The spider as a symbol

[KyriakosCH]

A number of my short stories are about spiders and other critters. Of course they are symbolic, yet it is a major recurring theme. Spiders, in particular, construct a wall out of their webs, preventing the protagonist from reaching anything repressed or lost.
I never liked spiders (that is the opening line from one of the stories as well), although I had little issue observing or touching other bugs (praying mantis, grasshopper, beetle, and of course the humble ant). The spider just seems vicious and menacing, particularly if it rests on its thick web. I think it always seemed to me to be a sort of deity of the web; something which is sensitive to the tiniest change taking place in its realm that is made of sickly white dense saliva-like lacework; ominous to behold and akin to some uncannily inverted broken mirror where the gaps are actually the only parts that matter.
It has been noted by many poets that the spider does resemble a tree in form; a peculiar tree in this case, because it is alive and carnivorous. Its movement may seem bizarre at first, yet in reality (when it has a galloping pace) is revealed to simply be that of a human infant moving on all fours - two infants, to be exact, attached to each other, walking in synchronization, with the first and third and the second and fourth legs on either side of that singular body being always in the same phase angle. The hairy body of the spider can also be said to connote a thick beard, thus turning the creature into a chimeric hybrid of infant and adult.
For me spiders always seemed to be not so much on guard, but guardians themselves. Always on the look-out for the unhappy passer-by, who without realizing it had already ventured way too close to his doom and any escape would no longer be possible without extreme sacrifices...

[Mandle]

I sense a new movie coming from your description of human forms combined into a spider:

The Human Arachnid...

Seriously though, that description freaked me out and could work well in a horror work!

[KyriakosCH]

I sense a new movie coming from your description of human forms combined into a spider:

The Human Arachnid...

Seriously though, that description freaked me out and could work well in a horror work!

^_^ I am happy the description had an effect!