Synchronicity is a beautiful thing. Sunday night I drew three cards from James Wanless’ Sustain Yourself deck of oracle cards. The card I drew for my question about what I needed most right now to live sustainably was “Web — Interconnected,” which is illustrated by a collage of spider web photos.
Sure enough, I was asked to write today’s Daily Astrology post about the Sun’s current conjunction with the asteroid Arachne in the first degree of Scorpio. Five minutes later, Eric’s friend send him a picture of her spider tattoo. In mythology, Arachne was a boastful young woman who angered the goddess Athena with her claims of superior weaving ability — without even acknowledging the goddess’ influence on her skill.
When Athena challenged Arachne to a contest, and the young woman’s tapestry depicting the loves and transgressions of the gods won, Athena destroyed the loom, struck the girl and turned her into a spider.
Makes you wonder how much of Athena’s rage was actually embarrassment fueled by having amorous relations — and the sexual interconnectedness of the Olympians — out in plain sight. Just how old is our determination to ignore the fact that we are only two degrees away (in the Kevin Bacon sense, not the astrological sense) from anyone our lover has had sex with? How many degrees separate anyone from someone you have sex with?
Along with death and money, Scorpio is about sex, and it’s also about secrets: what happens in the dark, behind closed doors or when we think no one is looking. The Sun showing up in Scorpio, shining its light with Arachne, is asking, ‘why are we still pretending all of this stuff is so secret’?
Or to quote the Leonard Cohen song, “everybody knows.” Is everyone paying attention to the fact that they know? Is everyone admitting it? No. To do that, we have to acknowledge that our interconnectedness has consequences, and that each of us has power and responsibility in that equation. Just imagine what it might be like if everyone took awareness of their sexual health (such as with regular STD testing) and its ripple-effect impact on others seriously.
Wouldn’t that be a different conversation? And it leads to the flip side of another of Arachne’s themes. This asteroid (and spider medicine in general) has to do with the stories we tell — writing, creativity and weaving the story of life — but it also extends into conspiracies. For example, someone with Arachne conjunct Venus might hold a conspiratorial view of love.
‘Conspiracy’ generally has a negative connotation; it is a narrative counter to the widely accepted view, presumed to involve a network of people with an agenda. Culturally we apply it derisively to theories officially considered ‘out there’ (or downright ridiculous). But must it always invoke paranoia?
What about John Perry Barlow’s definition of “pronoia” — that the universe is a conspiracy on your behalf?
Since we’re talking about Scorpio (a water sign whose modern ruler is Pluto, which is linked to hormones) consider another way we’re all connected: via our water supply. We have more to consider than the evaporation-precipitation model we all learned in elementary school. The increasing presence of hormones (such as birth control pills, dioxins and a diversity of other chemicals) sometimes found in municipal drinking water is another reminder that we’re all living together, feeling together and possibly being altered together. It’s just evidence that we share the same water of life, clean or otherwise.
What if we take this idea of interconnectedness not as a reason to worry about what we’re in contact with, but rather as a reason to tend each strand of the web with loving-kindness? Ted Andrews wrote of the spider totem in his essential book Animal Speak:
The spider awakens creative sensibilities. It weaves a web of intricate and subtle fabric, as if to remind us that the past always subtly influences the present and future. Often the webs will take a spiral shape, the traditional form of creativity and development. The spider found within the web reminds us that we are the center of our own world. The ancient mystery schools had one precept inscribed above their portals: “Know Thyself and Thou Shalt Know The Universe!” Spider reminds us that the world is woven around us. We are the keepers and the writers of our own destiny, weaving it like a web by our thoughts, feelings and actions.
Today the Sun shines its light on this interconnectedness from the transformative waters of Scorpio. What secrets and webs are revealing themselves? Is your life story one of paranoia or pronoia, and how are you tending your web?
Video above chosen in ‘honor’ of last night’s presidential debate.
What an amazing dream, dear hugging.
Hey Mystes! Thanks! 😉 I felt rather teary eyed this afternoon and just visited my friend to say thank you to her.
Yeah, Geoff I saw that movie (or one very like it) when I was a kid – LOVED it! Just watched Snow White and the Huntsman last night and found myself rooting (hahahaha) for the dark forest.
Thanks, dear Mysti. In fact my father continues to report matches at the age of 81 (he’s a football journalist), it’s what keeps him sane. But my mother gets more and more hysterical about his leaving the house. Better call ’em now. xxx
After all this, I shall be a tad disappointed if I don’t dream of giant spiders with huge butterfly wings eating ostriches tonight. With Sun-cum-Saturn I’m hoping to discover the world wide spider at the centre of this web.
Here’s one Ray Bradbury concocted earlier:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantula_%28film%29
Sweet dreams all.
Wow. HS… DEWD…
Well, this is gonna be an interesting birthmonth. Sounds like you found your vahana (vehicle).
Thank you, Huffy. I am so sorry your mom has entered that twilight, and that your dad’s health is under siege. The good news is that pacemaker implantation is now a very simple procedure; though I hope he is taking the opportunity for a breather. Even an hour here or there can be a seachange for the caregiver’s body.
Alzheimers reminds us that the physiology is the queencaptain. We navigators get confused about that sometimes, which is why we *all* have to respect the body’s prerogatives. When it finally takes over, edging out the “I” mind, we’d better have a sunk a commline deep into that twinkling net of flesh.
Thanks all for the lovely dream talk!
I had an interesting dream last night, not about spiders though.
I dreamt first of a friend who helped me through a challenging period of adjustment in my life. In the dream, she had died and I was taking care of her body, showing it respect and care, and making sure it safely reached the memorial.
Then I found myself in a house along a lake. I was upstairs and noticed this jacket from a prison nearby. I took it out and gave it the next house and said, “this is not mine.” When I came back, the house was completely empty of furniture. The windows were open and a gentle breeze was blowing through. I walked out on the terrace and noticed the lake was frozen solid. Out a bit in the lake were the storm barriers (a line of rocks before the beach) also covered in sheets. Then I noticed there the semblance of something moving. This thing then turned a beautiful pink/red/golden hue and turned into a huge butterfly. As it opened its wings, the shape of them made a huge beautiful heart shape. As it slowly flapped its wings, I woke up.
Thank you letting me share this here,
HS
Love ya, Mysti! Your dreamy, pithy posts take me out of the present grim reality, into another world.
Re: Tara-antulas. As I was drifting into the hypnogogic this morning, the name came up first: Tara (twinkle). Meaning ‘star’ in Sanskrit and maybe in Gaelic. Gold Tara (whom I have never met before) in particular was lolling around in this form.
And then, like all arachnids, 8 legs. How many directions spread out from the axis? Four, you say? What about the intermediates? Well, then 8 it is. That is to say: ALL directions, without preference to any particular one or three.
Webs no, nests yes. Being a gnarly little grrrrrl in Texas, I used to find and watch them. Like silver-grey pocks in the mountain skin. Oh and they do weave, but they are more like woven purses, dense and fog-colored. It is said that they can catch small birds in them.
Lupus of the spider world, I heard as I lost consciousness. Then laughter as She loped away.
It’s great to read the different perspectives on dreams and tarantulas – thank you, all! 🙂
Well that inspired me to go ogle tarantulas. They’re classified as the family Theraphosidae – Wild Creatures of Light – and interestingly, from the perspective of this article, they are spiders that don’t weave webs.
This has been a dreamtime observation brought to you by the makers of man.
It says: Those who weave magic with the written word usually have this totem, Sarah, Amanda….
Sarah, here’s another interpretation: http://www.linsdomain.com/totems/pages/tarantula.htm
HS & Sarah
“Interpretium” means to carry (inter) silver (pret) from one side of the dream/life border to the other. I prefer to leave my lucre where I find it/it finds me.
Here’s the 411: If you want to know what anything “means” you are allowed to inquire once you can enter the dreamstate during daylight hours. We enter REM state for between 3 and 7 minutes every 120 or so during our daylight awareness. Once perched in that window, you can ask all kinds of questions, cause you’re not you, especially. And ‘meaning’ isnt’ meaning, especially. It doesn’t point anywhere else- it’s not a copy of an idea of a simile (which is very ‘lossy’ as they say). It just is.
There are penalties for dragging the pretium of that world into this one, mostly in the form of debilitating the real work of the Oneiros.
Hypnos emptor.
Sarah, may I try and answer your question?
I think most times the dreams reflect our subjective experience about something. So, how do you Tarantulas make you feel? What in the dream surrounds the Tarantula? Is it day or night? Where is the critter hangin’ out in the dream? I think those types of clues will point you closer than any textbook definition.
To share my own subjective experiences:
1. I was in Tucson a few years ago and noticed much to my slight tension, these critters lurking in their little crevices in the ground, all scrunched up. But they seemed rather peaceful dwellers, albeit ready to leap forward if necessary or if threatened. Reactionary, maybe not; but I stayed clear nonetheless. They weren’t going to chase me if I didn’t go sticking my nose in their hole.
2. When I was in the midst of my life changing switch to independent-hood, selling shared property, finding a place to live, taking on a ton of burden to resolve as I sought greater freedom for myself, I had a nightmare that woke me up in terror: that all these black tarantulas were coming out under my bed and across the floor. I flipped out and got up in hysterics as I thought they were real. I was seriously stressed out and this was just my unconscious purging a lot of tension.
If I were a animal totem dream talker, I’d say that you are feeling rather protective of yourself recently, slightly suspicious, and putting on a necessary front of looking more ominous to scare away a potential or perceived danger. And in doing so, you are connecting with a dark feminine aspect (black spider that is hidden, secret, and creates webs of creation) of your psyche that feels good in this protective mode if only perhaps to tell you secrets you may not be noticing.
Amanda: Thank you. This piece today is absolutely superb and delightful, one of your best ever. i read it twice because i wanted to re-experience the sheer enjoyment of both your astute observations and lucid writing.
Hey Sarah, I’m not a big fan of dream ‘interpretation’ – I simply let the dream body do its work. So, I don’t think about or look for meanings, per se.
The T’s in that world were very friendly. I was driving a jeep through some very rough terrain, had decided to go entirely off-road in order to rescue my kid, who was stuck in some odd territory. I remember gunning the engine to head up a *very* narrow passage and feeling the tires slip off into a steep drop. I didn’t care, knew it would be ok. The tarantulas were hanging out of trees that were growing off the edge of the precipice – kind of throwing web-like-stuff up and down like chewing gum. They reminded me of professional baseball players, spitting and rubbing, kinda cleaning their eyes and winking at me from time to time.
I knew they could catch me if the jeep went entirely over the edge, so my determination was, well, mother-licht.
The experience didn’t entirely allay what I am going through otherwise, but it is a glimpse into a reservoir of another kind of energy.
~~~
I find that the quest for meaning in the dream is usually to service the doubts and demands of my ego. Once it came clear that the dreambody was as or more real than the ‘physical’ body, I stop running those applications. Just today it was suggested to me that I *actually* died of typhus when I was 3 months old, and this last 50+ years of ‘experience’ has been a long, febrile invention.
Works for me.
*8D
mysti – what are your thoughts about dreaming of tarantulas? (tarantulae?)
I dream about them pretty often — all spiders, in fact. But mainly tarantulas of late.
and here’s some welcome news coinciding with the Sun-Arachne conjunction in Scorpio: a story-teller who has come back from the dead in a sense, and is writing again (from Democracy Now! today):
That’s really exciting, Amanda. Keep on writing!
mysti — thank you, and credit where it’s due: eric added the reference to john perry barlow. i had only heard of “pronoia” through rob breszny.
funny, last night exactly as the sun was entering scorpio, i found myself spontaneously compelled to write. i thought i was just telling the funny and obstacle-filled tale of making my only BLT with a home-grown tomato of the year. by the time i was done, i realized i was writing about my dad.
lifting the veil to contact the dead scorpio-style, with a little help from the spiderladies and the sun.
Thank you, Amanda, for this piece – which gives a little love to the much-maligned Arachnids in our midst. Dreamed about tarantulas night before last, was delighted to see this article yesterday.
Soooo glad you are giving credit where it is due on the notion of ‘pronoia’… (John Perry Barlow). In my more exuberant periods [not right now, eh], I’ve worked with a similar notion which I call ‘caranoia’ – the idea that the universe is out to *give* (as opposed to get) you.
It’s true, and the spiderladies are all in on it. Look up, ms. painter and notice the web being woven between your horns. Perfect for catching the Moon.
(Back to my cave…)
M
Thank you for this interesting and beautiful piece Amanda.
Synchronicity indeed!
I write from the UK where a huge sexual scandal has recently erupted. A DJ then TV presenter then major fundraiser with a public career spanning maybe 40 years has, following his death, now been exposed as someone who serially and persistently sexually abused (mainly) young girls in their early teens. The beloved BBC is implicated because some of these ‘incidents’ took place on BBC property…so who else knew? One presenter said he had been waiting 30 years for all of this to come out…which suggests a conspiracy of silence and in all probability a web which spread to other bastions of the Establishment.
The victims are now coming forward to tell their stories/secrets. So far there are over 200.
SO Scorpionic!
Synchronous indeed, Amanda. Yesterday I spent part of the morning clearing a myriad of spider webs from my outside toilet. Today I read your article, looked up the position of my natal Arachne and found transiting Venus was exactly conjunct yesterday. No doubt those spiders have already started rebuilding their webs and I bet they’ll be even more beautiful than before. The toilet looks good too. Thought I’d share this arachnoia (spider thoughts), and thank you for the Leonard Cohen, brilliantly appropriate.
thank you Amanda
A very good effort, Amanda, to weave the story into something more palpable than just the existing mythology.
I am tending to my web today..here.. on PW
“What if we take this idea of interconnectedness not as a reason to worry about what we’re in contact with, but rather as a reason to tend each strand of the web with loving-kindness?” Yes, lovely. Great piece Amanda, thank you, and for the Leonard Cohen, too.