SPIDER WOMAN

Paula Underwood

There is a very ancient Telling . . . my father told me it was our oldest learning. It is found among other Native American people in substantially the same form . . . and it goes like this:

IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS THOUGHT WOMAN

AND SHE WAS WHOLE.

AFTER A WHILE SPIDER WOMAN CAME

AND SPUN OUT OF THE WHOLENESS OF THOUGHT

THE INDIVIDUATION OF PERCEPTION

SPUN THE THREADS OF INDIVIDUATION

AND WOVE A UNIVERSE WITH IT.

And my father would end this brief story with the following words: “When you understand this, you understand a great deal.”

The way I learned it from my father is that the Great Spirit is the Spirit of All Things, the Spirit of Universe. Each of us in that broad context is an individual focus of the broad Universe, an individual focus.

Each of us is connected to every other thing, and yet each of us is a specific focus. Universe is like a three-dimensional spider web . . . you touch any point on the great web of life and in some way you affect every other point.

Thought Woman and Spider Woman are what my father would call mind images, and the idea is that you walk through the mind images toward the reality that lies beyond.