Spiders! Ooh, those little crawling webby creatures in a press-up position and often mistaken for being insects! Who doesn’t love their attractive movements? Watching them transition from one point to another is simply magical. It’s as if you are watching your own life evolve. As much as you would want to express your love for these air-breathing arthropods with eight legs, how well do you know them? Keep reading to learn more.

 

A brief history of spiders

The oldest spider known to mankind dates back 380 million years during the Devonian Period. That was about 150 million years before the emergence of dinosaurs. These have undergone several transitions over time due to evolution. For instance, a spider with an abdomen is recorded to have appeared 250 million years ago and is attributed to the development of maze webs to trap prey.

In the Jurassic period, characterized by dinosaurs roaming the earth, sophisticated spiders with aerial webs developed rapidly to capture flying insects. More evolution gave us the different types of spiders we know today, including cellar, hobo, daddy long legs, a black window, and wolf spiders.

 

Spider’s mythology and symbolism

From African folklore to Greek mythology, spiders have been used to represent various things. Some things, such as Spider-Man and The Lord of the Rings, endure today.

Besides, they symbolize malice and mischief due to their venom and slow death. For some, this is considered to be a curse. Additionally, they symbolize patience and persistence because of their hunting approach of setting webs and waiting to trap prey. Various cultures got inspiration from spider’s web-spinning to start textile weaving, net making, basket weaving, spinning, and knot work.

Moreover, spiders influenced the origin of creation myths since they create the impression that they weave their own artistic words. Some philosophers use the spider’s web as an analogy or metaphor. And in the modern world, the emergence of the Internet or the World Wide Web often refers back to the interconnectivity of the spider’s web.

The spider and its web appear in cosmology, oral traditions, artistic, spiritual depictions, and mythological fables. Ancient Egyptians associated their goddess Neith with the spider. The same link can be seen in the Greek Arachne and the Babylonian Ishtar.

In Ancient Greece and Rome, the spider has a central societal role. A myth is told of Arachne, the daughter of a famous purple wool dyer from the ancient Tyre. Arachne becomes adept with weaving and considers herself the greatest weaver, bigger than the goddess Athena. The two venture into a weaving competition in which Athena concedes to Arachne’s flawless skills. However, the goddess takes offence at the mortal’s pride and destroys her in a final moment of anger. Athena later takes pity on Arachne and brings her back to life as a spider. Since then, Arachne has been weaving her web.

 

These are all the colors so far, click on each to be taken to the products that contain that design:

Stone Purple	Stone Red	Stone	Bloody White Goth
Horror Beige	Horror Grey	Bloody Gothic Black	Bloody White
Steampunk	Cyan & Gold	Pastel Goth	Gore
Gold Black	Gold Red	Silver Black	Silver Red
Pastel Black	Aesthetic Pastel	Cream	Dark
Boho	Neon	Vaporwave

 

Process

Spiders are one of my top favorite animals along with snakes, foxes, bats and cats, it was time for a tribute!

The inspiration for this design is the combination of the unreal Spiny Orb Weaver from Florida, specifically the Spinybacked Orbweaver, where I saw them for the first time, and the Tarantula family, specifically the Gooty Sapphire Tarantula (or Peacock tarantula), which must be probably the most beautiful spider of all.