Thread: Spider with a Human Face

I don't know what to make of the grey void, and that might change the interpretation if I understood it. But one thought that occurs to me is this - a dream is supposed to be a correction of an incorrect conscious attitude. Possibly the dream is telling you that you've developed too harsh and negative of an attitude toward your mom. It seems in the dream you saw her as a spider. Some people come across as hard and cold on the outside but sometimes they have a gentle core that they're afraid to show. The goofy face might be reinforcing this idea - showing that your mom isn't always just domineering and dark, but has a goofy side to her as well.

On the other hand, it could mean that you shouldn't be so hateful toward spiders. It could actually mean BOTH. By putting a human face on a tarantula the dream could be saying look - they have little personalities too, and are sort of like people.

I think it's kind of a weak analysis, but it's all that occurs to me, and like I say I don't know what to make of the grey void - unless (and this just occurred to me right this moment) it's showing you the results of having a hard unforgiving attitude toward (your mom? Spiders? Both? Maybe toward many people in general, represented by your mom and the spider?)

Because your attitude toward others does largely determine how warm your life will be. If you have a tendency to be unfair toward people and see the bad in them without seeing the good, that will cause your overall life to suffer - possibly represented by the grey void. Just a guess really.

On the other hand, it could be showing you that your mom really is stupid (tongue hanging out goofily) and has a true spider nature, and that you'd better not trust her. I suppose it depends on your real attitude toward her. If you're a little too trusting and forgiving and tend to overlook terrible things she does, then it could be the last interpretation. If you tend to be harsh and unforgiving toward her, it would be the first.

How do you like that - a multiple choice interpretation!

Although in order to provide a more accurate interpretation it would usually be best to have some additional general background information about you (and a description of events just before this very upsetting dream), it’s safe to say that the presence of any animal creature in dreams usually points to the issue of the dreamer’s overall attitude toward natural instinctive reactions, strong emotions, values, vague feelings, intuitions and even cold thoughts and actions that are sometimes needed to defend ourselves in certain situations (just like a quiet mother bear will suddenly turn very savage if her cubs are in danger).

In addition, the very unusual image of the spider which has a human face points to this dream as being an “archetypal” one, meaning that it came from the deepest layers of your unconscious mind. This usually occurs at an important transitional point in the dreamer’s life.

A key point appears to be that you could be especially unaware of a certain aspect of your psyche. This is symbolized through various analogies such as being totally unable to recognize the person who presents you with the tarantula, being unable to recognize the place you’re in even though it may be your home, not being able to recognize the face of the spider, and ending up in an unpleasant, frightening and featureless grey void.

In addition, this part of yourself might be exceptionally difficult to accept since it’s apparently being pictured as something that you’re extremely afraid of in outer life, namely, the poisonous spider.

A spider generally symbolizes a kind of snapshot of the whole of nature and of life itself.

For instance, some species of spider create beautiful round-shaped webs that shimmer with dew in the sun, but at the same time, these webs are meant to ensnare and kill prey.

In this image are contained the realities of “creativity” (creating a web) and “destructiveness” (devouring prey), just like Mother Nature as a whole gives birth but also causes death in an unending cycle.

The image of a spider in its web stirs up all kinds of negative connotations, e.g. “a web of conspiracies and lies”; the World Wide Web which can lure people to endless sites of often unreliable data, doubtful sources of relationship and even to limitless perversions; “entanglements” with others can lead to all sorts of problems etc.; also we can fall prey to an inner “web” of psychological defenses and illusions to ward off the harsher realities of life in general.

In contrast to all this, a round spider’s web also has a “center” which is symbolic of a kind of wholeness and a sense of calm. That is, a person can eventually manage to absorb and accept both the lighter and darker sides of themselves and of life in general by keeping an ongoing, interactive balance between the two.

So it looks like the dream could be encouraging you to pluck up your courage in order to carefully examine some kind of painful reality within in order to “remove its sting” as it were. For example, it’s apparently morning (the beginning of a “new day” or potential new way of looking at things), and light (broadly speaking, a symbol of a higher level of conscious awareness) is pouring into the lightly colored room from behind the person gifting the tarantula. All this is accompanied by a refreshing new “spirit” blowing in past white voile curtains as if to sweep the latter aside to allow an unobstructed clearer view of some kind of difficult issue.

Also, the dream specifically pictures you as being apprehensive but still open to carefully examining the spider (which has been identified by the unknown person as being your mother), very contrary to how you would respond in outer life. Symbolically, this could occur partly because the tarantula had earlier been safely “contained” and had also been provided with what it needed to feel comfortable and calm when later being picked up. This perhaps represents a certain basic level of acceptance of it being needed overall, and if so, this allowed the spider to be picked up and apparently to remain quite still while you carefully examined it close up.

In the dream, you then become more apprehensive because of this careful examination, perhaps suggesting that a next step is needed to help remove more of your fear. This apparently takes the form of removing a veil from the spider’s face which turned out to have a goofy look with its tongue hanging out. Symbolically, this could possibly represent the need to consciously take less seriously any harmful influences of your unfortunately dour mother which reside inside yourself. These could perhaps take the form of self-hurtful gibes, feelings of failure, guilt, shame and other unfortunate opinions and thoughts.

In a practical sense, the dream might even be encouraging you to catch yourself at the moment of any such negative feelings and so on, countering them immediately with something like a stand-up comedian’s jokes about a member of the audience. As a general example, something like “Hey! Put that tongue back in your mouth! You look goofy enough already without that thing hanging out!” etc. etc.

This might sound like an unusual thing to do, but taking any such dark moods etc. less seriously, and consciously making fun of them (while perhaps even visualizing your mother as you did so) could potentially reduce their negative effect on you which could possibly be represented next in the dream by the frightening and cold grey void. Fighting back persistently could eventually work well because you’d probably come to realize very clearly that any such inner gibes etc. wouldn’t really be “you” but only the unfortunate residue left over from some aspects of your upbringing.

If perhaps you’ve tended at times to be dogged by such unhelpful feelings and thoughts during the first half of your life, the dream seems to be encouraging you at this important transition period into the second half of life to become more assertive with yourself in fighting back against them. If any of these ideas seem to make sense in your personal circumstances, you might like to read a few books by James Hollis who has written a lot on how to make the best of the second half of life. Some of these include “The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife”, “Mythologems”, “Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up”, and “Hauntings: Dispelling the Ghosts Who Run Our Lives”.

Anyway as mentioned, without really knowing anything about you, this way of looking at your dream might not fit your personal circumstances very well, but I hope that these ideas can be helpful in some way.

Please feel free to comment on, or to ask any questions about, this particular way of looking at your dream.

When we look at dreams, we need to realize that the contents of our dreams do not necessarily reflect our conscious beliefs. For example, nightmares can be very positive. Additionally, some unsettling dream animals can be also be very positive. For examples, spiders, as well as snakes, are animals that we often have conscious feelings of disgust, fear, loathing etc.

A couple of points:
• We can get around these feelings by trying to figure out what it is about the spider that causes it to appear in this dream – as opposed to some other little critter such as an ant, a dragonfly or even a beetle. Spiders have eight legs, they have a poisonous bite and they spin silk, and, some such as tarantulas are hairy.
• I’ve noticed that spider dreams (as well as snake dreams) are especially common in the religious and spiritual types.

I suspect that the spider’s hair has something to do with the nadis or the prana that flows through the nadis.

The spider was, apparently, a gift. Receiving a dream gift is almost always a good sign in a dream. The gift represents something that is added to the dreamer.

The person who gave the dreamer the gift seems to be associated with a wide opened window. He (?) may be Krishna, who governs the 6th chakra. Discover The Meaning Of The Original Third Eye Chakra Symbol
There was “a breeze blowing in through the window.” Wind is symbolic of the spiritual.

It looks like the spider may have the face of the dreamer’s mother. In preindustrial societies, the mythological spider is almost always identified as being female. Additionally, in some of the Native American myths, there is a very helpful entity called the Spider Grandmother (or Spider Woman), who helps or protects the tribe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_Grandmother

There seems to be a shift in the dream with the grey void and the dreamer’s becoming very cold. I am unsure about this part. The cold, it may be due to the appearance of the mother’s face. That is, the conscious views of the dreamer’s mother have intruded into this dream. The grey void might then be an indication of the mother’s impact on the dreamer.

Hope this helps.

I’m wondering if your mother has presented you with something you are uncomfortable with. She has told you everything is alright but deep down you know you don’t like it.