The Dream Weave

All men are interdependent. Every nation is an heir of a vast treasury of ideas and labor to which both the living and the dead of all nations have contributed. Whether we realize it or not, each of us is eternally 'in the red'. We are everlasting debtors to known and unknown men and women. When we arise in the morning, we go into the bathroom where we reach for a sponge which is provided for us by a Pacific Islander. We reach for a soap that is created for us by a European. Then at the table we drink coffee which is provided by a South American, or tea by a Chinese, or cocoa by a West African. Before we leave for our jobs we are already beholden to more than half of the world.;-MLK

I have never truly existed in the reality of an existence I perceive myself to be experiencing at this very moment, in this current body - the body of a Dreaming Woman. I am but a vessel for Grandmother Spider. She inhabits the form Araneae, hallucinating the world of men through her eight eyes, stalking time and space upon her eight legs; legs that once spun the eight snake gods of the Hindus, the sacred serpents of superiority who have slithered the crossroads of the ancient world. The firecloud breathes their names, manifesting the octet who sounds their distinct vibrations as they call out from the winds of karma - Shesha, Vasuki, Kaliya, Manasadevi, Ananta, Padmanabha, Astika, and Kulika.

Thousands of years ago the Sacred Eight inhabited vast tropical forests of South India, a peninsula bounded by the Arabian Sea in the west, the Bay of Bengal in the east, and the Vindhya and Satpura ranges in the north. If you locate South India on a map of any sort, taking your pen in hand for tracing, you will find its location to be fashioned in the form of an inverted triangle, a timeless symbol of feminine power known by the tantrikas, whose ancient Indian tradition-Tantra-means "to weave" in Sanskrit.

It is here, at the origins of her web, that Grandmother Spider first began to silk weave the Great Web containing the single story from which all stories came to be in the Great Dream.

She is the creator; her web, the maintainer; its inhabitants, the destroyers. It is these destroyers, residents of the Human world, who are the microcosmic Beings reflecting the macrocosm contained within the enigma of the Great Mystery. It is she, Grandmother Spider, who is of the Ancient Mind and it is her web that holds together the divided consciousness of man. The closer one travels to the center of her magnificent web, the closer one becomes to the At-One-ment of the colorless light, the Clear Light of objective reality.

I remember traveling to the center of her web to this very place, but it was the seductive woman with her hourglass figure, the Widow, who came to take me. I suddenly found myself entangled in the Web and although I couldn't open my eyes I saw, with dreaming eyes, that Widow was traveling upside-down along her silk threads, red hourglass figure pointed toward me. She seemed to dance from across the way, appearing before me in the timeless space that vampires seem to appear, disappear, and reappear at the feet of their innocent victims. Time seemed to be moving quickly, as was any movement nearing the space of her web. Before I could object or squirm my way out I found myself in the center of the Great Web, my body being held tightly by her as she spun her silk around me.

She sunk her vampiric fangs into my flesh, injecting neurotoxic venom that traveled throughout my bloodstream, paralyzing the innocence of my being between my seventh and eighth year. When she first came to me I could hear the tinkling sounds of dewdrops falling from her web. It is the sound of her power that poisons you and the transmission of venom that binds you to the lineage of the Ancient Ones. It was on that night that I was initiated as a Darkside Dreamwalker, but it was the reflecting light of my water moon that first attracted her to me. I never really had the choice in the first place, as it was my obligation on the day President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel signed a peace treaty during a White House ceremony the 26th day of March in 1979, the day White Ciconiidae delivered me to Stonewall Drive, the street on which the house my parents first owned stood.

It wasn't until the moon appeared, once again, in its entirety that I awakened into the Dream, or what the Dreamers call El Ensueño, the place which can be accessed by an awakened Being from both vertical and horizontal life. I remember peering upward toward the ceiling of my childhood bedroom. The air appeared to be watery, flowing like a mermaid's tail as she swims to the darkest, deepest parts of the Oceans located beneath the Water Worlds. My father had mounted shelves that wrapped around the perimeter of the room a few feet from the ceiling. I asked and begged until he finally mounted them because I knew I needed all stuffed animal and My Little Pony warriors in position, peering downward with their 93 eyes fixed upon me (Rabbit Dog had lost an eye). This was so I would be guarded every sleeping moment of the night as I dreamed my way into the darkest spaces of the Labyrinth; for I was the source of light, illuminating the shadow worlds, rescuing other little children on mechanical merry-go-rounds, and saving innocent baby monsters from their fateful endings.

It was the singing of the Song of Solomon that was sung to me: "I am asleep and my heart is awake; the voice of my beloved is knocking." Widow's second bite soon jolted my embodied Being, elevating my awareness and bringing my limbs to paralysis yet again. This intense heat began to rise from my torso, radiating a volcanic fire that emanated from the solar plexus. I averted my eyes downward toward my feet and watched, in horror, the sight of Widow's 100 children being birthed as they hatched from their eggs that nested in the bottoms of my feet. Widow laid them into me during her initial visit the previous full moon. I still remember the distinct feeling of what it was like to remain immobile and to experience the excruciating pain as her babies ate their way out of my flesh, the pain that expands with time, that aching and throbbing that ensues immediately after the wasp's stinger pierces its way beneath the skin.

She crawled down from her web positioned above me, holding time in that red hourglass on her belly, and spoke with softness these words:

You are not alone, for you are everything and nothing all at once. You are but a divided piece from the whole of the Great Dream, but you are still part of the Great Web. It is here you dreamed me that I may tell you, you are weak only alone, divided. Your power will grow exponentially just as the heat continues to rise and expand about in your belly, but this is only so when you pair with one or more in your travails. They too are weak alone. For man is not indebted to man, but he is indebted to Creator; for it is He whom made thee. Man knows not what he holds - the first, second, and third hierarchies of angels. It is the Seraphim who is held by the Cherubim, the Cherubim who is held by the Ophanim, the Ophanim who is held by the Kyriotetes, the Kyriotetes who is held by the Dynameis, the Dynameis who is held by the Exousiai, the Exousiai who is held by the Archai, the Archai who is held by the Archangels, the Archangels who is held by the Angels, and the Angels who is held by man. You are their only hope, but alone as you stand you cannot hold them. Remember my words when you grow tall and find the others that can help you hold them.