How the Universe Sends You Signs Through Spiders
We’ve all been there. We’ve all done it. You see an unusual animal and suddenly find yourself googling “spiritual meaning of…” followed by whatever creature just crossed your path.
Most of the time this happens with birds. A crow lands on your balcony. A hawk circles overhead. A white feather appears out of nowhere. Something unusual happens, and suddenly you’re wondering whether the universe is trying to tell you something.
Usually, we don’t do that with spiders. I mean, spiders are everywhere. Especially in basements and garages. And honestly, if you encounter a spider in your garage, immediately google “spider in garage spiritual meaning,” and conclude that the universe is trying to communicate with you personally, I would gently suggest taking a break and watching a little Netflix instead.
Now, I’m once again going to sacrifice my dignity for the sake of science. Or, more accurately, metaphysics.
I suffer from arachnophobia. And when I say suffer, I mean it. It feels like a prison. It is an actual mental health issue. What I feel when I look at a spider isn’t really fear in the strict sense. It’s something closer to overwhelming disgust. A feeling that if a spider accidentally touched my body, I would need to find the nearest axe and remove the affected limb because I could never again live peacefully with a finger or toe that had once been in contact with a spider.
I’m constantly looking around. The vacuum cleaner is my best friend. One story my daughter refuses to stop telling happened about ten years ago when she was still little. We had just left my mother’s house and were maybe ten minutes into the drive home when I spotted a spider inside the car. I immediately pulled over. I jumped out. I called my mother. And I informed her that she would have to bring her own car because I was absolutely not driving another mile in mine until the spider had been located, removed, and the vehicle thoroughly cleansed of its presence.
I have spent years trying to identify the traumatic event responsible for this absurd level of arachnophobia. The earliest memory I can find goes back to a story my great-grandmother loved telling. The other adults hated it. Every single time she started, somebody would say: “Stop it. Don’t tell that story in front of the children.” Naturally, she ignored them.
According to my great-grandmother, sometime in the 1920s or 1930s, her older sister developed large red, inflamed bumps all over her body. When the local village healer, who apparently served as the closest thing they had to a doctor, cut them open, hundreds of baby spiders crawled out.
My great-grandmother always ended the story by reassuring us: “But that was back then. Nowadays there are no spiders like that anymore.”
I didn’t believe her. I assumed she was only saying that because everybody else was so angry with her for terrifying the children.
From a spiritual perspective, I actually understand why spiders are often viewed positively. Think of Anansi. Okay, perhaps “benevolent” isn’t quite the right word when discussing Anansi. But he’s cool. Or consider Guede Zareyen, a benevolent Loa who manifests as a spider, from the Guede Nation in Haitian Vodou. Those are only two examples among many.
Which brings me back to the beginning.
I live in an area with a lot of spiders. There are huge trees outside my windows. A creek nearby. In many ways, it is the exact opposite of my ideal habitat. The fact that my husband has developed a habit of secretly opening all the windows at night while I’m asleep and leaving them open until morning does not improve matters.
A few weeks ago, we suddenly had a spider invasion. Five spiders a day. Sometimes more. Eventually they were also in the vacuum cleaner. And no, they do not crawl back out. If the vacuum cleaner is empty beforehand, simply keep it running and throw a few grains of rice inside afterward. There. Now I’ve shared my war crimes with the internet.
Anyway. The strange thing wasn’t that there were spiders. The strange thing was how many there were. I remember thinking that this year seemed much worse than normal. Maybe it was the weather. But the winter had been cold and long. Shouldn’t there have been fewer spiders, not more? And why were they all so big? And what about the large but skinny one with the black and yellow stripes that built a web overnight between my husband’s whiskey bottles? Was that the invasive Chinese species that had been in the newspapers lately?
Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. Completely. No gradual decline. No occasional spider every few days. Nothing. And no, neither my husband nor our daughters had suddenly become better at secretly removing spiders before I could find them.
The weather hadn’t changed. Spring was advancing. By all logic there should have been at least one spider every now and then. But there wasn’t. Not a single one. For a suspicious amount of time.
And that’s when a strange thought crossed my mind. Maybe I had been vacuum-cleaning signs from the universe for weeks. I mean, surely I hadn’t managed to single-handedly drive the local spider population to extinction. Right?
And that was when I started digging. ... [click here to read the full article]