Spider Woman’s Hands

Among the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest it is said that Spider Woman spun the world into being with the stories She told.

She is also called “Thought Woman” because what she imagined came to be. Mississippian Gorget,

ca. 1500 ad.

Spider Woman passed on this creative power

to all of Her Relations.

“Ts' its' tsi' nako,

Thought-Woman, the Spider, is sitting in her room thinking up a good story now:

I'm telling you the story she is thinking”

Keresan Pueblo Proverb

“The Universe is made of stories, not atoms” Muriel Rukeyser

The Cross and Spider

is an ancient symbol found among prehistoric people living along the Mississippi, the Southwest –and as far away as the Maya of Mexico. So is the ubiquitous “Hand and Eye”.

The Navajo say that Spider Woman lives on Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly

They revere Spider Woman because she taught them how to weave.

Like a spider, she can be so small one may never see her . Yet the Web of Grandmother Spider Woman is everywhere, for those with eyes to see.

Anasazi petroglyphs from the Arizona desert

To this day, Navajo midwives rub a little spider web into the hands of newborn girls ~ so they will become good weavers.

like Spider Woman

we also spin our worlds into being with what we imagine: with the stories we tell about the world

And weave with the manifest creative work of our hands.

We are each weaving a thread

that reachesinto times primal

and farinto the unknownfuture……

warp and woof : the foundation or base of something

[ Old English owef "weave on" < wefan "weave" < Indo-European]

weave [weev]:1. to make something by interlacing threads vertically and horizontally.2. to spin something such as a spider's web. 3. to construct story: 4. to introduce separate parts into something larger

[ Old English wefan < Germanic]

“What might we see, how might we act, if we saw the world with a webbed vision?

The world seen through a web of relationships…..

as delicate as spider silk, yet strong enough to hang a bridge on.”

Catherine Keller, Theologian

The 6th Extinction

Psychologists have not begun to ponder the emotional toll of the loss of our fellow life. Nor have theologians reckoned the spiritual impoverishment that extinction brings.

Mark Jerome WaltersTHE NATURE CONSERVANCY

We are the Web

“At the quantum level

Reality is strange and non-local: the whole universe is a network of interconnection that transcends time and space.”

Ervin Laszlo, Physicist

“Synchronicities

may demonstrate an underlying unified pattern that is about the nature of consciousness .”

F. David Peat, Physicist

Synchronicities might just be…….

Spider Woman’s way of saying “Hello”.

~All those threads ~

Go on forever.

Into the Earth,into each other, into all of your stories into all thosewho came before,and all thosewho will come after.

“Spider Woman Speaks” (2004)

We’re incubating the future with the stories we tell.

Birthing a new world.

May we rub a bit of Spider Web

into the palms of our hands.

Spider Woman‘s Hands

is a cross-disciplinary Community Arts Project. In 2004 it was sponsored by the Muse Community Arts Center in Arizona, in 2007 by an Alden Dow Fellowship at Northwood University, in 2008 by the Creative Spirit Center of Michigan, and in 2009 as Resident Artist at Wesley Theological Institute in Washington , DC.

Wesley, 2009

“Weaving the Web” Performance, Tucson, Arizona (2004)Tucson Performance in 2004

The Midland Center for the Arts, 2007

The Creative Spirit Center (2008)

“Naming the Links” with Prayer Ties and Personal Icons

With Gratitude to:

The Henry Luce III CenterWesley Theological SeminaryThe Creative Spirit Center The Alden B. Dow Creativity CenterThe Puffin FoundationKathy Space and Space StudioThe Muse Community Arts CenterMorgana Starr & Ensemble Turn of the Century GalleryBrushwood Folklore Center

Lauren Raine MFA(520) 609-4904 laurenraine@aol.com