2021-12-14 22:20:47 ¶ ●

It annoys me when people say that spiders don’t really fit the Web, that people don’t really fear spiders manipulating them (which I. also have arguments against. I may put them at the end of this).

Leitner says we have to think about the meaning of the thing. And while I give him the same disgusted side-eye I give Freud…he has a point. Sure, maybe we don’t fear a spider will trap us (although animals do, as someone has pointed out on this website [hee hee website]). But we have thread and weaving associated with them and with fate (as in the Fates), associated with plot threads as well…there’s Anansi the spider trickster god…there’s Athena with weaving and strategy under one dominion (and Arachne but it doesn’t work as well)…

[edit: I have more examples:

what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive

The painter plays the spider and hath woven
A golden mesh to entrap the hearts of men,
Faster than gnats in cobwebs;

And now, dear little children, who may this story read,
To idle, silly, flattering words, I pray you ne’er give heed;
Unto an evil counselor close heart, and ear, and eye,
And take a lesson from this tale of the Spider and the Fly.

Marmion, The Merchant of Venice, ‘The Spider and the Fly’]

Yes, spiders actually trap animals and not us. But we have built this symbolism around them that they could trap people. Actually, it amazes me that someone could say they don’t fit the Web. Of course they do. We made them fit the Web. We made the Web. We did that.

Back to the objection that people don’t really fear spiders manipulating them. Yeah, it’s often that we’re repulsed, and really if we didn’t give them the title of manipulator, they’d be Corruption probably. But…sometimes spiders just disappear. They’re there and then they’re not. I find that a bit scary. Where are they now? That could be extrapolated to 'what are they plotting’. Like Carlos Vittery, he was scared of the fact that there are spiders everywhere. (Which honestly is a bit Eye now that I say it. But I think you get my point. Hopefully?)