Spider symbolism
In British and American folklore it is unlucky to kill a spider, and a small one on your clothes means money or a letter. In stories the spider is a weaver and a bringer: Arachne in Ovid, Spider Woman in Diné (Navajo) tradition, the Cherokee Water Spider who brought fire, and Anansi of the Gold Coast and Jamaica.
Meaning
The spider carries two kinds of meaning. In the folk belief of Britain and America it is lucky, a bringer of money and news that should not be killed. In stories it is a maker: Arachne, turned into a spider for weaving too well; Spider Woman, who gave the Diné their weaving; the Water Spider of the Cherokee, who fetched the first fire; and Anansi, the trickster of the Gold Coast and of Jamaica. Its Halloween meaning, the web of a dusty empty house, is on the spider and web page.
Origin and history
John Brand’s Popular Antiquities (1853) records that it was “vulgarly thought unlucky to kill spiders”. He traced the belief to the magicians of ancient Rome, who, according to Pliny’s Natural History, read omens from the way spiders wove their webs, and noted that small spiders called money spinners were held to bring good luck.
Arachne in Ovid
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Arachne challenges Minerva to a weaving contest. The goddess, enraged to be outdone, strikes her with her shuttle, and Arachne hangs herself. Minerva, taking pity, holds her up and turns her into a spider, with a sentence on her and all her descendants to go on hanging; as a spider, Arachne works at her web as before (Henry T. Riley’s translation).
Spider Woman and Diné weaving
In Diné (Navajo) tradition, as the weaver Barbara Teller Ornelas relates it, Spider Woman (Na’ashjéii Asdzáá) brought the gift of weaving to the Diné. She went to each of the four sacred mountains for what she needed: wood from Blanca Peak for her husband, Spider Man, to build a loom, plants for dyes from Mount Taylor, patterns from the thunder gods on the San Francisco Peaks, and the prayers of weaving at Hesperus Mountain. The Bard Graduate Center’s exhibition Shaped by the Loom calls her a grandmother, teacher and guide to the Diné, and weaving a way of keeping hózhó, harmony and balance, in daily life. Many looms and tools are still made by men and passed down from weaver to weaver, keeping the teachings of Spider Woman and Spider Man.
The Water Spider who brought fire
In a Cherokee story James Mooney recorded in Myths of the Cherokee (1900), the world had no fire until the Thunders put it into a hollow sycamore on an island. The raven, the owls and the snakes all tried to fetch it and came back scorched. Then the Water Spider spun a thread from her body, wove it into a tusti bowl and carried a coal back in it, “and ever since we have had fire, and the Water Spider still keeps her tusti bowl.”
Anansi
Anansi, the spider, is the trickster hero of the Jamaican animal stories Martha Warren Beckwith collected in 1924, and she calls him the culture hero of the Gold Coast, “a kind of god”. Anansi stories were told on wake nights, and a head-man on a Westmoreland cattle-pen assured her that Anansi, once a man, was now leader of the dead. One of her stories ends: “So never kill a Spider, as whatever you have in hand will be sure to break.”
Robert the Bruce and the spider
Walter Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather (1828) tells how Robert the Bruce, in hiding and close to giving up, watched a spider try six times to swing its thread from one beam to another, as he had fought six battles against the English. He resolved to be guided by the spider; it succeeded on the next try, and so did he. Scott had met people named Bruce who would not kill a spider on any account because of the story.
What a spider on you is said to mean
In Berkshire, Elizabeth Mary Wright recorded in 1913, the rhyme ran “If you wish to live and thrive Let the spider run alive”, and a little red spider should be put in your pocket, because it means money. Some spared cobwebs in the belief that a web hid Jesus in the manger from Herod’s messengers. In Kentucky, Daniel and Lucy Thomas recorded in 1920, people held that a spider crawling on you brings good luck and that killing it brings bad; one that comes down in front of your face means a letter, unless you kill it; and a spider on a bride’s trousseau is good luck.
Related animals
The English belief that spares the spider spares the Ladybug symbolism too.
See also
Ladybug symbolism, Spider and web, Dreamcatcher, Butterfly symbolism, Dragonfly symbolism, Moth symbolism.
Sources
- Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 3 (John Brand, ed. Henry Ellis, 1853), John Brand, Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, arranged and revised by Sir Henry Ellis, vol. 3 (London: Bohn, 1853), Internet Archive (University of Toronto copy), Spiders, Snakes, Emmets, &c., pp. 223–224
- Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore (Elizabeth Mary Wright, 1913), Elizabeth Mary Wright, Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore (London: Oxford University Press, 1913), Project Gutenberg, chapter on superstitions
- Kentucky Superstitions (Daniel Lindsay Thomas and Lucy Blayney Thomas, 1920), Daniel Lindsay Thomas and Lucy Blayney Thomas, Kentucky Superstitions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1920), Internet Archive (University of Toronto copy), nos. 3730–3753
- The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I–VII, Book VI, Fable I, translated by Henry T. Riley, Project Gutenberg
- Spider Woman and the Role of Diné Women (Shaped by the Loom, Bard Graduate Center), Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest, exhibition, Bard Graduate Center Gallery, Bard Graduate Center
- Myths of the Cherokee (James Mooney, 1900), James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee, Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, part 1, Project Gutenberg, Myths, no. 2, The First Fire
- Jamaica Anansi Stories (Martha Warren Beckwith, 1924), Martha Warren Beckwith, Jamaica Anansi Stories, Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society 17 (New York, 1924), Project Gutenberg, introduction; story 44
- Tales of a Grandfather (Sir Walter Scott, 1828), Sir Walter Scott, The Tales of a Grandfather, new edition with an introduction by F. W. Farrar (1888), Internet Archive (University of Toronto copy), chapter VIII
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Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research