The Myth of Old Woman Weaver
From The World Behind the World by Michael Meade
Inside a cave there is an Old Woman who remains unaffected by the rush and confusion of daily life. She spends most of her time weaving. She wants to fashion the most beautiful garment in the whole world and she has been at that weaving project for a long time. She has reached the point of making a fringe for the edge of her exquisite cloak. She wants that fringe to be special. She wants to weave it with porcupine quills. She likes the idea of using something that might poke you, as an element of beauty; she likes turning things around and seeing life in unusual ways. She only interrupts her work to stir the soup that simmers in a great cauldron at the back of the cave. The cauldron hangs over a fire that began a very long time ago. The Old Woman can’t recall anything older than that fire. Occasionally she does recall that she
must stir the soup in the cauldron that hangs over it. That soup contains all the seeds and grains and herbs that sprout up over the surface of the Earth. If the Old Woman doesn’t stir the ancient stew once in a while, the fire will scorch the ingredients and there’s no telling what troubles could result from that. So the Old Woman divides her efforts between weaving the exquisite cloak and stirring the elemental soup. She’s responsible for weaving things together as well as for stirring
everything up. She senses when the time has come to let the weaving go and stir things up again. Then, she leaves the weaving on the floor of the cave and turns to stirring the soup. Because she is old and tired from her labors and from the relentless passage of time, she
moves slowly and it takes a while for her to amble over to the cauldron.
As the Old Woman shuffles across the floor and makes her way to the back of the ancient cave, a black dog watches her every move. The dog was there all along, seemingly asleep, yet suddenly awake as soon as the Old Weaver turns her attention from one task to the other. As she becomes busy stirring the soup, the black dog goes to where the weaving lies on the floor of the cave. The black dog picks up a loose thread with its teeth and begins to pull on it. Since each thread has been woven to another, pulling upon one begins to undo them all. As the great stew is bring stirred up, the elegant garment comes undone,. When the Old Woman returns to take up her handiwork, she finds a chaotic mess instead. The garment woven with such care has been roughly pulled apart; the fringe is all undone.
The elegance of creation has been turned to a mess of destruction. The Old Woman stands quietly and looks deeply upon the remains of her once beautiful design. She ignores the presence of the black dog and stares intently at the tangle of undone thread and distorted
patterns. After a while, she bends down, picks up a loose thread and carefully begins to weave the whole thing again. As she pulls thread after thread from the chaotic mess before her, she begins to imagine again the most beautiful garment in the whole world. As she weaves,
new designs appear before her and her old hands give shape to them. Soon she has forgotten what she wove before as she concentrates on making this the most beautiful garment in all the world.
Commentary:
Upon hearing this tale, most people feel sympathy for the old woman who labors so long and hard only to wind up having to start everything all over again. What a shame that she can’t finish her work, how unfair and punishing this world can be. Most feel that if the black dog would just stop causing trouble and undoing everything, the Old Woman could
complete her weaving. Tribal people see the story differently. They take solace in the tale and the way the Old Woman faces the mess and deals with disaster. They recall her when times are hard and the world seems darker, more chaotic and confusing. They see her as
the Old Woman of the World herself. They point out that trouble and turmoil are the ways in which the world changes. They know that the cave holding the hidden weaving of life is the world itself. The old people consider that the garment being woven again and again
with beauty and care is the world itself. They are thankful for the trouble in this world and for the black dog that occasionally unravels the whole thing. For the black dog acts out the role of time that eventually undoes and dismantles everything made in this world. The elders know that the black dog so dedicated to undoing things belongs to the Old Woman
of the World just as much as that garment woven of beauty. They know that the “black dog times” come around again and again and require that the living people find a new vision for life or else become undone when the threads of nature loosen and the designs of culture
collapse. Reality appears where the weft of time is thrown over the warp of eternity. Everything real must be made up from hidden threads that secretly tie it to the unseen, to the world that’s behind the world. Each thing that appears and each person that exists is a part of a story
delicately woven with the threads of time and eternity which is always on the edge of unraveling and slipping back into chaos. When the world becomes dark with endings it becomes time to turn to the inner thread that first brought each soul to this life. Although it cannot be found by common observers, as long as we hold the inner thread of our essential being we cannot be completely lost.
The Weaver is the heiress of all leftovers, the queen of the dead and mistress of everything that comes to an end. She is also the mistress of all that continues. She shapes all the costumes for the endless, tragicomic displays of life. Her cave is the tomb we all are headed for and the womb from which we began.
