Spiders everywhere!

[ms_book05]

I was dreaming last night and in the dream I was in this house I'd never been in before with my former boyfriend. We were friendly but not amicable. He was in one room. I was moving through the house trying to find something or somewhere to sleep. As I was moving through the house I would enter different rooms and the one I went into there were spider everywhere. Hanging from the ceiling. Most were black. Occasionally a blue one, several that were black with red markings. They were so abundant I couldn't help but run into them even though I was ducking and trying to avoid them. There was a group of black with red marking that I couldn't help hitting and they bit me on the face right below my right eye. The bite became red and swollen. I went further into the room and found a bed where I slept. The next morning in the dream I woke and didn't see any of these spiders, though I was still wary. And the former boyfriend was no where to be found. And shortly after this I woke up becoming aware slowly. Any thoughts on this one?

[unclesirbobbyrobson]

HOW TO INTERPRET A DREAM : There is some evidence that dreams can link to telepathy and premonition. However, it’s really best to assume that any given dream is purely psychological in origin. So first try to establish if this is the case. The language of dreams is complicated so it’s actually easier to try and second guess what subjects a dream can be about. First try to understand that dreams are very much in the present. That because of the way that the Mind is organized. The research of Jon Winson showed that certain brainwaves only make an appearance at night time. So during the night we process through the previous days events and feelings and reorder our own feelings. We transfer new information from short term into long term memory blocks. So therefore dreams represent the highlights of the previous days thinking. So simply try to establish the new feelings. Also try to remember that the dream mind is a mind that deals with ideas and conceptual feelings. So try to reduce your key moments and feelings into a set of quotes. Here are a few examples: "My sister is acting oddly again. I wonder if her marriage is in trouble", "I really hate my boss. I was picked on again yesterday", "I am trying to devise a new strategy to the new computer game I have got". Above all try to see which way your mind is pointing. Sometimes we dwell on the previous day but other times we are worrying about some event or situation that is due to happen. Once you have written down some possible dream triggers then try to see how the various dreams symbols can represent specific feelings. The dream symbols feature a number of quotes which in practice tend to be the types of emotions that these symbols mean in practice. For instance a soldier appearing in your dreams may link to a need to be disciplined or a need to struggle through some warlike situation. See which best fit your own situation. For a full understanding of symbolic meanings refer to the links provided.

YOUR DREAM: I was dreaming last night and in the dream I was in this house I\'d never been in before with my former boyfriend. We were friendly but not amicable. He was in one room. I was moving through the house trying to find something or somewhere to sleep. As I was moving through the house I would enter different rooms and the one I went into there were spider everywhere. Hanging from the ceiling. Most were black. Occasionally a blue one, several that were black with red markings. They were so abundant I couldn\'t help but run into them even though I was ducking and trying to avoid them. There was a group of black with red marking that I couldn\'t help hitting and they bit me on the face right below my right eye. The bite became red and swollen. I went further into the room and found a bed where I slept. The next morning in the dream I woke and didn\'t see any of these spiders, though I was still wary. And the former boyfriend was no where to be found. And shortly after this I woke up becoming aware slowly. Any thoughts on this one?


THE DREAM SYMBOLS
BEDS : "It involves my own future"
"he made a very personal request to me"
"its just one of my own personal habits"
"I have been thinking about my own health"
"I have been thinking about his habits and personality"
"I really managed to identify with that story on the news"
"I realised how sensitive and touchey that issue is"

Dream symbolism and dream interpretation - the symbolic meaning of beds and bedrooms in practical dream analysis


HOUSE : "I have been spending some time thinking about work and how I am coping with it"
"I have been thinking about my health recently and..."
"I seem to be changing. I seem to get easily intimidated nowadays"
"I have been thinking about him. I wonder how he will respond"

Dream symbolism and dream dictionary interpretation - The meaning of houses in dream analysis



These links wil help you understand dream interpreting in general

Dream symbolism and dream dictionary interpretation - How to interpret dreams

Dream symbolism - How to use dream symbols

A dream dictionary that explores the variety of meanings in a dream symbol

[Athanor]

Generally it’s always best to have background information about the dreamer, including a description of events in the days leading up to the dream, but overall, in this case it looks like one prominent theme is the idea of being too unconscious of a certain area of your personality.

The first instance of this idea appears to be the “house I’d never been in before” because a house usually symbolizes the person overall with each room often representing various aspects of the personality. Here, the house is “unknown”, that is, it’s a building or “complex” within the mind that is probably often outside of everyday “knowing” or consciousness.

It’s a little difficult to explain in a brief way the reasoning behind what your former boyfriend represents, but in this case he likely symbolizes in part your commitment to your own growth and self development. Something likely happened a day or two before the dream where this aspect of yourself was challenged in some way and you needed to explore some habitual situation within that might sometimes get in the way of your growth somehow.

Trying to find something or somewhere to sleep picks up on the idea of being unconscious (trying to find something which is “lost” or “unseen”; sleeping as being “unconscious”).

Finding the room where you eventually will go to sleep and which contains all of the spiders seems to summarize or focus on “what you’re unconscious of” overall.

Spiders can have many meanings, but in general they are ambivalent symbols, that is, they are linked to both positive and negative meanings. In this, they reflect the unconscious mind which can be either supportive or destructive, largely depending on the ego’s attitude towards it.

For example, the image of a spider in the center of its web can represent the sun or the source of life, but in your dream, there are apparently no webs but only spiders that are hanging from the ceiling with no “center” present. Black would tend to be a negative color in most cases, but it also can represent the rich potential in something (a broad parallel example would be rich black earth which is very productive).

Black widow spiders happen to have red markings on them and of course do bite and are poisonous.

In the dream, the bite is below the “right” eye, that is, something that is “right”, good or conscious is hurt, possibly affecting how you appear to others (red and swollen). Or perhaps the “bite” is meant to wake you up and make you “see” some mostly hidden part of yourself.

In outer life, many spiders don’t actually weave webs and use just single filaments as in your dream. Invisible threads such as these could tend to represent a person expressing negative emotions such as envy, jealousy, guilt or anxiety in “invisible”, that is, in unacknowledged ways. Such “sticky” emotions if they’re “hidden” in general are very hard to separate from. Therefore, they may flare up largely uncontrollably (“bites”) and sometimes affect a person’s overall situation in frustrating ways.

It’s possible that something happened recently that was related to this idea but you may have mostly ignored it (went to sleep in the room in spite of the danger of more bites occurring). The problem may have been suppressed (spiders and former boyfriend gone in the morning), but it could resurface (feeling wary).

However without knowing anything about you, it’s not possible to say if this interpretation fits your personal situation in any way. To find a meaning more applicable, you could try jotting down the spontaneous thoughts, memories and feelings that come to mind about the spiders and the bite.

As a general example, when focusing on the bite, a person might suddenly remember an event where an uncontrolled burst of anger followed by cutting remarks occurred in a certain situation, and this would be a clue that because emotions weren’t conscious enough overall they built up and then burst out uncontrollably. But this is just an example and it depends on the specific personal memories that come to your own mind.

I hope that some of these ideas will help in uncovering the meaning of your dream.

[Wolfjk]

Hi
Quote
As I was moving through the house I would enter different rooms and the one I went into there were spider everywhere. Hanging from the ceiling. Most were black. Occasionally a blue one, several that were black with red markings. They were so abundant I couldn't help but run into them even though I was ducking and trying to avoid them.
Unquote

The dream indicates that whilest you are apprehensive of spiders, especially those with red markings or poison signs, you are not really frightened off them. The dream was created by your subconscious to divert you from some problems you have in your life at present. The problems are probably psychological that involve relationships with other people. This is indicated by the dream taking you round the different rooms in the house. It is a classic case of a diverting dream that is designed to keep you from waking until you have had suffiscent sleep.
Cheers Wolfjk

[Breene]

To see a spider in your dream, indicates that you are feeling like an outsider in some situation. Or that you may want to keep your distance and stay away from an alluring and tempting situation. The spider is also symbolic of feminine power. Alternatively, a spider may refer to a powerful force protecting you against your self-destructive behavior. If you kill a spider, it symbolizes misfortune and general bad luck.

To see a spider climbing up a wall in your dream, denotes that your desires will be soon be realized.

To dream that you are bitten by a spider, represents a conflict with your mother or some dominant female figure in your life. The dream may be a metaphor for a devouring mother or the feminine power to possess and entrap. Perhaps you are feeling trapped by some relationship. (Hmm..ex?)

Good luck,
Breene

[mythopoet]

Hi Dreamer,

I actually recognize the mention of this very same dream motif in Henri Ellenberger's "The Discovery of the Unconscious" (see pp304-305) where H.E. mentions the contributions of Scherner, one of the great pioneers in dream investigation; Scherner wrote prior to the work of Freud & Jung and to which their own works are both indebted. (His primary book, The Life of the Dream,1861)

According to Scherner certain symbols correspond to each of our body organs, are not arbitrary and are revealed by experience in dream. One basic symbol, the image of a house, is the expression of the human body time and again in dream. This corresponds to Athanor's post which provides a very nice commentary on your dream.

Scherner believed, as do many, there is a correspondence between dream houses and human body parts. What is interesting is that S relates the story of a lady who went to bed with a violent headache and who dreamed that she was in a room in which hanging from the ceiling were numerous large, swarming spiders. There was definitely a (th)reading around the head spun in your dream fiction.

Scherner tied one kind of dreaming to wish-fulfillment.

In antiquity the physician Herophilos, who lived under the First Ptolemy, distinguished between three kinds of dreams: dreams sent by the gods; natural dreams or those which come about whenever the soul creates for itself an image of that which is beneficial to it (prophetic dreams that may come to pass) and mixed dreams or those dreams which originate spontaneously from the juxtaposition of images, when we see that which we desire. Scherner says: "The (dream) phantasy immediately fulfills the dreamer's wish, simply because this existed vividly in the mind." Scherner will not ascribe to the wish any further significance for the dream than to any other psychic condition of the waking state; least of all does he insist on the connection between the wish and the essential nature of the dream.

Our tendencies toward positivisms and scientisms as encompassing the whole of reality (which they cannot) will often speak contemptuously of dreams apparently to justify scientists where they wish to say that "dreams are bubbles"; what Scherner actually discovers as a researcher into the phenomenology of the dream says that a dream is predominantly the gracious fulfiller of wishes. At root, our dreams mean well for us.

Many Blessings,
mythopoet

[blueberrysummer]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------Hi there just to add a little extra

The overall impression I get from reading your dream seems to reflect where you have been recently within yourself, your dream indicates that you have been in a confusing and even fearful place that your not fully conscious of.

Men in dreams tend to reflect our attitudes and thoughts and also our active/doing aspects of our personality, your former boyfreind may be reflecting a part of you, your own thoughts that you have been in relationship with in the past, and which are no longer compatible with you, though these thoughts still take up space within you, 'boyfreind in one room',

At this point in your dream you discover a room full of spiders, I get the impression here these spiders portray more about the nature of these thoughts that you have been having, the black spiders reflects your fears and are what you have been trying to avoid and duck, the energy and feeling of walking through this room may be familar to you in the way you have been dealing with some situation in waking life. Some were blue which denotes the need for expression of these, and another group were black with red markings, biting you on the face, your face representing the way you show yourself to the world, these fearful thoughts have in some way impacted on you and on your right side denoting your active doing side, the red and swollen feeling would likely indicate the feelings you have been experiencing recently in relation to your fears, 'red' maybe a little angry and swollen.

Your going to sleep here is a reaction to this a reponse to close down so to say the bed representing these intimate layers of your self that you probaly would not share with any one and may not even recognise them within your self.

During his phase its like some inner alchemy has taking place and may be reflecting the situation and how your innermost feelings and thoughts have been expressing themselves in regards to your actions and what you have been experiencing recently for as you awaken the next morning your former boyfriend having left and so have these fearful thoughts, it must feel like your sense of recent inner turmoil has resolved itself though you are still feeling wary.

This is just my perspective the best of luck
Marce