Spinning Deities?

[HerbGurl]

:boing: I recently purchased a drop spindle to spin my own yarn with and I have been wondering about Deities that have a spinning wheel in their myths. I know about the Norns in Norse mythology and the Fates in Greek/Roman mythology with their use of a spinning wheel, but does anyone know of any other cultures that have myths involving one?
Thanks,
HerbGurl

[Twilight Garden]

Look up the mythology of Athene and Arachne. :)

[Lavender]

I was going to suggest that too! I think of Athene as the Goddess of knitters, spinners, weavers, & all things fabric. :D

Do you do a lot of spinning? There's an old spinning thread in Arts & Craft somewhere. I don't do much of it but a couple of Christmases ago, I spun enough wool to knit socks for presents for everyone.

[Mnemosyne]

I too immediately thought of the myth of Arachne and Athena. Other pantheons such as those of the Mayans and the Sumerians have weaving goddesses. In Sumerian mythology, the main weaving goddess in Uttu, the daughter of Enki. The Sumerians thought of Uttu as being a model wife, since she was good at weaving. If you want to learn about weaving goddesses from various mythologies, I would highly recommend learning about Uttu.

Perhaps you might think of this as being more connected with literature instead of mythology, but I really like the part of the Odyssey when Penelope is at her loom. Remember that she would weave all day and take out her work at night to dupe her suitors! Now Penelope is one of my favorite weavers in literature. What a clever woman! Happy spinning!

[BrightStar]

Hi all!
I was reading some stuff about Strega,and about Diana last night.In the myth,Diana the moon chases the Sun,Dianus/Lucifer.She finally turns into his cat,and has her way with him.He's upset when he realizes this.But Diana hums/sings for him.The sound is like bees buzzing,or the spinning of a top.This sound soothes him back to sleep,it's Diana's spell.The author(s) suggest that the spinning of a top is a metaphor for the spinning of the wheel,and Diana also rules the Wheel.
They may have mixed her up with the Fates,or the Moerae.
In it was a quote from Leland "She spun the lives of all men;all things were spun by the Wheel of Diana".
Peace and Love
BrightStar

[Nina]

... are real home-maker crafts (and how wonderful that you've got the patience - I'm a complete klutz with anything like that!!) how about Hestia, Greek Goddess of the home and hearth?? A bit of a stretch, perhaps...

[maya]

Herby, you amaze me with the things you can do. I wanted to add that even if there is not a lot of mythology related to spinning there are a lot of fairy tales which contain them. Sleeping Beauty and Rumplestiltskin (sp) are well known but there are a few Welsh tales do as well. One in particular was sort of the opposite of the sleeping beauty tale where a girl was trying to wake a prince. I guess what I'm getting around to is that even though I don't know of any associations that perhaps there are some with the Welsh pantheon. It's worth a look anyway.

~Maya

Edit: I found this link for you!

http://www.thorshof.org/spinmyth.htm

[maya]

I found more links as well:

http://kws.atlantia.sca.org/dieties.html
http://www.paivatar.com/AFA/library/aa01/aa021901.htm
http://realmagick.com/articles/80/180.html#credits
http://shanmonster.bla-bla.com/witch/deities/holda.html
http://home.no.net/hagalaz/tradition.htm


Most of the stuff about Holda actually follows what I was saying about fairy tales but it's Norse instead of Welsh. There are also several references to Bertha who is also a Norse goddess ;)

This link has some good info related to pagans and clothmaking/spinning:

http://www.danann.org/library/sochis/spin.html

[Lavender]

If you get a chance, check out a book called "The Knitting Goddess" by Deborah Bergman. Not only does it have great knitting projects but she has a beautiful story to go with each one. After reading through that book, you'll never look at knitting & spinning as anything but magical.

[TheTempestuous1]

Yeah, a third for Athena and Arachne! If you don't know the story.. Arachne is a mortal who thought she was the best weaver in the world. Then Athena (the goddess of wisdom and who taught spinning and weaving to young women) heard about it and came down to ath disguised as an old woman and talked to her about it, and advised her not to say such things, so she couldn't incur the gods displeasure. But she still insisted she was the best and said she would gladly challege athena, so athena changed back to herself and told her she would accept the challenge. Then as they wove, athena wove scenes of the gods displeasure to mortals, while athena wove them showing the gods weaknesses. Athena was furious not only because it made the gods look bad, but also because Arachne's was just as beautiful as Athena's. So Athena slashed Arachne's weaving to shreds and touched her forehead to make her feel shame. Arachne was so ashamed she hung herself with her threads. Athena took pity on her and didn't let her die but instead made her into a spider, weaving all the time. Well there it is, hope that helped! :)