Power Animals: MOTHER SPIDER

She tests the space in front of her by delicately lifting the front one of her eight legs. Her furry appendage tenderly caresses the air feeling the breath of the forest collectively and the movements of the forest's creatures individually. The only thing that gives away her active, sentient thoughts is the small, almost nervous, twitching of the two feelers on either side of her mouth. This is mother spider. She weaves webs. She climbs trees. She digs burrows. But always, she ambushes her prey.

Spider is a powerful ally and her presence in your life is not to be taken lightly. She has come to help you work with your fears. Ask spider to help you muster the courage to look at the fears that are behind the negative, critical thoughts of yourself and others. Often when we get critical it is because we are trying to protect ourselves from something we are afraid of. It's as simple as the arachnophobic person saying, "I hate spiders".... the truth is "I fear spiders". Allow all the little fears to pour out of you into your journal. It is these fears that are preventing the creativity in your life, not the projections of others. You'll find that spider will come to collect all the little eggs of fear and transmute the energy into creativity, hatching dozens of creative allies in your life that can help you spin beautiful webs.

It is said that spider created the alphabet and is the mother of the written word. There is no better companion to welcome to your home to help you wield your words on paper. What more is a story than the creation of a new reality? In spinning a web, spider literally weaves a new plane of existence, an entirely new world. This world can be flat, round, linear or circular. It all depends on what species of spider you are watching. Each has their own signature. What is the signature of the species you watch now? What does this mean about the paths you have available? The spider has eight legs and the number 8 is associated with infinity. Imagine you now stand at the center of a web of possibilities with an unnumbered variety of paths to follow. Which is yours?

If you find yourself face-to-face with a non-spinning spider such as a wolf spider or tarantula you'll be examining a different aspect. Rather than hanging suspended by a thread and opening up to possibilities, what is needed now is to burrow into the unconscious. These spiders dig burrows in the Earth and wait patiently for their next meal to pass by. Go inside yourself. Snuggle into the smell of the soil, know who you are and be grounded in that. Here you are safe to confront your fears. Here spider will find you and use the effective poison in her bite to transmute those fears into true power. All you need will pass by the door of your tunnel. Turn inward, be brave, and trust that you are safe. There is no better companion to have accompany you on any forays into the unconscious to uncover the meaning behind WHY you do the things you do. They are incredibly sensitive to vibrations and can help you sense things you hadn't felt before. Spider can help you navigate the darkness and the fears and view them from a new, less threatening perspective.

Spiders are known to fly for hundreds of miles, even across open oceans, by casting out a strand of web and allowing the wind to take them thousands of feet aloft. This is know as "ballooning". They have absolutely no control over where their journey will take them or how far they will go. They could go 20 feet or 20,000 feet. Think about the amount of trust it takes to cast that strand and not know. Let go of control. Face the fears that cause you to try and be in control. Know that there is no such thing as control. Ask spider to help you see that you are already on this unknown journey. Anything else is just an illusion.

I love this excerpt from David Abram's book The Spell of the Sensuous about spiders:
"It was from them that I first learned of the intelligence that lurks in nonhuman nature, the ability that an alien form of sentience has to echo one's own, to instill a reverberation in oneself that temporarily shatters habitual ways of seeing and feeling, leaving one open to a world all alive, awake, and aware. It was from such small beings that my senses first learned of the countless worlds within worlds that spin in the depths of this world that we commonly inhabit."

"Ghostly Messenger" from Gracious Wild

This is an excerpt from my book: Gracious Wild: A Spiritual Journey with Hawks...

Another spirit I’d known in this life began calling on me regularly since I’d come to the island. The woman who was my babysitter when I was a child was a grandmother to me. She first appeared randomly in my dreams, but then her visits began to take on meaning. I hadn’t seen her during the last few years of her life and always regretted never saying goodbye.

I was in a dimly lit living room with the shades drawn. Pauline sat low on an old sofa with green and gold floral print. She was plump like I remembered her in one of her big, soft housedresses. The room was smokey with rays of light coming in through the cracks in the curtains. I knew she was dying.

“You should get going to class,” she encouraged. She was right; it was nearly time for my college courses to start.

“I don’t want to leave you,” I shyly admitted.

“All will be well,” she comforted, “come here and give me a hug.”

I approached her and bent over to wrap my arms around the round woman now on in years. She felt frail under my arms. The sweet scent of her housedress rubbed my chin. Her tight, gray curls tickled my cheek. Her arms engulfed me. I leaned into her and whispered, “goodbye grandma.”

I felt myself lifting up with her spirit as it left her body. For a moment, I held the embrace and revealed in the weightlessness. I felt so free. Then, self-conscious, I pulled back into my own body. I stood aside and watched her spirit ascend.

My wrist-watch alarm woke me from my otherworldly dream hours before dawn. I ate breakfast staring at three black windows and packed carefully for a cross-island trip. A setting three quarter moon surrounded by haunting, wispy clouds loomed ahead as I climbed Manzanita Hill. The scene was the perfect backdrop for a horror movie, and after my strange dream it felt as if I was walking the land of the dead. What was I doing here? In answer, a shrill, blood-curdling scream erupted from the darkness around me. I stopped, my muscles surging in anguish against the anxiety. I spun to face the tormenting barn owl that had released his shriek. I let out a madwoman’s scream of my own. Hearing my voice so similar to his raised my courage. His ghostly white figure glowing in the moonlight stealthily disappeared into the night sky. Just then my grandmother’s house came to mind. She had owl figures and pictures decorating her entire house. This was becoming way too real.