More "Numina" Masks..........

 SPIDER WOMAN

I’ve had a lot of names.  It doesn’t matter what you call me.
Call me Tse-Che-Nako,  "the One who makes the world"
with the stories I spin.  Call me  Spider Woman, the Weaver.

Listen, I’ll tell you something.
 Because you came  to the red desert
empty, listening to the wind.

When the Third World ended, I wove  a long thread
And led the people through the Kiva to a new world.
A new world is being born again.

 It’s time to weave a new story.

Walk out into the desert and sit beneath a cholla.
Listen to the ones that live here.
Stories like threads woven into the land.
Stories that wrap themselves around old bones and pottery shards,
that fly, or run on four legs.
Stories written in the rock.
And cracks in the land like a spider web,

full of light.
Once, you could see the Web
as plain as day.  Each shining thread 
touching each thread.

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  your hearts
and go on forever

into the Earth,
and into each other,
and 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.

(1998)

Desert Spring:  "Our Lady of the Arroyo"

I keep making "Numina" masks, because they keep suggesting themselves to my heart.   I don't know what to do with them.........they have no "voices" yet, or people who want to use them. I'm left with hoping that they will suggest their own use .........that they'll have an impulse within them to lead me somewhere else. Now doesn't that sound strange.......but I think that's a bit how Spider Woman works.

In a recent post, while asking this question about this weird collection of masks I seem to be making, I found a comment about a story written by Rob MacGregor (I often visit their fascinating blog on Synchronicity):

"Lenore is an artist.  She sees faces and people in trees, rocks, water, etc.  She draws what she sees, then painstakingly removes whatever traps the faces / people and frees them to move on to whatever is next."

I think that's a pretty elequent way of talking about art, and a good bit of advice for me!

Giving Birth to Spring