Spleen: emotional and spiritual meaning

The spleen sits in the upper left of the abdomen, under the diaphragm. It is a lymphoid organ. It watches the quality of red blood cells and takes part in fighting infection by making antibodies. An enlarged spleen, a ruptured spleen and life after the spleen has been removed are medical situations. A blow to the left side, with pain and faintness, is an emergency.

In the emotional reading, nostalgia, unfinished things, regrets and worries can lodge here. If the spleen works badly, the source asks whether you are working badly too, because you stay fixed on dark and negative ideas.

What the spleen represents

You are obsessed with someone or something. The energy drops, and you no longer want to do anything. The book plays on the French word rate, the spleen, and raté, a failure, something missed. You feel you have missed your life, even massacred it, because you could not finish certain things and you did not know how to turn the page. You missed the train. Fine opportunities went by, and you blame yourself. You now believe you are incapable of succeeding. You tarnish the family story in your own eyes.

You try to compensate by forgetting yourself for your family or your friends, and you cannot go on. You have built a situation you can no longer step out of. The source takes that picture as far as the spleen being removed. That is the book's image of a story you cannot leave. It is not a medical prediction, and it is not a reason to fear an operation you have not been offered. Surgery, if it is ever discussed, is a doctor's decision.

The negativism is often tied to the way you see yourself: ugly, not right, not good, not up to it. You would rather sleep and stay passive. You feed on anger, and nothing in the life feels cheerful. Someone or something "falls on your spleen": it may be someone in the family you consider a failure. Nostalgia, regret and worry are the feelings this entry names as able to lodge here.

Blood, and the fear of lacking it

Trouble at the spleen is also read as a clue to fears about blood. You fear you might lack blood, or bleed too much, at menstruation or during a transfusion. The spleen's work on red cells is the physical side of that picture. The heart and circulation pages take up the blood itself. The lymph is the wider system this organ belongs to.

Caring for the spleen from the inside

Infection, blood disorders and injury affect the spleen for medical reasons. The emotional perspective adds a question: what have I refused to finish, and what am I still calling a failure?

• Turn one page. An unfinished thing is the image this organ is given.
• Name the obsession. A person or a thought that will not leave is what the entry says lowers the energy.
• Separate a missed chance from a ruined life. The French pun is the book's way of saying you have sentenced yourself.
• Stop disappearing into other people. Forgetting yourself for the family is the compensation the source describes, and it runs out.
• Set down one dark idea. Passivity and sleep are the posture it pairs with a spleen that struggles.
• Get left-sided pain after a blow checked at once. Meaning does not replace an emergency department.