It’s been said that some of our oldest myths are lodged in the human subconscious, surfacing to influence our behavior, our language and our cultural traditions. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.
Today, women in Southern Italy will gather to take part in an ancient rite, the legacy of a Greek myth. Claiming to have been bitten by a tarantula, they’ll fall into a deep trance from which the only cure is a ritual of dance and music. Telling us more is Allessandra Belloni, artist in residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.
“It goes back to the ancient myth of Arachnae which is the Greek myth of the first spider: a young princess who was a skilled weaver and condemned by the goddess Athena, out of jealousy, to become a spider and to hang from a tree and weave her spider web. At that time, in ancient Greece, a euphoric suicide mania happened among the young virgins of Athens. There is a recollection of them all trying to hang themselves. And it was believed that the only cure to that was by letting them free and celebrate these orgiastic rites in honor of the god Dionysus.”
“So this is crazy orgiastic rites, led by women, but with men participation, they died out in Greece, you cannot no longer find those celebrations. But they survived in the south Italy.”
As Christianity took hold in western Europe, the figure of Dionysus was replaced by St. Paul. Revered in the Bible as the healer of snake bites, St. Paul came to be known as a healer of spider bites as well. To this day, the ritual of the Spider takes place every year on the feast of St. Paul, June 21st.
Additional funding for Pulse of the Planet has been provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities. I’m Jim Metzner.