Fear of Spiders

**Done by drawing with a glue gun onto a piece of waxed paper, adding little plastic spiders, and then letting it dry.  When cool, adding glitter glue.  

Psychologists believe that one reason why people fear spiders is because of some direct experience with the arachnids instilled that fear in them. This is known as the “conditioning” view of arachnophobia. - American Psychiatric Association

Arachnophobia is real to some.  The fear is said to come from being genetic to being conditioned. Some, as children, realized they got attention for pretending fear and then it stuck.  It was 1950 when the movie industry decided that doing many many horror films including spiders, making money on people's fears and things that creep them out, commercialized and conditioned many more people of being afraid of spiders. 

We live safe lives, for the most part, and few of us, in the Northern Hemisphere, have occasion to run into dangerous spiders.  Some of our fear is disgust.  Some is real because we may have had a traumatic incident with a spider, or watched a film where a spider caused a traumatic event.. or... well, you get what I am saying.  They can be creepy if they are on me, but over there -----> they are fine.  Some people have forgotten why they are afraid of spiders, what event caused it, but the fear persists  and the creepiness sustains itself because one might land on us and that is beyond creepy. For most of us, fear of spiders is irrational but spiders are, in some areas, shrouded in mystery, and we have been taught that spider webs in houses equals dirtiness.  And since it is a fear to commercialize, Halloween became the time and place to enhance it all.  We were seduced into the occult of evil spiders we should fear.

Someone, early on in the world, when they made up the cult of witches, also decided that, if there were spiders, there were witches.  It waw believed witches used spider's web(s) in their spells.  Now, I do not know if generations of women, up to today, built on that belief and started using spider webs, but this is where it came from in medieval times.  I was taught to think if you had spider webs, you were not a clean housekeeper...so I seek out spider webs monthly.  See, haunted houses have spider webs because no one lives in them.. but spiders.  Spiders like dark places... for the most part.  And, First Nations have stories of Spider Woman as Creator and the teller of ancient stories.  I like this idea and make singing hoops and dream catchers to honor Spider Woman.

I do not know about you, but I will not kill spiders because it might rain.  And, someone must have been killing a lot of spiders because it has rained here for 17 days off and on.  And, on these rainy Autumn days, when there is fog in the mornings, the webs outside are simply stunning...

Challenge:  Do an art journal page with a spider's web on it.  I made my spider's web with a glue gun... easy peasy and I had some little spiders left from a Halloween bingo last year.

©Carol Desjarlais 10. 3.19