who is arguing with the storm
passing over oxen in a field
not me just a butterfly
whose eyes blind my shabby self
"Old Pajamas", 2010
"The Ancient Greek word for “butterfly” is “psuché/psyché”(ψυχή,
1st.declension) which is used in the meaning of ‘butterfly’/ ‘moth’
by Aristotle and Theophrastus, though its usual meanings are :
breath, spirit, life, soul, departed spirit, ghost, living being, person. In
Ancient Greece the butterfly was a symbol of the soul, because it
changes from caterpillar to a beautiful winged creature. Plus it has a
shape of a double ax which was an Minoan symbol of the Great Goddess. Greek paintings often showed a small butterfly - "soul" - flying free from the mouth of the dead." Yahoo Answers.com
Lately I've been thinking about butterflies again (maybe because I've been painting them), and felt like re-examining this post from 2010. Butterflies are a universal symbol of transformation. BTW, Antero Alli has recently finished a new film, THE BOOK OF JANE, which will be premiered in the Bay Area of California this coming month. As with all his previous films, I'm sure it will be beautiful, fascinating, and well worth seeing.
I
think this is going to be a wandering/wondering post, because what I'm
trying to approach with my capture net of words is the magical
butterfly, a black one at that, a creature that clearly exists on
such an elusive multitude of dimensions and metaphors........that it's
impossible to consider her mysterious flight without a "holographic"
approach. Butterfly is a creature that flies right into the Dreamtime
as she so chooses. So, I'll begin by slipping, momentarily and
gratefully, back into
mythic time and
mythic place, the life-renewing, fluid land of the Fey,
the imaginal** (!!!).......for any hour I can spare.
I
recently had energy work with a healer. With eyes closed, lying on a
table, she did something similar to Reiki, running energy, helping me
to connect with different areas of the "subtle body" that are blocked.
Within this holistic approach, mind is viewed as being not only in the
cranium. We perceive through at least 7 or more different "brains" -
energy centers, symbolized by the Chakras, which represent different
ways of receiving, experiencing, perceiving, responding to, and
expressing consciousness. For example, the Base Chakra, identified
with the color Red, is about physicality, the interface with nature and
the planet; the Heart Chakra, Green, is associated with the ability to
love and experience com-passion; the "Third Eye" Chakra, violet, is
associated with psychic perception and visioning.
In energy
medicine, practitioners help patients achieve integration between the
chakras, the different "brains". Much of the work is surprisingly
psychological, and is often concerned with helping clients to identify
emotional "blockages", accessing, while in an altered state, old
traumas, environmental issues, or erroneous belief systems that have
caused an individual to close the heart or the doors of perception.
I had a vivid vision throughout this energy work of
butterfly wings
(not butterflies, just wings)...........folding, unfolding, before my
closed eyes. I cannot help but feel that this was a kind of Grace, the
wings offered were, perhaps, mine.
The butterfly has much
significance to me, as personal archetype, and a sometimes visitor from
the angelic realms, fulfilling the angelic role of messenger. Of
course, I'm not alone in this. I've spoken with many people over the
years who have had mystical Butterfly stories, among them my friend
Fahrusha (her name, in Arabic, actually means Butterfly), who recounts
an amazing synchronicity with a black butterfly in
her blog.
Out
of curiousity, I looked up "Black Butterfly" on Amazon.com recently,
and was stunned to find there were 27 books with that title. I think a
black butterfly is about the transformation that happens when the
Shadow, in Jungian terms, is also given wings, transmuted.
I have
met many people who have told me about butterflies appearing in
connection with the loss of a loved one, or at times of personal
despair. I list below a site that is devoted exclusively to "miraculous
butterfly experiences". **To me, and I'm no
psyche-
ologist .....but
to me, butterflies wonderfully participate in the interface between
dream and waking life, flickering on the wings of synchronicity with
their multi-dimensional messages, disappearing into the field of dreams
just as mysteriously. A "Butterfly Experience" can be utterly
intimate in the meanings they bear, and equally, universal and
impersonal. For me, dealing as I have been for years now with therapy,
and caretaking my mother and brother.........there is great personal
meaning in my vision, meaning that has to do with karma, long patterns
of family dysfunction, the work of emotional and psychic transformation.
Perhaps
the most dramatic "butterfly experience" I had occured 10 years ago.
Since this experience had to do with both dream and synchronicity, I
don't know if I can tell it very cohesively, but I'll try.
It
began with a disturbing dream. I dreamed I was on a ship, and on the
deck many people sat in deck chairs, all of them playing with masks,
taking them on and off. I seemed, in the dream, to be two people at
once. I knew that there was, down in the lower decks of the boat, a
demon. One of the women that I was was a kind of priestess or
missionary - she was about to descend into the depths of the boat, where
the demon below would torture and kill her. She thought that if she
did so, offering herself as sacrificial victim, she could save the
people above.
The other "me" was a cynical observer who thought
she was a ridiculous martyr, and knew everyone, especially her, was
doomed. I woke up as the "martyr self" began her descent.
Without
going into the many circumstantial and psychological meanings of this dream, I'll skip ahead in real time. About 6 months after
having this dream, I actually found myself, with a lot of actors, and a
few masks, on an old decommissioned ocean liner (the "art ship"),
which was anchored in the industrial harbor of Oakland. I was acting in
a movie, and the writer and director of the film, Antero Alli, had
decided to do his filming in the very bottom of this 5 level boat; the
old, cold, dark, dank, cargo bay.
Descending into the bottom of
the boat brought my dream back vividly, and every superstitious notion
of prophetic dreams I ever had came right to the fore. I didn't like it
there! Between shoots, the cast hung out in what must have once been
the crew's cafeteria - located in a middle deck, it had round portholes,
all of which were closed because it was a cold day in March. As we
waited, the Director offered everyone a card from his own fascinating
deck of oracular cards (with his artist wife, Sylvie Alli), and there
was lively interest as each person contemplated his or her card.
I took a card from Antero with trepidation, and sure enough, damn if it wasn't the "DEATH" card.
Not five minutes later, as I stood with the card of doom in hand,
a small orange butterfly landed on my shoulder.
There
was absolutely no explanation for how that butterfly could have gotten
into that closed room. I had lots of witnesses - and after the miracle
revealed itself, several of them helped to catch the butterfly and get
it upstairs where it could be released.
As a kind of synchronistic post-script, in 2005 I was back in the Bay Area for a two-person show (with Rye Hudak) at
Turn of the Century Gallery,
in Berkeley. I was surprised that, of all the works in the show, the
gallery owner chose to put on the card announcing the show the one
above, "
The Butterfly Woman".
When I came to hang the show, I went to nearby Cafe Trieste for a cup
of coffee. Two stacks of cards were on the table there, side by side.
One
was the card for my show with the image above. The flyer next to it
was an announcement of the premiere of a new movie by Antero Alli
called "
The Greater Circulation"
(a gorgeous film inspired by the life of poet Rainier Maria Rilke).
The image on his announcement was a face encased in a skull - a Death's
Head.
-------------------------------------------------------------
***"The
caterpillar spins or weaves the cocoon, and in that cocoon, what the
caterpillar is creating is his own tomb. We don’t know if he knows that
or not. And he crawls into it, and his body liquefies. Complete
disintegration of caterpillar. But in that caterpillar soup are these
cells that have been in the caterpillar’s body all along, called
imaginal cells. Isn’t that a fabulous word? Imaginal cells. It’s called
imaginal by botanists because the adult form of that creature, the
butterfly, is called imago. So these are imaginal cells, but to me those
cells are ‘imagining’ flight. And these imaginal cells know how to
take the soup and reconfigure that into a butterfly, an adult. I
believe nature has designed us humans to go through a similar
experience."
Imagine your Imago - Liberating the Imaginal Cells of the Human Psyche
Bill Plotkin
http://www.animas.org/
http://www.alternativesmagazine.com
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** The Butterfly Website - miraculous stories
Alan Moore and the Butterfly Gardeners Asso.
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THE BLACK BUTTERFLIES
The black butterflies of night
Clipped for sleep to nightshade and widowgrief,
Or in shaking luminous flight
On paired and silver wings, are rare,
And rarely seen by human sight.
Yet, they are there, surfacing
Out of range of neons and streetlights,
Preferring underleaf
And the dark offshores of air
To man and moth-maddening glare of things.
Tonight, As crisis after crisis
Cracks our skies like lightning,
I think of death,
Of different ways of dying,
And of Egypt and the myth
That once held black butterflies
Sacred to Isis.
They lived forever in flight
In her private groves, compelled like
Flickering minutes
Never to touch leaf nor stone,
Never to rest, except upon her nakedness
When she turned to love.
And here is death to be envied;
To be crushed to a personal breast
Between goddess
And whatever bird, beast, lover
Fell to her lips.
We are something else. . .
Myth and love will miss us
When the night is suddenly turned on,
Turned blank white,
And the black butterflies
Appear against that vellum sky
As far, flitting, burnt-out stars.
Frank Polite
