Afterward - Syncronicity and Spiderwoman in Indiana

The moon is full and the night is very hot, somewhere in Missouri. Cicadas drone their mating calls, an August chorus. I’m still allergic to everything, wondering if my dignity is forever gone along with the use of my nose. But Magic has been afoot. Quite often I don’t write or talk about days like this, because I doubt others will see the wonderful intersections and weave that I see, worse, we'll try to figure out what it all "means".

Syncronicities are Spider Woman's way of saying "hello".

When synchronicities chose me, or I blunder into them, they flurry about with such literary qualities that I sometimes think its like being inside a novel where the plot is about to become clear. Ephemeral, transparent, funny, poetic strands.

“Tse Che Nako, the Spider,
is sitting in her room thinking of a story now.
I’m telling you the story
She is thinking.”

I had my map on the motel bed, ready to open yesterday a.m. I was thinking about two things. The first was the fact that I was 30 some miles from industrial Gary, Indiana, and the road was apparently flooded there. This could mean hours getting through Gary. And then there was Chicago. The prospect was not appealing. The other item on my mind were my friends Morgana and Phil, who live in Indianapolis. I’d been thinking of visiting them since Spring, but now assumed it was too late to just “pop in” unannounced.

I glanced at my dog-eared map, which had long ago lost its cover. Now the cover was page two of “Routes of Interest”, and my eye fell on “Indiana” (right in the center of the page, with “Louisiana” below it.) The authors suggested I take a scenic drive through West Baden and visit historic French Lick Springs. The prospect of possibly discovering a new hot spring seemed attractive, and I opened the map to find that I could head on down to Indianapolis, maybe convince my friends, on short notice, to have dinner with me, and if not, take a hilly route to a possible soak and end up on 64, which would eventually lead me to route 70, across Kansas, and the welcome road to Colorado.

The moon was fulling, and butterflies kept flying in and out of my field of vision. I decided a trip to Indianapolis was a good idea, and headed down the road, taking my bearings at Roseville. I would follow the “rose line”, a symbolic idea related to the Goddess that I’ve been thinking of before the Da Vinci Code.

I wondered why the place was called French Lick. I later learned that the area, before it was settled by white people, had been an important migration route for buffalo because of salt licks in the area. The new settlers had literally followed the buffalo to the wells. The first Europeans to settle at French Lick were French Jesuit missionaries, and one of the first businesses established in the area had to do with salt mining.

“Routes of Interest” informed me that I could have a soak at the Pluto Baths for $20.00. This is no longer true - any soaking areas where the public might have once taken the curative waters are now replaced with expensive spas. I don’t know why they were called Pluto Waters either, but there on the ceiling of the French Lick Spa were huge, Rococo, paintings of Pluto, Persephone, Orpheus, Eurydice, Cerberus, and the Underworld.

I felt a bit like I was within a personal mythic event, because the myth of Persephone and Hades has been significant to me for many years - my little novel, THE SONG OF MEDUSA, was based on it. I have identified with the Persephone archetype strongly in my past - Jennifer Barker and Roger Woolger wrote eloquently about this in their 1989 book "The Goddess Within", a book that informed much of my interest in Goddess spirituality. A page mark in my own story. It is interesting to note that Pluto means "wealth". The wealth of the below, the hidden, the depths of the earth. Or, as Robert Bly has pointed out, the inner life of the psyche:

"Pluto, or Hades, took Persephone downward and inward. She went to live with Pluto, whose name means "wealth", and so all of us go, when we go into "walled garden" to encounter the wealth of the psyche, which is especially rich with grief." (Iron John, 1990)

What the area meant to the native people who lived there, I do not know, although I’m sure it was, like all places where healing waters bubble out of the earth, a sacred place. Maybe it was a place of pilgrimage, in the same way that people still go to the Chalice Well in Ireland. It is still a place where native people make Vision Quest. Where they go to "talk with the Earth". I thought of Phil making his prayer ties while he was there in the Spring for his ceremony, I thought of the Irish who still tie “Klooties”, which are essentially prayer ties, on bushes near holy wells and springs, and I thought about the prayer ties Kathy Space and I just created in Midland, resting on a podium at my show just a few weeks ago.

Morgana and Phil are extraordinary people, extraordinary healers. They’re a rare and complimentary partnership, Phil specializing in massage and physical therapy, and Morgana is a Reiki master, intuitive healer and psychic. In the past year they had begun working at a metaphysical store in Indianapolis, and their dream had long been to open a healing center of their own, but the financial means was never available. When I met them two years ago while we were camping at Brushwood, we took an immediate liking to each other, and I traded one of my Earth Shrine sculptures in exchange for body work with Phil, and Morgana gave me the first degree Reiki initiation and I’ve often used the Reiki to ease breathing when I’m asthmatic. Both Morgana and Phil exude energy. Phil has participated in the Sun Dance for years.

When I got to Indianapolis, I met them at a Border’s bookstore, and they took me to the metaphysical center where they worked. Indianapolis - my mind was full of judgmental images of hostile rednecks, motorcycle races, and my fear of Baptists.

Many of my lessons this year have been about tolerance, and learning that I also am walking around with many assumptions and judgments that get in the way of what I preach. If the “Hoop of the Nations” Black Elk envisioned is going to manifest, if the unity of diversity within Spiderwoman’s Web is going to harmonize - well, the process begins within each one of us. And so, waiting for my friends in a bookstore in Indianapolis, I idly picked up a local paper, which had a beautiful painting of Gaia as the Tree of Life right there on the cover. How many times have I painted this image myself?

“Never Make Assumptions” The Four Agreements

Morgana gave me the 2nd degree Reiki initiation. Then Phil worked on my eternally stiff neck, and I joined Morgana’s healing class where we did a meditation, and invoked Thoth, also called Hermes by the Greeks, god of healing, the god who brings “messages“. (He was on the ceiling of the French Lick Spa as well. Go figure.) By the time we had dinner, I was buzzing with energy.

My strand to weave this summer has been about coming out of the depression and disillusionment (and health issues) I’ve been mired in for so long, to become clearer, detox my spirit as well as my body, and begin a new year truly new. To re-weave my spirit back into the Web, into a renewed experience of connectedness. To open my heart again, which has become closed in many ways, for all my talk of unity. I’ve just had my birthday, in fact, I left Michigan on my birthday, August 19th, which seemed fitting. The ritual process was not just designed for the community of Midland, Michigan, but was my personal ritual process as well.

I learned that Phil went on his Vision Quest, preparatory to doing the Sun Dance this summer - at the state park in French Lick. The heart of French Lick is the recently restored white towered building behind formal gardens - West Baden Springs, “The Carlsbad of America”. This historic building was once called the “8th Wonder of the World” because it boasted the largest suspended glassed dome in the world. Restored finally only within the past year to its original turn of the century splendor, 6 stories of guest rooms, spas, restaurants, and bars encircle a huge sunlight center, with inlaid marble tiled floor, and statues of the muses. Its stunning, an amazing architectural feat. I felt the ghosts all around me of a more elegant time, the guests come to "take the waters".

Here’s the synchronicity that tops them all. After the stock market crash of 1929, the owners. Bankrupt, sold the famous resort to the Jesuits for a dollar. For years it was a Jesuit seminary until 1967, when it was purchased by the Whitings of Midland, Michigan, and became a campus of Northwood University until 1983. Northwood, on whose campus I had just spent the summer! After that the building sat desolate until it was restored just this year!

Spiderwoman is still with me. I proceed down the road, awed.

Chautauqua

"What is in my mind is a sort of Chautauqua - like the traveling tent-show Chautauqua’s that used to move across America, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster -paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply to dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale, and platitudes too often repeated.

There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and “best” was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now. Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for."

Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"


Now that the project has ended, or at least is going to grow without needing me - well, what's next? Should I end this blog? I haven't been the most faithful blogger, and I honestly don't know what's next. But it gives me pleasure to see the process of the past few months archived here.

I know I called this journey a "vision quest", but it would be better to call it, as Robert Pirsig wrote - a Chautauqua. I happen to be in Chautauqua county again, at this very moment, enjoying the green saturated, moist light that inhabits this place, a peculiar place of geomantic potency that has been called “the burned over zone”. Because so much religious fervor, utopian dreams, and spiritual experiment has occurred here in the past 150 years, from the Suffragettes and Lily Dale school for mediums, to the Shiloh Community and the origins of Mormonism.

I hit the road looking for vision and adventure, and succeeded, although mostly its been about weaving into a more harmonious pattern various loose threads and frays of my self. Among other things, a lot of shadow work - getting to know on a more familial basis my demons, and realizing the real value of the conversation. I think I understand now why the fallen angel was called "Lucifer", which means "Light bearer". Because the shadow brings so much illumination, if we can but engage the dialogue.

But this has, now that I think about it, been a Chautauqua for me. Bringing forth what I know and have to share to a new community. It hasn't been easy, which is what makes it most valuable for me. I've learned a lot.

So, the question that rolls west with me now is - how do I define myself as an artist now, what is next? If I'm going to continue with my Chautauqua, then it will require a rigourous discipline on my part. Matt Burke, the other resident artist I made good friends with this summer, shared not a few conversations with me about this subject. The fact is, very few people do care, even those who are close to you. After years of returning to Tucson with my new work and adventures, I've become used to few if anyone I know acknowledging what I bring back, artistically or intellectually. That's how it is these days.

You have to let it go, and not concern yourself with how many people care about what what you're doing, not care about how much money you make or don't make, not care about what any institution or magazine or even colleague thinks art "is". Ultimately, it has to become your spiritual path, your meditation, your thread that weaves you into harmony and depth.

"The truest art I would strive for would be to give the page the same qualities as Earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding. Finally, the lessons of impermanence would teach this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness, and despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life"

Gretel Ehrlich
"The Solace of Open Spaces"

reception tonight august 16th at the Midland Arts Center

Tomorrow I leave Midland, Fellowship completed, and Spider Woman's Web spun and still spinning. The show and talk last night was a great success! And I am very pleased that Kathy Space, and the Creative Spirit Center in Midland have decided to continue this Community Arts Project and will have another exhibition of the pieces, with new work as they include new participants, later in the year.

My sculptures will remain with Kathy to be included in the future show. Beyond that, I'm very happy indeed that the Web was woven, and continue to weave, even if I'm not here!

No artist could ask for more.

My gratitude to many: to Kathy Space and Space Studio, my collaborator. To the participants who worked with us to create this project. To my friend and colleague Matte Burke, for his insight and creative inspiration in the course of this residency. To Christiana and Nancy from the Center for all of their support and help. To the Midland Arts Center, and Northwood University for housing and resources, as well as the many days I've spent in the forests around the University.

And especially, to the Alden B. Dow Creativity Center - and the spirit of Alden Dow, whose presence is deeply felt here.

Show at Midland Arts Center

"Thought Woman Weaving the World"

I wanted to post some of the images from the show that I'll be having with the other Fellows next week at the Midland Arts Center (August 16th from 7:00 to 9:00). My community arts project "Hands of the Spiderwoman - Weaving Ourselves Back Into the Web" will be on display, and I'll be giving a brief talk. I look forward to seeing participants there! And also look forward, after the residency ends next week, to some "down time" to process the work and insights of this summer.

Thanks again to so many who made the work possible, and most of all, to the Aldon B. Dow Creativity Center.

"Hands of Spider Woman - Healing the Rift"

Icon #7"We are the Weavers, We are the World"

"The River Face"

"Dancing on the Bones"

Rilke

What we call fate

does not come to us from outside:

it goes forth from within us.


Rainier Maria Rilke

Progress Report

I've not had a chance to write much of late, as I and Kathy have been working with the small group of "weavers" here in Midland, casting faces and hands and thinking about what it means to "weave" our ways back into a greater sense of connectedness with each other, and the world.

Naturally, the realization that when one invokes ("to join") a ritual, a deity, a process, the web expands, and the changes happen in our own lives as well. That will take me a good day or two to write about sometime soon.

I like the pieces I did (as above) that have lively, chaotic threads coming out of hands, mouths, noses..........the vitality emerging from hands and mind. More on this later as well.

Mostly, the great joy of getting my hands in the good rich dirt, in this case, terra cotta dirt, and sculpting. I post here just a few pieces. Sculpting in clay, painting with delicious colors, dancing. All the same ecstasy.

The exhibit will be at the Midland Arts Center on the 16th of August, at 7:00. 17 people have participated, and we will be mounting 17 individual "icons" to create a mosaic, each hand connected to the next with the prayer ties we're weaving. I think it will be beautiful.

THREADS OF THE SPIDERWOMAN - some random notes

Ts' its' tsi' nako, Thought-Woman
is sitting in her room,  and what ever she thinks about appears.
Thought-Woman, the spider
named things and as she named them they appeared.
She is sitting in her room thinking of a story now:

I'm telling you the story She is thinking. 3

 

Keresan Pueblo Proverb  (3)

Native stories don't end after two hours in a theatre, or when we turn off the electronic box. Like the Hands of Spider Woman, they keep spinning and evolving, generation into generation, from the waking world to the dreamtime. Storytelling, in native traditions, is more than a way to pass on history and religious beliefs to the next generation - it is also a ceremony that acts as a link between the mythical beings and the people themselves, whose ritual life is based on the mythic cycles. This is the same way sacred masks, throughout the world, are regarded and used - as doorways into the realms of the deities.

Spider Woman appears in stories throughout the Americas, indeed, throughout the world. My inspiration is derived from her potent presence in the Southwestern part of the United States, where I live, which includes the rich cultural traditions of the Pueblo Indians and
the Navajo. The Pueblo Indians refers to many native peoples living there, from northern New Mexico to the Hopi mesas of Arizona, with many unique cultural differences. These people are believed to be the descendants of the vanished Anasazi who built cities, cliff dwellings, and ceremonial centers throughout the area.

In Pueblo mythology Thought Woman, Sun Father, and Corn Mother are the most important deities. These primal deities are each powerful, but they are also interdependent. Thought Woman/Spider Woman is the creatrix of the universe, which she sometimes initiates alone, and sometimes in partnership with the Sun. The creative impulse is something Thought Woman passes on, originating from the Web's center a generative process continually expanding through her daughters, sons, and a non-human pantheon of relations as well.

There are also tales (among the Hopi) that say Spiderwoman, with Sun Father, fashioned the very first people (which also included two-legged people) from red clay. When ceramic artist Kathy Space and I began our community sculpture project in Midland, Michigan (2007), we conceived of “prayer ties” to unify a mosaic composed of casts of participants’ hands and faces. This variation on Spider Woman Web seemed like another “thread“ to envision the telling. A Web of minds and hands, made of red terra cotta clay. Terra. The good red earth, the color of life, of blood, of vitality.

A "Spider and Cross" symbol is found, ubiquituous, among the prehistoric Mississippian people thorughout the South and Midwest, and a Spider Woman, who is also a variation of Mother Earth, is found among the Maya.  The Navajo (who call themselves the “Dine” which means “the people”) revere Grandmother Spider Woman ('Na'ashje'ii sdfzq'q) because she taught them how to weave.

According to cultural anthropologist Carol Patterson-Rudolph,

"The Navajo have their own version of Spider Woman. As with all metaphors, Spider Woman is a bridge that allows a certain kind of knowledge to be transmitted from the mundane to the sacred dimension.........they believe that an individual must undergo an initiation before he or she can be fully receptive to this kind of knowledge. Thus, to the eyes of the uninitiated, Spider Woman appears merely as an insect, and her words go unheard. But to the initiated whose mind has been opened the voice of this tiny creature can be heard. This is the nature of wisdom, c0nveyed through the metaphor of Spider Woman. 1"

Spider Woman (who lives, the Navajo say, on Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly) is always available to help her descendants. She can best be heard in the wind (or on the transparent threads of synchronicities) - if one is quiet, and prepared to listen.

Navajo rugs often have Spiderwoman’s Cross woven into the pattern. The cross of Spider Woman, it seems to me, is another very important symbol for our time, because it represents balance - the union of the 4 directions or 4 elements. The fifth element is the unifying force, the mystery at the center. To “walk in beauty” is to be aware of a “moving point of balance” as we walk across the land, and walk through the circles of our lives and relationships.

Spider Woman has a way of getting around.

Although she can be found in the canyons and deserts and prairies and forests of the Americas (and stories about the Yellow Women, and “Born from the Water” and “Monster Slayer“, and Evil Katchina, and many others, are well worth the telling) - it seems her grandchildren traveled to many other places and times as well. Perhaps she was once Neith, the primal weaver of ancient Egypt. In Celtic lore she has her hand on the web of the Wyrd, and in India, there is the great Jewel Net of Indra, wherein each gem infinitely reflects every other gem. Among the Greeks she gave Theseus a thread to guide him through his labyrinth - a thread not unlike the same threads she casts to you, and to me, now and then, on our own heroes journeys.

And today? Well, there are many contemporary ways Spiderwoman makes herself known. Ecologists speak of the great Web of life, while physicists speak of entanglement theory. I like to think that the Internet is Spiderwoman's latest appearance. I have the feeling She’s working very hard now to make us pay attention.

Because the truth of Spiderwoman's Web is really very simple. All my efforts to make a more complex tale have failed, and I can summarize it like this:

We're woven into the world,
and the world is woven into us.

We’re weaving the world into being with the stories we tell, right now. 

A cultural paradigm is founded upon mythic roots - the "warp and woof"2 from which the ideas of a culture grow. So what are those threads? Do they show us how to “walk in beauty” as the Navajo teach? Because to "walk in beauty" is not just a personal practice. It's a blessing in motion for all our myriad relations. Each of us is holding a thread, a lineage, that goes back in time and extends far into the future, a weave we participate in with our thoughts, our dreams, and the manifest creative work of our hands. So perhaps the only real question is also an ethical question, as well as a creative one. “What are we weaving?”

I have found that Spiderwoman delights in all things connected, co-creative, collaborative, cooperative, communicative - all those “co” words. Warp and weft. May we all be conscious weavers, beautiful weavers. For our children, for all our relations, for the future.

My gratitude to:

The Aldon B. Dow Fellowship, The Puffin Foundation, Kathy and Steve Space and Space Studio, and you - for weaving this story with me.

Lauren Raine, 2007

Beauty is above me

Beauty is below me

Beauty is beside me

Beauty is before me

Beauty is behind me

 Dine Blessing Way Chant

1 Patterson-Rudolph, Carol, "On the Trail of Spiderwoman", 1997, Ancient City Press, p. 82

2 "warp and woof : the foundation or base of something." [ Old English owef "weave on" <>

3 Keresan Pueblo Creation Myth - Patterson-Rudolph, Carol, "On the Trail of Spiderwoman", Ibid.