Once upon a time, at the Vienna Academy of Visionary Art, I participated in a spirit animal journey under the guidance of my dear teacher Li Lian Kolster. This inner journey was an initiation for a new spirit animal painting that should evolve during the following months.
At this time, I had many expectations about the possible animal that would appear on my path... I feel deeply connected to many animals. But I didn’t expect the one that revealed itself to me: it was a giant spider sitting in the very center of my heart space.
Ouch.
To be honest, this was far out of my comfort zone. I never liked spiders very much. They are neither cute nor protective... And even though I never had a strong phobia against them, I could imagine many things I’d rather do than spending one and a half months on a giant spider painting.
It felt like the journey ahead would be rather challenging. But despite my inner resistance, I became curious. I wanted to find out what the spider had to teach me. And this inquiry changed everything…
The more I learned about spider symbolism, the more things started to make sense.
Before we started on this spirit animal journey, I had an urgent question in mind. I wanted to understand how my past and present life path fit together and make sense.
At that time, I felt like I had wasted the previous 5 years of my life. I had been a student of Chinese language before I decided to become an artist. And I had sacrificed most of my free time learning Mandarin, to become either a translator or a language teacher. For what…? My soul wasn’t happy all these years. I was trapped in a vicious cycle of destructive behaviour patterns… and finally, I had to make a radical shift to regain my mental health. This healing process led me to dedicate my life to art, following my inner calling and passion. It was a step into the unknown, a 180 degree turn.
Now, spider showed up to give me answers to my question – how all things that happen are meaningful and important.
The spider is a very powerful dreamweaver with a special medicine for us. She teaches us how past, present, and future are always deeply interconnected. Every choice we make matters in the big whole. Our lives are like the web of a spider. It is up to us if we act like the fly that gets trapped in the web, or if we take responsibility for our choices and become the weavers of our dreams, like the spider that weaves its web. All our actions and thoughts are part of creating this intricate web of life. And spider teaches us to reclaim the power to write our story.
This message felt so empowering that my whole feeling towards spiders changed.
Now, every time I encounter a spider, I smile, remembering this lesson.
Another magical thing happened to me on the journey with this powerful spirit teacher.
In my spider painting, I integrated an intuitive landscape filled with trees on the left side, and with huge skyscrapers on the right side. In front of them, there was water.
One year after painting this scenery, I went on a workaway journey to Taiwan. Taiwan is a beautiful little island with a rich heritage of Chinese culture. There, I joined an artist community and became a resident artist in the capital city, Taipei.
One day, I was cycling along the river… and suddenly realized that the landscape in front of me looked exactly like the one in the spider painting.
It felt like a special moment when everything magically falls into place. And again, spider showed me how my path had been guiding me here, connecting past, present and future. Nothing is ever wasted.