt, also had the meaning of the "Red Land", desert area, of Lower Egypt, on either side of the fertile Nile river basin.
If the Desheret is fashioned after the honeybee, although it is quite unique in its shape, it would not appear to be the only crown having a bee motif. There are many portrayals of the Sumerian gods which show a conical shaped crown resembling a conical bee hive.
These pictures show Shamash, the Babylonian sun god. Notice his wavy, and plaited or weaved/waffle pattern beard and hair.
Honeycomb with Honey
The word waffle comes from the Proto-Germanic wabila, "web, honeycomb", related to Old English wefan, "to weave". And the word "hive" itself is not too far off of wef. The bees "weave" their comb together, but with wax instead of thread.
Both the spider and the bee are associated with Neith, the weaver(Nit-er, "knitter"). She is associated with the spider, for it being a spinner and weaver, and the bee, for it having a spine/thorn and waffled hive. This is because in order to weave and spin we use spindles and needles.
Spider Woman by Susan Seddon Boulet
Nit was, further, associated with Daumutef.
Daumutef, one of the four sons of Horus, was the deification of the canopic jar storing the stomach(and small intestines)[not to be confused with Quebehsenuef keeper of the (large)intestines], or we might say, yarn of a person, (yarn, Old Norse garnan from root ghere- "intestine, gut, entrail", Greek khord, "intestine, gut-string," Sanskrit hira, "vein, entrails"). And it is sometimes said that a man is knit together as in this passage from the bible.
You knit/weaved me together in my mothers womb. Psalm 139:13
Crochet comes from a word meaning "hook", as in the hooked needle used to knot/knit the yarn or chord.
(However he refuses to wear it. One year olds!) - photo by Julie O. /chthonickore
Did the goddess, Nit, knit man together on her loom? Or did she, rather, knit the human out of the humus and loam, i.e., sticky mud or fertile clayey earth?
Adamah/Humus- by Julie O. /chthonickore
We could say that men were formed out of the loam of the earth through a knitting or tilling process of that loam, or a "looming" process upon that "loom". Remember, telarium is from tela "web, loom" in Latin. So we might say to till or cultivate the earth is akin to "weaving" on the "loom" of the earth.
The Old English tilian means, "to tend, work at, to attain by labor". So the word "till," which is from tilian, certainly has the connotation of difficulty or striving, like Adam after he was forced to leave the garden. Adam was told that he would have to toill upon the earth.
"Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you will return. Genesis 3:17-19 [NIV]19
The word toil in 3:17 is a translation of the Hebrew, itstsabon. The Spanish name Esteban, i.e. Stephen. Stephen is said to mean "crown" from Greek, στέφανος / stephanos, "crown, garland, wreath, honor, reward". So, Adam's toil(itstsabon) = his crown(esteban)? And this is his "reward" for eating from the tree of Knowledge? A crown is what identifies a king. A king is actually supposed to be a servant to his subjects. So to wear a crown would be a toil or labor(hopefully of love).
However, the ground/earth was said to be "cursed" because of Adam and that it would bring forth "thorns". So, the loam("earth") or loom("tela"), brings forth thorns. To be in the flesh, i.e., made from the earth, is to till a crown of thorns.
However, the ground/earth was said to be "cursed" because of Adam and that it would bring forth "thorns". So, the loam("earth") or loom("tela"), brings forth thorns. To be in the flesh, i.e., made from the earth, is to till a crown of thorns.
And a loom actually does look a lot like a crown.
Adam's toil was his stephanos, "crown or garland". It was a crown of toil, therefore, a crown with a sting, a crown of spines, or thorns.
Crown of Thorns
The Red Crown of Lower Egypt(or of the Red Land/"Earth") was a crown with a thorn.
The crown of Christ, or a Christ, is a crown of many thorns and full of toil, i.e., blood, sweat and tears.
The crown of Christ, or a Christ, is a crown of many thorns and full of toil, i.e., blood, sweat and tears.
It's kind of funny, I have been using the cursor pointer of my computer to knit all these thoughts together and, darn it, if that curser doesn't look like a shuttle.
Oh! what a tangled web we weave!
As someone with a connection to both weaving and bees, together with all too acute experience with the thorns of a life in the flesh, I find this post particularly thrilling. Very, very interesting, Ember! Well done!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Querci!
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