Thought Woman/Spider Woman

"Thought Woman Spider named things and as she named them things appeared." thus begins Leslie Silko's book " Ceremony". In Native American, particularly Laguna Pueblo, myths and legends, everything in the Universe first came into existence as the manifestation of the thought of Thought Woman/Spider woman -who then wove myriads of connections and interconnections with intricacy of craft inherent in the translucent web.


The legend is that Thought woman Spider thought the web that is our World and all that is in it, into being. Well, the First Nation cultures in most parts of the world, believed in the inherent power of thoughts to manifest into being and some of them even insisted on controlling thoughts to prevent negative manifestations likes war and natural calamities like storms, droughts etc., from happening.

The act of creation is an act of love - love of Creatrix' thought that manifests into beings/things and the Creatrix, a quintessential woman, through her act of love, calls all things in the Universe into being. Initially, thoughts, words and being were inseparable. But later, with time and distance from the Centre of the web -like the farthest filaments-things moved away from words and thoughts with many iterations/many births and thus from the quintessential Creatrix, who goes by different names in different places, in different times: Corn woman, The Sky Woman, Shakthi, Manjusha, Saraswathi, Anahita, Amaterasu - people tried to name their nameless thoughts into being with nomenclature and the Goddess merely smiled.

Weaving

I have always been fascinated by the act of weaving. As a child, I have watched granny's fingers reenacting the motion of weaving as she tried to make sense of Krishna's rasakrida to a five year old girl; seen it in the motions of the ladies who wove the pinnate leaves of the coconut tree into roofing thatch to protect their homes from the cruel June rains and in the cyclical movements of the charka or the spinning wheel as it spun hard khadi clothes which became the trademark of a rajnithi( political ideology) gone awry

The motions of weaving were set in time immemorial - even though I understood the tenors and hues of weaving only a few years ago. In many Native American creation stories, Spider woman Grandmother wove the webs which became the filaments of all existence. 

The act of weaving was reenacted later by the calloused fingers of a "half naked fakir" who through the act of weaving taught us, the art of love and non-violence, in the act of proclaiming freedom. Weaving, thus happened, in many guises, tenors and hues. It became a metaphor for our existence, which preceded essence. 

Weaving is an act of love, an act of responsibility. Spiders showed us the way and we followed them instinctively. Spider webs grew on the walls. As the spiderwebs caught the light from the sun and reflected rainbows in its filaments, we too traced the filaments, and caught a bit of rainbow, as we continued to weave new webs from the old ones as we traced our way back to the centre which is the Goddess.