Comparison Spiders and Insects
[Carolyn
Burdet]
Belittled and demeaned or the need
to be someone big: Insect and Spider remedies
Of all the animals on earth, insects
and spiders are almost universally disliked by humans (only equalled by an
archetypal fear of snakes, symbol of the underworld of our intuition).
Spiders make us jump in alarm, our
heartbeat increases. Although the neurotoxin of a spider bite is rarely fatal
in humans, the phobia is intense. Panic can lead to palpitations, even angina
from psychosomatic anxiety in spider remedies. This relates to the action of
spider toxin on the central nervous system, which causes pain, paralysis and
increased heart rate. In spider bites the ill effects take longer to take
effect, with paralysis or sepsis.
Insect stings cause irritation,
itching, allergic swelling. In some instances allergic reactions cause
anaphylaxis, asphyxiation, rapidly resulting in death. Fear of sudden death and
suffocation are present in insect remedies.
Humans revile insects for spreading
disease; mosquito bites causing malaria, flies spreading contamination. Dirty
or filthy is an insect theme, especially in musca domestica, the bluebottle or house fly
which lives on excrement then
indiscriminately lands on food. Maggots are an image of rubbish and rotten
food, and our response is disgust. This feeling of disgust, saying ‘it’s
rubbish’ to describe their circumstances, and the indignant sense that they are
‘treated like dirt’, is very strong in the remedy picture for musca domestica.
To manage their sensitivity to dirt,
people needing an insect remedy may be as fastidious as an Arsenicum
case, cleaning, tidying, vacuuming or hoovering
(insect behaviour is to suck up via the proboscis).
Demeaning and Humiliated
Insects are regarded as an
infestation to be exterminated (fleas, lice, bedbugs, flies, mosquitoes). They
are hard to get rid of and their persistence is annoying. A wasp or mosquito
near us feels harassing
and in insect cases the person can
feel harrassed (malarial miasm),
humiliated, insulted.
Ruthless
There are one billion insects for
every person on the planet. Insect colonies are tireless, enslaving the
workforce of the defeated colony in a ruthless bid to colonise new territory
and exploit them with cold acquisitive ambition. This is a mode of success in
corporate strategy in aspects of human life from fracking
mineral resources to copyright of seeds for food crops. So it’s no surprise if
insect consciousness increasingly presents in our cases.
Jonathan Hardy, a homeopathically trained medical doctor based in England,
teaches on Spider and Insect remedies, presenting an orderly, structured,
sequence through the sub-kingdom. He notes that people who need an insect
remedy can often appear to be in the mineral kingdom, as structure and
organisation is very important to them.
Competition
Ambitious, hard working, keen to
improve and progress, to compensate for an inner sense of inadequacy (which may
be confused with a mineral sense of lacking capacity), in insect cases
achievement is
a means to validation.
However, in a case needing an insect
remedy or a spider remedy, the issue of competition will emerge as a key theme
of any case in the animal kingdom. Someone is the winner and someone is the
loser. Mineral remedies can have performance issues, attack and defence, but
when the sense is of falling victim to a predator, or taking out the
competitor, this is animal kingdom fight for territory and survival.
Even so, it may not be obvious. A
butterfly case may be preoccupied with their identity. An Apis
case may be busy keeping everyone in the household organised to be productive.
Social organisation may be a bigger theme than survival. But at some point we
glimpse a competitive edge. In insect cases this is often from the point of
view of feeling overlooked, belittled, badly treated or disrespected.
Disrespect and Deceit
Spider remedy cases will not
tolerate disrespect, they respond to an imbalance of power or unfair treatment
by a determination to get even. The defining feature of spider remedies is a
provocative and irreverent sense of humour,
using pranks and practical jokes to ‘get one over’ their victim. The web that
traps a spider’s prey is sticky, almost invisible. The ‘deceit’ of the spider
remedies may derive from the artifice of the intricate web of ultra violet
threads a garden spider will spin to reflect the pattern of a flower to lure an
unsuspecting insect, while a ground dwelling spider disguises its hole as a
trap
with leaves or twigs and jumps out
to catch its prey.
Restlessness
Spider remedies are internally
restless, nervy, they cannot sit still, fidgeting, with restless legs and
needing to keep their hands busy (knitting is a spider hobby). Sensitive to
noise and sounds, spider remedies feel the vibrations reverberating through
their body. Spider remedies have a sense of rhythm, an inclination to dance and
jump around, but there is also lassitude and prostration (modality:
> lying down). The rhythmic
quality extends to periodicity of ailments, a headache recurring annually or
monthly.
Insects are constantly on the move,
buzzing around. People who need an insect remedy can have an internal sensation
of buzzing with energy, constantly busy, working hard, productively to achieve
goals, or wired on hectic fruitless activity.
Ambitious to achieve
A spider remedy characteristic is
that they want to be someone big. Insect remedies are ambitious to achieve,
materialistic with a fear of poverty. Insects live in highly organised social
colonies with defined roles; they can build structures and ‘cities’ or consume
and destroy everything in their wake. In people who need an insect remedy, this
is expressed as a materialistic streak. They can be avid consumers of the
latest must-have gadgets and take care over their appearance, seen to be
wearing fashionable brands, using hair styling products or make up.
Ambition is driven by an innate
sense of inferiority, they need to keep pushing for more, even when successful.
There is a continual ambition for self-improvement. A key theme in insect cases
is change, transition or complete transformation of life circumstances. Their
hunger to progress involves a transformation from a lowly earthbound grub to
taking flight – the point where their life, or their project takes off. They
can be ruthless in marching towards this goal.
Power struggle
Insect and spider remedies have
issues with control and domination. Wasps lay their eggs inside other creatures
such as caterpillars, ants enslave other colonies of ants. This may explain why
some insect remedies have the delusion of being ‘under superhuman control’.
Whereas spider remedies often have a
power struggle in a relationship, and may defer decisions to a more powerful
partner, as seen in the delusion ‘head belongs to another’.
Male spiders are smaller than the
female, the theme of bigger than me / smaller than me, more powerful than me,
is key in spider. Insect cases can feel small or insignificant; they have an
inferiority complex, they feel belittled or worthless by someone’s treatment of
them.
In spider remedies there is a power
struggle and the spider impulse is to turn the tables or take revenge on the
person overpowering them. Being bigger relates to a peculiar delusion of
enlargement of body parts in spider cases.
Neglected or Possessive
Insect remedies may feel their
parental care was cold and unemotional. Apis is an
exception; honey bee larvae are nurtured by worker bees and the insect sexual
instinct is sublimated into duty in Apis. Other
insect remedies tend to feel neglected by their parents.
Spiders give parental care and male
spiders sacrifice themselves as food for their young. In human relationships
this ‘self sacrifice’ can be bound up in over-involvement. The close bond can
mean the child has to escape the possessive love of the parent. A spider remedy
(specifically black widow spider) may be relevant in a case where the parent is
needy, demanding, controlling and manipulative.
Animal remedy cases will express
aspects of the predator and their prey. Spiders tread warily during the
courtship dance, to get tangled in the web risks bondage, powerlessness,
paralysis, having the life juice sucked out of them. Yet they cannot resist
getting involved, and once involved they struggle to extricate themselves from the
situation.
In spider and insect remedies there
is restlessness and high sexual energy. Insect sex drive is intense but it can
be a casual fling. In spider remedies, what starts as a need for constant
attention, can become manipulative. Alize Timmerman:
dynamic of possessiveness in the spider subkingdom – the possessive partner
feels intense despair that they can’t live without the other person. They
develop sychosomatic symptoms from panic, with
gripping pains around the heart, or M.E exhaustion, or depression. The need for
attention and sexual drama is destructive. If their partner tries to leave
them, the manipulative ‘victim’ declares “I’ll take him for everything he’s
got”. Lat-m., black widow spider, can be a remedy to release both parties from
the destructive holding pattern of a vengeful and crimonious
divorce.
Animal Kingdom Theme |
Insect Theme |
Spider Theme |
Competitive
|
Ambitious, hard working, work for the
corporation. Striving, need to achieve goals for validation and material
gain. |
Ambition to be someone big or to do something
big. Ambitious to become bigger. Attention seeking |
Competition with a Winner/Loser |
Ambitious to do better, improve, get ahead,
make something of their life, |
Competitive power struggle. Wants to get one
over someone else. Victory! Must win, must come out on top |
Power struggle - Me versus You |
Domination, submissive, enslave, inferiority
complex, downtrodden, want to be seen as an individual but feel like nothing |
Exert their will over others. Overpowering,
or wants to overcome an oppressor. Head belongs to another - personality
sublimated into another person’s identity |
Bigger than me / smaller than me |
Feel small, belittled, humiliated, feel as if
people demean them and treat them like dirt |
Won’t tolerate disrespect. Feels a need to be
bigger in order to defend oneself from a bigger oppressor |
Animal kingdom has hierarchy issues |
Insects colonise. Feel as if they are working
within a structure of control that is abusing them. |
No fear, no intimidation, or feels
manipulated and overpowered by someone. Big difference in power in a
partnership (she is stronger) |
Key themes: |
Change, Transition, Transformation are key
themes for insect remedies |
Vindictive, possessiveness, won’t let go,
manipulative relationship, female revenge |
Tubercular miasm |
Trapped, suffocated, fly away, restless
activity, |
Embroiled, entangled, can’t escape from a
situation |
Attack / defence is a survival issue |
Violent impulses: ruthless, quick attack, fear
of sudden death, incandescent rage, feels harassed, fights back |
Violent outbursts: pounces suddenly,
premeditated impulse for revenge, spiders wait for prey to get caught up |
Activity |
Team sport, running around, one team wins; eg football |
Likes violent sport, sadistic, brutal:
boxing, kick boxing |
Ruthless |
Can be unfeeling, lack of empathy for others
feelings, may ruthlessly exploit others |
Cruelty, sadism, deceit, lies, trickster,
plot to hurt, ‘take him for everything he’s got’ |
Teasing |
Cutting, stinging comments, gossip,
unfeeling, abrupt |
Joke, tricks, pranks, teasing, mockery,
teasing, jibes, sly |
Irritating |
Irritating, harassing, feels bullied
(malarial miasm) |
Annoying, trapped, stuck, under someone’s
power |
Sensitivity to environment |
Over sensitive, irritable, buzzing, humming,
wired |
Sensitive to noise, vibration, rhythm, pulse,
sound |
Restless |
Internal / physical restless - suffocated,
restricted, tubercular miasm |
Internal restlessness, physical restlessness
and nervy, jerky movements |
Impatience |
Impatient, in a hurry, rushing around,
speedy, fidgeting, frenetic or fruitless activity |
Impatient to have it, wants it now, can’t
stand being kept waiting, demanding |
Energetic |
High energy, restless, fidgety, energy
buzzing in their body, can’t relax |
Highly strung nervy energy - noise /vibration
reverberates in their whole body |
Sexual desire |
High sex drive, itching for sex, urgent desire, dispassionate, fickle, casual fling. Apis is an exception - sex is suppressed |
Passionate, high sexual energy, one partner
has the upper hand, can be deceitful |
Animated Movement |
Run, hop, fidgety, ADHD, itchy, scratchy,
insect bites cause itchiness, restlessness |
Jump out at someone, booby trap, climb,
ropes, swings, spin, trapeze, ticklishness |
Productive |
Must keep busy, structured, organised,
productive work to do goals or fruitless activity |
Creativity, knitting, craft, art, textiles, handicraft,
or there may be a desire to lie down |
Energy |
High energy, excitement, erratic, never stops moving, inexhaustible energy, or tired out. Keep busy even when ill |
Rhythm, drumming, dance, Lassitude, lie down.
Feels vibrations in body, noise sets their teeth on edge. |
Animal kingdom is social, issues about their
interaction with others |
Social. Conform to society, corporate,
follows orders. Insect remedy children may feel overlooked, ignored |
Nonconformist, individual, committed to their
family and children, spiders show parental care to their young |
Delusions |
Insect delusions: feels used + abused,
exploited, tormented, harassed, humiliated, small |
Spider delusions: caught in a web, can’t leave
a bad relationship, overpowered |
Sensations |
Squished, squashed, bugged, demeaned, dirty,
stepped on, despised, downtrodden, small |
Crushed, crunched, kicked, smashed, tortured,
distortion of size, enlargement of parts |
Jealousy |
Apis:jealous, a saying “jealous as lice” |
Can be vindictive, revenge, turn tables, lies
web of deceit |
Attractive appearance |
Materialistic, consumer, look good, fashion
trends, brands, shiny colours, nail bar |
Prefer black, red, green colours, individual
style, |
Consumption |
Consume stimulants, drugs, caffeine, to stay
wired |
Craving: to smoke tobacco or marijuana to
relax |
Animal species in relation to humankind |
Insects are stepped on, low, crushed, exterminated,
dirty, treated as an infestation (fleas, flies, lice, mosquitoes) |
Spiders make people jump, elicit fear +
phobias, spider remedies treat panic, heart arrhythmia + palpitations |
Compensations
|
An insect remedy feels small, treated like
dirt, filthy, dirty, to overcompensate, they clean, tidy, wash compulsively |
Spider cases want to appear bigger and
stronger to overcome their oppressor, so plot to get the upper hand |
Symptoms + Sensations |
Burning, itching, pricking pain, swelling,
allergic reaction |
Lassitude, enlargement, vibration, nervous
conditions |
Temperature |
Hot, red, burning |
Cold, chilly to the bones |
Modalities |
Hot, itchy, < from heat, > cold applications (Apis)
|
Palpitations > warm showers (Lactrodectus mactans) |
Affinity / pathology symptoms |
Urinary tract infection, rash, allergic
reactions, sore throat, with swelling constriction |
Heart palpitations, angina, fatigue,
hysteria, nerves, jerky, injury, blood platelets |
Appetite / Desires |
Big appetite, constant hunger, feels starved,
appetite for sugar |
Juice, liquidised food Can go for long periods without eating,
indigestion |
Insects
Themes
Common in Insect Remedies
Busy, active,
restless, industrious, organised
Change,
improvement, develop, to make something of themselves
Feeling
small, powerless, helpless, insulted, humiliated, belittled, used, taken
advantage of
Squished,
crushed, stepped on, squashed, trampled, downtrodden
Dirty,
ugly, repulsive, disgusting, no good, cheap, low, degraded
Desire
for a more elevated less lowly existence, dreams of taking flight
Symptoms
Common in Insect Remedies
Suffocated,
constricted, oppressed in the throat or chest
Itching,
crawling, prickling skin
Buzzing,
vibrating in the body
Urinary
tract symptoms, irritation of genitals
Burning,
stinging, stabbing pain
Hoarseness
of voice, aversion to fluids
Appetite,
hunger,
<
heat; > in the open air/from cold applications;
Insect
classifications
Coleoptera
- beetles
Dictyoptera
- cockroach, praying mantis
Diptera -
housefly, mosquitoes
Hymenoptera
- ants, bees, wasps
Lepidoptera
- butterfly, moths
Orthoptera
- locusts, crickets
Pterygota
Phthiraptera anoplura -
lice, blood sucking, wingless parasites
Siphonatpera - fleas
Zygoptera
Odonata - dragonfly, damselfly
Characteristics
of Insect groups
Hymenoptera
- highly organised social structures
Ants, bees, wasps: Busy activity, home, family, social duty, bossy, organised
Vespa: home life feels unstable, fragile, sarcasm,
stinging repeatedly
Apis: organised, industrious, bossy, home loving,
fastidious, inflammation amel cold water
Ants: industrious, tireless activity, unemotional, dreams aliens, robots
Diptera -
housefly, mosquitoes
Musca Domestica: dirty,
low, worthless, ‘rubbish’, belittled, confusion, perversion, pornography
Mosquitoes:
harassing, malarial miasm
Coleoptera
Cantharis: frenzy, activity, overreaction, mania, stabbing pain, burning
pain, cystitis, burns
Coleoptera
Beetles: hard shell, fragile inside, feels vulnerable, bullied, feels used,
feels guilty, stability
Doryphora (potato beetle feeds on solanaceae):
allergy, addiction, loquacity, bloating, red
Dictyoptera
Cockroach: numb, indifference, crushed, ambition for status, to be
polished, successful
Preying
mantis: brutality, cursing, anger, thinks others are victimising them
Hemiptera
Lice, fleas: Parastic, greedy, needy, clingy,
get too close, talk about themselves
Lepidoptera
Butterfly, moths: Restless, flitting, lack concentration, confusion,
fickle, change to survive
Orthoptera
Locusts, crickets: irritability, ambition to be the best, hunger,
emptiness, cold, fear of attack
Zygoptera
Odonata
Dragonfly, damselfly: Floating, meditative, attacking, responsibility vs irresponsibility
Spiders
Themes Common in Spider Remedies
- enervation, sensitivity to noise, sound, vibrations felt in the body, noise
- dancing, music, beat, rhythm, drumming
- restlessness, activity, restless legs, busy hands
- joking, pranks, teasing, tricks, trickery, flattery, risk taking, defiant,
outspoken
- jumping, hiding, jumping out, pouncing, climbing, ropes
- tubercular miasm – in a hurry, on the lookout for
new and interesting
- deceit, sly, cunning, plotting, conniving
- reclusive, individual (not social like insects, but spiders are close to
children)
- power struggle, jealousy, revenge, feel small, powerless, female dominance
- fear of spiders or fascination with spiders
- issues of being trapped or caught, paralysis symptoms
- palpitations, cramping pains, breathing difficulty, feels cold to the bones
- fear of illness, death, hypochondria, psychosomatic, depressed by illness
- inflammation, swelling of wound, oedema, abdominal pain, delirium
- jerky movements, chorea, cannot sit still, vertigo
- nervous exhaustion, weariness, lassitude, wants to lie down, prostration
- attractiveness, sexuality, adornment
- dyslexia, poor memory
Arachnida Remedies
Aranomorpha:
eg Aranea: Spin cobwebs in
the air.
Mygalomorpha: eg Atrax, Mygale, Tarentula cubensis
Live in funnel hole in the ground. Camouflage the entrance with a twig
or leaf like a trap door.
Aranea diadema – papal-cross spider – garden spider (spins a fresh
web daily and lives suspended in the air)
Aranea ixobola – the cross spider (larger than diadema)
Aranea scinenencia – grey spider
Atrax robusta – trap-door spider (lives in a hole in the ground)
Latrodectus
hasseltii – redback spider
Latrodectus
katipo – New Zealand spider
Latrodectus
mactans – black widow spider (has a messy
funnel-shaped web)
Loxosceles
reclusa – brown recluse spider (isolation, sudden
attack)
Mygale –
black Cuban spider, bird spider (vigorous sexual urge)
Tarentula
cubensis – decomposed Cuban spider (known as a remedy
for boils)
Tarentula
hispanica – tarantula (benchmark of spider
characteristics)
Tegenaria
domestica – house spider
Tela aranea – spider’s web
Theridion
– orange spider (keynote: hands busy, knitting, craves oranges, bananas,
sensitive to noise)
Scorpion
remedies Androctonos and Buthus
australis are also arachnids but they have different
characteristics and modalities. For this reason the scorpion remedies are not
included in this comparison chart or general summary of spider symptoms. Instead
of spiders’ teasing and joking there is isolation, cold blooded violence, the
‘lone fighter in the desert’.
Belittled
and demeaned or the need to be someone big: Insect and Spider remedies
Of
all the animals on earth, insects and spiders are almost universally disliked
by humans (only equalled by an archetypal fear of snakes, symbol of the
underworld of our intuition).
Spiders
make us jump in alarm, our heartbeat increases. Although the neurotoxin of a
spider bite is rarely fatal in humans, the phobia is intense. Panic can lead to
palpitations, even angina from psychosomatic anxiety in spider remedies. This
relates to the action of spider toxin on the central nervous system, which
causes pain, paralysis and increased heart rate. In spider bites the ill effects
take longer to take effect, with paralysis or sepsis.
Insect
stings cause irritation, itching, allergic swelling. In some instances allergic
reactions cause anaphylaxis, asphyxiation, rapidly resulting in death. Fear of
sudden death and suffocation are present in insect remedies.
Humans
revile insects for spreading disease; mosquito bites causing malaria, flies
spreading contamination. Dirty or filthy is an insect theme (Musca domestica, the bluebottle
or house fly); which lives on excrement then indiscriminately lands on food.
Maggots are an image of rubbish and rotten food, and our response is disgust.
This feeling of disgust, saying ‘it’s rubbish’ to describe their circumstances,
and the indignant sense that they are ‘treated like dirt’, is very strong in
the remedy picture for Musca domestica.
To
manage their sensitivity to dirt, people needing an insect remedy may be as
fastidious as an Arsenicum case, cleaning, tidying,
vacuuming or hoovering (insect behaviour sucking up
via the proboscis).
Demeaning
and Humiliated
Insects
are regarded as an infestation to be exterminated (fleas, lice, bedbugs, flies,
mosquitoes). They are hard to get rid of and their persistence is annoying. A
wasp or mosquito near us feels harassing and in insect cases the person can
feel harassed (malarial miasm), humiliated, insulted.
Ruthless
There
are one billion insects for every person on the planet. Insect colonies are
tireless, enslaving the workforce of the defeated colony in a ruthless bid to
colonise new territory and exploit them with cold acquisitive ambition. This is
a mode of success in corporate strategy in aspects of human life from fracking mineral resources to copyright of seeds for food
crops. So it’s no surprise if insect consciousness increasingly presents in our
cases.
Jonathan
Hardy, a homeopathically trained medical doctor based
in England, teaches on Spider and Insect remedies, presenting an orderly,
structured, sequence through the sub-kingdom. He notes that people who need an
insect remedy can often appear to be in the mineral kingdom, as structure and
organisation is very important to them.
Competition
Ambitious,
hard working, keen to improve and progress, to compensate for an inner sense of
inadequacy (which may be confused with a mineral sense of lacking capacity), in
insect cases achievement is a means to validation.
However,
in a case needing an insect remedy or a spider remedy, the issue of competition
will emerge as a key theme of any case in the animal kingdom. Someone is the
winner and someone is the loser. Mineral remedies can have performance issues,
attack and defence, but when the sense is of falling victim to a predator, or
taking out the competitor, this is animal kingdom fight for territory and
survival.
Even
so, it may not be obvious. A butterfly case may be preoccupied with their
identity. An Apis case may be busy keeping everyone
in the household organised to be productive. Social organisation may be a
bigger theme than survival. But at some point we glimpse a competitive edge. In
insect cases this is often from the point of view of feeling overlooked,
belittled, badly treated or disrespected.
Disrespect
and Deceit
Spider
remedy cases will not tolerate disrespect, they respond to an imbalance of
power or unfair treatment by a determination to get even. The defining feature
of spider remedies is a provocative and
irreverent sense of humour, using pranks and practical jokes to ‘get one over’
their victim. The web that traps a spider’s prey is sticky, almost invisible.
The ‘deceit’ of the spider remedies may derive from the artifice of the
intricate web of ultra violet threads a garden spider will spin to reflect the
pattern of a flower to lure an unsuspecting insect, while a ground dwelling
spider disguises its hole as a trap with leaves or twigs and jumps out to catch
its prey.
Restlessness
Spider
remedies are internally restless, nervy, they cannot sit still, fidgeting, with
restless legs and needing to keep their hands busy (knitting is a spider
hobby). Sensitive to noise and sounds, spider remedies feel the vibrations
reverberating through their body. Spider remedies have a sense of rhythm, an
inclination to dance and jump around, but there is also lassitude and
prostration (modality: Better for lying down). The rhythmic quality extends to
periodicity of ailments, a headache recurring annually or monthly.
Insects
are constantly on the move, buzzing around. People who need an insect remedy
can have an internal sensation of buzzing with energy, constantly busy, working
hard, productively to achieve goals, or wired on hectic fruitless activity.
Ambitious
to achieve
A
spider remedy characteristic is that they want to be someone big. Insect
remedies are ambitious to achieve, materialistic with a fear of poverty.
Insects live in highly organised social colonies with defined roles; they can
build structures and ‘cities’ or consume and destroy everything in their wake.
In people who need an insect remedy, this is expressed as a materialistic
streak. They can be avid consumers of the latest must-have gadgets and take
care over their appearance, seen to be wearing fashionable brands, using hair
styling products or make up.
Ambition
is driven by an innate sense of inferiority, they need to keep pushing for
more, even when successful. There is a continual ambition for self-improvement.
A key theme in insect cases is change, transition or complete transformation of
life circumstances. Their hunger to progress involves a transformation from a
lowly earthbound grub to taking flight – the point where their life, or their
project takes off. They can be ruthless in marching towards this goal.
Power
struggle
Insect
and spider remedies have issues with control and domination. Wasps lay their
eggs inside other creatures such as caterpillars, ants enslave other colonies
of ants. This may explain why some insect remedies have the delusion of being
‘under superhuman control’.
Whereas
spider remedies often have a power struggle in a relationship, and may defer
decisions to a more powerful partner, as seen in the delusion ‘head belongs to
another’.
Male
spiders are smaller than the female, the theme of bigger than me / smaller than
me, more powerful than me, is key in spider. Insect cases can feel small or insignificant;
they have an inferiority complex, they feel belittled or worthless by someone’s
treatment of them.
In
spider remedies there is a power struggle and the spider impulse is to turn the
tables or take revenge on the person overpowering them. Being bigger relates to
a peculiar delusion of enlargement of body parts in spider cases.
Neglected
or Possessive
Insect
remedies may feel their parental care was cold and unemotional. Apis is an exception; honey bee larvae are nurtured by
worker bees and the insect sexual instinct is sublimated into duty in Apis. Other insect remedies tend to feel neglected by their
parents.
Spiders
give parental care and male spiders sacrifice themselves as food for their
young. In human relationships this ‘self sacrifice’ can be bound up in
over-involvement. The close bond can mean the child has to escape the
possessive love of the parent. A spider remedy (specifically black widow
spider) may be relevant in a case where the parent is needy, demanding,
controlling and manipulative.
Animal
remedy cases will express aspects of the predator and their prey. Spiders tread
warily during the courtship dance, to get tangled in the web risks bondage,
powerlessness, paralysis, having the life juice sucked out of them. Yet they
cannot resist getting involved, and once involved they struggle to extricate
themselves from the situation.
In
spider and insect remedies there is restlessness and high sexual energy. Insect
sex drive is intense but it can be a casual fling. In spider remedies, what
starts as a need for constant attention, can become manipulative. Alize Timmerman describes the dynamic of possessiveness in
the spider subkingdom – the possessive partner feels intense despair that they
can’t live without the other person. They develop psychosomatic symptoms from
panic, with gripping pains around the heart, or M.E exhaustion, or depression.
The need for attention and sexual drama is destructive. If their partner tries
to leave them, the manipulative ‘victim’ declares “I’ll take him for everything
he’s got”. Latrodectus mactans,
black widow spider, can be a remedy to release both parties from the
destructive holding pattern of a vengeful and acrimonious divorce.
Vorwort/Suchen Zeichen/Abkürzungen Impressum