The Weavers

Who Shape the World

~By Lyn Thurman, Author & Modern-day Priestess

“Among the gods, only goddesses are weavers” Herodotus

When I was a girl, I’d love to visit my grandmother.  There were many reasons but one in particular was her sewing box.  She had an oval, fabric box which was more like a footstool with a secret lid.  There was a top tray full of cottons but underneath lay a treasure chest of odd buttons, needles, thimbles, crochet hooks, wool and ends of fabric. 

Unlike my mother’s tidy sewing box, which I was not allowed to rummage through so freely, my grandmother’s box was a jumble of secrets, odds and ends, remnants of projects that had already been brought to life.  And the things I could do with such magic!  Hours would pass while I was absorbed in threading, stitching, wrapping and turning scraps into art.

This was in the late 1970s and early 80s and since that time, I’ve watched the practice of needlework decline.  While my mother and grandmother were not weavers, they were practitioners of women’s crafts.  They knitted jumpers, crocheted blankets, sewed clothes, patched jeans, and darned socks when holes appeared.  

It’s been a long, hard road for female equality and we’re not there yet.  However, with our desire to be on equal footing with men, we’re losing sight of some of the time-honoured female traditions because they are home based.  I understand, I really do.  Equality has meant more work for many women rather than less.  The pressures of the modern world are insane and there is little time or energy left over at the end of the day to relax, let alone pull out a sewing box.

But let’s not forget the magic of weaving.

Weaving or any needlecraft is an act of creation.  It’s divinely feminine, something acknowledged almost 2,500 years ago by Herodotus.  Women weave.  Women create.  Women are the holders of the threads of life.

We could remember this easier when women were more involved in needlecrafts.  We would take raw materials turn them into something to wear, something to keep us warm, or something beautiful to behold. Our fingers, nimble and quick, working alchemy.

Norse priestesses, the Seidr, carried with them distaffs and they were buried with them, the distaff bent to indicate the magic had stopped.  In Norse mythology, a dis (lady) was a female spirit associated with fate and the disir are female ancestors that oversee family lines, like fairy godmothers.  The Norns, like their Greek counterparts the Moirai, spun the lives and weaved the fates of men.  

Throughout the world, there are myths of goddesses who spin, weave and craft.  

Even the Greek Athena, born of her father Zeus and an unbeaten warrior, was also the goddess of weaving and crafts.  However masculine the world tries to mould women, we have an intrinsic link to spinning, weaving and cutting of threads. 

The divine feminine within each woman is a weaver.  We may now work long hours outside of the home so we have no time to acquaint ourselves with these crafts of our foremothers but it is in our DNA.  When we wake up to our power and take hold of the metaphorical distaff, we spin life.  Women, not men, control destiny.  

We need to remember our power.

It’s us that hold the threads of life in our hands and we transform them into something beautiful.

Women are the weavers who shape the world.

Lyn Thurman is a modern-day priestess on the south coast of England. She’s the author of The Inner Goddess Revolution and Goddess Rising, and the creator of the Sea Whispers oracle. When she’s not writing, she is helping mind-body-spirit authors build their businesses at the Quiet Rebel Bureau or she’s obsessing over vegan cakes.  You can find her at LynThurman.com or connect with Lyn on Facebook.

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