Enlarged spleen: emotional and spiritual meaning

What an enlarged spleen is

The spleen sits in the upper left of the abdomen, under the diaphragm. It filters ageing red blood cells and takes part in fighting infection. Splenomegaly means the organ has grown larger than it should. You may feel a fullness under the left ribs, or full after a small meal, or nothing at all until an examination finds it. Infectious mononucleosis is a common reason in young people. Liver disease, some blood disorders, chronic infection and inflammatory illness are others. A clinician looks for the cause. A large spleen can trap blood cells, so anaemia, infection and easy bleeding follow, and it can rupture if it is struck. None of that is a symbol to wait out.

The emotional reading below is the part of the spleen entry that speaks of swelling, of blood, and of a life pulled off the ground. The wider story of unfinished things and of calling yourself a failure lives on the spleen page.

Fears about blood

Trouble at the spleen is read as a clue to fears you could live about blood. You fear you might lack blood, or bleed too much, as at menstruation or during a transfusion. You may think your blood is "not good", or so rare that you doubt anyone could save your life in a major accident where you would need a transfusion. The fear of death is often present in the background. Because the spleen watches the quality of red cells, poor function is read as a great inner wound that remains to be healed. It is like a wound that bleeds. Blood stands for the joy of living, so you can have the impression that life is such a hard fight that you should lower the flag and retreat. The heart and circulation pages take up the blood itself.

Swelling, rigidity, and a mask

You may want to take refuge far from reality, in a more spiritual world that is not connected to the earth. That withdrawal is what this reading links with a swelling of the spleen. It is a picture of leaving the ground, not a mechanism, and not a reason to fear a spiritual life. You limit yourself inside a rigid structure, which takes you away from a feeling of freedom. In the body, that can be read as thinness. You build a wall between yourself and your emotions, and you wear a mask. It feels like a good way to defend yourself against the outside world and to avoid being humiliated.

The lymph is the wider system this organ belongs to. Infection, blood disease and liver disease enlarge the spleen for medical reasons. The emotional question is separate: where have I left the ground, and what fear of bleeding am I still carrying?

A gentler way to hold it

Instead of staying obsessed with negative ideas you tend to exaggerate, the direction is to change those ideas and find ways to "enlarge the spleen" in the old French sense: to cheer it, to dilate it with laughter. You take the drama down. You learn to laugh at yourself and at certain situations. You learn to say what you feel as you go, so that balance and harmony have a chance in the whole body.

• Have the enlargement explained. The cause is medical. A story about retreat does not find it.
• Name the fear of lacking blood, or of bleeding. A transfusion, a period, an accident: the reading asks which scene it is.
• Ask whether you have left the ground. A spiritual refuge that cuts you off from ordinary life is the picture tied to swelling.
• Notice the mask. It was protection from humiliation. It also cuts you off from feeling.
• Laugh at one enlarged drama. That is the old sense of dilating the spleen.
• Protect a large spleen from blows. Meaning does not make a rupture less urgent.