Anansi

For this week's episode, we're heading over to West Africa and the Caribbean for a legendary folklore monster/god, Anansi! How does this spider hybrid relate to the slave trade? Why is he so relatable as a dad? Find out this week!

Transcript

INTRO:
Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythical monsters from around the world. 

These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and their big adventures.

I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these absolute legends of the mythological world.

Spring is well and truly here, it’s been a beautiful week here in the UK with the sun shining. I certainly hope you’re getting the springtime vibes now, although I can’t say that this week’s monster is particularly linked to that - I’m making typical British weather conversation, okay?!

Thank you to everyone who got in touch last week after my sad news, I really appreciate the support and love! Typically, I’ve had even more bad luck and managed to cut off the tip of one of my fingers with a new set of kitchen knives and give myself an intestinal infection which I’m currently battling - so the weather has been a literal hopeful light this week.

DESCRIPTION:

For this episode's monster though, we’re heading somewhere super warm and going over to West Africa and the Caribbean for a legendary monster/god, depending on what stories you follow of him, the epic spider storyteller, Anansi.

Anansi is generally described as either a small spider, or sometimes a typical man - his form kind of depends on the story that he’s telling or starring in, but in his spider form, he usually has a human element to him, such as his head or even sometimes his torso, on a spider body. Nightmare fuel in all honesty. In his human form, he typically has some form of spider nod, such as having spidery legs coming out of his sides or his shoulders or even within his hair. 

He’s usually spotted wearing a bag, which he carries all of his wisdom within, but you’d be lucky to find him in general due to his size. In his normal human form, he is a smaller man - however, in spider form he is the same size as an average tarantula, so I guess you’d have to look out for a tarantula with a bag on which I think would be pretty easy in a spider line up.

Anansi is typically described as a trickster, and sometimes even as a god. Much like Loki from Norse mythology, Anansi’s greatest power is trickery, intelligence and deception but he’s also the god of storytelling, both kind of sit hand in hand with each other. He’s very good at telling stories to influence and manipulate, which can make him both a good and a bad guy, depending on what mood you get him in. 

He is also a keeper of knowledge and often considered too as a god of wisdom. He’s obtained this title through using those manipulations, wit and negotiation skills to outwit people like kings, other gods and monsters alike. Like some of his fellow Caribbean gods, he’s also fond of a deal and using bargaining to get what he wants at the expense of others. 

As well as this, he does have some general powers, such as shape shifting between his human and spider forms, and changing the size of himself in those forms to either slink away unnoticed or intimidate others by being a massive spider I guess. When he’s a spider, he’s also able to weave webs, and depending on what size he is, they can trap bigger prey. Whilst he doesn’t tend to eat the people trapped in them, he can mentally weave a web with his stories or ensnare their destinies, thoughts and fates.

Speaking of all things mystical, it’s also said that he has control of the flow of time within his stories, and is able to control the course of events and make things unfold in the way he wants them to, rather than how they’re supposed to be. Because of this, he’s also able to control the environment in these too, such as controlling the weather or influencing animals, which he can also communicate with and control, so he is quite a powerful guy.

If he is indeed a god, which is debated - he’s also immortal, but it’s also thought that maybe he’s just very good at getting away from potential death and always finds a way to come back. In terms of his eating, he eats like a normal bloke and a normal spider, and dabbles in both menus. 

He’s also not alone, he’s got a family which never happens in our monster tales. He has a supposed long suffering wife, Okonore Yaa and four children, 3 sons and a beautiful daughter. I won’t attempt their names because they are very complex to pronounce and I don’t want to butcher them, but there are a couple of stories about Anansi’s children in folklore too. 

ORIGIN:

Onto etymology, the word Anansi is from the Akan language, which is from Ghana in Africa, and it very literally translates into spider. He does have some other names though, such as Kwaku Ananse, Nanzi, Anancy, Aunty Nancy or Sis Nancy. But all of them really translate to the same thing, Anansi equals spider.

Now his history is unfortunately very hazy. We know he comes from West Africa, specifically from Ghana, but much like many folklore creatures, we don’t have a time span on when they came into being. This is usually because these stories were just spread through word of mouth, and writing down this kind of thing just didn’t happen, let alone thinking of preserving them until modern day, which Ghana also did not historically have the facilities to do so.

But what we do know about Anansi has been carried through the years through word of mouth from Ghana and the rest of West Africa, but because of the slave trade, many Africans were taken to the US and the Caribbean, and Anansi also became a part of their history and folklore too, with some minor geographical adaptations. This is why this is considered an African-Caribbean myth monster, because it traversed the seas with the slaves who brought this to new nations and cherished it as a celebration of the old world they were stolen from.

Because of this, the earliest texts we have on Anansi are from the 1900’s, when William Barker, an American missionary, collected stories from slaves in 1917 for his book West African Folktales. That was followed by the British anthropologist Robert Rattray in the 1930’s who travelled to Ghana and listened to stories directly from the Akan Ashanti people - but of course, we believe he’s been around much longer than this too.

But I also want to tell you about the stories around Anansi that make him so famous. These are known as Anansi stories or Spider Tales, and there’s actually a story around why that is, so we’ll kick off with that one - this is called How the Sky God Stories came to be known as Spider Stories. 

Anansi wanted to own stories as a thing, and so he went to the Sky God, Nyame, who said he could have them if he could capture four creatures for him, a python, hornets, a leopard and a fairy. Anansi agreed and actually threw his mum in as part of the deal, and went off to get the creatures. 

He approached the python first, and tricked him into comparing his length to a tree branch and whilst he was distracted, Anansi strangled him with webbing. Next, the hornets - he threw water at them, which made them think it was raining and they flew into the nearest shelter, a carved out gourd that Anansi was holding, which he sealed up. 

The leopard was probably the most simple, he dug out a pit outside of the leopard’s lair, and once the leopard fell in, he offered to help pull it up, but stabbed him in the head instead. Lastly, with the fairy, he carves a doll called an Akua child and lathers it in tree sap - the fairy then attempts to take the idol, but is stuck in the sap and Anansi takes her to the Sky God. As a reward, he not only gives Anansi his stories, but the complete power and ownership of them - making them now Spider Stories. 

One of these spider stories is How Wisdom came into the world. In this one, Anansi is seen as a godly figure and the human race had done something, we don’t exactly know what, to offend Anansi. He decides to punish them by gathering all of the wisdom that he had shared with them and sealed it in a bag. He then tied the bag around his neck and went into the jungle to hide it in a tree - however, halfway up the tree, he realised that he was really struggling and the bag kept swinging in the way. His son then approached, who’d been watching his dad struggle for a while, as you should always do, and suggested that Anansi put the bag on his back instead so it didn’t get in the way of his climbing.

He realised in that moment that all of his wisdom was definitely in the bag and even his son had more than him right now, so in anger he threw the bag to the floor and his wisdom spread across the world for mankind to use. Hilarious story about how dads are super stubborn I think, I can definitely see my dad doing exactly this.

Now there are plenty more Spider stories, but I won’t read them all out to you - there’s a taste of just two of them, but there are recorded to be up to a 100 spider stories out there - so if I’ve peaked your interest, I’ve popped in some book recommendations on where you can read more later. 

Spiders are obviously heavily linked to storytelling within folklore, but also in general. We’ve all heard the phrase web of lies, or you’ve been caught in someone’s web of deceit - and most of these sayings come from the idea of folklore spiders weaving deception and manipulation. Spiders are typically small, but mighty and they truly represent the tongue being mightier than the sword, and Anansi is no different. There’s no record of him being physically violent with his body, he was just very good at words. 

Anansi is also a beloved and legendary monster, he’s immensely popular within modern media and there’s even an Anansy Festival which was setup to celebrate Caribbean children’s roots in Africa, when their ancestors were displaced by slavery. This has been running since 2007 all over the world, and celebrates art, song, dance, book readings and stories around these ancestral links all coming together. 

Now there is technically a direct mythical comparison this week, which is the Br’er Rabbit, who is an African-American folklore critter, which you might know from Disney’s Song of the South. This trickster figure was directly inspired by Anansi, although in one of the spider stories, he does meet a trickster rabbit called Asante-Twi that he might also take inspiration from. The Br’er Rabbit is suggested by scholars to also represent enslaved Africans in America and the Caribbean who use wits to get their own back on their owners and sometimes their revenge too - making him and Anansi in turn, kind of folk heroes. 

The mystical spider is also used in other folktales across the world, such as the Spider Grandmother and the Iktomi from Native American folklore - the former offering guidance and protection, and the other being a trickster like Anansi. We also have the Jorogumo and Tsuchigumo from Japanese folklore, both of which are horrifying monsters who just really love to eat people. 

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: 

Now onto modern media, there’s a hefty bit for this monster surprisingly - so I’ve included everything and not added any filler bits in here this week.

For art, there’s not much here I’m afraid - all I can recommend is Illustration of Anansi by Pamela Colman Smith from 1899 or the Anansi puppet from the Puerto Rican puppeteer, Tere Marichal which was used in a TV show back in the late 80’s called La Casa de Maria Chuzema. Otherwise, there are some really cool independent illustrations around this monster, so do have a look around!

In movies, we have; Anancy Turns Over A New Leaf, Anancy's Healthy Diet, Kwaku Ananse & Anansi the Spider.

For TV, we have; Anansi Boys, Anansi, Gargoyles, We All Have Tales, Static Shock, Sesame Street, Anancy the Spider, La Casa de Maria Chuzema, American Gods, Wishbone, Legend Quest, Superstition & Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir.

In video games, we have ones such as; Spider-Man Unlimited, Pandora’s Box, Civilisation 6, Shivers, Persona: Ascend, Shin Megami Tensei, Kwaku Anansi, MechWarrior Online & MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. There’s also a card game called Anansi which won a load of awards!

A worthy shout out is that Anansi is a Marvel superhero, supposedly the first ever Spiderman, and I have to shout out the Brit-punk band Skunk Ananse, who are just legendary within British music culture, and got their name from the monster himself, but made it more metal.

My book recommendations this week are African and Caribbean Folktales, Myths and Legends by Wendy Shearer for all things in these mythologies or for Anansi himself, have a look at Anansi The Trickster Spider by Lynne Garner or Anansi: New & Ancient African Tales by Various Authors.

If you have kiddos, there are a few kids books specifically too like Anansi and the Golden Pot by Taiye Salasi and Tinuke Fagborun, Anansi and Rabbit: The Moss-Covered Rock Story by Al Campbell or Anansi the Clever Spider by Susie Linn.

DO I THINK THEY EXISTED? 

Now it’s time for, do I think they existed?

It’s a tricky one this week, because again, it kind of tip-toes around god territory and I would never want to declare that a god exists or doesn’t - that truly depends on what you believe as an individual in my eyes. It’s not down to me to spread what I think about belief in any system - but for this monster/god, I’ll take him out of the god context.

Honestly, I think something like Anansi could exist within our universe - we’ve all seen Charlotte’s Web haven’t we?! Whilst spiders are gross and have too many legs and eyes, the fascination with them is something that humans have had for a long time - and the link to weaving webs and spinning manipulations and stories is perfect for this kind of monster. 

The only thing stopping me from full on saying sure in this one is that he can shapeshift back and forth, which is something we don’t typically see within our universe - however, is maybe just something we’ve not been able to prove yet I guess. 

I didn’t know very much about Anansi before this, I’ve heard his name in passing and I understand so much now why he has the following and respect that he does. I believe he’s a folk hero, and an important grounding point for those who were stolen from their homes, and forced to make communities in a new place - thankfully with people who shared the same views on him, and I think that web is the best kind, the ones that bind us together as people. 

But what do you think? Did Anansi cause mischief and spread stories across Africa, the US and the Caribbean? Let me know on social media!

OUTRO: 

I really enjoyed covering this one - and almost all of this year's monsters were suggestions from you, my lovely listeners. This one was from RebenaHana on Twitter, and I couldn’t find the recommendation from last week til after, but the Rokurokubi was sent in by Sam Gluckman on Spotify comments! 

I love covering recommended monsters, and I’ll be sure to shout you out if you do ping one through, so keep them coming!

Next week, we’re heading over to Ancient Greece and Rome for the first time this year and looking at a fan favourite, the lovely ladies of nature, the Dryads! Come bring your best gardening set next Thursday for these gorgeous nature spirits.

For now, thank you so much for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on - I’ve got loads of social media for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you. The social media handles for Tiktok, YouTube and Instagram are mythmonsterspodcast, and twitter is mythmonsterspod and I’m now also on BlueSky under mythmonsters. But all of our content can be found at mythmonsters.co.uk, and you can also find us on Goodpods, Buymeacoffee and Patreon if you want to help me fund the podcast too.

Come join the fun though and share this with your pals, they might love me as much as you do.

But for now, stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.