Skip to main content

Grandmother Spider

Grandmother Spider 
Artist:  Jo Jayson


Grandmother Spider created the world by spinning her webs, and the interconnections of her weaving bonded all beings together.  The magic of spiders is featured throughout the mythology of ancient cultures across the globe, from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas.  People have been fascinated with the spider's ability to weave, and although the magical spider is not always portrayed as a woman, when she is often it is as a wise and powerful elder spirit.  A grandmother.

Are you afraid of spiders?  

I once saw a strong and independent friend jump up on a chair to avoid a spider crawling across her living room floor.  Another woman friend had a hedge near her house cut down because "there are spiders in there."  In Arizona a young mother routinely (and I maintain, reasonably) entered a shed in her backyard with a flashlight and a rubber flip-flop in her hand, finding black widow spiders in the dark and smacking them to death.  The killings made her shudder but her mama instinct to protect her toddler override her qualms.  Some spiders are dangerous, but not most. 

I admire their webs and appreciate their fly-catching appetites. If I remove a (non-poisonous) spider from my home I do it gently with paper in order to deposit her in the garden.  But when a childhood friend of my daughter's used our pet store gift certificate to purchase a tarantula, I shuddered at the thought that it might escape its plastic case.  I'm tolerant of spiders, but such a BIG one?  Oh no!  (I was relieved to learn that pet tarantulas are harmless).

I'm drawn to the stories that portray Spider Woman as a grandmother full of wisdom and power, a creator.  And I'm interested that both old people and spiders can be unsettling to many people.  (See:

There are indigenous stories honoring Grandmother Spider for creating the world even while cautionary fear of Spiders has evolved since some spiders carry the potential to deal out death to the unwary.  

Icons are powerful, I think, because they carry danger along with their blessings.

Something to think about ... or, to steal a phrase from Sandra, one of my dear wise women peers:  
"I need to sit with that idea."



Comments

  1. GraceFebruary 17, 2018 at 12:53 PM

    Yes, we have so many negative images of spiders that are mostly helpful in controlling insects and provide that sense of mystery. My daughter was convinced the spider had chosen her as totem as she experienced the wild initiation of a straight line of spider bites that appeared after a vision quest and sleeping the night in a sleeping bag on the ground. She is wise beyond my aged wisdom thinking nothing of the crows feet that have appeared on her face and her transition from Maiden to Mother. Perhaps her totem has had something to do with that. On another tract, spiders demand respect and attention least you find yourself in their realm. Love the image and the idea of the fear that aging inspires or perhaps those who have aged into their power inspiring fear in those that plan to deceive and take advantage. Thank you

    ReplyDelete
  2. JSCFebruary 17, 2018 at 5:15 PM

    Thank you for reading and commenting. I think our totems are strong, especially when we acknowledge and accept them.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated before posting, generally within 24 hours.

Popular posts from this blog

The Seasons of a Woman: Harvest Queen

Harvest Queen  The  Harvest Queen  represents the Autumn Equinox, also known as the celebration of Mabon.  The light and the dark are in balance on the equinox, and as the days unfold the darkness begins to overcome the light.  We celebrate our harvests, and then come the days of contemplation.  Wisdom emerges from our depths into our conscious minds, and if we fully accept this upwelling of knowing from within, we enter a time of new strength, preparing ourselves as we become, day by day, one who understands grace.    Celebrating the Autumn Equinox    She who has matured through her seasons, from infancy and childhood to maiden, thence to mother, and as she ascends her Autumn Throne, her crops are fully grown.  She has earned her crown. The left half of the painting represents the end of summer, and the fullness of nature, and that of a woman fully matured. The right half of the painting represents the beginning of autumn; the beginning of the fall ... the very beginning of the descen
Post a Comment
Read more

Becoming a Work of Art

Advanced Style:  Girls Just Wanna Have Fun! For many people of all ages that includes playing with one's presentation to the world, to friends, and to oneself.  Yet in our culture, women who are beyond their reproductive years are shamed into invisibility, retreating into clothes they were taught were more suitable for older women.  But not everyone succumbs to the idea that due to being older they should just shuffle off the stage of life, retreating to the comfort of sensible shoes, a cup of tea and the couch.   The photos on this page are from Advanced Style, the work of Ari Seth Cohen. To celebrate the sense of style of some stylish over-age-60 women he'd seen on the streets of NYC,  Cohen used his photography to focus on them and got to know many through interviews and repeated photo sessions.  He eventually published a book as well as a documentary about women who don't give up the self-expression they've enjoyed all their lives just because they are "ge
Post a Comment
Read more

The Shadow Self

  I'm exploring this concept at the request of Kathleen V., who is leading a Crone workshop in which I'm participating.  She asked whether I'd ever written about any aspect of my shadow self in my journaling over the years. I immediately thought of one experience I had in my early 20's.  I had just left a difficult relationship and had moved to a house with two friends near Bass Harbor, Maine.  The small house was rural, built above the rocky shore facing the harbor.  Behind it the forest rose up into the hills.   One winter night I was dropped off on the road.  As I trudged up the lonely driveway to the house through the snow I realized the house was empty.   I had not lived there long, and I had not been home alone before.  I kicked the snow from my boots and opened the kitchen porch door.  As is the case for many farm houses, the small enclosed back porch stored coats and boots and when the outer door was closed an inner door helped protect from the cold entering the
Post a Comment
Read more