Can Robin Gibb Keep “Staying Alive” with Spider Medicine?

Robin Gibb, best known as a member of the Bee Gees, which he co-founded with his twin brother Maurice and elder brother Barry, has been diagnosed with liver cancer.

The diagnosis was made this past spring, when the singer was hospitalized with severe abdominal pain. He has been hospitalized on several occasions, including a 4 day stay last month, and again on November 15, when an ambulance was called to his home in Thame, Oxfordshire.

Gibb’s twin brother Maurice died suddenly in 2003, at age 53 after a seemingly successful operation to correct an intestinal blockage. Robin said he had surgery for a similar blockage in the past, with the gastroenterologist telling him his intestine was two hours from bursting.

Robin’s wife, Dwina Murphy-Gibb, an ordained druid priestess, is reportedly looking into alternative treatments, including a possible trip to visit a Native American healer. Murphy-Gibb told Sky Arts:

“This incredible Indian tribe introduced Robin and I to something called ‘spider medicine… [It] apparently contains properties that can help you get well from certain untreatable illnesses.”

What is Native American Medicine?

A Native American healer or medicine man is a traditional healer who uses information from the ”spirit world” in order to benefit the community. People see Native American healers for a variety of reasons, especially to find relief or a cure from illness or to find spiritual guidance.

Laurance Johnston, Ph.D. writes:

Native-American medicine considers spirit, whose life-force manifestation in humans is called, ni by the Lakota and nilch’i by the Navajo, an inseparable element of healing. Not only is the patient’s spirit important but the spirit of the healer, the patient’s family, community, and environment, and the medicine, itself. More importantly, healing must take in account the dynamics between these spiritual forces as a part of the universal spirit.

What is Spider Medicine?

According to Dr. Loretta Standley, FIAMA , the word “medicine” in Native American practice and in the custom of animal medicine refers to the healing aspects that a particular animal brings to our consciousness. This would mean anything that supports, strengthens, restores, empowers, or revives the spiritual body, as well as the physical body.

Spider Medicine represents creativity. Its 8 legs represent the 4 winds of change and the 4 directions on the medicine wheel. Its body is in the shape of an 8, which represents infinite possibilities. “Spider people” must look beyond the web of illusion of the physical world and look beyond the horizon to other dimensions.

According to the American Cancer Society

Available scientific evidence does not support claims that Native American healing can cure cancer or any other disease. However, the communal support provided by this approach to health care can have some worthwhile physical, emotional, and spiritual benefits.