In the interpretation of dreams, Spider is among the recurring images that traditional dream-books and modern depth psychology have alike tried to read. It is commonly interpreted as feeling trapped or manipulated, or the weaver of fate and creativity.
Common readings
Folk dream-books and Jungian readings alike take the spider now as a devouring or entangling figure, now as a patient maker and weaver, sometimes tied to a powerful maternal image.
The reading of dream symbols has a long documented history, from the Oneirocritica of Artemidorus in the second century to Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) and the archetypal psychology of C. G. Jung. Such meanings are interpretive conventions of those traditions, offered here as ways the image has been understood rather than as fixed or established fact; in practice a symbol takes much of its sense from the individual dreamer and the setting of the dream.
What changes the reading
The details interpreters weigh are the web, the bite and the dreamer's position. A spider quietly spinning at a distance is commonly read toward patience and craft, while being caught in the web or bitten moves the reading toward entrapment and fear. Waking feeling matters here more than with most images, since arachnophobia is common enough that for many dreamers the spider carries dread before any symbolism begins, and an interpretation that ignores that plain fear in favour of a subtle one has skipped the obvious layer.