Spider Woman

Mother of Stones in the West

Who is Spider Woman? This is what I see when I look at her.

She is old. The lines on her face are deepened by the labyrinth etched across it. She has endured hard winters. She squints in sunlight. She stays in the shade.

She is still, unmoving. The landscape changes around her. Seasons come and go. Children grow up, fall in love and bear their own children, but she changes not. She is beetle-bodied, a small head on a round torso. When she moves, she moves slowly.

She is silent. For her, words have no use. She listens, she nods, she says nothing. Even her thoughts are wordless. Much can be learned from the wind, from the running of a lizard, from the earth itself as it moves. Her expression is inscrutable. She gives nothing away.

She weaves and cooks. She feeds and clothes. She tends sickness. She knows how to do all these things. She does them silently, without sympathy or emotion.

She sees all. The labyrinth extends from her eyes, ears, and nose like a spider’s web. She senses everything that happens as a spider feels every vibration on a thread. She has lived a long time. She has experienced thousands of days, hundreds of years. Nothing shakes her.

She is the centre, the hearthstone, the matriarch, the source. Through her, all her people are connected. Brothers and sisters, mothers and daughters, generation after generation, she is the grandmother of them all.

For her, every day begins when the sun rises and ends when it sets. For her, every day is the same. For her, this is life. Breathing the same air as the coyotes and the eagles. Walking the same earth as the ants. Letting the animal of her body live in the world.