Why the spider symbolism?
Photo by Nicole Thorn © 2023
“Ick! Spiders!”
Yes, I once had that thought too.
Working with a shaman years ago, I confronted my crippling arachnophobia but only as a consequence of answering more important questions. It was an exploration into myself that was more intense than I had ever previously attempted. Through guided meditation and later discussion, I came to know the spider as an major archetype in my life.
The spider, I learned, is a force of creation, which also lined up with my personal numerology, my natal chart and the early history of my life as a creative. With all of these elements fitting together it was clear that my fear of the spider was a manifested fear of my own creativity, which, upon deeper work was confirmed to be very true. This revelation was rather destructive at the time, but years later has proven to be a point of genesis.
My focus in the Western Occult tradition seemingly didn’t have much support for this interpretation of the creative principle at first. However, I eventually discovered a description of solar consciousness, the Kabbalistic Tree of Life sephirot Tiphareth, being the center in which all other sefira are connected, as “the spider in the tree of life” because of its 8 paths. This was serendipitous to say in the least.
Understand that I don’t feel I have achieved solar consciousness, but it was as if I was being guided back towards my creativity. After a long career in information technology, it was a little intimidating to accept creativity back into my life after abandoning it thanks to a terrible experience I had in art school.
From a numerological point of view, Spider = 71 = 7 + 1 = 8, which also connects to the 8th Major Arcana card in Tarot: Strength. Strength is connected to Leo and The Sun. It is also the shape in which the sun travels, the solar analemma from the perspective of the earth, which is also present in the Strength card as the lemniscate crowning the head of the woman closing the jaws of the lion (in the well known Rider–Waite–Smith deck).
In Alchemy (the spiritual art that attempts to utilize the emanations from the Tree of Life for personal and general transformation) this process represents the alchemical step of Conjunction, where the internal energetic representations of the sun and the moon together occupy the heart. This is a profound spiritual step towards mastering the self, one that I’ve only glimpsed at, at the time of this writing.
The Lemniscate itself is reminiscent of a cross section of a torus where at the center point of that torus is a point of transformation, much like the event horizon of a liquid/gaseous vortex or a gravitational singularity. Symbolically, this also connects with the ouroboros as a representation of the infinite cycle that is connected to life & death, dark & light, or any other duality that flows into its polarities. It can also be interpreted as a Platonic/Gnostic representation of the lion-headed Demiurge and its hold on our physical reality.
This path of mine, which has been hinted to me by the humble spider, has delivered onto me a better understanding of my experiences, my passions, and highlighted the importance as a symbol of deeper wisdom.
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