“Goddess as Mother is the Weaver of the Fabric of the Universe, with many ancient Goddesses imaged this way. This power came to be feared, rather than revered – in Her “character as creator, sustainer and increaser of life” the Great Goddess came to be seen as “negative and evil,” by a consciousness that desired “permanence and not change, eternity and not transformation, law and not creative spontaneity …(turning) her into a demon.” This consciousness, which Neumann calls an “antivital fanaticism,” feared being “ensnared” in the “web of life, the veil of Maya.” Sometimes the weaving activity of women became known as the cause of illness or a curse with some Christian traditions even forbidding knitting. Ixchel the Weaver, Mother, Queen, Grandmother to the peoples of Southern Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, and most of Central America, came to be symbolized by an “overturned vessel of doom” – yet “for centuries, women have made pilgrimages to Her holy places.” Austen describes Ixchel as sitting “at Her loom with Her ever-present bird companion, the nest weaver, who is associated with Goddess throughout the world:” Ixchel “easily and with great presence ... in the bliss of creativity” spins “from her deepest being” and breaths the “breath of eternity, ... the life force into each being.”
