Exhibit Twenty-Two: Acquired by the Dream Gallery 27 January 2000
'Dewy Web'
Feeling The Picture
Your feeling reactions to a dream are keys to its interpretation. These are my feelings. If this were a scene in your dream or life, how would you feel about being there?
If this spider web were a daytime picture, my feelings might be different. By night a spider web, darkly unseen against a black sky, entraps us in stickiness when we collide with its delicate, tenacious, far-flung silken invisibility. Yet this spider web wears resplendent drops of dew, shining like stars spread across a universe of night, highlighting into acute vision every crafted spider thread. This dewy web gives me a feeling of awe, of invisibility revealed, of safety in seeing the unseen through the power of a little light shining in the right direction.
Following the awe comes a feeling of strength, inspired by the thought of the weight of water droplets compared to the fine threads. Although the web is built by one spider alone, the feeling is one of strength attained through the pattern of interconnecting struts and radials, as a reflection of the strength of a community built through many links over a large area. Yet again there is a feeling of the power of the individual, as the one spider simply started at the centre and kept on spinning, leg by leg, according to a plan. Entrapment or safety? Strength or fragility? Community or individual power? A spider web is a mandala of contemplative opposites.
The Symbols
Symbols in your dreams often relate to your personal memories and associations, so always consider those first. Then let your mind play with other, more general possibilities. They will not all apply! Just open your mind and notice where the symbol seems to fit and make sense of the rest of your dream.
If the web is specifically a spider’s web, it’s important to consider the symbolism of the spider too. Personal symbolism apart (the ‘Questions’ sections of the Dream Gallery help you to work out your personal associations to these images), spiders frequently symbolise power, mixed with a hint of danger or fear and a speckle of the feminine. In many species the female spider eats the male after mating, giving the spider a ‘female power’ image, but it runs deeper than this. The spider generally sits at the centre of the web and is alerted to the arrival of prey through vibration of the web. The spider can feel this vibration over a long distance. This gives a feeling of the powers of intuition (regarded as a Yin or female power), or psychic power (knowledge over a distance). Most dreams of spiders relate to some aspect of female power in the dreamer’s life, usually a situation in which the dreamer feels overpowered by another and needs to re-connect to their own personal power. This mix of power, intuition and psychic sense is embodied in the webs and spiders which often accompany images of witches.
A spider web can symbolise these same qualities, as well as entrapment, determination, strength, fragility, patterning, inter-connection, the need for a clean-up, old-stuff not attended to (covered in cobwebs) and much more.
These days a ‘web’ also has prominent meaning through the world wide web. Internet communication, which has drastically altered our previous notions of time, space and reality, is perhaps our modern-day symbol of the powerful influence of both individuals and communities. Our almost instantaneous communications are perhaps only one step away from intuitive or psychic inter-connection. Will we really need the hardware and software once we’ve gained confidence in the inter-connectedness of all?
The Questions
Here are some questions the dreamer of such a dream picture might ask to work towards a complete understanding of the dream.
Try these yourself: just give your 'gut reaction' answers to the questions - your answers will surprise you in the insights they deliver. The key thing to remember is, "Don't THINK about your answers - give quick gut reaction replies". Your unconscious will deliver.
If this process can work powerfully for this image, consider how infinitely more powerful the insights are when the image comes from one of your own dreams - direct from your unconscious!
- If this image included a spider, where, on the web, would it be sitting?
- How big would it be compared to the centre circle of the web?
- What would be most prominent: its legs or its body?
- How does the thought of a spider sitting on this web change your feelings about the web?
- Why is there no spider in the Dream Gallery image?
- Where has the spider that built this web gone and why?
- Where is the light shining in from?
- The way this web hangs suggests it is attached to two supports, one on each side. What are these supports?
- What, or who, are the two main supports in your current life situation?
- What interconnects these two main supports in your current life situation?
- In this life situation, who or what is the spider and who or what is the web?
- Look at your answer to question 1. Is the spider centred or off to one side? Above or below? Present or absent? Knowing what or who the spider is (question 11), what insight does this give you now?
- Some of the threads seem broken or clumped, why has this happened?
- Which feels better: a perfectly symmetrical web or one with some irregularities in its shape?
- What does the dew represent in your life now?
- What do you see in the overall pattern of this web?
- How does this overall pattern clarify your current life situation?
- What message has the spider woven into the web specially for you
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