Psyche, the Soul, and a Philosopher's Dream

The butterfly's complete metamorphosis is so plainly transformative that the symbolism scarcely needs argument, and two traditions built on it in very different registers. In Greek, the one word psyche means both soul and butterfly, and the personified Psyche is shown with butterfly wings in Hellenistic and Roman art; the insect that leaves the husk of the chrysalis became a natural figure for the soul leaving the body. In Chinese thought the Zhuangzi records the philosopher waking from a dream of being a butterfly and asking whether he is a man who dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly now dreaming he is a man, a passage about the instability of the self, not about the insect's life-cycle.

Aztec religion gives the butterfly a fiercer aspect than the Greek Psyche: Itzpapalotl, the Obsidian Butterfly, is a warrior goddess shown with butterfly wings edged in stone knife-blades and the clawed feet of a predator, one of the fearsome tzitzimime associated with the stars and with the souls of women who died in childbirth, honoured as warriors in their own right. Where the Greek and Chinese butterfly figures above are gentle emblems of soul and dream, the Aztec butterfly carries an explicitly martial and dangerous power.