Here I am presenting at the American Academy of Religion at the beautiful Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland, Washington, in May, 2018. I spoke about the earliest creator god whom our Indigenous ancestors envisioned as an original single female entity. In the Pueblo mythology, and seen in other mythologies worldwide, this singular creatrix initially projects her consciousness into the void and so creates our reality. The slide I am using features Metis artist Leah Marie Dorion’s vision of Thought Woman who is called Sus’sistinako in the Pueblo myths and who is a manifestation of Spider Woman–my all time favorite creatrix.[1]
Spider Woman’s myth tells us that she is the original creator who initiates the world. She thinks, dreams, and imagines an idea and then projects it into the rich and fecundate void that is the mystery described in worldwide myths as the original sacred darkness. This is the quantum field of potentiality from which all life emerges. This is what archaeologist Marija Gimbutas described–as depicted in the Neolithic art of Old Europe–as the motif of the “Womb-Tomb.”[2]
This original creation story describes the world as being born from darkness by way of a female creatrix who desires to birth of her own consciousness into a new field of creation. This ancient story is entrained with our psyches’ deepest essence. It is the story of our consciousness being birthed by a creator mother into being. Our experience of this mythic origin of life is hardwired in our brains and our bodies. We recognize this story. We long for this story because we long to remember who we are in this universe.
This mythic truth of a female consciousness that births the life cycle through her intention is a powerful story of female agency and a primal testament to female ways of being and knowing. More to come on this great big story. Bless.
Photo: Mary Beth Moser, PhD
[1] Hamilton A. Tyler, Pueblo Gods and Myths (University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), 91.
[2] Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess, 151.
[3] Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary in the Tongass National Forest in Ketchikan
hello Elisabeth … shared this to my Facebook page 🙂 https://www.facebook.com/PagaianCosmology/