We’ve all been there. We’ve all done it. You see an unusual animal and suddenly find yourself googling “spiritual meaning of…” followed by whatever creature just crossed your path.

Most of the time this happens with birds. A crow lands on your balcony. A hawk circles overhead. A white feather appears out of nowhere. Something unusual happens, and suddenly you’re wondering whether the universe is trying to tell you something.

Usually, we don’t do that with spiders. I mean, spiders are everywhere. Especially in basements and garages. And honestly, if you encounter a spider in your garage, immediately google “spider in garage spiritual meaning,” and conclude that the universe is trying to communicate with you personally, I would gently suggest taking a break and watching a little Netflix instead.

Now, I’m once again going to sacrifice my dignity for the sake of science. Or, more accurately, metaphysics.

I suffer from arachnophobia. And when I say suffer, I mean it. It feels like a prison. It is an actual mental health issue. What I feel when I look at a spider isn’t really fear in the strict sense. It’s something closer to overwhelming disgust. A feeling that if a spider accidentally touched my body, I would need to find the nearest axe and remove the affected limb because I could never again live peacefully with a finger or toe that had once been in contact with a spider.

I’m constantly looking around. The vacuum cleaner is my best friend. One story my daughter refuses to stop telling happened about ten years ago when she was still little. We had just left my mother’s house and were maybe ten minutes into the drive home when I spotted a spider inside the car. I immediately pulled over. I jumped out. I called my mother. And I informed her that she would have to bring her own car because I was absolutely not driving another mile in mine until the spider had been located, removed, and the vehicle thoroughly cleansed of its presence.

I have spent years trying to identify the traumatic event responsible for this absurd level of arachnophobia. The earliest memory I can find goes back to a story my great-grandmother loved telling. The other adults hated it. Every single time she started, somebody would say: “Stop it. Don’t tell that story in front of the children.” Naturally, she ignored them.

According to my great-grandmother, sometime in the 1920s or 1930s, her older sister developed large red, inflamed bumps all over her body. When the local village healer, who apparently served as the closest thing they had to a doctor, cut them open, hundreds of baby spiders crawled out.

My great-grandmother always ended the story by reassuring us: “But that was back then. Nowadays there are no spiders like that anymore.”

I didn’t believe her. I assumed she was only saying that because everybody else was so angry with her for terrifying the children.

From a spiritual perspective, I actually understand why spiders are often viewed positively. Think of Anansi. Okay, perhaps “benevolent” isn’t quite the right word when discussing Anansi. But he’s cool. Or consider Guede Zareyen, a benevolent Loa who manifests as a spider, from the Guede Nation in Haitian Vodou. Those are only two examples among many.

Which brings me back to the beginning.

I live in an area with a lot of spiders. There are huge trees outside my windows. A creek nearby. In many ways, it is the exact opposite of my ideal habitat. The fact that my husband has developed a habit of secretly opening all the windows at night while I’m asleep and leaving them open until morning does not improve matters.

A few weeks ago, we suddenly had a spider invasion. Five spiders a day. Sometimes more. Eventually they were also in the vacuum cleaner. And no, they do not crawl back out. If the vacuum cleaner is empty beforehand, simply keep it running and throw a few grains of rice inside afterward. There. Now I’ve shared my war crimes with the internet.

Anyway. The strange thing wasn’t that there were spiders. The strange thing was how many there were. I remember thinking that this year seemed much worse than normal. Maybe it was the weather. But the winter had been cold and long. Shouldn’t there have been fewer spiders, not more? And why were they all so big? And what about the large but skinny one with the black and yellow stripes that built a web overnight between my husband’s whiskey bottles? Was that the invasive Chinese species that had been in the newspapers lately?

Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. Completely. No gradual decline. No occasional spider every few days. Nothing. And no, neither my husband nor our daughters had suddenly become better at secretly removing spiders before I could find them.

The weather hadn’t changed. Spring was advancing. By all logic there should have been at least one spider every now and then. But there wasn’t. Not a single one. For a suspicious amount of time.

And that’s when a strange thought crossed my mind. Maybe I had been vacuum-cleaning signs from the universe for weeks. I mean, surely I hadn’t managed to single-handedly drive the local spider population to extinction. Right?

That felt suspicious.

And that was when I started digging.

So What Were My Spiders Trying to Tell Me?

The first thing I discovered was that spiders are apparently very busy creatures. Not in the sense that they catch flies. In the sense that the internet has assigned them approximately seventeen different jobs. Depending on which website you visit, a spider can symbolize money, prosperity, abundance, patience, creativity, destiny, intuition, feminine energy, hidden wisdom, personal growth, manifestation, protection, weather forecasting, travel, and occasionally the fact that you should probably clean your house.

Naturally, I started with the money interpretation. Because let’s be honest. Out of all possible spiritual messages, “unexpected financial abundance” is one of the more attractive options. And spiders are surprisingly often connected with money. In England there is even the idea of a “money spider.” Finding one on your clothes or in your pocket is said to bring financial luck. Other traditions claim that seeing a spider means wealth is on its way. Some say the bigger the spider, the bigger the reward. Excellent.

Unfortunately, reality refused to cooperate. I did not win the lottery. Nobody left me an unexpected inheritance. No rich relative emerged from the shadows. I did not receive a surprise raise. In fact, at the exact same time all these supposedly wealth-bringing spiders were appearing, we were trying to sell my younger daughter’s bed. The older daughter had received a new bed and now the younger one had decided she wanted the exact same model because apparently children are physically incapable of wanting different things. Her current bed is perfectly fine. The mattress is so comfortable that sleeping on it feels like being gently embraced by a cloud in heaven. Nobody cares. She wants the other bed. So we listed the old one for sale. And despite all these spiders allegedly delivering prosperity and abundance, we couldn’t even find someone willing to give us a little money for a perfectly respectable second-hand bed.

At that point I started to suspect that perhaps the spiders weren’t talking about money. Fine. Maybe they were talking about travel. Because yes, spiders apparently do that too. One old superstition claims that a spider running across its web during the daytime means a journey is coming. Wonderful. I love travelling. The only problem is that travel generally requires money. And as previously established, the spiders had been remarkably unhelpful in that department. Have you seen what a holiday costs nowadays? Two adults. Two teenagers. Teenagers who have reached that magical age where everybody suddenly expects you to pay full price for everything despite them still leaving lunch boxes in their school bags until the leftover bread turns green. By the time you’ve paid for accommodation, food, transport, snacks, drinks, entrance tickets, and whatever mysterious financial sacrifices modern tourism demands, you could probably have purchased a brand-new KIA Sportage. The kind that makes the other parents at school jealous. So if the spiders were announcing a great journey, they were being extremely optimistic on my behalf.

Then there was patience. Spiders are patient. They build webs and wait. Spiritual websites absolutely love this interpretation. The problem is that patience is one of those spiritual messages that is impossible to disprove. Nothing happened? You need patience. Something happened? Good thing you were patient. Still nothing happened? More patience. At some point I began to suspect that “be patient” is the spiritual equivalent of an automatic customer service email.

Then came creativity. This one was actually more interesting. Spiders create. Spiders weave. Spiders build intricate structures from almost nothing. The symbolism made sense. Except for one small problem. I was already writing. I was already creating. I was already building websites, articles, dream interpretations, tarot content, and enough words every week to fill a small library. The spiders weren’t exactly informing me of some shocking new development.

The deeper I dug, the worse it became. Every source seemed to offer a different explanation. By this point I had learned that spiders could symbolize money, journeys, creativity, patience, abundance, destiny, intuition, hidden wisdom, manifestation, weather forecasts, and approximately half of all human experiences. I wasn’t finding answers anymore. I was collecting spiders.

And that was when I stumbled across something completely different. Not a superstition. Not a symbolic interpretation. Not another website trying to convince me that a spider was awakening my inner goddess.

Actual spider divination.

When Spiders Become Oracles

While digging through spider superstitions, I eventually stumbled across something that stopped me in my tracks. Not a sign. Not a folk saying. Not somebody on TikTok explaining that seeing a spider means your spirit guides are trying to contact you. An actual spider-based divination system.

Among the Mambila people of Cameroon, there is a tradition known as Ŋgam dù (sometimes written Nggam). Unlike the superstitions we looked at earlier, this is not simply a matter of seeing a spider and assigning a meaning to it. The spider itself becomes part of the oracle.

The basic idea is surprisingly simple. A diviner begins by asking a question. Usually, it is a practical question with two possible outcomes. The diviner then places a collection of specially marked leaf cards near the entrance of a spider’s burrow. Small sticks, stones, and other objects may be added to represent people or possible answers. The spider is left alone overnight. When it emerges from its hole, it moves through the cards and objects. By morning, the arrangement has changed. The diviner then interprets the new pattern as the spider’s answer.

At first glance this sounds like exactly the sort of thing the internet would invent and repeat endlessly until everybody accepts it as fact. So naturally, I became suspicious.

Besides that, my husband is Nigerian, and over the years I have learned two things about West Africa. First, it is incredibly diverse. There are countless ethnic groups, languages, traditions, and beliefs. Just because one group practices something does not mean the neighboring group has ever heard of it. Second, whenever I stumble across a strange claim about West Africa, my first fact-check is always my husband. So I asked him. He had never heard of spider divination. Now, that does not prove anything. A Mambila tradition from Cameroon is not supposed to be common knowledge in every West African country. Nigeria is huge and the area my husband originates from is nowhere near the border to Cameroon. But still, it was enough to activate my internal nonsense detector. At that point, I needed sources. Not ten websites copying each other. Actual sources.

What I found surprised me. The strongest sources weren’t spiritual blogs. They were anthropologists. (Fun fact: the Haitians have a proverb that says, “When the anthropologists arrive, the Loa (spirits) disappear.” I always think of that saying when reading anthropological sources. They are not usually my favorite kind of source because they often describe people’s beliefs from a very detached perspective, in some cases to a degree where it gets disrespectful. But one thing they are good at is documenting what they actually witnessed. And that was exactly what I needed here.)

Researchers such as David Zeitlyn have spent decades studying Mambila spider divination. Harvard Divinity Bulletin discusses it. Oxford included it in an exhibition on divination traditions. Multiple academic publications describe the same basic method, often with remarkably similar details.

Even more interesting, several sources describe quality-control measures that sound almost comically scientific. Some diviners reportedly ask test questions before asking the real one. If the spider produces inconsistent answers, another spider may be consulted instead. Some practitioners even compare the answers of multiple spiders before reaching a conclusion. That level of detail is difficult to explain if the practice were merely an internet legend. It also struck me as surprisingly unusual. My husband was taught that spirits should only be asked once about a matter and that the answer, whether welcome or not, must be respected. Asking the same question repeatedly is considered disrespectful. He follows that rule very strictly. The spider diviners seem to take the opposite approach. If one spider gives an inconsistent answer, they simply ask another spider. Personally, I have to admit that I fall somewhere in the middle. I would love to tell you that I always accept the first answer my tarot cards give me. Unfortunately, that would be a lie. If I don’t like the answer, I am fully capable of asking the exact same question again with slightly different wording and pretending it is a completely different question.

The more I researched, the more it became clear that spider divination appears to be a genuine local tradition. A very niche one, admittedly. Still, the tradition itself appears to be real. And honestly, I love the symbolism.

Many of the sources mention that the spider is associated with wisdom and with the world beneath the earth. In some traditions, the spider is seen as a messenger capable of moving between different realms of existence. Rather than speaking directly, it communicates through the rearrangement of cards and symbols.

There is something strangely beautiful about that idea: Imagines wisdom arriving from a place nobody thought to look. The spider does not speak. It simply rearranges the pieces and leaves the humans arguing about what it meant.

Which, now that I think about it, is not entirely different from how most forms of divination work.

The Verdict

Fun fact: Did I mention that I hadn’t encountered a spider in the apartment for weeks? Well, that changed at the exact moment I started writing this article.

After finishing the second section and just before moving on to the part about Cameroon, my husband called. We decided that I would bring the girl’s old sofa down to our multipurpose room.

Now, you need to know that our girls share a room, and in order to get them new beds, the sofa had to go. As I mentioned earlier, nobody seems interested in buying our furniture despite it being listed on various online platforms.

We live in a high-rise apartment building, and apparently the people who designed it were smart enough to realize that nobody wants to live on the ground floor where every passerby can stare directly into the living room. So instead, they built surprisingly large multipurpose rooms there, with proper windows, electricity, and everything you could wish for except running water and a toilet. Naturally, we did what every reasonable spiritual person would do and manifested one of the very few ground-floor multipurpose rooms. (I did the math. There is exactly one bonus room for every eight apartment units. I consider this undeniable proof of my extraordinary manifestation skills.)

My younger daughter and I were on our own. We are strong women. We are capable. We don’t need daddy’s help. At least not for every task under the sun.

I grabbed the measuring tape. Measured the sofa. Measured the elevator. Concluded that everything should fit perfectly. We took a blanket, tilted the sofa onto one armrest, and placed it on top.

No spiders underneath. No spiders hiding inside the underside. This story ain’t that predictable, guys.

We rolled up the carpets. I pulled while my daughter pushed. We dragged the sofa through the apartment, through the hallway, and all the way to the elevator. That was when we discovered that it did not fit after all. So we unscrewed the legs. Somehow I managed to lock myself inside the elevator behind the sofa, hidden in a corner, while simultaneously pressing the button as my daughter ran down the stairs. Eventually we reached the bonus room. We screwed the legs back on. Turned the sofa upright. And no, there was no spider waiting for us in the bonus room. There was only satisfaction and my daughter staring at the sofa in disbelief before saying: “We did a great job.”

Yes. Yes, we did.

When we returned to the apartment, I started putting the carpets back where they belonged. That was when I noticed a shadow darting across the baseboard. It was almost invisible. I ran for the vacuum cleaner, turned on the light, and discovered a medium-sized spider that was so pale grey it was nearly transparent. The vacuum cleaner caught it while it was still sprinting toward the bathroom.

Now let’s be serious for a moment.

Looking back, I can think of two things that happened during the exact period when the spiders appeared.

The first was that I applied for AdSense and not only got accepted, but eventually crossed the payment threshold. I know this probably sounds insignificant to some people, but I genuinely consider it a personal success. For a long time, this website cost money. Hosting. Themes. Plug-ins. Optimization tools. Now it pays for itself. And there is enough left over to take my husband and two permanently hungry teenagers to running sushi once a month. I’m not joking. I literally show everyone the dashboard and announce: “Good news! The website paid for running sushi again!” And then we go. And we enjoy it very, very much.

The second possibility is the fifth volume of my Rahel Vega series. I wrote it during exactly the same period. And while my novels do not currently pay for running sushi, I remain optimistic. But that’s not the point. The point is that the fifth book introduces Anansi, the spider trickster god. If that was the event responsible for the sudden wave of spider encounters, I sincerely hope vacuuming the messengers does not count as disrespectful. Then again, by all reasonable standards, a trickster god ought to know how severe my arachnophobia is and hopefully extends a little grace.

So which explanation do I believe?

Honestly, I don’t know.

Maybe the spiders arrived because of the website. Maybe they arrived because of Anansi. Maybe they arrived for reasons that have not yet unfolded. Maybe I need more patience, after all.

In retrospect, the real mystery may not be what the spiders were trying to say. The real mystery is why the universe thought spiders were a suitable communication method for someone whose first instinct is to fetch the vacuum cleaner.

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