The Seba library treats Spider in 9 passages, across 6 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Abraham, Karl, Hillman, James).
the spider has a sinister aspect that should not be overlooked. The round metallic spider of our dreamer probably has a similar meaning. It has obviously devoured a number of human beings already, or their souls
Jung interprets the dreamed spider as a symbol of psychic inflation and soul-devouring self-enclosure, warning that those who place the ego as highest authority risk being swallowed into the spider’s belly.
, Civilization in Transition, 1964thesis
the spider that stands for this side of the mother. One might say that it is because spiders catch and kill small animals, and small animals often represent children in dreams.
Abraham examines the spider as a symbol of the devouring, destructive mother in neurotic dream life, while acknowledging the insufficiency of any single explanatory rationale for this overdetermined symbol.
, Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis, 1927thesis
the spider has a second symbolic meaning. It represents the penis embedded in the female genitals, which is attributed to the mother.
Abraham argues that beyond the phallic-mother meaning, the spider also symbolizes a concealed or ‘hidden’ penis embedded within the maternal body, revealing the symbol’s fundamental bisexual ambiguity.
, Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis, 1927thesis
Flying incredibly low, the spider passed along the windows of the building, for the obvious purpose of letting the voice influence the people inside and point out the way to peace, which was the way to the inner, secret world.
Jung presents the spider in a patient’s dream as a numinous aerial vehicle bearing a redemptive prayer, functioning as an emissary between the outer world of collective decision-making and the inner world of the unconscious.
, Civilization in Transition, 1964thesis
if the spider embodies the power of the dark natural mind that can unfurl a fantasy system out of itself that holds all things together in an inescapable network
Hillman reads the spider as the archetype of the chthonic, web-spinning mind — a dark creative intelligence that binds all things within an inescapable order — and explores its initiatory relation to phallic consciousness.
, Animal Presences, 2008supporting
She was the spider turning the tables on her husband. To counter a spider, a woman must know her own spider.
Signell uses the spider to illuminate the shadow dimension of female aggression in relational dynamics, arguing that a woman’s psychological liberation requires conscious recognition of her own spider-nature.
, Wisdom of the Heart: Working with Womens Dreams, 1991supporting
there was a different spider spinning this web, testing its tautness by dancing around it like the first, now setting the silken cross weaves around the nodal point and winding outward.
Abram uses the direct perceptual encounter with multiple spiders weaving overlapping webs as a phenomenological image of participatory perception and the interweaving of consciousness with the animate world.
, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996supporting
spiders spun webs in his eyebrows and magpies built a nest on top of his head.
In a Zen Buddhist hagiographic context, spiders spinning webs on the meditating Shakyamuni’s face serve as a sign of his complete absorption and radical stillness, the body becoming indistinguishable from the natural world.
, Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki, 1234supporting
spider, black, 333
The index entry for ‘black spider’ in Jung’s Alchemical Studies signals the creature’s presence within the alchemical symbolic bestiary, associated with dark or chthonic aspects of the opus.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967aside