Let me tell you a thing about me and spiders. I really, really don't like them. I kill them when they get in the house (really, it's their fault, they intruded). I tend to just leave them alone when they're outside. In fact, there was a very beautiful green garden spider this summer by our tomato plant. I let it be. After all, it was outside. Spiders belong outside.
This orb weaver spider outside of our library is a type of spider I have never seen before. When I get home from work, I open up the curtains to let in some light and the spider goes scurrying up her web in alarm. I actually started opening the curtains just to see if she was still there. My husband said he would take care of her this weekend, but this morning I told him not to worry about it. She's outside. She has woven this huge and beautiful web. She's just hanging out there, catching bugs and chilling.
I did a little research on orb weavers. They are very helpful spiders because they eat mosquitoes. Those little blood-sucking fiends deserve to be eaten. I believe that is their only reason for existence, to feed larger bugs. Orb weavers are found just about everywhere in the United States. They are not venomous nor are they aggressive. She's really causing no harm to us by hanging around outside our library window. In fact, she's probably helping us by keeping our insect population in check.
I strongly believe in the spiritual symbolism of animals so I decided to look up spiders. There was one thing I knew for certain - a spider is one of the animals linked to the Greek Goddess Athena. I studied Greek mythology in ninth grade and she was always my favorite. There is a story in mythology that tells of Arachne, a mortal weaver who boasted she could weave better than Athena. Athena, by the way, is a Goddess of wisdom, weaving, and the intellectual side of war. There was a contest and Arachne wove a tapestry that, while beautiful, depicted the sins and secrets of the Olympian gods. According to the story, Athena was furious and turned Arachne into a spider. The name actually does mean spider in the Greek language.
The website I found is about totem animals and this is what it says about the spider:
"Spider: Creativity, Written Language, and Weaving Our Own Fate - Spiders, with so many multiples of eight, are linked to fate and destiny. They can spend a day weaving their web and if it doesn't work, untie it and let it float away. Spider can teach us to weave our lives, but we always have the ability to re-weave what we don't like. Spider in Native American myth and lore wrote the alphabet teaching the people to use words and writing. Spider can help you with your poses and poems creating new ways of expressing yourself. Creativity is always available when spider comes into your life."
Wow! That just fits perfectly. Our orb weaver is outside of our library, which is the creativity part of our house, according to feng shui principles. It is where our computer is so it's where I sit to write and to blog. I've also recently started listening to The Secret again in an attempt to remain more positive and create my life the way I want it. This all happened at the same time that the orb weaver showed up.
Animals of all shapes and sizes and species teach lessons, but only if we have the ears to hear, the eyes to see, and the heart to believe. They have a way of showing up in our lives exactly when we need it, like a message from our Creator telling us that we're on the right path, to keep up the good work, and to keep the faith.
And, by the way, we named her Gertrude.
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