The Symbolism of the Caterpillar, Chrysalis and Butterfly
Introduction
The symbolism of the Egg, the Caterpillar, its Chrysalis
and the final Butterfly [which then lays more eggs]
has to be treated as a whole.
There are also symbolic links to the Leaf.
This cycle represents the spiritual evolution of a person,
a person’s spiritual progress
- perhaps over many cycles of reincarnation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - The Over-Soul
The soul's advances are made by ascension of state;
such as can be represented by metamorphoses
- from the egg to the caterpillar, from the caterpillar to the butterfly.
The Caterpillar
The Caterpillar, being somewhat formless and with no shell,
symbolises the immortal soul
- the Higher spirit and Atman. The Divine within us.
The caterpillar ‘stage’ can symbolically represent
the time between lives and a new incarnation.
What some may call ‘death’,
but which mystics simply regard as a formless state.
The caterpillar can also be found on leaves
- the symbolic leaves of the Tree of Life.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
When a caterpillar has come to the end of a blade of grass,
it reaches out to another blade, and draws itself over to it.
In the same way the atman, having coming to the end of one life,
reaches out to another body, and draws itself over to it.
A goldsmith takes an old ornament
and fashions it into a new and more beautiful one.
In the same way the atman, as it leaves one body,
looks for a new body which is more beautiful.
The atman is divine.
But through ignorance people often identify the atman with the mind,
the senses and the emotions.
Some people even identify the atman
with the elements of earth, water, air and fire.
As people act, so they become.
If their actions are good, they become good;
if their actions are bad, they become bad.
Good deeds purify those who perform them;
bad deeds pollute those who perform them.
Thus we may say that we are what we desire.
Our will springs from our desires;
our actions spring from our will;
and what we are, springs from our actions.
We may conclude, therefore, that the state of our desires
at the time of death determines our next life.
Cocoons and the Chrysalis
At the Chrysalis stage, the Immortal Soul [Higher spirit, atman etc]
becomes entrapped in a cocoon - our body.
A similar symbol used with similar meaning is that of swaddling clothes.
We are trapped first and foremost by the limitations of our 5 senses.
But also by our gradual loss of curiosity and our obsession with intellect.
From Walter De la Mare
- Rupert Brooke and the intellectual imagination
Children are in a sense butterflies,
though they toil with an almost inconceivable assiduity
after life's scanty pollen and nectar,
and though, by a curious inversion of the processes of nature,
they may become the half-comatose and purblind chrysalides
which too many of us poor mature creatures so ruefully resemble.
They are not bound in by their groping senses. ...
"I am afraid you cannot understand it, dear,"
exclaimed a long-suffering mother, at the end of her resources.
"O yes, I can very well", was her little boy's reply,
"if only you would not explain".
We are also trapped by the Personality given us
- as implied below by reference to the stars - the Signs of the Zodiac.
Joscelyn Godwin
we are like caterpillars until we let ourselves be entranced and enwrapped
by the music which has its origin in the starry spheres
- the silken harp strings of the stars.
Then we await the moment, whether in trance or at death,
when our cocoons will fall away and we will awaken a winged soul
who can fly back to our tree house of light.
- so spiritual experience will help us to metamorphose to a butterfly,
otherwise we must wait until death.
The Chrysalis, the Thread and the Cord
Our minds have both inputs and outputs
coming from and going to the spiritual world.
In effect, we are connected to the external spiritual world
by a sort of ‘conduit’.
Spirit input comes to us as intuition, wisdom, inspiration, etc.
Spirit output comes from us as we think
and is symbolically described
using thread, ropes, cords, string and so on.
Spiritual progress is then symbolically achieved in one of three ways.
Wings - Those with wings are naturally able to ‘fly’ or ascend.
Ladders, chains and stairs
- Those with steps of some sort are on the stages of the spiritual path.
Ropes and thread, etc.
- Others just hang there by a thread.
And when the thread is cut
the Personality used on this life dies and we revert to spirit again.
In other words those who make no spiritual progress
die a chrysalis and never get the chance
to experience what it is like to be a living butterfly.
Faust part two - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Gladly we now receive This spirit chrysalis
Thereby we shall achieve Pledge of the angel bliss
Loosen the thread of earth That still impede him
Transfigured to new birth We shall soon lead him
Butterfly
A butterfly in mystic symbolism is thus an Immortal soul
- Higher spirit or Atman - that has been able, in life,
to break free from its prison of sensory restrictions
- break free from the ‘Personality’ and learnt to ‘know itself’.
And thereby has gained a fleeting temporary set of wings
and ‘body’ and uses them to experience heaven on earth
- a mystic.
From The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries,
by W.Y. Evans-Wentz, [1911]
The [higher spirit/‘soul-monad’/atman],
to follow the view held by Celtic mystics,
apparently weaves out of matter
the body-unit adapted to its further evolution,
in a way analogous to that in which
a silkworm is led by acquired instincts to weave a cocoon.
... Celtic Esoteric Doctrine does not conceive a personal immortality,
but a greater kind of immortality
- the immortality of that same [higher spirit/‘soul-monad’/atman]
which gives unity to each temporary personality it makes use of
[the mask].
And this individuality is the bearer of all evolutionary gains made
in each temporary personality through which it reflects itself:
it is the permanent evolving principle.
Psyche
And finally, in early Greek art,
Psyche (the Greek goddess) was represented as a butterfly.
Psyche - by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The butterfly the ancient Grecians made
The soul’s fair emblem, and its only name -
But of the soul, escaped the slavish trade Of mortal life!
For in this earthly frame
Ours is the reptile’s lot, much toil, much blame,
Manifold motions making little speed,
And to deform and kill the things whereon we feed.