Weaving (mythology)

Please bear with us as this stub is expanded to do justice to a wide-ranging mythological subject.

The theme of weaving in mythology is ancient, and its lost mythic lore probably accompanied the early spread of this mysterious art. Westward of Central Asia and the Iranian plateau, weaving is a mystery within woman's sphere, and where men have become the primary weavers in this part of the world, it is possible that they have usurped the archaic role. In English the "distaff side" denotes a woman's role in the household economy. In pre-Dynastic Egypt, nt, (Neith) was already the goddess of weaving (and a mighty aid in war as well). She protected the Red Crown of Lower Egypt before the two kingdoms were merged, and in Dynastic times she was known as the most ancient one, to whom the other gods went for wisdom. Nit is identifiable by her emblems and most often it is the loom's shuttle, with its two recognizable hooks at each end, upon her head. According to E. A. Wallis Budge (The Gods of the Egyptians) the root of the word for weaving and also for being are the same: nnt. Many of the world's people understand that the world is woven and that a weaving creator wove its designs into being. Compare the Navaho legend of the Spider Woman, of Teotihuacan origin. In Greece the Moirae (the "Fates") and among the Norse the Norns are the three crones who control Destiny, and the matter of it is the art of spinning on the distaff the thread of life. Penelope the faithful wife of Odysseus was a weaver, weaving her design for a shroud by day, but unravelling it again at night, to keep her suitors from claiming her during the long years while Odysseus was away. Penelope has a high lineage that melds human and divine, and is she perhaps secretly Odysseus' own weaving goddess-nymph, like the two weaving enchantresses in the Odyssey, Circe and Calypso. Helen is at her loom in the Iliad. Among the Olympianss, the weaver goddess is Athene, who punished the impious pretensions of her acolyte Arachne by turning her into a weaving spider. The daughters of Minyas, Alcithoe, Leuconoe and their sister, defied Dionysus and honored Athena in their weaving instead of joining his festival. Homer dwells upon the supernatural quality of the weaving in the robes of goddesses, and every writer reaching for a heroic style after him imitated an analogous passage. In the terrible tale of Philomela, raped and her tongue cut out so that she could not tell about her violation, her loom becomes her voice, and the story is told in the design, so that her sister Procne may understand and the women may take their revenge. Ovid retold the old tales in his ''Metamorphoses (VI, 575-587) In Baltic myth, Saule is the life-affirming sun goddess, whose numinous presence is signed by a wheel or a rosette. The Baltic connection between the sun and spinning is as old as spindles of the sun-stone, amber, that have been uncovered in burial mounds. Baltic legends as told have absorbed many images from Christianity and Greek myth that are not easy to disentangle. The Finnish epic, the Kalevala, has many references to spinning and weaving goddesses. In later European folklore weaving retained its connection with magic. The daughter who could spin straw into gold and was forced to demonstrate her talent, aided by the dangerous earth-daemon Rumpelstiltskin was an old tale when the Brothers Grimm collected it. In Tang Dynasty China, the weaving goddess floated down on a shaft of moonlight with her two attendants, showed to the upright court official Guo Han in his garden that a goddess's robe is seamless for it is woven without the use of needle and thread, entirely on the loom. The phrase "a goddess's robe is seamless" passed into an idiom to express perfect workmanship.

External links

\n*Weaving Mythology and Folklore website\n*Chinese Idiom: A Goddess’ Robe Is Seamless\n*Greek weaving myths listed \nCategory:Mythology