Spider Woman's Web: Traditional Native American Tales About Women's Power
Image via WikipediaAnyway, I picked this book up and am pleasantly surprised by it.
I was expecting a mishmash of cultures and generalities but what I got was a precise study of NA Culture with only a slight feminist slant without screwing up the tales themselves.
The translations are solid and enjoyable to read, made for a modern audience but remaining true to the roots they spring from.
Its a collection of tales that highlight the power that women held in NA culture and the questions at the end of each section help apply lessons taught in the tale to your own life.
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Chapter 1:Spider woman saves Ko-chin-ni-na-ko
This tale orientates from the keresan pueblos, located in the southwest of the US, and features a wise woman often called Spider Woman. She is the bane of wrong doers across the continent and shows up in three separate guises throughout this particular story.
The basic story is this: Masts-tru-oi is the evil son of a good and honest woman living on a cliff side. He gets it into his head to search for the perfect wife, and if the woman refuses him or fails to meet expectation she is thrown off the cliff-side to her death.
After many years of this routine, the mother has become deaf and blind to her sons actions. Finally, Masts-tru-oi comes to the village of a prominent warrior and takes a wife named Ko-chin-ni-na-ko.
Eventually he grows tired of her and sets her three impossible tasks. Spider woman helps her complete 2 of the tasks before helping her escape with her two sons.Spider Woman than kills the husband for his evil deeds.
He is later reconstructed and learns from his mistakes, living a better life with his mother afterward.
In other variations of the story the husband survives and takes custody of the two sons, the price of her freedom being that she will never see her sons again.
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At the end of the story you are asked a series of questions, helping you identify with the characters and apply their lessons to your own life.
All of the characters resonate with me, during certain points of my life.
I see some of my own family in there as well.
I identified with Masts-tru-oi, mainly because his mother, like my own, cannot accept her own role in the creation of her evil son. There is no mention of discipline or boundaries in his upbringing, and without these even love and kindness can become inappropriate or evil.
His mother became deaf and dumb, because she didn't want to face the inadequacies that she herself had nurtured in her son.
I wonder why she had no husband, was she the same as her son except in the other direction?
Did she smother her own son and make him resent her.
She shows a lack of boundaries in how she reacted to her daughter-in-laws plight. She allowed the abuse to continue in her own home and by her silence she condoned her son's behavior.
Only when Spider woman interfered did he learn his lesson.
Masts-tru-oi had become obsessed with the finding of a woman who could satisfy the needs that were impossible. I find myself looking for the perfect relationship, when my relationship with myself in anything but perfect.
I hide myself from others because I see myself in them and don't want to.
the distorted view I see the world in, is the same mirror I see myself in.
The darkness and cruelty I see in the world is a reflection of what I see in myself.
Only when you accept all aspects of yourself can you do the same with others.
He had to be forced to see that 'woman' had to first be found in himself before he could find it in others.At times I can even say that I have been Masts-tru-oi, being out of control. I obviously didn't kill anyone but even if I wasn't evil to that extent I did act selfishly and hurt the people around me.
There have also been times where I can see myself as the mother, in denial of the what my Masts-tru-oi has done and too afraid to stop them.
Similarly, Ko-chin-ni-na-ko is another aspect of who I can be. Brutalized by one who should love her she is waiting to die when she is saved by spider old woman.
Sometimes I wonder if my Spider Woman is every going to come along, but then I realize that the only person I can change is myself. I have to accept that I am all of these characters before I can accept them in others. Only then can I move on.
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