Spider Woman's Signature: the "Cosmic Spider"

"Spider and Cross", ubiquitous symbol of the prehistoric Mississippian culture

In 2007 I was an Aldon B. Dow Fellow at Northwood University, in Midland Michigan, for the summer, and was pursuing my fascination, indeed, obsession with, myths and symbols related to the Native American Spider Woman, but as She appears in my life, and in our contemporary world as well..  In time my obsession led me to travel across the country, to have many synchronicities

(one of those synchronicities led me to this building, which,

 now that I revisit it, very much looks like being under a giant Spider Web!)

and to create a community arts project I called "Spider Woman's Hands".  

The Project was continued at the Creative Spirit Center the following year (2008). As participants created "Icons" using casts of their faces, their hands (mind and creativity in manifestation), along with symbols of personal sanctity or significance to each participant, they wove a "thread" that unified all of their stories.  In each show that "thread" was "held" by each hand in each Icon, and ran right out the door.  I look back at that time, following the "threads" that Spider Woman cast me as an artist and a person, as infused with magic and guidance.  I do not know if I have fulfilled that quest yet, but I do know that the symbols of the Spider, the Cross representing the union of all directions, and the Great Web are profoundly important symbols not just from the buried past, but for our time now.

Lately I've been feeling the "hand" of Spider Woman weaving in my life again.  I do not know where She might lead me...........

So thinking about this I re-discovered a Blog post from 2015 I found fascinating, information kindly sent me from a gentleman named Eddie Bailey in the U.K. in which he pointed out that the Earth's  magnetic field in its appearance is very similar to the prehistoric spider and cross  symbol found among the Mississippian people of  ancient America (one that, interestingly enough, also occured in 2005 as a crop circle in Wiltshire, England.  I do not see that many people in Southern England, hoaxers or not, would even know about this symbol, and personally feel this is a genuine crop circle.) 

 The "Cosmic Spider".....a  motif, for me, that embodies the concept of Spider Woman as, once again, midwife for a New Age.  

http://geomag.usgs.gov/about.php

As Mr. Bailey pointed out, 

 "The truth will cease to be stranger than fiction when we get used to it."........ "I realise symbols work on many levels or fractally.  It is said matter is condensed light, and Light is an electro-magnetic wave or particle.  The electric field and the magnetic field are ALWAYS perpendicular to each other - like a Cross on a certain level."

2005 crop circle of ancient American spider motif, Wiltshire, England

He also kindly shared comments by Laid Scranton, who believes that the "primitive people" of Africa, the Dogon people, not unlike  the similarity between the  "cosmic spider" of ancient America and the Earth's magnetic field in relationiship to our sun, seem to have created or intuited a complex symbol language as well: 

"The Dogon symbols and concepts relating to atomic structure so thoroughly mimic their scientific counterparts that, if our purpose was to refute their basis in science, we would first need to explain in some believable way the following extraordinary similarities:

• The po, which is defined in terms similar to those that describe the atom
• Sene seeds, which are described in form and behavior as being similar to protons, neutrons, and electrons and whose "nesting" is recognizable as an electron orbit
• The germination of the sene, whose drawn images are a match for the four types of quantum spin particles
• The spider of the sene whose threads weave the 266 seeds of Amma, much as string theory tells us all matter is woven from strings. 

Likewise, there seems to be a relationship between Dogon cosmological drawings and the shapes of various Egyptian glyphs, yet among the Dogon, these drawings have never taken on the status of an actual written language.

Dada, the Dogon spider who weaves matter and whose name means "mother" in the Dogon language, exhibits many of the classical attributes of the Egyptian (and Amazigh) goddess Neith.  In fact, other ancient goddesses, like Athena, who are traditionally associated with Neith also are associated with spider symbolism similar to that found in Dogon cosmology. Such consistencies suggest that the Dogon system of myth could represent an early incarnation of the Egyptian myths."