I've had a lot of letters about the piece I wrote on Monday regarding the spider that crawled across the Pope when he was in Prague. Some of them 'added' to what I wanted to say and others seem to be from people who have misunderstood me completely. In a departure from our usual format, I have today decided to publish several of those letters in full, along with my replies:

Dear Jonathan
I've just read your remarks about the Pope and the spider: To me the Pope and his RC church represent an (almost) inescapable web of control.
Love, peace and weblessness
Ann

Jonathan,
According to the famous 'Mary Summer Rain on Dreams' guide, a spider may reveal a conniving individual. Interesting view, no?
Peter

Dear Jonathan,
Your comment about the Pope and the Spider was just too much for me! I wished the spider would have been a deadly one as was... and is... the Roman Catholic Church to the world. I will never read your horoscopes again.
Yarden

Dear Yarden,
You're not the only reader who seems to have read, into my words the other day, some kind of message that I absolutely did not intend. Here's another.

Dear Jonathan,
Who is untouchable, and who is not? In my opinion, the Dalai Lama is as untouchable as the Pope and vice versa. But PLEASE don't put one higher and better than the other.
Magdalena

And another...

Dear Jonathan:
I really think your comment about the Pope is completely without thought. This Pope if he had his way in the Inquistion time would put all Homosexuals, Transexuals and any deviants to the stake!! The Catholic history of child abuse and peadophilia is unbelievably terrible and downright evil.
Sorry but I found this article really annoying.
Minwah

I'm vaguely amazed that Yarden, Magdalena and Minwah all thought that I had written something in 'favour' of the Pope. I'm figuring it may be a language problem. I was, after all, using subtle phrases. This next letter from Susan, also finds fault with what I wrote, but at least it takes issue with something I was actually trying to say...

Dear Jonathan
Your "inescapable web of Fate" meaning for the spider on the pope's shoulder appears to me to hold the potential to negatively influence many who deny the fact that we have choices where our fate is concerned.
My J.E. Cirlot and Hans Biedermann symbol dictionaries, offer multiple cultural meanings for the spider. In addition, to the body part of the pope the spider chose to visit, the text of the pope's words, the country and city the pope was speaking in, and that country's relationship to the world and the church would be important to the meaning of the spiders appearance on Pope's shoulder.
For starters, I see the possibility that the spider as a creature of Mother Earth may be asking all of us to weave a new spirituality that includes shouldering more responsibility for the care of Mother Earth.
Thanks
Susan

Susan is of course, quite right. But really, I was using the phrase 'inescapable web of Fate' as a polite and subtle way to imply that I saw, in that Spider, an omen of the Pope's inevitable demise. It was clearly too polite and subtle, as was my use of the word 'untouchability' to describe how aloof, remote and out of touch he seemed to be to me. I guess, if there's a lesson in all of this, it's 'Look how easy it is to be misunderstood when you're writing about a controversial figure while Mercury is retrograde!'