Butterfly

The butterfly is the soul rendered visible. Greek psyche means both soul and butterfly. Mexican tradition associates the monarch’s return with the return of the dead — the butterflies arriving at Día de Muertos. Jungian analysis reads butterfly-dreams as emergence after a long interior gestation: the chrysalis opening, the self taking its adult form. A butterfly landing on you is classically a benediction; a butterfly caught in a web, a newly-emergent self under threat.