Spider, spider on the wall

When I stumbled downstairs this morning (I had a working weekend and have never quite recovered) I nearly put my hand on a big, black spider crawling his way up the wall to meet me.Now as some of you may know, I'm quite into my animal symbology and this little fellow was bigger and blacker than your usual specimen. He also had a very characteristic shape: a figure of eight - big lobe-like body connected at the waist to little bulbous head - and eight legs, the front four curling forward and the back four curling back: a perfect infinity sign.Now, for me, a spider is not an ugly creature to be reviled and stood on chairs for. To me, he is a connector, a weaver of beautiful tapestries and tales. Could this little fellow be telling me that I was moving into a phase where I'd be taking on more of that role in my own life? Seeing him also triggered a memory of a conversation I'd had with a new friend the day before - himself a powerful connector of people, a 'spider' - and I remembered that I'd been unconsciously doodling figures of eight while talking to him!I looked the creature up in my Medicine Cards book: 'Spider wove the web that brought humans the first picture of the alphabet. The letters were part of the angles of her web... Spider is the female energy of the creative force that weaves the beautiful designs of life. Her web has hundreds of intricate patterns which catch the morning dew.''Spider is the symbol for the infinite possibilities of creation.' There was that word again - infinity. 'Her eight legs represent the four winds of change and the four directions on the medicine wheel' - another layer of the infinity theme.'If Spider dropped from her web into your cards today (onto the wall, in my case), she may be telling you to create, create, create!'As I made my way through my day, I reflected on how the way Spider was constructed mirrored the human energy system (though I know there'll be resistance among some readers when I compare us to our eight-legged friends). Some say we have seven main energy centres or 'chakras' (which fits into the way I see things), connected at the middle by our energetic 'powerhouse', the heart chakra (which acts as a 'transformer', shifting energy from the lower chakras to the higher and vice versa): again forming a circuitous figure of eight - an infinity sign.And it occurred to me that this energetic system only seems to work to its highest potential in an individual when the heart chakra is open and in balance: ie, when 'our heart is in the right place'. And this, I reflected, was a characteristic of the most effective 'connectors' among us - the human spiders.When I returned to the house this evening, I nearly put my hand on the spider (again!) as I poured myself a cup of tea. He'd travelled the spider equivalent of several miles to greet me this time... as if to say, 'don't forget me!' I put my hands up: you want me to create, I'll create. I switched on my laptop, tuned in... and started to type.Write in with your own experiences of Spider! I'd love to hear them!