Spider Woman- Navajo GodDeity"Grandmother Spider"

Spider Rock

Spider Woman lives atop Spider Rock (Tsé Na'ashjé'ii), an 800-foot sandstone spire rising from the floor of Canyon de Chelly in northeastern Arizona. The slender column of red rock stands alone, visible from the canyon rim. Beside it rises a shorter companion spire called Speaking Rock, said to report children's misbehavior to Spider Woman above. The white cap of sandstone at the summit? Navajo parents told their children those were the bleached bones of the disobedient.

The First Loom

Spider Man (Na'ashjé'ii Hastíin) built the first loom from the elements of the Glittering World. Its cross poles were sky and earth, its warp sticks sun rays and lightning. Even the comb was white shell. Spider Woman then taught women to use this loom. The warp threads, stretched vertically, represent rain. The weft threads represent the path of the sun. Every textile recreates the axes of the Navajo cosmos.

Weavers leave a thin line of contrasting color extending from the interior pattern to the edge, called the spirit line (ch'ihonít'í). It releases the weaver's creative energy and prevents her spirit from becoming trapped in the finished work. Spider Woman taught this too: always leave a path out, as the people left each lower world through an opening above.

The Hero Twins

When Monster Slayer and Born for Water set out to find their father the Sun and obtain weapons against the monsters, Spider Woman called to them from a hole in the ground. They were young and eager to rush forward. She told them to stop and listen.

She described the dangers ahead: the crushing rocks and the cutting reeds that would kill them on the road. For each obstacle, she gave them a prayer that would cause the danger to part. She pressed life feathers into their hands for their chests and heads. She gave them sacred caterpillars to swallow, which would protect them when the Sun offered his poisoned tobacco pipe. She warned them what the Sun would do: he would try to kill his own sons through a series of ordeals before he would acknowledge them.

Without her, the twins would have died before they reached the Sun's house. Every weapon they later carried home, they owed to the small voice that called from the ground.

The Weaver's Art

Young weavers were rubbed with spider webs on their arms and hands so they would not tire at the loom and so Spider Woman's power would guide their work. Killing spiders was strictly avoided. The prayer feathers used in Navajo ceremonies descend from the life feathers she pressed into the Hero Twins' hands.