page_title: Cultural depictions of spiders
section_title: In philosophy
hierarchical_section_title: Cultural depictions of spiders / In philosophy
caption_attribution_description: العربية: قطراتُ ندى على شبكة عنكبوت خلال الصباح. English: Dew on a spider's web in the morning. Français&#160;: Rosée sur une toile d'araignée au levé du soleil. Русский: Утренняя роса на паутине.
context_page_description: Throughout history, spiders have been depicted in popular culture, mythology and in symbolism. From Greek mythology to African folklore, the spider has been used to represent a variety of things, and endures into the present day with characters such as Shelob from The Lord of the Rings and Spider-Man from the eponymous comic series. It is also a symbol of mischief and malice for its toxic venom and the slow death it causes, which is often seen as a curse. In addition, the spider has inspired creations from an ancient geoglyph to a modern steampunk spectacle. Spiders have been the focus of fears, stories and mythologies of various cultures for centuries.
  The spider has symbolized patience and persistence due to its hunting technique of setting webs and waiting for its prey to become ensnared. Numerous cultures attribute the spider's ability to spin webs with the origin of spinning, textile weaving, basket weaving, knotwork and net making. Spiders are associated with creation myths because they seem to weave their own artistic worlds.
context_section_description: Imagine a multidimensional spider's web
    in the early morning covered with dew drops.
  And every dew drop contains the reflection
    of all the other dew drops.
  —And so ad infinitum.
  That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image.
  — Alan Watts, Following The Middle Way
  In the Vedic philosophy of India, the spider is depicted as hiding the ultimate reality with the veils of illusion. Indra's net is used as a metaphor for the Buddhist concept of interpenetration, which holds that all phenomena are intimately connected. Indra's net has a multifaceted jewel at each vertex, and each jewel is reflected in all of the other jewels.
  As related in the book, Vermeer's Hat by historian Timothy Brook:
  When Indra fashioned the world, he made it as a web, and at every knot in the web is tied a pearl. Everything that exists, or has ever existed, every idea that can be thought about, every datum that is true—every dharma, in the language of Indian philosophy—is a pearl in Indra's net. Not only is every pearl tied to every other pearl by virtue of the web on which they hang, but on the surface of every pearl is reflected every other jewel on the net. Everything that exists in Indra's web implies all else that exists.
caption: Morning dew on a spider's web
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