We of the weave.

November 2024

“But who weaves with warp and woof into this untearable texture, the endless, ever-repeating interlacings of the ages? Whose warp and woof, whose hand at the loom, and whose foot in the treadle?”

Dear Friends

In this epic moment from Moby-Dick, Ishmael stands beside his ‘wild twin’ Queequeg weaving a sword mat—used on whaling ships to protect from heavy impacts. He contemplates the invisible forces that shape life’s events and suggests that we are not merely caught like a fly in an indifferent, predestined web, but that a divine hand is at work on the cosmic loom.

Few symbols in myth are as rich as the thread and the weave. Across cultures, they have served as metaphors for the pattern of life, where destiny is spun and fates intertwine.

Even the Sanskrit word tantra aligns closely with the concept of weaving. Each thread woven in the loom of tantra—whether it is a practice, symbol, mantra or meditation—serves as a vital part of the whole, creating a tapestry that reveals the unity underlying all existence.

In Greek mythology, Clotho, the spinner, is one of the three Moirai, or Fates, alongside her sisters—Lachesis, who measures the thread, and Atropos, who cuts it. When a person is born, it is Clotho who provides the thread, setting the course of life from her spindle, and weaving it into the larger fabric of existence. Her thread is both fragile and enduring, symbolising the delicate yet resilient nature of life.

I find myself particularly drawn to Arachne, the young weaver who challenged the gods, and Ariadne, the Cretan princess whose golden thread guided Theseus through the darkness of the labyrinth. Though separated by kin and kingdom, their stories are inextricably woven together.

Let us begin in the ancient town of Colophon—which means, rather poetically, an inscription at the end—there lived a young girl named Arachne. Though her birth was neither noble nor divine, her deftness at the loom was a gift that seemed to surpass all mortal skill. Arachne’s fingers danced upon the shuttle, creating tapestries that shimmered with a brilliance that might even give the gods pause to wonder. She captured rivers sparkling in sunlight, dawn spreading its blush over olive trees, mountains glowing with the day’s first light—wondrous worlds conjured in silk and colour.

Word of Arachne’s gift spread far and wide, and people flocked to see her, but despite the admiration, she remained grounded in her discipline. Yet there came a day when a momentary hubris overcame her. When asked how she had come by such skill, she laughed and said that it was not from any god but by her own hands—hands that could surpass even Athena, the goddess of craft and protectress of weavers.

Now, if there is one thing the gods will not abide, it’s a mortal claiming to better them. Enraged, Athena disguised herself as an old woman—a mere peasant, eyes glinting beneath a frayed hood—and paid her a visit. When Arachne declared her talents her own and not gifted by Athena, the goddess cast off her disguise and issued a challenge: they would weave, side by side, and let the thread decide.

On a borrowed loom, Athena wove the gods in all their glory: Zeus with his thunderbolt, Poseidon raising the seas, Demeter breathing life into the crops. Every thread gleamed as though plucked from sunlight itself.

Arachne was unshaken. Daring to mock the gods, she began weaving tales of Zeus’s scandalous trysts, capturing each deception with piercing wit and searing honesty. As the last thread was woven, Athena looked upon Arachne’s work and felt something unfamiliar—a pang of envy. In a flash of fury, she stood and tore Arachne’s tapestry to shreds, scattering it to the four winds, and cursed her to a life forever weaving. Arachne’s fingers shrivelled, her legs multiplied, and she became spider.

From that day on, Arachne has spun in the shadows, tracing delicate patterns in the corner of darkened rooms. Her webs, those delicate threads of truth and beauty glinting with dew in the morning light, have become the silent signature of the girl who dared challenge the gods.

The spider's web is a tuning fork of subtle vibrations,
Harmonies in the balance of chaos and cosmos.

A world away (or sew it seams) lived Ariadne, daughter of King Minos and Pasiphaë of Crete. Her mother’s accursed love for a divine white bull from the depths of the ocean—the white whale, perhaps?—had been bizarrely consummated to produce the minotaur, Ariadne’s half-blood brother hidden deep in a labyrinth designed by the master craftsman Daedalus to keep him contained.

Ariadne’s life was bound by duty and dread, every thread of her existence pulled tight by her family’s dark secret, until a prince named Theseus, who was sent from Athens as a sacrifice to the minotaur, stirred something within her heart.

Ariadne slipped Theseus a clew of golden thread that would guide him through the labyrinth. He entered with the thread unfurling in his wake, eventually slaying the beast within. Following Ariadne’s thread he found his way back, and together they fled Crete. Yet fate would twist once again, as on the shores of Naxos, Theseus abandoned her as she slept.

Ariadne’s cries of despair echoed across the island, catching the ear of the wild one, Dionysus. In a swirl of ivy and wine, he lifted her from the sand. Over time, she would become his queen, and when she passed from our mortal world, he cast her crown into the heavens, forming the constellation Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown seen in Spring and Summer skies.

Her journey—from the dank corridors of the labyrinth to the divine embrace of the stars—reminds us, as William Blake does, that even in darkness there is always a thread to follow:

I give you the end of a golden string;
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate,
Built in Jerusalem’s wall.

William Stafford’s words also come to mind—and a poem that found me during one of the lowest points in my life, offering a thread of eternal solace:

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

I like to imagine that the golden thread Ariadne gave Theseus was no ordinary hemp—but one woven by Arachne herself, with the power to guide and eternally bind us to the stars.

For both women, the loom and the thread is the compass by which they follow their north star. Arachne’s loom holds the warp of mortal pride and the woof of divine wrath, while Ariadne’s thread offers a lifeline in a world of blinding twists and turns. Their stories, interwoven with both grief and joy, cross and recross on the cosmic loom, weaving a pattern that reminds us of whole humanhood.

Asher, it’s always been this way.
Your attention is the centre.
The spider holds the rest
in her quivering, gossamer net.

In the hidden corners of temples and forgotten libraries, spiders have listened to every whispered word of these sisters of thread, weaving them into their own webs. Each is a descendant of Arachne herself, and no doubt an ancestor or two hitched a ride through the labyrinth, and even stowed away on The Pequod in search of Moby-Dick.

The world is a house where the spider weaves
And man dreams that he lives.

Dear reader, should you find a spider spinning nearby, don’t whisk her away too quickly. Be patient, for her quiet wisdom is a gift—then let your words be your weaving, your story spun in silk, binding past and future together.

Oceans of love.

Asher

References:
Melville, H. (1851) Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Blake, W. Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion. Written 1804–1820. Plate 77.
Stafford, W. (1998) The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press.

Notes:
There’s still time to join me and Leon Cossar on Saturday, November 9, at Gratitude for Old Teachers: Marking the 40th Anniversary of the Minnesota Men’s Conference.

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