Dreaming about
spiders

Few animals get the reaction a spider gets, and a fear of spiders is one of the most common phobias there is, even in places where almost none of them can hurt you. So dreaming about spiders usually comes down to fear, though rarely fear of spiders as such. The spider tends to stand for something you feel caught in, a worry that has outgrown the facts, or a person with more control over your life than you'd like.

Which of those it is depends on what the spider was doing. One sitting still in a corner is a different dream from one crawling over your hands, and walking into a web says something a bite doesn't. Then there's you. Someone who keeps a pet tarantula and someone who can't stay in a room with a house spider won't have the same dream, even when the pictures look alike.

What dreaming about spiders means

Spiders do a few things no other animal in your dreams does. They build traps out of their own bodies and wait for days without moving. Then they go from total stillness to sudden speed on eight legs, which the eye finds hard to follow. Each of those habits gives a reading.

Something you feel caught in

A web is made to hold whatever touches it, and the more an insect struggles, the more thread it collects. If the web mattered more than the spider in your dream, look at what you feel stuck in right now. It could be a job, a debt, or a relationship where every attempt to talk makes things more tangled. English already has "caught in a web" and "a web of lies" for this, and dreams borrow the language we use when we're awake.

A fear that has outgrown the facts

Most spiders that end up in a house are harmless to people (we share our homes with far more of them than we ever notice). And yet plenty of us would rather leave the room than deal with one. That gap between the real danger and the felt one is often the whole dream. Is there something that feels huge when you think about it at night and much smaller when you look at it in daylight? One theory of dreaming says threat dreams exist for this, as the brain rehearses danger while you sleep so you're readier for it by day.^[1]

Someone with a hold on you

The spider doesn't chase you down the way a dog or a bear would, but it waits, wraps and controls, so a spider dream is often about a person who works the same way. Think of a parent who still decides too much, a partner who keeps tabs on you, or a manager who always seems to know everything first. In folklore and film the spider is usually female (the big web-builders people notice mostly are), and the reading often lands on a woman in the dreamer's life. But if the spider reminded you of someone in particular, that hunch counts for more than any dictionary.

Patience and things you make

Not every spider dream is a bad one, and the oldest stories about spiders are as much about skill as about fear. In Greek myth Arachne was a weaver so good she challenged the goddess Athena, who turned her into a spider for it. In West African and Caribbean stories, Anansi the spider is the trickster who owns all the world's stories. If you calmly watched a spider build its web, the dream may be about your own slow work, the project you're putting together one thread at a time.

Dreaming about a giant spider

People search this one as big, huge, large and giant, and they all mean the same dream of a spider the size of a dog. It's a fear that has grown out of proportion, and the dream shows you how big it feels. Ask what has grown lately, whether it's a debt that keeps adding interest, an argument nobody has settled or a health worry you keep looking up at night. A giant black spider adds weight, because black tends to carry the side of a problem you haven't faced yet.

Dreaming about black widow spiders

The black widow is named for the female's habit of sometimes eating the male after mating. It happens less often in the wild than the name suggests, but it gave English the "black widow" as a dangerous woman. So a black widow dream is often about attraction mixed with threat, a person you're drawn to and wary of at once. And the red hourglass on its belly is hard to miss as a picture of time running out. If a deadline has been on your mind, that may be all the dream is saying.

Dreaming about a tarantula

Tarantulas are big, hairy and slow, but for most people their bite is no worse than a bee sting, and plenty of people keep them as pets. A tarantula dream is often about something that looks far more frightening than it is. The spider even gave its name to the tarantella, a fast dance from southern Italy that people once believed could sweat out the poison of a bite. If you held the tarantula, or it walked over you without biting, you may have outgrown a fear you still act on. And if you keep one, it's most likely your day showing up at night, since dreams track what you spend your waking hours on.^[2]

Dreaming about spider webs

A web with no spider in it turns the dream from a threat into a situation. Walking into one face first, in the dark, is being tangled in something you didn't see coming, like a rumor or a commitment that turned out bigger than it looked. Old cobwebs in an attic are about neglect, a friendship or a skill you haven't touched in years. But a web covered in dew, the kind you stop to look at, is about admiring something well made, often your own work.

Dreaming about a spider biting you

A spider bite is less about pain than about poison. Something small got under your skin and keeps working after the moment has passed, like a remark you can't stop replaying or a doubt someone planted. Did the bite swell and spread, or did you forget it right away? A bite that grows is a hurt that's still growing, while one you shake off suggests the thing is losing its hold.

Dreaming about black or white spiders

Black spiders are the color people search for most, and in dreams they lean toward low mood, a secret, or something about yourself you've kept out of sight. A white spider is rarer in nature, and in dreams it often feels uncanny, almost the ghost of a spider. It can point to a fear that has lost its teeth, or to a threat that looks innocent. Does anyone in your life seem harmless and still make you uneasy?

Dreaming about killing a spider

Most people kill dream spiders the way they would in real life, with a shoe, a book or a tissue. How it felt afterwards is the whole reading. Relief means you've dealt with a worry, or you're ready to. Guilt is more interesting, because an old English rhyme says that if you wish to live and thrive you should let a spider run alive. Part of you may feel you've thrown out something useful along with something frightening. And if more spiders kept coming however many you killed, the problem you're attacking is probably not the real one.

Dreaming about spiders crawling on you

"It makes my skin crawl" is how English describes someone who disgusts you. A dream of spiders on your body can be exactly that, a person or a situation that feels like an intrusion. It's also the most physical spider dream, since a stray hair on your face or an itchy blanket can turn into legs while you sleep. If you woke up scratching, the spiders may have started on your pillow.

Dreaming about spiders everywhere

Spiders on the walls, the bed and the floor is overwhelm, lots of small things that each feel a little threatening (the inbox, the bills, the people waiting on an answer). Like a swarm of insects or ants, it shows up when your to-do list has stopped being a list. An egg sac bursting open with hundreds of tiny spiders is more specific. It's something that multiplied while you weren't watching, like a small lie that needed another one, then a third.

Dreaming about spiders according to Jung and Freud

Jung's idea of the shadow gives you one way to read the spider that made you recoil, and Freud's list of dream symbols reaches spiders through its small animals.

Jung: the spider you couldn't touch

What follows is Jung's framework applied to spiders, not something he said about them. His shadow is the part of yourself you keep out of view, and it tends to show up in dreams as something with no business being there, an intruder or a stranger.^[3] A spider in your bed or on your arm is an intruder, and few animals get more recoil. Read that way, a spider you couldn't bear to touch may stand for a quality you can't bear in yourself, such as patience that is really waiting someone out, or a grip you keep on a person you're afraid to lose. That turns the "someone with a hold on you" reading around and asks whether you ever work that way. Jung had little time for ready-made dream dictionaries, this one included, so what spiders bring to mind for you comes before anything here.

Freud: small animals and unwanted siblings

In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud wrote that small animals and vermin in dreams often stand for small children, very often brothers and sisters the dreamer didn't want.^[4] Applied to spiders, a room full of them could be an old rivalry in disguise. That's worth a thought if a sibling has been on your mind. Freud still put the dreamer's own memories ahead of any fixed symbol, so he'd begin with what spiders make you think of.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of spiders in dreams

The Bible names the spider only twice, and both times as a picture of something else.

Spiders in the Bible

In Proverbs the spider "taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces", small but able to get anywhere.^[5] In Job, the hope of someone who has forgotten God is a spider's web, which looks like it will hold you and won't.^[6] Neither verse is about a dream, and neither tells you what yours means.

Questions to ask about your spider dream

Before you settle on a reading, go back to the spider and what you did about it, because that's where your dream differs from everyone else's. A few questions help.

• How big was the spider, and how big did it feel?
• Was it in a web, on you, or somewhere you thought was safe?
• Did it remind you of anyone, in how it watched or how it waited?
• Did you freeze, run, kill it or watch it?
• What in your life feels sticky right now, hard to leave and hard to change?

Oniri asks you the same kind of questions before it reads your dream, so the answer fits your spider and not a dictionary's. If spider dreams keep waking you up, these ways to have fewer nightmares work on them too.