Greek mythology: Story starts off with a woman and her next life as Spider
Arachne: Wild-eyed* mortal
Mortal woman with excellent weaving and embroidery skills.
Athena: Green-eyed* goddess
The greek goddess of wisdom and skill and elegance
Duel between the mortal and the goddess:
She boasted too loud about her skills as a weaver. She once even boasted that she is better than Athena.
Annoyed by her arrogance, Athena called out a duel and both wove.
Athena's work had God Poseidon and mortals as inferior beings to teach Arachne her place.
Arachne's work had the flaws of gods - illegitimate dirty playboy conquests of Zeus.
Spider-after-woman:
This insult and mockery angered Athena and she struck the work with her shuttle and tore it into pieces. And she touched Arachne's head and injected guilt and shame. Which made the mortal woman hung herself on a rope.
Curse:
To teach other mortals a lesson, Athena turned her into a spider. Till today the species Arachnida continues to hang on a thread and keeps weaving constantly and endlessly.
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Hindu mythology: Story starts off with a spider and it's next life as a King.
Chenkannan : Red-eyed king
Chenkannan - Chola King, his name literally means red-eyed king. This king in his previous life was a pious wide-eyed spider.
Spider: Wide-eyed* spider
Spider - ardent devotee of Lord Shiva. Daily it used to spin a web over Lingam (Idol of Shiva) under the Jambu tree to prevent it from getting soiled by falling leaves.
White elephant: open-eyed* elephant
And in same place another devotee of Shiva a white elephant lived too, which felt annoyed by the dirty web and cleaned the place to retain the holiness and adorned the linga with flowers.
Elephant clears the web and does puja and next day spider builds the web over the Linga to protect. This continued for sometime.
Duel between spider and the elephant:
The annoyed spider one day entered into trunk of the elephant and bit it hard, the pain and poison caused the elephant to die. The spider died as well when Elephant fell to death.
Lord Shiva was pleased by service of both the Elephant and the Spider.
Spider-before-man:
Lord Shiva gifted spider it's next life as a King.
Gifted curse:
Chenkannan built a huge temple for Lord Shiva in Thiruvanaikaval but the actual place of worship of Lord Shiva ie sanctum sanctorum would be small and is in basement level in contrast to the entire infrastructure of the temple.
Even in his next life as King he couldnt forget the feud with elephant and had to build the temple to prevent entry of elephants into Shiva's sanctum sanctorum ;-)
*wild-eyed - idealistic and unrealistic
*green-eyed - jealousy
*wide-eyed - childlike
*open-eyed - watchful
MORAL OF THE STORY:
Greek : You can take amour propre out of a mortal, but you cant take jealousy out of a goddess bitch.
Hindu : You can make a king out of a spider, but you cant take the spider out of the king.
Arachne: Wild-eyed
Mortal woman with excellent weaving and embroidery skills.
The greek goddess of wisdom and skill and elegance
Duel between the mortal and the goddess:
She boasted too loud about her skills as a weaver. She once even boasted that she is better than Athena.
Annoyed by her arrogance, Athena called out a duel and both wove.
Athena's work had God Poseidon and mortals as inferior beings to teach Arachne her place.
Spider-after-woman:
This insult and mockery angered Athena and she struck the work with her shuttle and tore it into pieces. And she touched Arachne's head and injected guilt and shame. Which made the mortal woman hung herself on a rope.
Curse:
To teach other mortals a lesson, Athena turned her into a spider. Till today the species Arachnida continues to hang on a thread and keeps weaving constantly and endlessly.
___________________________________________________________
Hindu mythology: Story starts off with a spider and it's next life as a King.
Chenkannan : Red-eyed king
Spider: Wide-eyed
Spider - ardent devotee of Lord Shiva. Daily it used to spin a web over Lingam (Idol of Shiva) under the Jambu tree to prevent it from getting soiled by falling leaves.
White elephant: open-eyed
And in same place another devotee of Shiva a white elephant lived too, which felt annoyed by the dirty web and cleaned the place to retain the holiness and adorned the linga with flowers.
Elephant clears the web and does puja and next day spider builds the web over the Linga to protect. This continued for sometime.
Duel between spider and the elephant:
The annoyed spider one day entered into trunk of the elephant and bit it hard, the pain and poison caused the elephant to die. The spider died as well when Elephant fell to death.
Lord Shiva was pleased by service of both the Elephant and the Spider.
Spider-before-man:
Gifted curse:
Chenkannan built a huge temple for Lord Shiva in Thiruvanaikaval but the actual place of worship of Lord Shiva ie sanctum sanctorum would be small and is in basement level in contrast to the entire infrastructure of the temple.
Even in his next life as King he couldnt forget the feud with elephant and had to build the temple to prevent entry of elephants into Shiva's sanctum sanctorum ;-)
*wild-eyed - idealistic and unrealistic
*green-eyed - jealousy
*wide-eyed - childlike
*open-eyed - watchful
MORAL OF THE STORY:
Greek : You can take amour propre out of a mortal, but you cant take jealousy out of a goddess bitch.
Hindu : You can make a king out of a spider, but you cant take the spider out of the king.
