Yesterday, I described the dreamy, imaginative interior space opened up during the spinning process and how it allows for creative curiosity. Neuropsychologists who study asymmetric bilateral movement have theories about how cognition and affective states are impacted during spinning, knitting and other kinds of handwork. (More on that another day.) There also exists a long historical view of the spinning wheel as a site of divination, magic and numinous experiences. Scholars of comparative literature and folklore note that the act of spinning fiber appears across all global cultures. It is necessary survival skill, likely dating to Neolithic times. Represented in ancient stories, songs, poems, epics and artwork, spinning is an act that represents interstitial spaces or states of being. Remember how frequently spinning turns up in myths, folklore and fairytales? The witch Baba Yaga spins or challenges the young women who stumble upon her chicken-legged cabin to spin. Sleeping Beauty can’t resist the lure of the spinning wheel, pricks her finger on its spindle and fulfills the curse of a 100-year sleep. In European folklore, the spinner is frequently imbued with access to non-human magical powers, like clairvoyance, the ability to practice magic, access the fates or communicate with spirits or fairies.
In her expansive study of comparative European folklore, Mirjam Mencej notes that spinning, an almost exclusively a female task, is often connected with numinous, supernatural or magical domains. In the act of reckoning with raw fiber, bringing it into alignment and spinning it into yarn, the spinner is the intermediary between domains. She sits at the threshold, at the veil. Depending on the regional meaning attached to the unspun/spun juncture, the spinner may sit between life and death, the present and the future, the natural and supernatural, childhood and adulthood, human and fairy realm, childhood innocence and adult wisdom, childless and with child. I often begin the creative process by spinning, even if I’m not spinning fiber I’m planning on using immediately. There’s a beautiful openness I experience while spinning. I’m considering my time at the wheel today as an invitation to imaginative, spiritual or numinous experiences—a space for divining what comes next.
For a deep dive into Mencej’s cross-cultural research on the folklore of spinning, try her article: Connecting Threads.
