An overview by artist Lauren Raine MFA of the Native American Creatrix mythology of the Spider Woman, and its significance for the contemporary world, and includes overview of community arts projects facilitated by Ms. Raine as participants explore the meanings of weaving and interconnection

1. Spider Woman’s
Hands
by Lauren Raine

2. “What might we see,
how might we act,
if we saw the world
with a webbed vision?”

3. The Cross and Spider
Is ubiquitous at prehistoric Mississippian and Mound
Builder sites. So is the “Hand and Eye” talisman.
Mississippian Gorget,
ca. 1500 ad.

4. Spiro mound artifact, Woolaroc Museum, Oklahoma
“Spider Woman’s” many hands ?

5. Among Pueblo peoples of the Southwest
Spider Woman made the world with the
stories She told. She is also called
“Thought Woman”.
Anasazi petroglyph from Arizona

6. Spider Woman passed on this
creative power
to Her Relations.

7. “Ts' its' tsi' nako, Thought-Woman, the Spider
is sitting in her room
thinking up a good story now:
I'm telling you the story
she is thinking”
Keresan Pueblo Proverb

8. “The Universe is made of stories, not atoms”
…..Muriel Rukeyser

9. In Pueblo cosmologies,
Spider Woman led the
people through the Sipapu
(or birth canal) at the end of
each Age into the New World.
The “4th
World” has just
ended according to their
calendar.
Perhaps the World Wide Web
is Her latest appearance!

10. The Navajo (Dine`) say that Spider Woman
lives on Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly.

11. They revere Spider Woman because she was
the First Weaver, a wise guide to the initiated.
Like a spider, she can be so small one may
never see her . Yet the Web of Grandmother
Spider Woman is everywhere, for those with
eyes to see.

12. To this day, Navajo midwives rub a little
spider web into the hands of newborn girls ~
so they will become good weavers.

13. “Spider Woman’s Cross” design in traditional Navajo rug.
Balance, inter-dependancy

14.
“To the Hopi,
weaving is an act that
uncovers a pattern that
is already there.”
John Loftin,
Religion and Hopi Life

15. like Spider Woman
we also spin
worlds into being
with the stories
we tell……….
What are the Stories we need now?

16. The 6th
Extinction
Psychologists have not
begun to ponder the
emotional toll of the loss
of our fellow life. Nor
have theologians reckoned
the spiritual
impoverishment that
extinction brings.
Mark Jerome Walters
THE NATURE CONSERVANCY

17. “What might we see,
how might we act,
if we saw the world
with a webbed vision?
The world seen
through a web of relationships…..
as delicate as spider silk,
yet strong enough to hang a bridge on.”
Catherine Keller, “From a Broken Web”

18. We weave with the work of our hands and words

19. weave [weev]:
1. to make something by interlacing threads
vertically and horizontally.
2. to spin something such as a spider's web.
3. to construct story:
4. to introduce separate parts
into something larger
[ Old English wefan < Germanic]

21. “At the quantum level
Reality is strange and non-local:
the whole universe is a network
of interconnection that transcends
time and space.”
Ervin Laszlo, Physicist

22. “Synchronicities
may demonstrate
an underlying
unified pattern
that is about
the nature of
consciousness .”
F. David Peat,
Physicist

23. Synchronicities
might just be…….
Spider Woman’s way
of saying “Hello”.

24. Spider Woman‘s Hands Community Arts Projects
Exploring with others what it means to weave the Web
together……….as “Spiderwoman’s Hands”.

25. “Weavers” at the Henry Luce III
Center for the Arts and Religion
with the Faculty and Students in
Washington D.C. (2009)

26. “Weaving the Web” Performance, Tucson, Arizona (2004)Spider Woman weaving with audience at
“Restoring the Balance” community
performance, the Muse Community Art
Center, Tucson, AZ (2004)

27. “Spider Woman’s Hands” Community
Arts Project, at the Midland Center for the
Arts and Aldon B. Dow Creativity Fellowship,
Midland, MI (2007)

28. “Spider Woman’s Hands”
Community Arts Project at the
Creative Spirit Center (2008)

29. “Naming the Links”
with Prayer Ties
and Personal Icons

30. “WOVEN” Community Dance
Performance for the Winter
Solstice, Zuzi’s Dance Theatre,
Tucson, AZ (2017)