Spider Totems

Spiders are very delicate creatures that play an important role in the myths and lore of many peoples as the teacher of balance between the past and future, the physical and spiritual.

To the Native Americans, Spider is Grandmother, the link to the past and future. In India it's associated with Maya, the weaver of illusions.

With its gentle strength, Spider spins together the threads of life with intricate webs.

Spider knows that the past affects the future and vise versa. It calls us to make use of our creativity and weave our dreams into our destiny.

For many Native Americans, "spider woman" stories are important creation mythologies. One of the common feature of those are wisdom symbolized with spiders' webs (for example, she taught the human how to weave). Also generally accepted are the ideas that her "thread" connects the human world and the world of spirits or the "above world" and the "below world". Spider Woman also weaves the "relationship" of the Web of Life and all beings.

"In the beginning, there was the dark purple light at the dawn of being. Spider Woman spun a line to form the east, west, north, and south. Breath entered man at the time of the yellow light. At the time of the red light, man proudly faced his creator. Spider Woman used the clay of the earth, red, yellow, white, and black, to create people. To each she attached a thread of her web which came from the doorway at the top of her head. This thread was the gift of creative wisdom. Three times she sent a great flood to destroy those who had forgotten the gift of her thread. Those who remembered floated to the new world and climbed to safety through the Sipapu Pole the womb of Mother Earth."