Grandmother Spider's Reappearance

"Autumn and the Spider" copyright 2011, Caris Cerdwyn, All Rights Reserved

It is that time of year when the spiders want to creep indoors where it is warm.  This big old spider has a web off the back deck, on some bushes.  Not sure if it's a wolf spider, or some sort of brown spider that usually hangs out around water.  I saw some more of them today when I stopped to look at motor scooters.  Big, like this one, weaving webs on a sign post, and successfully catching insects.  This one is not as large as she looks in the photo...thank heaven.  The photo is a bit blurry.  But you get the picture, sort of!

Back in seminary we read a book called Spiderwoman's Granddaughters by Paula Gunn Allen.  It was the writing of Native women.  Some interesting stories and poetry.  Transformational.  I took every Native American Spirituality Class offered during that time, and found my life deeply and profoundly changed.  Not only from those classes, but by that time in my life.  The changes in my thinking and my psyche.  Powerful stuff.  Spiders kept showing up.  I nearly walked through a rather gigantic spider's web one day.  The Spider is a symbol of change...the weaving of life and death.  And when spiders appeared to people in visions, it was such a holy thing that no one would speak of it.  That was frustrating to me at the time, as spiders kept showing up, and I didn't know what it all meant...except that there was something powerfully transformative happening to me, and there were no words to use.

It is an odd thing.  Spiders are something that most of us fear at some level.  And yet, we are almost never more than six feet away from a spider of some sort or another.  Now isn't that comforting?  Feeling as though something is crawling up the back of your neck?

Well, spiders are indeed showing up again.  I'm not sure what it all means, (other than the equinox has just past and they are looking to come back indoors for the winter),  but I can guarantee that something transformational is happening in my life.  A death and new life.  Not the final one of my lifetime.  But this is a journey I am taking, and I am weaving my lifepath, and I sense that the ways I am meant to serve are going to come clear in my life.

Next time you meet a spider...walk through their webs or nearly come face to face.  Stop a moment and listen for the wisdom Grandmother Spider may have to offer in her weaving.  Her amazing capacity for creation.  How your story is woven into the Story She has woven from before time.