A Web of Trance: When I Met the Spider Queen

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by Janice Van Cleve

There I sat on the carpet, my back up against the concrete block wall. It was too warm in the art room, but it is always too warm in the art room. To my left was a woman I had met before, although where exactly I could not recall. To my right was a young woman who seemed very into this trance stuff and who talked in husky whispers. There were other women in the room, maybe 20 in all, sitting up or lying on the floor. The trance guide had asked us to get comfortable, and there were few inhibitions in this group about doing just that.

The guide started a slow, rhythmic drumbeat. The drum was a djembe, an hourglass-shaped form with a taut membrane over one end and a hole in the other end. It hung by a strap from her shoulder. She walked around the room, telling us to breathe in and breathe out, keeping time on the djembe. We closed our eyes, and I took the hand of the woman to my right.

"We are going on a journey," she said. Yeah, right. I'd been to sessions like this before. My life is full of computers, appointments and politics. I paid for this workshop to get some information, not to daydream. "We are crossing the street to enter the park. We come to a large, old gnarled tree with an ancient wound in its side now grown over by bark to create two vertical lips, not unlike a yoni." This was the only workshop at this hour that seemed interesting, so I guessed I could stay here until the featured speaker came in that night. The woman I was holding hands with was really very attractive. Maybe we could go out for coffee together afterward, I thought.

"We hug the tree and send it our love. The tree groans and opens its lips. We step inside and climb down the ladder to a large room in the tree's base. It opens to a dirt path through a sunlit forest." I hoped nobody saw me hugging that tree in the park. They'd think I was nuts. The ladder was muddy with footprints. I reached the bottom and saw the others were already starting down the path.

"Hey, wait for me!" I cried out, and suddenly some brain cell in my head told me I must have entered the trance.

The alder forest easily let sunshine through to the rhododendrons that lined the path. We came to a grassy clearing through which twined a bubbling brook. "As you stand on the bank," the trance guide's voice was far off but in steady rhythm with the djembe, "you see spirit guides emerge from the forest beyond. Some are animals, and some are ancestors. When yours comes for you, take its hand and step over the brook. It will guide you and protect you on your journey."

One by one, I saw mountain lions, bears, snakes, owls, grandmothers, fairies and crones emerge from the dark woods beyond the clearing and find the women they had come for. One by one, I saw my sisters from the art room take the helping hands, or paws, and go together with their guides into the dark woods.

I waited. No guide came for me. Finally I was the only one left. I realized that no one would ever come for me. So I jumped across the brook and walked into the forbidding wood alone.

The trees here were black and bare. What few leaves clung to their tangled branches were a cold gray-green metallic shade, and the only light that penetrated at all was a pale olive color, which cast a pallid hue over the thorny, twisted trail. More than once I thought of Bilbo and the dwarves creeping through the matted tangles of Mirkwood. I tried to catch up with the others, but I always tripped and fell or, frightened, hesitated before pushing on.

"You have come to the lair of Spider Woman," intoned the trance guide. Obviously, she was preparing those ahead of me, but already I could see the wisps of silken filaments draping the hoary branches.

I rounded a corner and fell backward in shock. There before my eyes was the hungry maw of the Spider Woman's whorl. A huge nest of densely woven gauze gobbled up the trail in its funnel. The sticky whorl was anything but inanimate. It pulsed and sucked. Its cold breath chilled me even as its magnetic attraction drew me in. I was scared and totally alone, but I surrendered. I let go my fears and allowed myself to be pulled into the black tunnel.

It seemed to have no end, yet just as I got to the part where the passage was so narrow I had to stoop to pass through, it opened to a chamber -- and there she was! Spider Woman. Arachnid Queen. Before I could squeal or run, she froze me to the spot with her multieyed gaze.

How long I was transfixed there I cannot say. What I can say is that I felt an overwhelming warmth and love coming from her. Not only did it come from her, but it was directed solely to me and was meant for me. Whatever emptiness I had felt alone on the trail outside was more than filled by the pure, fully satisfying love that was poured into me in that dark queen's nest.

When or how I emerged I do not know, but I do know it was not by the route I had taken to get in. I came to the field with the brook running through it and heard the trance leader tell us to bid our spirit guides farewell. The other women were hugging their guides and waving goodbye. I marked them only peripherally and splashed through the water in a magickal fog all my own. I saw the rhododendrons again and climbed the ladder, which was still muddy. The groaning tree sealed its opening behind us, and we crossed the street. "Breathe in," coached the trance guide, "and breathe out."

We came back into our bodies, and tears rolled down our cheeks. First, the woman on the left hugged me, and then the one whose hand was still in mine. Obviously, all of us had been very much moved by this experience. Even now, as I recall it four years later, it is as vivid as if it had just happened.

Last week, I passed the old tree in the park on my way to another conference workshop. I patted its aged bark in tender memory... and it groaned.

Janice Van Cleve is a writer in Seattle. She still passes that old tree from time to time -- and believes.