Insects
INSECTS appear in mythology not only as the gods, often as the creators of the world, but also as messengers to the gods. They serve sometimes as the agents of creation and frequently function as symbols of the human soul. Moreover, some insects, such as cicadas, beetles, and scarabs, often symbolize rebirth, resurrection, or eternal life.
According to the Lengua, a South American tribe of the Gran Chaco, a god in the shape of a huge beetle created the world and peopled it with mighty spirits. He holds aloof, however, from his creation and is not invoked in prayer. The butterfly is often worshiped as a god, sometimes as the creator. In Madagascar and among the Naga of Manipur, some trace their ancestry to a butterfly. According to the Pima of North America, at the time of beginning the creator, Chiowotmahki, assumed the form of a butterfly and flew over the world until he found a suitable place for humankind.
It is, however, the spider that plays a prominent part in the myths of North American Indians; it appears as the creator (e.g., among the Sia Pueblo Indians) or culture hero, or at least as the trickster (among the Dakota Indians). The Jicarilla Apache believe that at the time of beginning, when creatures lived in the underworld, the spider spun a web in the hole leading up to the earth and, together with the fly, came up on it before the people emerged. The spider and the fly were told by the Holy Ones to make a web and extend it to the sky in order to bring down the sun. According to the Navajo, Spider Man and Spider Woman are supernatural beings who instructed their mythical ancestors in the art of weaving and established the four warnings of death. The spider is also conspicuous in West African myths. In some myths, he is creator of the world; in others, he plays the role of culture hero, as in the stories in which he steals the sun. However, his usual role is that of a crafty and cunning trickster who prospers by his wits.
In Hindu mythology, ants are compared to a series of Indras. One day Indra in his palace receives a visit from a boy dressed in rags, who is Viṣṇu in disguise. While the boy speaks of the innumerable Indras who people the innumerable universes, a procession of ants appears in the great hall of the palace. Noticing them, the boy suddenly stops and bursts into laughter. "What are you laughing at?" asks Indra. The boy replies, "I saw the ants, O Indra, filing in long parade. Each was once an Indra. Like you, by virtue of pious deeds each one ascended to the rank of a king of the gods. But now, through many rebirths, each has become again an ant. This army is an army of former Indras."
In West Africa, ants are often viewed as the high god's messengers. In the Romanian creation myth, the bee serves as God's messenger. It also helps God to complete his creation with advice that it overhears from the hedgehog. Although the angry hedgehog puts a curse on it, condemning it to eat only ordure, God blesses the bee so that the filth it eats may become honey.
The bee is still an important symbol in Islam. The Qurʾān explicitly mentions it as a model of an "inspired" animal, and both Muḥammad and, even more, ʿAlī are connected in folklore with the pious and useful bee. Honey becomes sweet, it is said, because the bees hum blessings for the Prophet as they go about their work.
In some earth-diver myths, which speak of the origin of the earth from the primordial waters, insects serve as agents of creation. According to the Garo of Assam, the goddess Nosta-Nōpantu was to carry out the work of creation on behalf of the god Tattaro-Robuga. To get a particle of soil from the bottom of the primeval ocean, she sent in turn a large crab, a small crab, and a dung beetle. Only the dung beetle succeeded in bringing up a little clay, and from this Nosta-Nōpantu formed the earth. The Semang Negritos of the Malay Peninsula (such as the Menik Kaien, Kintak Bong, and Kenta tribes) similarly believe that the earth was brought up from the primeval ocean by a dung beetle, although in this version the insect seems to have dived on its own initiative. Among the Shan of Burma, the divers are ants. In North America, too, insects are known as earth divers among the Cherokee. In contrast to earth-diver myths are stories that speak of the celestial origin of the earth—as in the Indonesian and Micronesian cosmogonies—and in these myths, too, insects play an important role. The Toba and the Batak of Sumatra, for example, have preserved the tradition that a swallow and a large dung beetle brought down a handful of earth from the sky.
While bees, ants, and dragonflies often symbolize the souls of the dead, the image of the butterfly as the human soul is widely diffused in Europe, Asia, and the Pacific islands. The early Greeks sometimes depicted the soul as a diminutive person with butterfly wings, and later as a butterfly. A similar belief was shared by the Romans. The Maori of New Zealand believe that the soul returns to earth after death as a butterfly, and in the Solomon Islands a dying person, who has a choice as to what he will become at death, often chooses to become a butterfly. In Japan, the motif has been incorporated into nō dramas, and in the world of Islam, it is one of the favorite images of Sufism: The moth that immolates itself in the candle flame is the soul losing itself in the divine fire.
The cicada, on account of its metamorphosis, was well known in ancient China as a symbol of rebirth or renewal of life. According to the Arawak of Guyana, at the time of beginning the creator came down to earth to see how humankind was getting along. But humans were so wicked that they tried to kill him; so he deprived them of eternal life and bestowed it instead on animals that renew their skin, such as serpents, lizards, and beetles. In ancient Egypt the scarab, a beetle of the Mediterranean region, was identified with the sun god Khepri and thus became a symbol both of the force that rolled the sun across the heavens and of the rising sun, self-generated. Scarab amulets made of green stone set in gold were placed over the heart of the dead during the funeral ceremony as a sign that just as the sun was reborn, so would the soul of the deceased be born again.
Insects are not always viewed as beneficent creatures. According to Northwest Coast Indians such as the Tlingit, the Haida, and the Tsimshian, mosquitoes are pests that originated from the ashes of an ogre's burned body. The same motif is found among the Ainu and in southern China. In Japanese mythology, spiders appear as a symbol of the evil forces that were subjugated by the heavenly gods before the imperial dynasty—and with it, Japan—was established.
Tricksters.
Bibliography
On insects playing a role in cosmogonic myths, see Mircea Eliade's Zalmoxis, the Vanishing God: Comparative Studies in the Religions and Folklore of Dacia and Eastern Europe (Chicago, 1972), pp. 76–130. See also Charles H. Long's Alpha: The Myths of Creation (New York, 1963), pp. 44ff. There is a fine study of scarab symbolism in the Greco-Roman world in Fish, Bread, and Wine, volume 5 of Erwin R. Goodenough's Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (New York, 1956), pp. 172ff. Schuyler Cammann discusses the symbolism of the cicada in his very useful essay "Types of Symbols in Chinese Art," in Studies in Chinese Thought, edited by Arthur F. Wright (Chicago, 1953). On the origin of mosquitoes, see Gudmund Hatt's Asiatic Influences in American Folklore (Copenhagen, 1949), pp. 89–90. On the Islamic symbolism of insects, there is an admirable study in Annemarie Schimmel's The Triumphal Sun: A Study of the Works of Jalaloddin Rumi, rev. ed. (London, 1980), pp. 108ff.
New Sources
Cherry, R. H. "Insects in the Mythology of Native Americans." Entomology 39 (1993): 16–21.
Gosling, David L. Religion and Ecology in India and Southeast Asia. New York, 2003.
Hoyt, Erich. The Earth Dwellers: Adventures in the Land of Ants. New York, 1996.
Hoyt, Erich, and Ted Schulz. Insect Lives: Stories of Mystery and Romance from a Hidden World. New York, 1999.
Lauck, Joanne Elizabeth. The Voice of the Infinite in the Small: Re-Visioning the Insect-Human Connection. Boston, 2002.
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