Yara Aranis and Other “Spiders” — What’s in a Name?

[mfbrandi]

  Your wish is my command (almost):

5 hours ago, davecake said:

On 5/24/2024 at 4:40 PM, mfbrandi said:

Perhaps the spell is unexpected, but surely not the association with spiders. The clue is in the name, no? Yara Aranis.

The name Aranis is not derived from the Latin Aranea, but from Sanskrit meaning 'the one turning around', which obviously makes so much sense. (I know this thread should be moved, but I don't know how to do that). 

So I foolishly thought “eight limbs, sounds a bit like ‘aranea’ -> spider!”

But as Davecake points out, we also have “arani: the one turning round”, which made me (knowing no Sanskrit) think “turning round -> spinning -> spinnen -> die Spinne -> spider”. But no such luck: more like a drill for making fire, also the sun, so Arachne Solara might almost have been Arachne Arani.

The Sanskrit for spider is, apparently, “markaṭa”, and although Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit are closely related, this may be modified loan word (for weaver, natch) from a non-IE language. But do I sound like I know what I am talking about? No, of course not!

Spinning, weaving, knot-making, knitting — all plausible sources for spider names, but what is the PIE for spider? I don’t know that, either. Anyone? 😉

[scott-martin]

Fulcanelli is dependably bizarre on this topic. I wonder if Arachne's "solara" is that sidereal sun, not the yelm of your fathers.

[mfbrandi]

For fire vs. spiders, see also the etymology of Loki (again)

[mfbrandi]

3 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

“Ariadne, the mystic spider”

Labyrinth as sticky web. Our girl’s motto: “mostly other people do the killing”. Weeping is harder to outsource. Help the hero, get dumped — do I see a pattern forming?

[davecake]

9 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

a drill for making fire, a

Also known as the Quail, the active part of the Pillar (the fire board is the eagle - cf Entekosiad pg 78), and symbolic of the role of Illuminated consciousness in the Pillar - which had become inactive after the death of Nysalor, and Yelm abandoning the work of higher consciousness, but restored by the Red Goddess (cf. Fortunate Succession, page 72). Hagu, now known as Natha's Well, where Vakare Addi was Illuminated and life rekindled in the Darkness, is known as Glorantha's Quail. So the firestick is at the heart of the Lunar mysteries. I think we might be onto something. 

[Ali the Helering]

Of course, in the Fortunate Succession she is described as 'a multiple limbed thing that stalked like a spider', is depicted as having six arms and two legs, so I think reading Aranis as a form of Aranea is quite forgivable🤣

[Ynneadwraith]

Nysalor as Prometheus, giving the power of the gods (illumination) to mortals, and being punished for it?

What does it say that later, Yelm (Zeus*), himself acknowledges Prometheus as having done the right thing (admits that he himself is illuminated)? It's a little more overt than what Zeus did (not necessarily punish his son Heracles when he freed Big P).

*I'd always thought Zeus was more Orlanth in his behaviour, but fills the role of 'chief god' in this instance.

1 minute ago, Ali the Helering said:

Of course, in the Fortunate Succession she is described as 'a multiple limbed thing that stalked like a spider', is depicted as having six arms and two legs, so I think reading Aranis as a form of Aranea is quite forgivable🤣

Perhaps I watch too much scifi but that scene in The Thing with Norris' head came to mind (don't google if you're squeamish, though it is a fantastic film).

I suppose the vision you receive depends on where you are standing, within the Glowline or somewhere with a bit more ozone in the air...

[Ali the Helering]

Just to confuse matters there are species defined as Araneas (the n should carry a tilde, but I don't know how to insert one!) and the Portuguese as Aranhas.

Given Greg's love of Latin America I think he might have included them in his reasoning...

[mfbrandi]

11 hours ago, Ynneadwraith said:

Nysalor as Prometheus

Uncle ZZ as the yarrow stalk.

Spoiler

The tricksters’ “our riddles and fire stealing are completely different” — are we still buying it if the Shiny One is Prometheus?

[davecake]

21 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

Of course, in the Fortunate Succession she is described as 'a multiple limbed thing that stalked like a spider', is depicted as having six arms and two legs, so I think reading Aranis as a form of Aranea is quite forgivable🤣

I think it's quite forgivable, and probably some Gloranthans feel the same way, I'm just not sure it is correct. 

I object to Yara Aranis being given the Spiderlimbs spell (rather than Sprout Limbs, as she was in the preview) mostly because she is always consistently described as having six arms and two legs - not 4 arms and 4 legs. Even 4 arms and 2 legs is better (her worshipppers get only a portion of her mightiness is fine). And of course she is the demon daughter of Gorgorma

It seems more a physical expression of her symbolic power, and grasping/reaching nature, in typical Hindu style, to me. But then, its not shared by other gods, who normally have the normal number of arms, 

21 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

Just to confuse matters there are species defined as Araneas (the n should carry a tilde, but I don't know how to insert one!) and the Portuguese as Aranhas.

Given Greg's love of Latin America I think he might have included them in his reasoning...

That is spider in a couple of european languages that also get the word etymologically from Aranea in Latin. Aranea, though a direct Latin word, is definitely associated with Spiders in Glorantha - obviously it is the name of the Spider Goddess, and also the pseudo-Latin name for spiders given in the Gloranthan Bestiary, from which, if I was really going to get into the classic fannish extrapolation mode, I would say that the known name of the spider goddess is given in Western, and most of her actual worshippers probably call her something else, possibly not pronounceable by humans, because they speak either Darktongue or whatever spiders speak. I generally take the Latin/psuedo-Latin taxonomy as indicating taxonomy is in Western, in a sort of hand wavy way - obviously actual Gloranthan taxonomy should have very little to do with our biological taxonomy or Latin, horses being birds and all.

But my point is really that the name Aranis likely just coincidentally shares a couple of syllables with Aranea, and probably has nothing to do with spiders. Yara Aranis likely means something like strength or power or light of the one that turns? Extrapolating a lot because obviously I do not know Sanskrit, I don't think Yara is a word in Sanskrit as such, and while I do have a dictionary of Sanskrit terms from Indian philosophy it only gives me the firestick again. I do feel the firestick symbolism is very explicitly deep Lunar symbolism for Greg, so when we find a link to it, it is worth taking seriously, and to me is much richer and more appropriate than her just being a spider goddess, with whom she doesn't seem to share much except the number (if not type) of limbs. 

Note that the firestick symbolism is explicitly linked, through the reference to Hagu as the Quail/firestick of Glorantha, to myths involving Natha and Gerra, and other Spolite myths of the ancient Lunar goddesses - which link it with Gorgorma, the mother of Yara Aranis. And myths of the darkness and Death being the source of life and power, the necessity of human sacrifice, etc. 

[mfbrandi]

6 hours ago, davecake said:

I don't think Yara is a word in Sanskrit as such

In Persian (according to this, anyway), “Yara” is “power, capability, courage”, but in Uyghur, “sore, ulcer; wound, scar; pain, suffering” — all of those resonances are good for our girl, right? If we allow the slide Yara -> Gara, we get: in Sanskrit (see also this), “swallowing, poison”; in Marathi, “hailstone, flint, hole, pit, cold” — again, all good stuff. I don’t present these as scholarship, I am just trawling for cheap echoes.

In the Gloranthan context, I don’t really see the devouring female “monster” or “demon” — possibly venomous (“poison”) — who is a spinner with fire connections as being in tension with the spider reading. Wouldn’t we say all this of Arachne Solara, too? And she is supposed to have a “special relationship” with the RG, no? YA and the Bat are just “demonic” expressions or manifestations of the RG, right?

Now doubtless the twirled stick/pillar/drill is coded male and the “socket” it is turned in female. Sometimes the stick is a plough — Lodril? So is YA a reversal of tedious gender crap or does she just combine the rôles, male and female? I suggest likely the latter (after a fashion), but this is not necessarily an escape from toxic cliché: the monstrous female may be monstrous because she refuses to be confined to only one of the parts offered. And we know that in Glorantha, Giger’s alien is the perfect type of a perfect monster, even if it is wearing ungulate drag.°

Vagina dentata Gorgorma fits right in here — what “should” be passive is active. And don’t some tellings of the Ritual of the Net have the Devil being “consumed by every orifice”? And a woman who kills her sexual partners is a black widow, a spider.

So powerful goddesses in Glorantha often seem to scurry from a pretty dark, misogynistic place, expressing a horror of women I have never understood. The RG is a woman trying to break through the glass ceiling, right? And blokey Orlanth doesn’t want to let her join the club. Do we discard “women as demons” as having crawled out of the wrong bit of what can only jokingly be called the unconscious, or do we side with them? Or is it any of my business, at all?°° But “no, they are monsters, we must squish them” … err … doesn’t really seem to be a path anyone would want to walk.

 

——————————————————————
° The alien is a cigarette. ‘It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?’ — Oscar

°° ‘What can I do for the revolution?’ ‘Get out of the way.’ Where does that come from?

Edited May 29 by mfbrandi
added “after a fashion” — ’cos it is all a bit symbolic, innit?

[scott-martin]

27 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Sometimes the stick is a plough

Oh that's the other great '90s compendium of the bizarre.

One of the things I always really liked about the deep Pelandan and deep Arbennan lore was the way that the most inclusive shamanic practices unite the astronomical observations with the more personal tantra of the spinal cord: as above, so below, they are the same process. This precious insight then gets snatched away because the world is cruel.

If the yararanis demonstrates this kind of etymological basis (and I for one love it) then her modern imperial cult, like so many modern imperial things, starts to look somewhat debased, as though the magic people with the expertise to assemble her in the first place have since moved on and the secrets are unavailable to the people running the place now. But this is why the Pentan shamans with their heads swimming with big sky (Kate Bush reference) and stars fear that particular "spider." At some point she became the half of the revelation (what we would call the tantric half) that they abandoned, now it stalks them in the dark places. 

I'm reminded that the chastity religions of modern Dara Happa are nothing if not star religions.
 

[scott-martin]

7 hours ago, davecake said:

six arms and two legs - not 4 arms and 4 legs

This is undoubtedly part of her forbidden tantra when viewed from the horse rider perspective . . . compare to the sacred but "standard" hybrid configuration of the Nomad Gods ancestor counters or the conventional "beast with two backs" silhouette that emerges under certain conditions. Presumably with all those arms something is going on with her that at least bends normative marriage conventions and this might be especially horrible to the horse tribes of the Sheng era but I am unfamiliar with whatever they had instead of a kama sutra. 

But opening this up says strange things about strange phenomena (Kate Bush reference) of the broader Prax environment like the Cwim or the Watchdog: whose primal scenes are these and what do they represent? All I can surmise is that the heavy Carmanian plow never made it out that far. These are nomad countries.

[davecake]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Now doubtless the twirled stick/pillar/drill is coded male and the “socket” it is turned in female.

I've never noticed it to be so in a Gloranthan context. It is the quail, the quail deity is a goddess (the flat part is the eagle, and there are male eagle gods). 

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Wouldn’t we say all this of Arachne Solara, too?

No, she is explicitly a spider and has myths that involve spinning webs. 

 

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

And she is supposed to have a “special relationship” with the RG, no?

Yes. And it is a different relationship to the one Yara Aranis has - YA is connected to the Lunar way as daughter of the Emperor.

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

YA and the Bat are just “demonic” expressions or manifestations of the RG, right?

They both express the power of the Red Goddess in some ways, but both have their own separate history involving other powers. 

 

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

But “no, they are monsters, we must squish them”

Yes, which is why I'm not particularly keen on the spider imagery. Why do you feel 'Yara Aranea' should be regarded as a squishable non-human monster?

Edited May 29 by davecake

[scott-martin]

5 minutes ago, davecake said:

I've never noticed it to be so in a Gloranthan context. It is the quail, the quail deity is a goddess (the flat part is the eagle, and there are male eagle gods). 

The Entekosiad conflates many stick stories, drill stories and even a fire bow reference so I would be careful about gendering these experiences but by the time ViSaruDaran becomes Turos ownership of the stick has gotten a little more routine. Some of the girls might have focused more on the little bird, the board that flowers. And good for them!

What suddenly interests me about the yararanis cult now is the way she might be a reservoir of pelandan earth mysteries that did NOT make it into the state honeel cult. How exciting!

[Joerg]

9 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

The Entekosiad conflates many stick stories, drill stories and even a fire bow reference so I would be careful about gendering these experiences but by the time ViSaruDaran becomes Turos ownership of the stick has gotten a little more routine. Some of the girls might have focused more on the little bird, the board that flowers. And good for them!

The fire stick and the Addi may share the shape, but IMO the Addi does not represent the Axis Mundi (as the fire stick does) or any tool. It rather would be the most primal shape of a doll or votive figurine, a vessel to summon or at least represent the Goddess (MaElsor - Imarja or Glorantha).

The Firebow, while handily providing a 2-dimensional representation of the dome above the fuel, has the problem that it creates the heat/nascent Fire at the base of the axis rather than high up. Good for summoning the fire down to the humans (now Eurmal has opened the way for that), but rather counter-intuitive as a representation of the cosmos - you want the fire at or near the intersection with the bow, not downbelow. Application of the firebow might involve holding the firestick horizontally to get a few coils of the bow around the shaft, then let the Lodril side descend into the fuel and create friction to bring the flame down to the fuel. Copper Tablets 2 and 3 IIRC.

20 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

What suddenly interests me about the yararanis cult now is the way she might be a reservoir of pelandan earth mysteries that did NOT make it into the state honeel cult. How exciting!

To be honest, I see Yara Aranis as the newborn demigoddess sired by Takenegi under some personal sacrifice on Gorgorma. Dan Barker produced a gorgeous interior cover for the Reaching Moon Megacorp collection Wyrm's Footprints, a collection of the Gloranthan articles in Wyrm's Footnotes, which shows two re-enactors repeat Takenegi's ordeal as a dance. (Possibly a graduation rite for palace eunuchs?)

Her six-armed nature seems to be inherited from her paternal grandmother in her meditative stance, reduced to the fighting aspects and leaving out the blessings. While she may have adopted (or at least heroquested) the mutilation of Gamara, I would associate her more with the Arcos basin or her birthplace on (a branch of) the Oslir than with the West Reaches.

[mfbrandi]

50 minutes ago, davecake said:

Why do you feel 'Yara Aranea' should be regarded as a squishable non-human monster?

I don’t think that. I explicitly disparaged that: “we must squish them … doesn’t really seem to be a path anyone would want to walk.” More compactly and emphatically: no one should want to squish a spider (or spider-coded woman). Better?

55 minutes ago, davecake said:

… which is why I'm not particularly keen on the spider imagery.

Ah, but I love spiders, and I am happy to share my home with them. (I don’t live in Australia.) If I have a phobia, it is of dusting and hoovering lest I disturb them. It wouldn’t really occur to me that comparing someone to a spider was a bad thing.

Spider or not, YA is supposed to be scary like the Bat (but smarter?), no? Or is this just anti-Lunar propaganda:

• Criminals and rebels are sacrificed to feed Yara Aranis and maintain the Glowline;
  their tortured souls are bound forever to the temple as slaves and guardians.
  — Prosopaedia: Yara Aranis (PDF, pp. 137–138)

Imperial red is the red of blood, and being fed to the Empire’s demons is a form of damnation? But I am always happy for any interpretation to be trashed as despicable orthodoxy.

Again, I am a cheerleader for the spiders and the demons, not their would-be squisher. I just don’t make the move shouldn’t be squished -> not a spider.

[mfbrandi]

At least YA’s karaoke go-to is perfectly obvious:

• I’m the bitch you hated, filth infatuated
  I’m the pain you tasted, fell intoxicated
  I’m a fire starter, twisted fire starter

• I’m the self-inflicted mind detonator
  I’m the one infected, twisted animator
  I’m a fire starter, twisted fire starter

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

I would be careful about gendering these experiences

One of the other gara-related meanings that came up was “crucible” — I am happy to steal that for my ridiculous and pretentious »cough« doubleness thesis »cough«: YA as fire creator and fire container both. And when producing fire by friction, surely the heat is attributable to both parts of the fire-making kit, not just the twiddled or ploughing stick. I am no defender of gender norms, but we have sometimes to recognize that the “false consciousness” is out there, even if we don’t like it — Russ’s death-dealing binaries. (And if axis mundi = pillar = lingam, it is also a penis, whatever else it is.)

I guess we are all too sophisticated to mention “kindling” as having a part in Lunar religion, or that maybe the moon is red because it is on fire (like certain Lunar brains). Well, it turned out that I am not, but that is BAU, I am afraid.

@Joerg: Don’t we want fire — as Aether — to start in the Underworld, in the Heart of Darkness, and only later to ascend to the Sky? Of course, the Light Brigade might not like that, but the “truth” is likely down and dirty (“rarely pure and never simple”). Just ask Lodril.

[scott-martin]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

The fire stick and the Addi may share the shape, but IMO the Addi does not represent the Axis Mundi (as the fire stick does) or any tool. It rather would be the most primal shape of a doll or votive figurine, a vessel to summon or at least represent the Goddess (MaElsor - Imarja or Glorantha).

I love this. "Man" rune or the shape of the soul. But can that be the axis mundi also?

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Her six-armed nature seems to be inherited from her paternal grandmother in her meditative stance, reduced to the fighting aspects and leaving out the blessings. While she may have adopted (or at least heroquested) the mutilation of Gamara, I would associate her more with the Arcos basin or her birthplace on (a branch of) the Oslir than with the West Reaches.

I love this also. What is our history of the six-armed red goddess? The notion of a Gamara reenactment subverting the usual calculus of mutilation to collect extra limbs from the unwilling is genius. If they didn't do that at the beginning they probably do that now. (We saw the Furiosa movie, speaking of Australian wildlife.)

Going back I concede your point about looking too far west for sources . . . however, while the soul was conceived in the worst place in Sheng's cosmos and so would cosmologically have a steppe origin, the body (the "multiple limbed thing which stalked like a spider") emerged in upper Naveria in the shadow of Jernotius itself: Eel Country. Granted the modern empire recognizes her first house as Good Shore but calling it her "birthplace" is tricky to reconcile with the Fortunate Succession and probably a gloss to conceal secrets of state.

 

Edited May 29 by scott-martin

[Joerg]

11 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

@Joerg: Don’t we want fire — as Aether — to start in the Underworld, in the Heart of Darkness, and only later to ascend to the Sky? Of course, the Light Brigade might not like that, but the “truth” is likely down and dirty (“rarely pure and never simple”). Just ask Lodril.

Aether is the bow (as representation of the upper dome/hemisphere). He has started eons ago.

Lodril used to be up high, pure, and nothing special, until he did the dive (and the three thought-children of Aether diversified, probably alongside the final three castes of the Elder Mostali made by Mostal defining their metals brass, gold and silver).

28 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Going back I concede your point about looking too far west for sources . . . however, while the soul was conceived in the worst place in Sheng's cosmos and so would cosmologically have a steppe origin, the body (the "multiple limbed thing which stalked like a spider") emerged in upper Naveria in the shadow of Jernotius itself: Eel Country. Granted the modern empire recognizes her first house as Good Shore but calling it her "birthplace" is tricky to reconcile with the Fortunate Succession and probably a gloss to conceal secrets of state.

If I remember correctly, her first temple stands (to my great bafflement) on the edge of Glamour and doesn't extend beyond the Silver Shadow (the area already under roughly the same effect as the Glowline even when that breaks down). It is possible that this is something like a collector place, accumulating the moonglow that the other temples extend to the Glowline. To what extent does the Glowline trump the Silver Shadow effect?

[Ali the Helering]

10 hours ago, davecake said:

But my point is really that the name Aranis likely just coincidentally shares a couple of syllables with Aranea, and probably has nothing to do with spiders. Yara Aranis likely means something like strength or power or light of the one that turns? Extrapolating a lot because obviously I do not know Sanskrit, I don't think Yara is a word in Sanskrit as such, and while I do have a dictionary of Sanskrit terms from Indian philosophy it only gives me the firestick again.

I don't understand why you believe that she has nothing to do with spiders, given the explicit description in the FS.  Whilst I don't have any Sanskrit I too can do research, and there is no connection between Yara and firestick or turning that I can discover.  

Using the principle of Occam's razor, I see no basis for your position besides personal preference.  However, my personal preference is for the complex and the (unnecessarily?) varied, so YGWV!

[Ynneadwraith]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

The Firebow, while handily providing a 2-dimensional representation of the dome above the fuel, has the problem that it creates the heat/nascent Fire at the base of the axis rather than high up.

We understand that's how a firebow works, because we understand how friction works. For a Gloranthan, they may explain it as the bow creating a mythical representation of the Sky Dome, which then sends fire down the shaft (representing the sun's rays) to create fire in the temporal world (the base). In a Gloranthan context, that might actually be how it works.

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Ah, but I love spiders, and I am happy to share my home with them.

I knew there was a reason I liked you. That's one of the measures I use to judge someone's character by.

[Memestream]

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Again, I am a cheerleader for the spiders and the demons, not their would-be squisher. I just don’t make the move shouldn’t be squished -> not a spider.

That numinous moment when you see a roach crawling across the floor and realize that it exists unfettered by the apparent fact that every other denizen of reality is unanimously voting against it doing so.

 

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

the six-armed red goddess … collect[ing] extra limbs from the unwilling is genius.

And presumably as near canon as anything (see earrings on page 138 of the Prosopaedia). Jörg’s special sauce is making body part collection a practical act. YA as Frankenstein and monster both. The Empire has a place for the self-made spiderwoman.