Ooma-oo, long ago. The Spider was in the place where
only she was. There was no light or dark, there was no warm wind, no rain or
thunder. She was a great wise woman, whose powers are beyond imagining. No
medicine person, no conjurer or shaman, no witch or sorcerer, no scientist or
inventor can imagine how great her power is. Her power is complete and total.
It is pure, and cleaner than the void. It is the power of thought, we say, but
not the kind of thought people do all the time. It's like the power of dream,
but more pure. Like the spirit of vision, but more clear. It has not shape or
movement, because it just is. It is the power that creates all that is, and it
is the power of all that is.
In that place where she was alone and complete with
her power, she thought about her power, how it sang to her, how she dreamed
from it, how she wished to have someone to share the songdream with her. Not
because she was lonely, but because the power's song was so complete, she
wished for there to be others who could also know it. She knew this was the
power's wish just as it was hers. For she and her power were together and of
one mind. They were two, but they were the same thing.
So she thought to the power once and knew a rippling,
a wrinkling within. Then she knew that she was old, and wrinkled, and that the
power's first song was a song of great age. The wrinkling became tighter, more
spidery, stronger. It became in one place. She named that place Northwest. She
knew the wrinkling had folded up on itself, enfolded on itself. She knew much
of the universe, the great power, was contained within. Later the earth would
be ripples and wrinkles, spidery lines of power folded and enfolded into a
tight moving shape, and it would also hold the great power within, like a
mother holds new life. Others would also imitate this time: walnuts and acorns,
apples and pineapples, cactus and mountains, even the oceans would be like
that. And humans, five-fingered beings, would grow wrinkled in their skins and
brains, in honor of this time when she and the power made a song to form new
life, new beings.
She was so happy with what she knew, so full of awe at
the beauty of the song, that she thought again. And again she knew the
rippling, the wrinkling, the running of spidery lines along the edges of the
forming pouch of the power's song, the folding and enfolding into a shape that
held some of the power of all that is within. She knew that the place of that
pouch, that bundle of her thought, her song, was in the Northeast. So humming
and singing, she shaped them. That was how the directions came into being. How
the seasons came to be.
She thought in her power to each of the bundles and
continued singing. She sang and sang. She sang the power that was. The power
that is everywhere and that has no name or body, but that is just the power,
the mystery. She sang, and the bundles began to move. They began to sing, to
echo her song, to join it. They sang their heart's song, that was the same as
Spider's heart song, that was the heart song of great mystery, the power that
moves. The song seemed to deepen as she heard other hearts singing. The song
seemed more free, it seemed stronger. The two who rose up from the bundles with
their singing each had a bundle of her own. And in each bundle the life of the
universe rested, waiting until it was sung into life.
Spider named each of the beings; one she named
Ic'sts'ity and the other she named Nau'ts'ity. They were not human beings, but
supernatural beings. They did not have physical bodies because they were much
vaster than even a planet, even a star. A star couldn't contain all they were
and knew, all they thought. Spider told each of them that they were to make
more beings, so that the song could go on and on, so that she and the power
could share the beauty with more and more beings. She told them that they would
take from their pouches a part of the song and would sing it into fullness,
into ripeness. They would need to sing the mystery in the way of thought to
bring the lives in their bundles into being. They understood her directions
because they were the song and the mystery. All of it and only a small piece of
it. It was much vaster than they, and yet they could sing it into different
shapes of being, different ways of singing, different parts of the great being
song.
Ic'sts'ity began to sing a new chant: way-a-hiyo,
way-a-hiyo, way-a-hiyo, way-a way-a-o. She sang and sang, thinking to her
bundle, and around them as she sang swirling, whirling globes of light began to
form. They began pushing outward in a great whirling spiral, a great wheeling
multitude of stars, all singing as they circled and wheeled like great geese
upon the void. As they spiraled outward, they grew larger and brighter. Around
and around the still, invisible center where Spider, Ic'sts'ity and Nau'ts'ity
sang. The whirled, the outer ones flinging themselves farther and farther from
the center, great arms forming in the spiral dance, following the lines of the
song, the lines of the power, reaching out farther and farther into the mystery,
carrying the song in their light, in their fingers, making both the darkness
and the light as they danced, finding the power coming to them from the
darkness, flinging it out from them in the light. The power danced in the void,
in the light, in the midnight reaches of the gleaming dark. It sang.
Then Nau'ts'ity began to sing her thought to her
bundle. Aam-i-humm, humm, humm, aam-i-humm, humm,humm, aam-i-o, o, o, o,
aam-i-o, o, o, o, aam-i-o. The song changed again as Spider and Ic'sts'ity
joined her song, and from the brilliant globes of light new shapes spun out,
dancing around and around the lights, giving shape and solidity to the
darkness, carrying the spin of the song into new places, more solid, more full.
The planets sang, new beings awakening, joining their heart song. The power
shaped and dipped, wheeled and danced, and over vast reaches it took on forms
it hadn't known.
Satisfied
with their work, Spider turned to her granddaughters and smiled as she chanted.
In their begetting they would make many worlds, and upon some of them human
beings would sing in the same way as she and her granddaughter-sisters sang. On
those same worlds, feathered beings would swoop and wheel as the great fires
around her did. And on them, life would press its way from the place of the
Spider singing into the place of individual songs. And that would be far away
from the place where the three stood. It would be right among them as they
stood and sang in the void, surrounded by the wheeling lights and the great
swooping dark.