threads of the spiderwoman: A "Spider Woman" Synchronicity and a Poem

Wednesday, June 15, 2022

A "Spider Woman" Synchronicity and a Poem

Petroglyph in New Mexico

When I began this Blog I was on the "trail" of Spider Woman as an artist, and more importantly, as a spiritual quest. I began recording synchronicities along the way, and I often think of them as "Spider Woman's threads". Because the farther I explored that liminal zone of wondering and wandering, the more synchronicities seemed to occur. So many that I imagined I was occasionally getting a glimpse of the bigger pattern. Sometimes they seemed like touchstones, sometimes like road signs. Synchronicities are very personal, and if one pays attention, they can inform, guide, and often confuse on many levels. I believe this is because they exist on many levels or dimensions of being. **

So this beautiful Synchronicity.......

I have felt out of touch with my spirituality, out of touch certainly with Spider Woman and the work I used to do. All the daily demands of our lives, the "temporal density" of contemporary life that leaves one grasping, between items on the laundry list, little crumbs of soul here and there. I used to have a ritual I did every day that was dedicated to Spider Woman - I would watch the sun rise, and make offerings of my morning coffee to the 4 directions, East, South, West and North. Then I would pour some coffee in the Center, to symbolize the underlying unity of all things, the ineffable center of the wheel.

I remembered that ritual, and remembering, greeted the rising sun with it once again. Afterwards I reflected rather sadly that I had pehaps lost contact with the faith, and sense of divine purpose, that I used to have when I was on the trail of Spider Woman.

I support myself with an AIRBNB, tiny houses and rooms. A guest had just left and I went in to clean. She had left a poem on the desk - one of those poems from the ubiquitous "take a poem" piles found at coffee shops in Tucson. It was perfect. Here it is:

on the rock overlooking the huddled rock-gorge
on the rock planted on rock for a wall
on the rock rusted with a rosy haze on it
on the rock children scrawl with chalk
as though that were a way of making it talk
you can see circling about with a crazy velocity
as if the grain of the rock were reassembling
for some unforeseeable purpose
red specks that are the tiniest spiders
if you look real close

--------Cid Corman

**I began this Blog in 2007 as I prepared for a summer long Aldon B. Dow Fellowship at Northwood University in Midland, Michigan. My intention was to pursue my Visions of the Spider Woman, and in particular, I wanted to create a Community Arts Project that engaged others in that Vision of the Great Web. Spider Woman is an ubiquitous Native American Goddess/Creatrix found throughout the Americas, in particular, She has profound meaning for me as I learned about Her in the myths of the Pueblo Peoples, and the Navajo (Dine`). I was very influenced by a book by anthropologist Carol Patterson-Rudolph (1997) called On the Trail of Spider Woman: Petroglyphs, Pictographs, and Myths of the Southwest

I have also come to believe (no, perhaps sense or "see" is a better way of putting it) that synchronicities are all ultimately related, they are flashes of the hologram, the weaving.....Spider Woman's Web.

***And who is Spider Woman to me? She is a guide and mentor, with a great sense of humor, and a whole lot of patience. She is also my name for the Divine.

Exhibit of "Spider Woman's Hands" at Midland Art Center 2007

I did complete a Community Arts Project that summer of 2007 called "Hands of Spider Woman" at the Midland Arts Center, and then in 2008 the Project was renewed by artist Kathy Space at the Creative Spirit Center, also in Midland. And in 2009 I went to Henry Luce Center for Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., where I again continued my "Hands of the Spider Woman" theme with a community Project and sculpture I called "Weavers".