The Fable of Arachne, by Velazquez

Did the pantheon of immortals over the ages create mortals, or did mortals create the immortals?  Did the gods imbue humans with emotional characteristics reflecting their own, or is the reverse true, that mortals, in attempting to reach plausible explanations for the mysterious and terrifying aspects of nature and human interaction with nature, create faith in immortals?

In any event, it is the human creation of the myths of the immortals as manipulating all that occurs that many attribute to science and nature, powerful beings that look down on the activities of mere humans, that has left us with literature that is truly fascinating at a corner of humankind's emotional needs to reassure us in a world that seems at times threatening and fearful.  

Attributing occurrences both wonderful and strange to beings susceptible to emotions similar to ours seems to give them an aura of fallibility and occasional kindness to humans despite their status as representing the all-powerful.  

We live with our illusions; nature herself is universal, omnipotent and neutral.  The gods, by contrast, can sometimes be viewed as sympathetic to frail humanity, aping them in so many ways.

On the other hand, they are portrayed in ancient Greek legend as temperamentally egotistical, sharing the frail emotional faults and insecurities of the humans who imagined them into being, whom even the rationally brilliant Greek philosophers retained faith in.  Fearing their tempestuously jealous relationship both to one another up above, in their divine realms, and down below, with humans.

The egotistical jealousy of a goddess invoked when she was made aware of a weaving talent not only matching her own renown, but outdistancing it, ensured that a young and artistically outstanding talent was removed from competition as a human, transformed into a spider where she was permitted to continue weaving her tensile-strength, creatively beautiful, enchanting silk webs.

My husband, noticing a minuscule spider had built an equally-small and perfect web on an outside corner of one our windows, and seeing a number of tiny flies caught in its web, offered a gift to the tiny arachnid this morning, a fly that had ventured into our house.  The flies we consider expandable, since they are capable of carrying disease, whereas spiders are known for their clean-living habits, making short work of pests.