Latest / The Harmony Channel / The Black Widow Makes her Presence Known

Transcript

The Black Widow Makes her Presence Known · The Harmony Channel

0:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Harmony Channel, a podcast on creating harmony from the inside out.
0:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host, Sea Rose.
0:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for being here.
0:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Today we're getting into spiders and the spider's web, which is well-timed, seeing as Salon is just around the corner.
0:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, I must add the timing was not mine.
0:42
[SPEAKER_00]: The theme was given to me in my dreams.
0:45
[SPEAKER_00]: But first I'll say, I've never been a big fan of spiders.
0:50
[SPEAKER_00]: For the longest time they grossed me out, they were creepy and scary looking and it seemed like they had just way too many legs.
0:57
[SPEAKER_00]: But I also never enjoyed killing them, partly because I didn't like the feeling of how juicy they were when they were squished.
1:05
[SPEAKER_00]: that was gross, but it was more than that.
1:08
[SPEAKER_00]: There was something far too alive in them to terminate, and I was highly superstitious, still probably am.
1:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And felt as though I would be cursed if I brought an end to a harmless arachnid minding its own business.
1:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a co-worker of mine who taught me how to capture and relocate, not kill.
1:27
[SPEAKER_00]: If you take a glass, cover the spider and slip a piece of sturdy paper underneath.
1:32
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find your eight-legged buddies, a new home outdoors without needing to knock on wood after stepping on it.
1:39
[SPEAKER_00]: This was probably 15 years ago, and I've been using this method ever since, which came in handy when we moved to our last house in Maine.
1:48
[SPEAKER_00]: My husband said once that the house was run by spiders.
1:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I know people who visited didn't always understand the cobwebs in the corners of their rooms.
1:57
[SPEAKER_00]: But I really didn't mind letting the small ones have a little space at the edge of the ceiling.
2:02
[SPEAKER_00]: When it got out of control, I would clean the webs.
2:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Or if the spiders were really large, I'd get the glass out.
2:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But otherwise, I barely noticed them most of the time.
2:13
[SPEAKER_00]: One night, a friend was visiting, and we were sitting in our dimly lit living room when out of the shadows, a very large spider scurried across the floor between us.
2:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Before I could even think about reaching for a glass, my friend leaps forward and instantly stomped on it.
2:30
[SPEAKER_00]: My jaw dropped.
2:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't believe she did that, and my friend couldn't believe the look on my face.
2:36
[SPEAKER_00]: She and I had a good laugh later, but that's when she learned, spiders were not to be killed at my house.
2:42
[SPEAKER_00]: This also didn't mean I loved spiders.
2:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember staying at an old house for a girl's craft weekend in mid-coast Maine.
2:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Three times that weekend, I screeched when someone usual variety of spiders snuck up on me.
2:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It was so strange no one else there was having that experience.
3:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't like that I was getting a reputation for being a scaredy cat, but of course now I
3:09
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2021 and 2022, after my spiritual awakening, I worked with a healer, Deborah Hannecamp, also known as Mama Medicine.
3:19
[SPEAKER_00]: We met for several online medicine readings as I was actively working on trying to understand who I had been, who I was, and who I was becoming.
3:28
[SPEAKER_00]: She had mentioned in our first session together that I was a weaver.
3:33
[SPEAKER_00]: You are a weaver, and you are what is woven.
3:36
[SPEAKER_00]: These were beautiful words.
3:38
[SPEAKER_00]: They sounded true, and they felt true.
3:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a feeling that the meaning of them would take time to reveal.
3:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I intuitive that a weaver was someone who weaves different kinds of magic together to create their unique way of healing.
3:52
[SPEAKER_00]: At the time, I had a hard time seeing myself as a magical person, but I could understand being a weaver quite well.
4:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It was beautifully evident in my work on the craft magazine, where I incorporated knitting, sewing, embroidery, natural dyeing, and more into the universe of one publication.
4:11
[SPEAKER_00]: For the first time, I really thought about my work as magic, and I also thought about the life of a spider, and how they spin their webs, and how life comes to them.
4:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Later in our work together, I expressed my growing curiosity about the spider archetype, and asked if this was connected to being a weaver.
4:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Deborah said absolutely, it's the path that you've chosen to walk.
4:34
[SPEAKER_00]: The spider has everything that she needs within her, being able to create something from absolutely nothing, and creating a net to catch all your dreams, and letting life come to you.
4:46
[SPEAKER_00]: My logical mind spun with curiosity.
4:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to know more to understand deeper.
4:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Immediately I started searching for books on the subject, but when I did an internet search for spiders as magic weavers and mysticism, I came up with a very short list.
5:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I found in order to use book called The Magic of Spider Woman by Lois Duncan and illustrated by Shantobi Gay.
5:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Spider Woman is a legendary figure in Navajo traditions, and I figured this would be a good starting point for my research.
5:17
[SPEAKER_00]: When the book arrived, I was floored.
5:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember pulling the thin paper back from the envelope, mystified.
5:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It was originally a library book, so it still had some of the stickers adhered to the front.
5:30
[SPEAKER_00]: The stickers weren't what caught my attention.
5:32
[SPEAKER_00]: The words on one sticker were what drew me in.
5:36
[SPEAKER_00]: The words naming the library from which it came.
5:39
[SPEAKER_00]: This book used to belong to a little library in Massachusetts.
5:43
[SPEAKER_00]: A library I had been to.
5:45
[SPEAKER_00]: a library in the town where I grew up.
5:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in disbelief.
5:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought no way.
5:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there's another town in a different state with that name.
5:55
[SPEAKER_00]: But when I opened the front cover, the first inside page was stamped with the address.
6:00
[SPEAKER_00]: This was definitely my old library.
6:02
[SPEAKER_00]: That's so weird I thought.
6:04
[SPEAKER_00]: What are the chances?
6:06
[SPEAKER_00]: The book turned out to be a children's book, so I read through it quickly.
6:10
[SPEAKER_00]: The book takes you through the story of how wandering women becomes weaving women,
6:14
[SPEAKER_00]: based on the teachings of Spider-Woman.
6:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And the lesson woven in is about living and working with balance.
6:21
[SPEAKER_00]: At the time, my business was in the midst of a transformation.
6:25
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I was relocating my family to Idaho to help our small company grow.
6:30
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was taken aback by the story's lesson.
6:33
[SPEAKER_00]: If anything I needed to work harder, balance could come later.
6:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Now was a time to push the business in new directions.
6:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I really didn't understand what balance had to do with my life.
6:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But balance understood the relevance.
6:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And there were several little times when the word harmony or balance came up in a journey, or a meditation, or in pulling tarot cards.
6:55
[SPEAKER_00]: But just because the word was arriving for me, it didn't mean I understood why.
6:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't mean I wanted to go in that direction.
7:03
[SPEAKER_00]: In the undercurrents of my life, a faint understanding that spiders were meaningful to me was flowing, and as confusing as it was, somehow, so was the word harmony.
7:14
[SPEAKER_00]: My life started getting really hectic, and on a day that ended up being pivotal, on a day when the course of our business changed abruptly, I was met by a spider at a rental house in Boise.
7:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't recognize a spider as any particular variety.
7:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I recognized her as large and leggy.
7:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I sent a photo to my business partner at the time and she replied saying it looked like a black widow.
7:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I freaked out.
7:39
[SPEAKER_00]: A relationship with spiders was one thing, but a relationship with a black widow.
7:44
[SPEAKER_00]: No thank you.
7:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I went out to the garage where I'd seen the spider to confirm that she was indeed a black widow.
7:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I was glad she was outside, but I could almost feel the presence of her from inside the house.
7:57
[SPEAKER_00]: She felt important being a potent black widow, so I decided on a whim to connect with her energy.
8:03
[SPEAKER_00]: A year prior, I had channeled with Oliver, my beloved cat who had suddenly died, which I only did because of our strong bond and his willingness to connect with me.
8:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And now I was curious to give this a try, once again, with a stranger spider.
8:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I had never talked to a spider before.
8:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Was it even possible?
8:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I closed my eyes with no expectations of what would come through.
8:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I pictured her in a connection began to form.
8:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I asked her name and was given one.
8:33
[SPEAKER_00]: We exchanged a few words telepathically, which I will keep private, but she essentially served as a messenger, letting me know that a new path was forming.
8:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Months later as I washed dishes at our kitchen sink, I noticed another black widow spider had set up her webcam nearby.
8:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Can someone please hand me a glass and off this one went outside and across the street.
9:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Two black widow spiders in a matter of a few months.
9:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Odd.
9:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't channel with this one, I just removed it from the house.
9:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Please go away, I thought.
9:14
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of changes were happening in my life at this time.
9:17
[SPEAKER_00]: We sold our house, my business fell away, and as our one-year lease expired, my family and I moved yet again.
9:24
[SPEAKER_00]: We decided to stay in Idaho for the time being, but we moved up to the vast serene mountains where I knew no one, and I would have the open space to heal, and to figure out my next steps on our path to rebuilding.
9:38
[SPEAKER_00]: On move and day my family and I excitedly unloaded the truck, climbing the stone steps to our little townhouse.
9:45
[SPEAKER_00]: As I was heading back for another handful, I caught sight of a puffy grass seed stuck in a web.
9:51
[SPEAKER_00]: When I crouch down to inspect the web more closely, I saw her, her black form safely tucked away in the stone step cave.
10:00
[SPEAKER_00]: She greeted me gently as my family continued to move our belongings into the house.
10:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, that makes 3.
10:07
[SPEAKER_00]: That's funny.
10:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder what it means.
10:11
[SPEAKER_00]: A couple of months later, in the fall of 2023, I traveled on my own to the California Coast to stay a few days in a tiny one-room bunk house in Santa Monica.
10:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I was determined to figure out my next business, which was strangely pointing towards writing.
10:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though I was completely and utterly afraid of writing.
10:29
[SPEAKER_00]: it didn't make sense, but I could feel it was true.
10:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I had felt it for some time.
10:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I begged the universe to open a different pathway, but none had opened.
10:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I was tired of putting it off and was determined to figure out this whole writing business thing.
10:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Time alone in a beautiful place with little distractions seemed like a good way to begin.
10:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Somehow, I managed to find distractions, mostly from the alluring call of the ocean that I missed.
10:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I walked the beach for hours, collecting shells, taking photographs, and breathing in the salty air.
11:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, I knew it was time to wander back to spend the rest of the day writing.
11:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I found my way back to the pier, walked to Main Street, and walked another 20 minutes to a little vegetarian Indian restaurant.
11:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I ordered Alugobi and a dairy-free mango lassi to go.
11:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I hailed a car and returned to my little one-room cottage.
11:24
[SPEAKER_00]: In the doorway, a mouth was waiting for me.
11:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I was so tired, so hungry, so happy.
11:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I took out my key, opened the door, set my bags down, and removed my sandy shoes and socks.
11:37
[SPEAKER_00]: As I got settled, in the darkness I noticed a spider that hadn't been there before.
11:42
[SPEAKER_00]: She looked pretty big, and by the looks of her legs, I wondered, but no, it couldn't be.
11:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I walked into the bathroom, took off my glasses, and hopped in the shower.
11:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I was ready for PJs, and to sit on the bed, to eat my dinner and to face the mystery of the written word.
11:59
[SPEAKER_00]: As I dressed, I noticed the spider again and took note of her size.
12:04
[SPEAKER_00]: She's big, pretty big, and about three feet from my pillow.
12:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I shine the light on the wall, put my glasses on, and at closer inspection, yep?
12:14
[SPEAKER_00]: She's a black widow, all right?
12:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, don't be alarmed, I thought.
12:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, I used this visit to begin my special evening with a channeled message from the spider.
12:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I sat down, closed my eyes, and listened.
12:28
[SPEAKER_00]: She said a few things, and ended by saying, weave your web wisely.
12:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I think to her, then found a glass cup in the kitchenette, scooped her up, and released her in the farthest corner of the backyard where I kindly asked her to stay.
12:43
[SPEAKER_00]: weave your web wisely.
12:45
[SPEAKER_00]: This meant
12:46
[SPEAKER_00]: beginning.
12:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I must begin.
12:47
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the simplest and only way to weave a new web.
12:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I will begin weaving with words as I have been called to do.
12:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I will listen even though I don't fully understand.
13:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I started writing and continued through the evening.
13:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I wrote about the spider on the wall and thought about all the other Black Widows that had visited me since October 2022.
13:10
[SPEAKER_00]: The Black Widow was obviously a messenger needing to get through to me.
13:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And now another encounter, a large black widow very close to my pillow.
13:19
[SPEAKER_00]: She's following me here, and she would have been inches away from my face, had I not spotted her.
13:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It was interesting to me.
13:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I was learning to trust my inner voice, my heart compass, and this black widow guiding me to write.
13:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Why was I so hesitant to begin using my voice in written form?
13:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I realized writing to me was scarier than any other void I had ever left into.
13:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew I was meant to write about my life, and this meant sharing my life house, room by room.
13:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I would have to go back to those times in my life and work them out on the written page.
13:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I would have to share it all, or a lot of it, and I would have to be vulnerable.
14:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I acknowledged my fear with trust and set the intention to begin.
14:05
[SPEAKER_00]: actually it was more like a vow.
14:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I vowed to trust this call into the mystery of writing.
14:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I definitely did not want a tough lesson from a black widow.
14:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've pretty much been writing ever since.
14:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I live in Vermont and to my relief, the black widow is not native to this area, but spiders and webs still appear to me.
14:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Recently, one morning I was sitting writing at my desk
14:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Three gorgeous new spider webs twinkled, fresh with dew, the sun sprinkling the droplets with glittery light.
14:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I was considering what to write for this very episode, and knew the web would be a good theme at some point.
14:46
[SPEAKER_00]: But wasn't exactly sure what I would say about it, so I set that theme on a shelf for the future.
14:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Later in the morning, I walked outside and sat beside the apple tree trio.
14:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I sat with the warm wind and asked the mother tree what to share in this episode, and she said, go to the place you don't want to go.
15:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It felt like strange advice, but I think, to knowing it would make sense in time.
15:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, I thought she meant to talk about my struggle with failure, and overcoming negative thinking, as this has been coming up a lot lately.
15:20
[SPEAKER_00]: The next morning I woke up and stepped onto the deck to watch the sunrise over the trees.
15:25
[SPEAKER_00]: To my surprise, the railing of the deck had been completely graffitied by I don't know how many spiders.
15:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It was amazing, and a moment where you just had to be there.
15:36
[SPEAKER_00]: The photographs I took weren't capturing the full essence of the scene.
15:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I had never experienced anything like it.
15:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It was beautiful, but still I did not get the nudge.
15:46
[SPEAKER_00]: A few days later, I sat outside, my diary on my lap, attempting to write my outline for this episode.
15:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Our Tuxedo Katzige was lying beside me.
15:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I looked over to my left, and a giant spider slowly sauntered in our direction.
16:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I jumped up.
16:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, look at the time, I thought it must be time for tea, so I said goodbye to the spider.
16:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Went inside with Ziggy following me, realizing it had been a while since I'd seen a spider so large.
16:16
[SPEAKER_00]: That night, I dreamt of a spider's web.
16:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing scary, nothing creepy.
16:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I just woke up, and the sight of the web was still in my field.
16:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay, I get it now.
16:27
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the symbol to build the episode around.
16:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't quite understand, but I will once I begin to write.
16:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I got our youngest daughter ready for school, went out to the car, and opened the back door when something fell out.
16:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I looked down to see what it was.
16:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It was my daughter's play ring from Halloween last year, a spider ring black with a purple gem on the inside.
16:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose this was my prize for finally figuring it out.
16:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I was grateful to be on track with the podcast and marveled at how incredible it was that the land council.
17:00
[SPEAKER_00]: My team of helping land spirits was pretty gentle with their messages.
17:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have to come into direct contact with a spider touching or crawling on my body.
17:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But I should have knocked on wood because it wasn't long before something like this happened.
17:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Last weekend, I was volunteering at a community yard sale, and amusingly they put me in the book section, without knowing my near obsession with second hand books.
17:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I picked up a handful that were in a box and felt something wet.
17:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I flipped the book over and screamed while laughing out loud because a huge spider had been sadly and freshly sandwiched inside the box of books.
17:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I had spider blood on my hands as evidence of this blessing.
17:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Weave your web, the spider spirit said, and so it is.
17:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Writing this episode has helped me thread together and understanding that my resistance to writing about spiders was a resistance to reclaiming that I am a weaver and I am spinning a new vision.
17:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I already created a web with a craft magazine, originally spun from a dream, but the dream transformed and this meant the grossimer thread could no longer hold what was no longer true.
18:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And with its collapse, my confidence has suffered as I started to attach my identity to failure.
18:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I have been afraid to fully become the weaver again, because the dream for healing is so big, the dream of the question, what is the path to harmony, is so great, and so endless.
18:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But these times require me to greet my fears at the door, and to walk through the threshold anyway, returning to the vow I made to the black widow.
18:37
[SPEAKER_00]: These times require the weaving of a new web.
18:41
[SPEAKER_00]: One spawn within during resilience, with complete devotion, and with loving confidence, trusting that my dreams are worth dreaming and that they will come to me if only I dare to keep dreaming them.
18:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Until next time, happy blessings as you weave and tend to your own webbie dreams.
18:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to take a moment to mention my name, Linda Roberts, who came up in episode 3.
19:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I refer to her as my shaman teacher, but I'd really like to give her proper credit for all the wonderful teachings she has shared with me.
19:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Linda.
19:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll include her info in the show notes, along with Mama Medicine, who is another incredible healer and teacher who I mentioned earlier in this episode.
19:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you'll check their workout if you're called.
19:25
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all for now.
19:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Much love.
19:28
[SPEAKER_00]: See you next time.