Spider

Spider has been showing up recently, first in my dreams. Spider is a weaver between the past and the present. The center of her web marks a beginning with threads moving ever-outward represent the potential of a courageous future. Spider will not survive if she stays in the safe, early weaving of center, yet the center holds the balance for the entire web. What does not hold strong at the edges of the web will be returned to the center for recreation.

Spider appeared in the past life regression that my friend, Laura, guided me through two weeks ago. At the end of the life as the woman from Byblos who left her treasure in the mountain cave, I looked down at my body and saw myself crumpled, my long limbs bent and curled, just like a dead spider.

Spider asks us to recognize our resources. It is her creativity, her ability to weave that enables her to capture her meals, wrapping them in silk until she is ready to eat. In that life, I died with a deep, heavy fear of life without resources. The regression ended before my guides could help me lift this fear, but my guides, fortunately, are not limited to regression sessions. In meditation, my guide handed me my bag of treasures and instructed me to look inside. Expecting gold and silver, instead there was a loving heart, there was a family member from that lifetime I had lost faith in seeking me out, and there was the light and energy that infuses the world.

My guide showed me my grandfather, the man I admire most as a creator of wealth and of generosity. In fact, it is my grandfather’s creativity and hard work that has enabled us to pay for our children’s (his great-grandchildren’s) college educations. What would he have to say about resources? The wisdom that came to me is how we often view the physical world as a Monopoly game where we all start with a certain amount of money and when one player bankrupts the others, a winner. But there is not a limited amount of energy. That is a fear-based myth, and human-created explanation for the times of starvation, bankruptcy, and not being able to see our resources.

In early civilization when currency came into fashion, there were a certain number of trading beads, perhaps a certain amount of gold, but then we added silver, and copper. We added oil. To our wealth collectively there is the tendency to add rather than subtract. The global market has more in it now than it did back when a few villages began trading. I was shown how my grandfather was one who added energy to this world. There are souls who come to add—show us that energy can be added, just as meteors fall to earth and add to her mass and make up.

If I am fearful of not having enough, it is because I can hardly believe the world is full of abundance; that I deserve a full portion. I’m not certain I have the skill, luck, or talent to take my share and hold onto it. Others will envy or steal what I manage to have. I’ve never learned to really honor what I have, to allow myself to see my abundance in a balanced way.

It is fear that leads to greed, fear that blocks and fear that defeats. Spider says, weave your web of potential. Spider says there are always bugs out there to capture, more than you could ever eat.

Myth says that Spider brought the alphabet to humans so that they could communicate. She is the totem animal of the writer. Spider has been climbing all around me of late. There were a couple of people who had Tarot readings at the Summer Solstice Festival at Brigid’s House and spider crawled across my table and over their cards, so I added Spider messages to the reading. And by the way, I live on Spider Lake. Spider has a timely message for us in this unsettled time of fear and recession. Our troubles are not new, not insurmountable. We all might take a peek at our webs right now and count up the bundled bugs. Perhaps it is time to leave the safety of the center and weave a wider web, to take that courageous leap from one branch to another that seems so far away. Spider may fall but she always has her thread to hold her tight, her thread that is stronger than metals of equal diameter. The spider’s body is often viewed as being in the shape of the figure 8 or the infinity symbol. Though she crumbles up and dies, she knows there is another life to come. If we fail, let us try again.

I imagine saying all of this to the woman in Byblos who sits in her dark, empty house feeling that dread that she has nothing and no way to get anything except to steal it, using night as her cloak. She could not hear this; she could not see that she had resources. Even during the regression I could not see how she would survive. Even now, I am questioning the validity of this optimism that there is enough, and there is the potential for much more. What I’m left with is this: She could not see past the center of the web. I still cannot see past the center of the web, but I’ve glimpses, and I’ve seen the wide webs others like my grandfather have woven. We each in turn must tug on the thread to be reassured it is secure and tight, and then with all the faith and courage we keep in our bag of treasures….Leap!