A Spider Woman Story (not my own)

Danica Connors is a lovely woman I met while cooking in the community kitchen at Brushwood Folklore Center the summer of 2008. Brushwood is a place that hosts many summer festivals, including Sirius Rising and the former Starwood Festival. Danica was there to teach a class on herbs and flower essences - she is also a professional singer and actress living in Rhode Island.

I told her I was writing a book about the Legend of Spider Woman. When she told me the story below, I knew I was in the presence of another Spider Woman. I've met quite a few, and am pleased indeed to know they're around, helping with the weaving. So I felt like sharing her story, which I transcribed from a tape, below.

"As a child I’ve always liked spiders. I would find them in the corners of my room and say “goodnight” to them. I think the spider motif has always followed me, because the very first role I played was as Charlotte in “Charlotte’s Web”! I think Spider Woman has always been a part of my life, my friend and guide.

The most visionary experience I had occurred on my 25th birthday. At the time, I was finding it very difficult to end a relationship that had become destructive. I had a dream that I was in the house I spent my childhood summers in. In my dream, I was chasing a spider, but it was always out of my reach.

I crawled under beds, over tables….and finally the spider ran underneath the sink in the kitchen. I peeked beneath the sink, and there I saw a gorgeous web - a beautiful, illuminated web hidden away underneath, with a spider right in the middle of it! I looked closer, and I could see that different parts of the web held different experiences of my life, suspended on the web. As I watched, a strand broke off. It floated into the room and then it turned into the man I was breaking up with. I heard a woman’s voice speak then; she told me why our relationship was over, and why it needed to end.

Then my former lover walked out of the door and out of my life (in the dream). I understood that I was supposed to go back to touch the web where it had broken off. I realized I was now free to make a choice now about where to go next……and as soon as I touched the web, I woke up!

To me, this dream experience was a kind of soul release, and a birthday blessing as well. It also felt like so much more, as if Spider Woman was teaching me something about how continuity works. It was a reminder to me that the Web is under everything. I had to look under tables, under beds, and finally under the sink before I could find her.

Spider Woman always seems to come at pivotal points in my life. If she shows up with a dream or a synchronicity, I know it’s time to pay attention because something significant is going on. With that said, I have another story to tell about Her.

My husband and I moved into our apartment this past Yule. I found several beautiful spiders there and, as I always do, I welcomed them into our home. Not long afterwards, I was at the stove making cinnamon apples, and I turned around to reach for some fresh cardamom. As soon as I did, I heard what sounded like a shotgun going off! I had mistakenly turned the heat on beneath a Pyrex pot that held the apples. It shattered everywhere – except in a semi-circle close to me. My face was inches from the pot when I turned around. I was absolutely terrified with shock – and then I saw a spider, walking right across that little cleared area.

Just as loud as day, I heard a voice say: “I keep you, you keep me.” At that I burst into tears with gratitude."

The New Story - Brian Swimme

I truly do believe that story (myths) is the name of the country where the archetypes enact their dramas, the Gods and Goddesses weave their relationships and teach their values. Within the Mythic Realms we find the templates of societies, and as individuals, each of us is "in-formed" by story, by mythos. Which is why the ancient Native American archetype of Spider Woman has been so fascinating to me.

Also called "Thought Woman" in Southwestern Pueblo cultures, Spider Woman is a primal creatrix who imagines things that come to be; she weaves the world continually into being and dissolution with the stories she tells. At the center of the great Web (symbolized by the ubiquitous cross (representing the union of the 4 directions) that is always associated with her) Spider Woman/Thought Woman sees the ever evolving pattern, the resonance, the harmonies and the disharmonies. The gift of weaving, and the gift of story, are the gifts Spider Woman endowed her grandchildren with.

In various Pueblo mythologies, when the world fell out of balance, it was Spider Woman who led the people from the deluge and destruction of the dying "Third World" into the "Fourth World", which is our time. As the Hopi (and Mayan) calendar or cycle is almost ended, perhaps, it is Spider Woman who again will lead us into the new world, by helping us to spin "new stories".

There are some who say the "world wide Web" is Spider Woman's latest appearance.

I wanted to share this video with Brian Swimme, and revisit again the New Stories Foundation, which I find so inspiring!

Spider Woman "Crop Circle"....last reflections

West Kennet Long Barrow, April 19, 2009 Photo by Lucy Pringle

“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’s silk, yet strong enough to hang a bridge on.”

Catherine Keller, From a Broken Web

I felt like writing a bit about the "Spider Woman" crop circle I found......I was somewhat amazed to find this obscure symbol in a crop circle site! Mr. Silva believes that it is a man made circle, but reminds me that that does not have to negate its power as a symbol, or for that matter, a beautiful work of earth art.

There was a legend that when the world was going to change, Spider Woman would return again to help her Relations, as she has done in the previous worlds.

I have often thought that the World Wide Web just might be Her latest appearance.

I am grateful to Mr. Mark Fussell and the Crop Circle Connector for feedback, as well as "Crop Circles Reflections of a Season, by Mr. Fussell and colleagues.

Below is the "circle" in black and white, and next to it a detail from a pre-historic Mississippian shell ornament. I believe this one is from Spiro Mound in Missouri, although I will have to check my reference books - the ornament, most probably worn on a cord around the neck, would be anywhere from 400 to 1,000 years old.

I see the Spider Woman image in the crop circle (without all of the legs), the cross, the head and "womb" shapes, and rayed "web" or "strands" emanating from the spider/creatrix figure. (There is often an emphasis upon the "womb" center of the spider, as Spider Woman is associated with the Earth Mother/Creatrix, from whose body all things emanate).

To me, obscure as it may seem, these "crop circles", and the interest, even the controversy surrounding them, are important as contemporary icons manifesting within the collective consciousness, "words" from a timeless language, the iconography of humanity. They are communications worth meditating upon.Spider and Cross Gorget, ca. A.D. 1300, Fulton County, Illinois, Dickson Mounds Museum

Whether created by paranormal forces or through the efforts of contemporary "earth artists" who prefer to further controversy about their work.........these are still sacred symbols that exist on many layers of meaning. Mr. Silva is right; the origins of the "crop circle" are not as important as what its meaning for our time might be.

This symbol, with it's origins in the remains of the "mound builder" sites in south eastern U.S., somehow found it's way to Great Britain last summer. No one knows the exact significance of the spider and cross in the ornaments pictured above, but Spider Woman has an ubiquitous presence throughout the Americas. It's generally thought the "Spider and Cross" represents the Great Weaver (Creatrix)/Earth Mother, the cross on her back representing the union of the 4 directions, thus, balance or completion.

Spider Woman's origins go back as far as the Maya. The Spider Woman/Weaver Woman was a goddess of the Pre-Columbian Teotihuacan Maya in Mexico, discovered on the ancient murals there.* I see that I"m moving into a dissertation here, so I'll cut to the chase.

What meaning could this symbol have for us today?

Spider Woman, the Great Weaver, was also called Thought Woman ("Tse Che Nako" ) among Pueblo peoples. She brought all things into being with what she thought about, the "stories she spun about the world" - like the spider, she "spins the world into being" from her own substance. All things are connected upon the Great Web.....and this power to co-create, to "make the world with the stories we tell" she passed on to her Relations.**

To the Navajo (the Dine`), Grandmother Spider Woman is a wise guide whose teachings can be heard in the wind; but she will only offer instruction to those who have achieved a certain level of maturity or initiation. To the uninitiated or immature, she will appear only as an insignificant insect, her power and words unperceived. Spider Woman was responsible for bringing the people from the previous worlds into the new worlds in Hopi mythology.........in some stories, when the 3rd world ended in flood, she help the people to make boats and stepping stones to cross into the new world in safety and harmony.

It's worth noting that it is the "end" of the Hopi calendar as well as the Mayan (2012); the "4th World" is coming to a close. In each previous world, the breaking of balance, loss of harmony, greed and war brought about destruction and chaos. Here's from Wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_mythology):

"Some contemporary writers tend to posit an absolute importance of the feminine to the Hopi ............In this interpretation, the Hopis traditionally saw the goddess Spider Woman as the creator, "Grandmother of the sun and as the great Medicine Power who sang the people into this fourth world we live in now.”

In other interpretations, Spider Woman is an intermediary between Creator (Tawa) and this plane of being. Generally, it is agreed that in each "previous world" the people fell from harmony, and had come to live contrary to Creator's plan (Tawa)....thus, the people

"were led (usually by Spider Woman) to the next higher world, with physical changes occurring both in the people in the course of their journey, and in the environment of the next world. In some stories, former worlds were then destroyed........whereas in others people were simply led away from the chaos which had been created by their actions." (Wikipedia)

I am trying to understand why I'm so struck by this crop circle, which, like so many others, occurred near old sacred sites of Great Britain, "power centers" of the ancients.**** Perhaps, in this "way of telling, way of praying", Spider Woman is again invoked, to help, to bring us again through the kiva, the "sipapu", the "Birth Channel" of the Mother Earth.....into the "5th World" yet to be.

**Although often referred to as the "Great Goddess" of Teotihuacan, anthropologist Karl Taube was the first to appropriately christen her the "Teotihuacan Spider Woman" in his article in the 1983 edition of The Journal of Latin American Lore after his evaluation of the murals found there.

*** "Tse Che Nako, Thought Woman,
the Spider, is sitting in her room now.
I'm telling you the story
She is thinking". ...........Keresan Pueblo Proverb

Spider Woman Speaks.......

It doesn't matter what you call me.
I've had a lot of names.
Bring your offerings if you wish.
I’ll give them to the Bird People,
to the Mouse People.

Listen,
I’ll tell you something.
Because you came here
with empty hands.
Your spirit has become woven into bad things.
It’ s time to weave a new story now.

Walk out into the desert
and sit beneath a cholla.
Notice the shapes of things:
A hawk against the sky,
the shape of the sky,
the shapes of shadows,
the shape
of your own shadows,

and cracks in the land
like a spider web,
full of light.

Take a deep breath
of the stories that live here.
Stories that wrap themselves
around old bones and pottery shards,
stories that howl at the moon,
fly with russet wings,
hide in the arroyo.
You say you can't see it.

Well, take a look around!

You don't need to climb a mountain
to get the big picture.
All of its snaking rivers

and twining roots
are inside of you.

All those threads

come right out of your hands
and out of your hearts
all those threads go on forever.

Into the Earth
and into each other,
into all your stories,
into everyone you'll ever know

into all those who came before you
and all those who will come after you

O, Mitakuye Oyasin.

Spider Woman Revisited

“What might we see, how might we act, if we saw with a webbed vision? The world seen through a web of relationships…as delicate as spider’s silk, yet strong enough to hang a bridge on.”

Catherine Keller, Theologian, "From a Broken Web" (1987)


"It is through the poetry of myth, mask and metaphor Spiderwoman comes alive. The rock surface of an ancient petroglyph site is merely a veil between the observer and the other transcendental realms; it becomes a portal through which to enter the world of Spider Woman. As others have written before me: "She is with me now as I tell you these stories."

Carol Patterson-Rudolph, "The Trail of Spider Woman" (1997)

I'm crossing this great country now enroute to Washington D.C. for my residency at the Henry Luce Center for the Arts at Wesley Seminary. I find myself reaching again for the almost transparent strand Spider Woman has cast my way, and felt like reviewing some of my writings from 2007 (my "Spider Woman's Hands" project at the Midland Center for the Arts) as I head east.

Mississippian "Spider" Gorget, ca. 1,000 a.d.

Grandmother Spiderwoman is also called "Thought Woman" by the Pueblo people of the Southwest. She is a Creatrix deity found among the Navajo, the Lakota, the Zuni, Hopi, and Pueblo peoples, and images of "Spider" are found among prehistoric peoples throughout the South and Midwest. Perhaps the earliest representations of a Spider Woman (who was also associated with the Earth Mother) are found among the Maya.

I have always felt inspired by this ancient myth, which for me is a metaphor on many levels. Spider Woman's threads weave from the center of life, a symmetry of interdependency. We are all Relations.

Anasazi petroglyph, Arizona desert

Here are a few notes I felt like sharing. I wrote these comments in my journal enroute to Michigan in 2007, and they became some of the "text" for the show we had at the Midland Arts Center that summer:

Years ago I was enjoying a panoramic view of the Sonoran desert. I happened to be sitting near a spider web stretched between two dry branches. I realized, by shifting my point of view, I could view the entire landscape through the web’s intricate pattern…..revealing a vast landscape, seen through the ineffable, shining strands of an almost invisible web.

Perhaps, that was the moment Spider Woman first captured my imagination. I knew that the Great Weaver of the Navajos, who they believed lived on top of Spider Rock near Canyon de Chelly in Navajo country, was revered because she taught them how to weave.

Spider Rock, Canyon de Chelly

Weaving is a sacred art. In Navajo rugs, “Spider Woman’s Cross” is sometimes seen, a symbol of balance or completion, the 4 directions. T0 this day, a bit of spider web is rubbed into the palms of infant girls, so they will become a good weavers.

Another story I've heard is that weavers often leave a flaw in the work - because the only perfect web is that of Grandmother Spider Woman.

As anthropologist Carol Patterson-Rudolph has commented, to the Navajo Spider Woman is an initiation into a more expanded and interconnected way of seeing. She is able to bridge the sacred and prosaic dimensions of life - but for those who are not ready, Grandmother Spider will be invisible, nothing more significant than an insect so small she can sit on a shoulder and never be seen or heard. And yet, for those with eyes to see, her Web is everywhere.

There is a legend that Spider Woman will return at the end of this era (which, according to the Hopi calendar, is now). In his book on Hopi religion, scholar John Loftin writes that:

“Spider Woman was the first to weave. Her techniques and patterns have stood the test of time, or more properly, the test of timelessness – because they have always been present. It makes sense that one would follow the instructions of a deity who helped form the underlying structure of the world in which one lives…..…..Weaving is not an act in which one creates something oneself – it is an act in which one uncovers a pattern that was already there.”

In Pueblo mythology Spider Woman is also called Thought Woman. With Tawa, the Sun God, She spins the world into being with what she imagines, with the stories she tells. I love this notion of creation - from her very being Spider spins silken, transparent threads that she organizes into patterns, ever expanding in complexity and scale. Tse Che Nako weaves her threads, sharing the creative power with all of her descendants. We participate in the weaving and the telling.

Tse Che Nako, Thought-Woman, the Spider,
is sitting in her room thinking of a story now -
I'm telling you the story she is thinking.

Keresan Pueblo myth

Like the Spider Woman we conceive with our minds; but we “weave” the stories of our lives with the manifest works of our hands, bringing the imaginal into the physical.

In 2007 participants in the community art project Kathy Space and I created in Midland cast their hands to make “personal icons”, united by a thread connecting them to each other. Because Spider Woman’s many hands are our hands, weaving our stories and dreams into the world. Casting our hands honored the unique creative powers each possesses, honoring our abilities to become "conscious weavers“ with that which is ineffable.


A spiritual paradigm is founded upon mythic roots - the "warp and woof” from which ideas grow. Following the metaphor theologian Katherine Keller has provided in her book "From a Broken Web" - can we can find contemporary mythic models that allow us to envision our world as it really is – a shimmering web of interconnected relationships, and ecology of being. Can we find ways to "see the world with a webbed vision”?

Having found ways to claim that vision, by whatever name,
may we then rub a bit of spider web into the palms of our hands.

References:

Loftin, John D. , Religion and Hopi Life, Second Edition, Indiana University Press, 2003
Keller, Catherine, From a Broken Web (1989), Thames & Hudson
Patterson-Rudolph, Carol, On the Trail of Spiderwoman, 1997, Ancient City Press

Reflections on Visioning

"Spider Woman's Hands" - 2007 (Alden Dow Fellowship)

Back in Truth or Consequences for a little while, I find grief, and a feeling of lack of purpose are my frank companions. I miss my brother. There are many things I wish I could have said to him, when I had the chance.

I'm about as psychic as a brick these days (and perhaps that is unfair to bricks, since I have never actually had an intimate conversation with one.) But that is why I was pleased when a bit of magic happened this morning.

"Spider Woman's Hands" - Mississippian Gorget, ca 1300 ad.

I was in my studio trying to finish up the paper I will be reading at the Claremont Conference on Pagan Studies soon - it's on Spider Woman, of course. Last night I was up late trying to find out (unsuccessfully) who or from where the "prophecy of the return of the Spider Woman" came from. I confess, writing academic papers is frustrating to me, and so I wander around the vicinity of the typewriter, taking every chance to get distracted. So I bent down to check on the heater, and (I swear!) a tiny little brown spider fell down on it's web seemingly from the top of my head! I carefully positioned a plate under my nose to catch it, and then moved it to the window to watch it. Once again, a little spider (I would be alarmed, were it ever a large one) has dropped down from my head or my hat right before my nose. Spiders have done some pretty interesting things around me in the past few months.........

I like to think it's Spider Woman's way of saying "hello".

I've been thinking about visions. There was a time when I was blessed with several significant visions (by visions, I mean visionary experiences had while in a conscious or voluntary trance state, and not while asleep) that have very much informed my life and my art.

I'd like to say that visions are Grace, divine gifts. Among the Lakota, long preparations were made for the Vision Quest, in order to invite visions, and when a vision occurred it was shared collectively, discussed, and determined if it had prophetic or ceremonial significance for not only the individual recipient, but for the entire tribe. This is something we have entirely lost, and indeed, we cannot differentiate between someone who has had a true vision (which, in native wisdom, would be considered a gift), and a schizophrenic.

(I think of the great visions of St. Teresa, or the works of Hildegaard Von Bingham. I do not think they would fare so well in today's world.)

"The Universal Mind Lattice", Alex Grey

I remember a conversation years ago in Brooklyn with Alex and Allyson Grey about the shared vision they had while taking LSD. Their need to communicate that vision resulted in "THE SACRED MIRRORS". The need to understand it set them on their spiritual path (by the way, they have recently bought a retreat center in upstate NY where they are planning on housing the Sacred Mirrors and developing a center for sacred arts. Visit the link above to learn more.)

Here's the point - true visionary experience is meant to be shared. Art is one way, ceremony or ritual is another. To be given true vision, which is archetypal, collective, and exists on multiple layers of meaning, and then deny it's value, is an enormous waste. So here I am this morning (and I just noticed a single shining transparent spider thread stretching from my window pane to some infinite point into the air..........well, I've been feeling lately that these gifts I need to share, communicate. A blog is a good place to start; maybe someday I can produce a few paintings as well.

PATTERNS

This occurred in 1989. I was driving on an interstate in Virginia heading north. I became very tired, and pulled off the road. Almost immediately, I fell into a half-sleeping, half-trance state.

My little red Toyota pick up began to fly! It seemed as if it could fly not only through distance but perhaps through time as well. I looked down and I was over a green landscape, green and misty. Below I saw patterns of dolmens laid out in a spiral. There were lines of people who were coming up a hill toward that spiral pattern, reverently, as if in a ceremonial procession.
Then I was in a Southwestern landscape. I found myself contemplating petroglyphs on a cliff - spirals, figures, circles, layers of petroglyphs that receded into the rock face. And then I was flying over Los Angeles! I saw freeways making vast, snakelike patterns across the land, culminating in a figure eight infinity sign. What this means to me is that the living Earth, Gaia, speaks through the land, and through us, across the ages - even now, unseen, ever present.

And then I opened my eyes to a soft Virginia morning. In the "Song of Medusa" (with the voice of my character "Sibyl") I described that vision, from the imaginary perspective of a Neolithic shaman):

"I do not know the meaning of such a vision; perhaps it belongs to some distant past or a future beyond imagining. But I do believe this: the Song of Her purposes is written upon the land in all places, and in all times."

THE SONG OF MEDUSA, Lauren Raine & Duncan Eagleson

WHITE TARA

This vision came with help from a teacher of mine, Jewel. Jewel is a true shaman, who lives on her land which she has developed as a teaching center, THE SOURCE, in Shutesbury, Massachusetts. When I met Jewell I was living in Brattleboro, Vermont. I was divorcing from my former husband, Duncan, and was full of the grief, anger, and remorse that comes with the ending of a marriage.

I went to see Jewell for an energy healing. When she put me on her table, she said prayers before she began.

I slipped into a trance state - it seemed as if I was watching short clips from movies, without any sound. I saw African men drumming around a fire, then the body of an emaciated black woman lying on a bed, a ceremonial room of some kind with thousands of orange marigolds, a white man, balding and heavyset with glasses, and many more.

At some point, I felt I was pulled backward, given some distance, so that these "movie clips" became like a patchwork quilt, all occurring at once. I remember thinking how beautiful they were from that perspective.

Suddenly, a Great Being arrived. I cannot actually describe that presence, because there was no form - she was composed of light. The only identification I felt I could make was that she was female. She didn't speak to me, only radiated the most intense compassion I have ever felt. She also radiated a profound sense of humor! It was as if she was saying, "Look Lauren, take a good look at this. It's going to be alright. You'll meet again. Don't take on so."

I shall never forget the power of that radiant being. I later learned that Jewell begins her sessions with prayers to the Goddess Tara. And to me, that was the Goddess White Tara; which is why I have prayed to her and tried to honor her with my masks ever since. And,come to think of it. I've been very fortunate in that way!

Om Tare Tu Tare Tare Soha

Mana Youngbear as "Tara", 2004

Spider Woman at Wickliffe Mounds.........

"Sun Circle" & "Spider Woman's Cross" on gourd
(and "the threads" reflections on the glass case seem to have created!))

I have always felt that my imagination is most open to the ubiquitous, syncronic voice of the Divine when I'm on the road. In other words, like many Americans who grew up in cars (and were probably conceived in one as well), I do my best thinking when I'm behind the wheel of on a highway somewhere. Travelling puts me into the creative liminal state of "between"- free from all the demands and paradigms that "destinations" impose ( the people, duties, reality tunnels, and potent unconscious imprints that "fix" the mind into "place"). Travelling is one of the ways I can hear the "conversation" ...... it turns down the noise.

I went to Paducah, Kentucky, on a lovely bright day full of vast green oaks, and later, heading south, decided to take a detour and visit Wicklife Mounds, an archaeological site that was once the home of a tribe of prehistoric Mississippian Native Americans. Going back as far as 1,000 years, these people built ceremonial areas, chief's houses, and burial houses on earth pyramids and stepped rectangular mounds. Over time, the mounds grew in elevation as houses were destroyed and rebuilt. Art, pottery, and religious and tribal iconography belonging to these diverse peoples are found throughout the Southeast, with iconic associations as far as Central Mexico, the Southwest and the Gulf of California, and as far north as Canada.

I didn't expect to find Spider Woman everywhere! But there She was! Casting her threads my way. I guess I'm not really surprised though - the first thing I encountered as I walked into the little visitor's center was the "Spider Gorget" above. Later, I thought of my "Spider Woman's Hands" piece when I saw the ubiquitous "Hand with Eye", also found on ceremonial jewelry (gorgets made from shells), and pottery.


No one really knows the specific meanings of these symbols to the peoples who once lived, warred and traded throughout the Southeast. Yet within them, I personally find a continuing beauty, a familiarity, a continuing trail. The cross is ubiquitous, the symbol of the balance and ultimate unity of the the 4 directions. The Sun Circle is also completely ubiquitous. I find it interesting that the cross is found on the back of Spider in their (presumably) ceremonial gorgets - perhaps why, when it occurs in Navajo rugs (much later and among a very different people who migrated into the South West) it's still called "Spider Woman's Cross". Yet here as well as in the religious symbolism of the peoples of the South West, it seems that Spider is associated with the Earth Mother, and with creation.

To me, the "Spider Gorget" will always be profound. At the center is the weaver "Tse Che Nako", "Thought Woman" to the Keresan Pueblo peoples. Spider, spinning the world into being with her imagination, in partnership with the illumination of the Sun, spinning and weaving all things together with her "silky essence". From her very own body, from her own substance, she spins and creates.

The cross represents (to me) divine balance within an ever expanding and infinitely interconnected web of life. The Hand with Eye may represent the Divine manifestation, as well as consciousness itself.

I was amazed to see objects with this Hand in circles (and I think of my own obsession with "Spider Woman's Hands". Here is a quote from an anthropologist who studied Zuni petroglyphs in the South West, among them the occurrence of "hand" symbols. (I apologize for the use of "primitives" in the description. A more ethnocentric era.).

".......when hands were so at one with the mind that they really formed a part of it.......to reconstitute the primitives' mentality, he (Cushing, in the 1880's) had to rediscover the movements of their hands, movements in which their language and their thought were inseparably united.......the Zuni who did not speak without his hands did not think without them either." 1

And so the Hand with Eye is a symbol of active consciousness (?) Perhaps, to create (weave) with active intention.


Here's another little synchronicity I found in the course of following this thread, one that is a kind of personal poetic, as I am always fascinated with words and their origins. "Wickliffe" might become "Wick - life", which I have little doubt is it's origin. "Wick", from which we get "wicker ware", "wicca", "witch" and "wick" as in the wick of a candle (this association is with an English word that meant both "weave" and "alive").. ...... so, I'll take WICKLIFFE to mean "Weaving Life" with a double affirmative!

What really matters is the necessity, profoundly so now, to understand that we are all intimately interconnected, entrained, entangled, and woven together into World, interconnected within the processes of manifestation. We absolutely must develop a webbed vision now. And that's what artists can do, provide potent and lasting vision.

Great Mother

Thank you for this day, My life,

My strand on the Web,

The vibration it makes.

Keep me in tune, In harmony

With your purpose.

Let me serve.

Xia

*Here's a lovely article I found by an astrologer about Spider Woman -

http://wisewomaninwoods.blog.ca/2008/03/05/spirituality-love-spider-woman-s-web-3819808

1 Levy-Bruhl 1985: from ROCK ART SYMBOLS OF THE GREATER SOUTHWEST, Alex Patterson, Johnson Books, Boulder, Colorado.