What about spiders?

[Dr. Nili Marcia]

Today I've been puzzling over the spiders which I've been coming across in my house with surprising regularity and while this might not be the type of question Barb had in mind when she opened this forum section, it occurred to me that you would be wonderful people to ask for ideas, opinions and feedback.

I've been seeing lots and lots of spiders recently. A few weeks ago it appeared that eggs had been laid in the base of the light fixture in my home office. About 30 tiny spiderlings were spreading all over the ceiling over my head and down the walls. This is me pointing at a baby on the ceiling with a standard mechanical pencil for size comparison.

Today I saw 3 totally different types of spiders, different colors, different sizes. Two of them were running in front of me, across my desk, one in the bedroom. One of these could have been a grown up baby but the other two were totally different. Yesterday I saw still another type in the bathroom and several others in the previous week.

This is so odd. I'm used to seeing a few spiders a year in my house. I would love to hear any ideas or opinions you might have.

By the way I used to be quite afraid of spiders and no longer am. I don't really want to handle them but am happy to let most of them be. The ones that seem scary because they are large, I catch in containers and put outside. The rest I just leave to go about their business.

As I write this a small centipede just ran across the wall in front of me. What? We're going for ever-increasing leg counts??

Postscript: This is also the season when two different types of ants visit, large solitary ones which like fruit but ignore bread crumbs and little teeny ones which came in in the zillions yesterday after accidentally left a few drops of spilled lemonade on the floor. I didn't think a thing about them because they visit every year... I usually ignore the big ones because they are few and don't stay too long but I do sometimes wipe out hoards of the tiny ones if they won't listen to me requests to leave.

[Barbara Casey]

Karen Bishop has a neat story about the spiders on her windowsill and the bargain she makes with them. I found it at Booklocker.com in the free excerpt to her newest book: http://assets.booklocker.com/pdfs/3663s.pdf - page 36 of 47 (though the bottom of the page is the "real" book's page number 277).

She also bargains with the rattlesnakes on her property.

Cheers,
Barb

[Julia Rogers Hamrick]

Hi, Nili~

Spiders represent power, wisdom and creativity! Do a Google search for spider animal totem and see what you find! This may be an extra potent time for you to be creative.

And yes--I, too, have made many bargains with snakes and such ("I honor your right to be and I'll leave you alone if you leave me alone") and know you can do it with spiders as well.

In Joy,

Julia

[Patricia Fogelsonger]

Hi Nili,

I agree with Julia's answer as power, wisdom and creativity.

I do know one person who has her own meaning for spiders and that is beware of a person in your life...she has this meaning for it because she saw a spider in her house and then the next person she came in contact with was not so nice to her.

Personally, the power, wisdom and creativity meaning, is the meaning I use for spiders. I've always seen a spider as a positive thing.

Patricia

[Dr. Nili Marcia]

Thank you ladies, these answers were interesting. Julia and Patricia, I did indeed go look up spiders as totem and read a lot of material. I had to sift through it a bit because much of the material focuses on web spinning related aspects and the spiders I've been visited by are almost exclusively jumpers, IE, not web spinners.

There were two more spiders today! One I watched stalk and then back off from a very large ant. A bit of wildlife theater right in my bathroom.

Barbara, the book excerpt you sent me to was amazing. Thank you! I may well order the book. Have you read it? There were a few passages in there which may well change my life and there were separate important messages in there for no less than 4 close friends!

Now here's a curious little note: I woke up this morning with a hugely swollen eyelid with an obvious bite mark in the center of the swelling. I don't believe it was a spider though--possibly a centipede. I tapped on it once in the morning and it is almost back to normal now, 18 hours later. Any ideas about that are also welcome.