From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordDivaricated means spread apart, branching out, or splayed.
- In TraherneThe comparison explains the tenderness of a person transformed into Love.
- In this editionThe 2026 note gives the gloss and parallels involving a spider’s web.
- A place to beginThe spider’s divaricated feet illustrate love’s ability to feel at its remotest reach.
Meaning
Divaricated means spread apart, branching out, or splayed. It describes the spider’s extended feet in an image of awareness reaching throughout an articulated living structure.
Use in the book
The comparison explains the tenderness of a person transformed into Love. Its beams do not merely illuminate objects at a distance; feeling reaches to their furthest extension. The spider can sense at the extremities of its spread feet, and love is correspondingly present wherever its influence reaches. This is an embodied image for the soul’s responsive range, combining expansiveness with exquisite sensitivity. Without the gloss, a reader may miss how carefully the physical detail supports the claim: extension need not mean dilution or numbness.
Places to read
- IV.80The spider’s divaricated feet illustrate love’s ability to feel at its remotest reach.
In this edition
The 2026 note gives the gloss and parallels involving a spider’s web. Traherne’s wording here specifies feet; do not silently replace his anatomy with the parallel’s web.
Source note
Primary text: IV.80; historical gloss and image parallels: 2026 edition note to IV.80.