Deity of Interest: Spider Grandmother

Spider Grandmother, creatrix Crone Goddess

Spider Grandmother is creator of the world in Native American religions and myths. According to mythology she was responsible for the stars in the sky. She took a web she had spun, laced it with dew, threw it into the sky and the dew became the stars. Spider Woman is a metaphor for she who creates from a central source. One day it is she who will pull all of her creation back to her source. Her webs represent the grid and the matrix of our reality - The Spiderweb Effect.

The Spiderweb Effect means that all things originate from a central source, spiral out in a matrix, a grid, a lattice, and a web, following the same sacred geometric patterns, and are connected to each other and that source. If something affects one part of the web, it affects everything. Spider Woman's web links you to everything and everybody in our reality. It is how we learn to be psychic and to communicate telepathically.

Spider Woman is also linked with dream catchers. During dream time we remove part of our consciousness from physical reality and venture off through her web, to experience that which we cannot understand with our physical consciousness. Native Americans believe in the legend of Spider Woman, she who sits at the great, galactic center. She is the female force of all creation, who joins all nations, all tribes, all galactic families and all realities together in her web.

The Navaho revere Grandmother Spider Woman because she taught them how to read, and is the divine spinner amongst Native Americans in the South West. Her web is a shining web of spiritual, human and ecological relationships that has become invisible in the contemporary world. That's why her mask weeps. When we work with Spider Woman, we are inviting her to weave us back into the Web, strand by strand, story by story, remembering our connections, finding our way back to the Center.

They says that when Spider Woman returns, the world will enter a new age. Here, stretched exactly across from our line of vision, is a perfect spider web, spun so that, unless we look in a certain way, it is invisible. But if we shift our viewpoint, there it is overlaid on our horizons, our landscapes, our days. A shimmering, transparent web. Spider Woman's reminder, her gift, her blessing.

Whimsically yours,

Rev. Faemore Lorei,
Shrine Head and Director
Altar of the Arcane Song

The Chant of Goddess Across the Worlds ...

Devotional Song

Devotional Song is the sacred art of revering Goddess or Spirit through the act of music, singing and song. Through hymn and refrain, mantra and chant, drumming and dance we venerate our deities and the Divine. Devotional Song is done in rites, rituals and religious observances, but it can also be done when you are cleaning the house or washing the dishes, hanging the laundry or driving in the car, thus making every mundane act sacred and one of devotion.

Wicca has had its own tradition of devotional songs, and chanting has always been an integral part of pagan liturgy, since its earliest days. Devotional songs aid in the shifting of consciousness from ordinary awareness to astral trance or second sight. Chanting especially is an important key in raising energy, and can really effect the vibrations and frequency of the magickal energies being raised in circle. Beyond this chants can bring a beautiful enjoyment to the rite being enacted.

Devotional Song acts much as a spell, prayer in action, and can be both meditative and energizing as it pleases. When sung or chanted over a sustained length of time, the energetic effects tend to linger, and in the moment can lead one to profound and intense mystical experiences. Many other traditions beyond Wicca and paganism use Devotional Song as ornamental and transcendental art including Hinduism, Sikhism, Sufism and the Ba'hai Faith.



All of nature devotes to Goddess in Song. The sun roars in the firmament. The waves crest and crash on the shore. The earth hums gently to herself, while the wind howls like wolf and whispers like faerie. The birds sing a song of plumage and spirit, the whale sings a song of feeling and fins. The Owl hoots while the frog croaks, and all the world is a symphony on the stage of life herself. The grasses and the flowers, the leaves of the trees all rustle as the breeze blows by them, carrying lingering stories and secrets in the sound and with the seed. The stars sing us their sweetest lullaby in the dark of the night.

Every aspect of earth, each part, is singing its own song, regardless of whether we have the ears to hear it. For those of us who have the ears, however, we do hear. We hear the rhythm of the rain, the percussion of the thunder and the beat of the hailstorm. We hear the trickling of the stream, the babbling of the brook and the gushing of the river. We hear the fizzing of the sea foam, the break of the waves upon the ocean surf and the bubbling in the pond. We hear the music of the animals in the forest, from the chirping cricket and the hissing snake, to the cawing toucan and the snarling panther.

We too make our own songs, the sweetest of which is our own rich, deeply heart-felt laughter. The heart is the most significant conduit for Devotional Song, for it connect us to our highest selves, the powers of our soul and Goddess. When we open our mouths to sing in veneration and awe, honour and praise, worship and love, it is really our hearts that open, and allow our devotion to soar in song to Spirit, and allows Her own abundant, boundless, eternal love to flow back to us in return. Even more important than spiritual evolution and self-actualisation is the pure magick of true oneness with Goddess Divine.
 

In the beginning Goddess sung the God into being. Her voice was the buzzing of bees as she cast her spell, causing the cosmos to come gushing forth. The cadence of her chant cascaded across the worlds as her music manifested the universe of physical matter. Air is the clarity of her note. Fire is the passion in her pitch. Water is the emotion making her voice break. Earth is the deep wisdom unwavering in every word sung.

When I sing my favourite pagan songs I do so with this knowing. From Deity by Wendy Rule to This New Day by Kellianna, from Witch in the Woods by Louisa John-Krol to Veil of Elphame by Stephanie, I sing, focussed on the clarity of my notes and the passion in my pitch, the emotion making my voice break, and the deep widsom unwavering in every word. I sing, focussed on what my song is creating within me, and without.

Above all I focus on the devotion. And in that moment I find myself at one with nature and Goddess. My song of devotion draws me ever closer to her mother's love for me, and for all of my siblings across the seven spheres of existence. Above all I find Devotional Song connects me, through my heart, to spirit and to truth. And it is in this connection that I actualise and evolve. It is in this connection that I best sing my song ... my song of bliss and of love. 


Whimsically yours,


Rev. Faemore Lorei,
Altar of the Arcane Song,
The Chant of Goddess Across the Worlds ...