Anansi (also Ananse, Kwaku Anansi; Anancy in Jamaica; Aunt Nancy in the American South)

The sky god kept every story in the world in a carved wooden box beside his stool, and the price he asked for them was designed never to be paid. Nyame had named it to kings, to rich towns, to whole armies of warriors, and watched them all walk away. Bring me Onini the python. Bring me Mmoboro the hornets. Bring me Osebo the leopard, whose teeth are daggers. Bring me Mmoatia, the fairy no one sees. Then one day a spider climbed into the sky on a thread of his own silk and asked, politely, to hear the price again.

Anansi went home and started with the python. He cut a long bamboo pole and carried it down to the stream where Onini lived, arguing loudly with himself the whole way about whether his wife Aso was talking nonsense. The python rose out of the water to ask what the quarrel was. My wife says you are longer than this pole, Anansi said, and I say no creature could be. Onini stretched himself proudly along the bamboo to settle the matter, and Anansi lashed him to it, coil by coil, with vine. The hornets came next: Anansi filled a calabash with water and sprinkled it over their nest and over the banana leaf he held above his own head, so that the water drummed on the leaves like the first heavy drops of the rainy season. Foolish to stay out in such weather, he called, and the whole swarm funneled into the dry gourd he offered, which he plugged shut. For Osebo he dug a pit on the leopard’s night path and covered it with branches; by morning the daggers were at the bottom of it. The fairy took the finest trick of all. Anansi carved an akua’ba, a child-shaped wooden doll, smeared it with sticky tree gum, set a bowl of mashed yam at its feet beneath an odum tree, and tied a string to its waist. A mmoatia came, smelled the warm yam, ate it, thanked the doll, and got no answer. She slapped the rude child with one hand, then the other, and the gum held them both fast.

Nyame, to his credit, kept his word. Before the assembled elders of the sky he declared that his stories would be called Nyame’s no longer; from that day they were anansesem, spider stories, and they have kept the name in the Akan language ever since. When a storyteller in Ghana settles by the fire in the early dark, the smoke stinging pleasantly and the day’s heat finally lifting, the tale that follows belongs to Anansi no matter who is in it.

He is an Akan figure first, born in the oral tradition of the Asante and their neighbours in what is now Ghana and Ivory Coast, and his name is simply the Akan word for spider. The stories make him the son of Nyame the sky god and Asase Yaa the earth goddess, yet he is not exactly a god himself; he is something more useful, a go-between who carries words from the divine world to the human one and pockets a profit on the way. He has a long-suffering wife, Okonore Yaa, called Aso in some regions, and a houseful of sons, among them Ntikuma the firstborn, big-headed Tikelenkelen, spindly Nankonhwea, and pot-bellied Afudohwedohwe. Nobody agrees on what he looks like, and the stories like it that way. He is an ordinary spider when it suits him, a spider with a man’s face when he needs to talk, a man with eight legs when he needs to carry something, and the shift between forms is never explained because it never needs to be.

Owning the stories did not make him wise, or rather, it did once, briefly. In one of the most loved anansesem, Anansi gathered all the wisdom in the world into a single gourd pot, deciding that knowledge was safest kept to himself. He tried to climb a great tree to hide it, pot slung against his belly, slipping back with every attempt. Ntikuma, watching from below, finally suggested tying the pot to his back instead. Anansi was so furious that a child had outthought the owner of all wisdom that he hurled the pot down, and it burst, and the rain washed the wisdom into the rivers, which carried it to the sea and to everyone. That is why no one person holds all of it. Another tale says that Anansi, caught red-handed in an act of simple greed, was so ashamed that he changed into a spider and scrambled up into the darkest corner of the ceiling to escape the eyes of the household. He is still up there. Look into the angle where wall meets roof in any old house and there he hangs, quiet in the dust and shadow, waiting for the talk to turn elsewhere.

The slave ships carried him across the Atlantic, weightless, hidden in memory where nothing could be confiscated. In Jamaica he became Anancy; he took root in Suriname, the Netherlands Antilles, and across the islands, and in the American South he softened into Aunt Nancy while his plots passed almost unchanged into the Br’er Rabbit tales. For the enslaved Akan and their descendants he was more than entertainment. A creature with no strength, no size, and no rights, who still beat the powerful by wit alone, was a manual for survival, and scholars of the period credit Anansi-style cunning as an inspiration to Jamaican Maroons and plantation rebels. He won because he cheated. Against owners who held everything, that lesson was worth keeping.

His powers are exactly what the tales show: cunning beyond any other creature’s, the ownership of all stories, the freedom to slide between man and spider, and silk strong enough to climb to heaven. His weaknesses are just as well attested, because they drive half of his stories. He is greedy, vain, and lazy, and his schemes regularly collapse on his own head; the wisdom pot shatters, the shameful corner becomes a permanent address, and the firstborn son keeps seeing what the trickster cannot. The Akan knew what they were doing when they built him this way. A perfect winner teaches nothing. Anansi, who wins gloriously and loses stupidly, sometimes in the same afternoon, teaches everything.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Anansi?

Anansi is the spider trickster of Akan folklore from Ghana and Ivory Coast, and the owner of all the world’s stories. He is the son of the sky god Nyame and the earth goddess Asase Yaa, and Akan tales are still called anansesem, meaning “spider stories,” in his honour.

How did Anansi get all the stories?

Anansi bought the world’s stories from the sky god Nyame by paying an impossible price: capturing Onini the python, Mmoboro the hornets, Osebo the leopard, and Mmoatia the fairy. He caught each one through trickery, including measuring the python against a bamboo pole and trapping the fairy with a gum-covered wooden doll, and Nyame declared all stories his.

Is Anansi a god?

Anansi is not exactly a god, although his parents are the Akan deities Nyame and Asase Yaa. He is best understood as a trickster spirit and intermediary who carries messages between the gods and humanity, which is why traditions vary on whether to call him divine.

What does Anansi look like?

Anansi has no fixed form. Stories depict him as an ordinary spider, a spider with a human face, or a man with eight legs, and he shifts between these shapes as each tale requires.

Why is Anansi important in the Caribbean?

Enslaved Africans carried Anansi’s stories across the Atlantic, where he became Anancy in Jamaica and Aunt Nancy in the American South, influencing the Br’er Rabbit tales. For enslaved people, the small spider who defeated the powerful through wit became a celebrated symbol of survival and resistance.

Related Entries

Nyame, Asase Yaa, Anansi and the pot of wisdom, Ghanaian Mythology, Asanbosam, Obayifo, Aziza, Caribbean Mythology, Soucouyant, Eshu, Coyote, Azeban, Loki, Hermes, Arachne