Anansi And The Gift Of Lies

Anansi the Spider is one of the most famous tricksters in all world mythology, he's also responsible for our most beloved stories and our most nefarious lies.

This week, lowered down from the rafters of the Library Of Found Things by a spider’s web, is the story of Anansi and how he brought stories to the world. And by ‘stories’, I mean lies.

The Story

Kwaku Anansi was the son of Nyame, the Great Sky God, and Asase Ya, Mother Earth. At that time, all was light. The Sun, Moon and Darkness itself were mere legends amongst the creatures Nyame had created and the Great God considered that to be just perfect.

Nyame spun the cosmos into creation by using the finest of spiderwebs, which he created himself. Like a great spider, he created his own cosmos from himself and he only took an interest in the affairs of Earth after he had fallen in love with the beautiful Asase Ya and she insisted on letting their son grow up among the animals and the humans in whom Nyame had no interest whatsoever.

There came a time when Nyame demanded that all the creatures he had created return to his great palace in the heavens to pay him tribute. A multitude beyond imagination of deities, demigods, spirits and planets themselves converged on the magnificent palace to pay their respects. Anansi was there too but he arrived troubled.

When Nyame saw Anansi in his human form, he called him up to his throne and asked why he looked the way he did. Anansi was young and had little to say other than that he liked humans and their form, so his mother stepped in and said, “Though his form comes from me, Nyame, his spirit is undoubtedly yours.” Nyame bristled at this. He considered himself unique in the cosmos, and he asked Anansi what gift he had brought as tribute.

“You created the universe and everything in it, Father. What could I possibly give you? In fact, I need something from you.”

The horde of onlookers were aghast at Anansi’s audacity but the young man’s face was as blank and innocent as his father’s was full of wrath. Anansi did not understand the delicate dance of power and ego like the others present. Instead, Anansi asked his father to give humans civilization because he wanted them as companions and they were, to say the least, a little dull without it. Nyame stepped down from his throne to the sound of gasps from the onlookers and he loomed over his son.

“The humans will receive this boon when I receive a gift worthy of it.”

Back on Earth, Anansi sat and wondered how his words could have caused such anger and how he could find the ‘right’ gift when his father had demanded it in such an elusive way. He asked his mother but she simply told him to be wary of Nyame and his tricks, which he thought was no help at all.

While he sat thinking, he watched the birds in the trees. There were shikras and sunbirds and slate-coloured boubous and a thousand others that lit up the skies with the brilliance of their feathers. He asked each of the birds for one feather to make a coat and after he had spoken with all the birds in Africa he had a coat so resplendent, so magnificent that he was entirely unrecognisable in it.

He flew into the sky with his new plumage and the thought occurred to him that, in such a disguise, he could eavesdrop on his father to learn more about what gift would be worthy. When he arrived, all of the deities were still present and they wondered what kind of new bird this was. One of them said, “I wish Anansi were here, he’s the cleverest of all of us and he would know the bird’s name.” 

Nyame scoffed and told the speaker that Anansi would not return anytime soon, since only the gift of the Sun, the Moon and Darkness itself would be worthy of such a boon as civilization for the humans.

When Anansi heard this he was dejected. He plummeted back to Earth and went underground, to a majestic cavern with a blue pool at its heart. When he arrived, his oldest friend Onini the Python emerged and asked him what was wrong.

“My father told me to guess a gift that is worthy of bringing civilization to humans but he did not tell me that it was impossible.”

Onini was quiet as she listened to Anansi tell the story of his father’s lie and the impossibility of fulfilling his desire. When he finally stopped talking, she pulled a large leather sack from the pool. She told him that Nyame had considered bringing the Sun, Moon and Darkness itself to the universe but he had changed his mind at the last moment. He left the objects with Onini for safekeeping but, since he had never returned again, she saw no reason why she couldn’t give them to Anansi.

Anansi was delighted and he returned immediately to his father. When he revealed the Sun, the Moon and the Darkness, Nyame relented and agreed to give humans civilization. However, he also made the humans see themselves in the new light of the Sun and they suddenly realised they were naked and this new-found self-awareness didn’t stop there! 

They stockpiled food to ensure their survival over others, they domesticated animals and kept them in pens. For the first time they could think of things other than eating, fighting and f-- fornicating and they realised that they had discovered … boredom. 

They had civilization but they had no culture.

And, since they were bored, they were also boring. So, Anansi went back to Nyame to ask him to give them stories. Nyame agreed, providing Anansi brings him a selection of splendid-looking animals from Earth. Notably, the leopard Osebo, the fairy Mmoatia, the hornets Mmoboro and the python Onini.

Anansi was dismayed, he was friends with them all. Nevertheless, he desperately wanted to make humans his companions, so he agreed. Anansi went back to Earth and despite more of his mother’s warnings that Nyame would trick him, he began to systematically capture each of the animals. He lured them into traps with lies and, to his surprise, he discovered he too could produce webs to ensnare them.

When Anansi returned, Nyame was delighted with his new pets, though he did note that they were covered in webs. He asked Anansi if he had help from a spider and Anansi reluctantly told him that he had discovered a new power. Nyame found this hilarious and remarked that Ananse truly was his son. By this point, Anansi had grown tired of Nyame’s trickery and his leering sycophants, so he fired back that he was nothing like his father, he was the cleverest being in all existence.

Stepping down from his throne, Nyame in his fury waved a hand over Anansi’s friends and they turned to dust in an instant. Anansi was horrified, he didn’t expect his goal to cost so much and he chastised Nyame for not being honest with him. Nyame laughed and sent Anansi down to Earth along with the power of stories.

The people learned how to tell stories of great deeds, famous heroes etc. Before long, they saw the benefit of stories for inspiring humans around them for good … and for evil. It didn’t take long before they learned to lie, to trick their fellow humans, to rouse them to hatred and war, just like Nyame.

The World Is A Web Of Stories

Freudians would have a field day with this myth, I know. The whole “Father As First Enemy” is front-and-centre but, as fun as it would be to delve into the mindset of grumpy adolescents staking their claim in life, there’s another aspect of this story that I find useful.

A friend of mine once told me that her brother, an IT student, referred to her decision to study English Literature at university as a decision to “study lies”. Like with most things, it’s funny because it’s not all that untrue. I mean, the only difference between a lie and a story is the intention behind it, right? Or is it just the skill in the narrative? Just as there are true stories there are also well-meaning lies. We could say that we are surrounded by stories in life but it wouldn’t be completely to say that we live in a web of lies. We’d just sound more dramatic if we did.

In this story, at first sight, Nyame is a bastard, Anansi is a bit of a cruel idiot - though perhaps well-meaning, if you’re a human which if you’re reading this I presume you are - and all the animals and Nature Herself are the unwitting victims of an increasingly sticky web of egos and machinations. But this is a literal reading of the story and that’s not what we do with myths here.

The thing to remember about most myths, but West African myths in particular, is that they were born of the Oral Tradition. These were not stories written out once and stamped out for all to read. They were memorised and repeated, added to and amended. A common result of this is that many of the tales take on an edifying role. They’re ‘Teacher Stories’ and these stories are layered with their own meaning. 

In the case of Anansi and his father, at every step the bearer of stories (Nyame) reveals his pettiness and his lies. The more Anansi deals with him, the more Anansi becomes like him. Lying to his friends, lying to his mother and, ultimately, producing webs just like him. Anansi has a childlike directness at the beginning of the story (“Why should I give you a gift, you created everything?”) but he becomes jaded and joins the ranks of liars himself over the course of his short life. Sound familiar? I should do, since most of us go through that very same journey from “isn’t she cute when she’s so honest?” to “I’m not telling my boss I’m looking for a new job because she’ll sack me” We see the consequences of absolute honesty and lying, even slightly so, is something we learn to accept as natural.

So What? All The World’s A Web And Everyone In It A Liar?

Well, yes. Kind of. I don’t need to explain to you that there are lies that are used to spare people’s feelings and stories we tell ourselves to help us sleep at night. The best of us try to be honest all the time but sometimes it’s just not cool to tell somebody their food is bland or their haircut doesn’t match their face shape. The point of this story, I think, isn’t so much to make us jaded about the world, it’s to make us wary of believing everything.

Hold on! Hold on! I’m not going to drag you down a conspiracy-hole, I promise. I’m just saying that we all know that some ‘accepted narratives’ (gender roles, racial views, time itself) need to be reexamined now and again for the good of progress. This is what Anansi teaches us in this story.

You could even say it’s actually one of the earliest arguments for source criticism, if you think about it. Anansi, Coyote, Loki, Odin, and even Yahweh are all examples of the archetype of a trickster-storyteller we shouldn’t trust as far as we can throw them. We can feel jaded by this and see the world as a dark place full of lies …

Or …

We can accept that there is no ‘constant universal truth’. All truths are temporary. As Dr Klaas pointed out in one of his recent Substacks “all categories are wrong but some are useful” so too could we say that “all stories are lies but some are useful”. We know that the sun is going to eventually devolve into heat death but this shouldn’t stop us from getting out of bed in the morning. We all know that sugar is bad for us but telling ourselves a little of it, now and again, is “good for our soul” has innumerable benefits, not just after a break-up.

This story of Anansi tells us that the world is complex, that “what’s always been the case” is no excuse not to try and make improvements, that there are liars who will try and manipulate us and we should be aware of that just as Anansi should have listened to his mother. “Accepted truths” are only accepted until they’re not and we should be cautious about believing all of them just because others tell us we should. After all, how many countries today have good relations with neighbouring states they once believed to be ‘evil’ or ‘malignant’? How many countries once had good relationships with others they are now trying to defeat in war?

Ultimately, Anansi’s story here is a warning for us to be cautious. To take a moment and think if we’re being walked into a trap. Not to make us paranoid maniacs but to face each story, each event and each person as we come across them without prejudice formed by stories we had no hand in making.

Or at least that’s what I reckon.