Why did we select a phobia today? Let’s try to get to the answer through the story!!

Most of our generation has either read Harry Potter books or watched the movies and many, self included have done both… Most of the generation has been some way of the other been influenced by the stories. One of the scariest parts, if you remember, was the one scene where Aragog, a giant spider and Harry come face to face. And later an army of spiders attack Harry and Ron. Despite the fact that the spider is on the other side of a screen and that too animated, an irrational fear gripped me & that fear of Arachnids, specially spiders, is called arachnophobia. Let us now tell you the story of an extraordinarily talented weaver in Lydia (a part of the then Greece and now Turkey). Her talent in weaving was so immense that she could captivate anyone looking at her weave with her skills. It is rumoured that the silk would appear to originate right at her fingertips!! Now this lady was not only extremely talented but aware and proud of her talent, to the extent that she compared herself to gods and goddesses.

It is said that to teach her a lesson the goddess of war, craft and practical reason challenged her to weave better than Athena herself. To everyone’s surprise she agreed Athena’s challenge and both had woven such amazing and life like pieces that Even Athena was wonderstruck and bewildered!!

She however had depicted the vices of the gods and hence to teach her a lesson, Athena curses her to turn to a multieyed and multilimbed creature, a gigantic spider The name of the weaver was Arachnae and as a lesson Arachnae had a silk thread which would serve her as a reminder from her life as a human!!

The next time you see a spider try to think of Arachnae and how her skill has now become one of the most essential skills for the existence of a species, and to the ones afraid of spiders, I think we need to be afraid of Athena even more..!!

And this also goes on to show how mythology has been embedded in the language that we use everyday! Till the next episode keep finding such words and DM us on Insta with more such words that interest you and we may feature it in our next episode!

Namo Dheyam Eva Satyam!