Transfiguration and Metamorphosis

At the center of my altar I have a trinket made of thin bronze metal, slightly green with age and oils from my fingers, in the shape of a butterfly. It’s suspended in the air by a thin wire planted into a piece of quartz and when I move it, the butterfly quivers and shakes and though it’s wings aren’t flapping, it’s animate. Even now as I look at it, there’s a breeze coming through the window and it appears to be shimmying. 

This bauble was given to me by my Grandpa Fred when I was about 8 years old. He was the man who taught me how to greet a river, garden, identify snakes, and basket weave. Fred lived about a thousand miles north of me and died when I was 12. Along with him went the last living link to the lineage practices he’d held onto from his (and my) patrilineal line. The significance of his teachings was lost on me when I was young, but he had an impact. When I chose my name in my 20s, it was his middle name that I decided to carry as my last. He was important to me and I feel I was important to him too even though we didn’t get to spend much time together during his lifetime.

The butterfly he gave me stayed with me through many moves. It came with me out of my hometown and traveled with me to England and to Oregon and eventually back to Southern California where I was born. It stayed with me during times when I didn’t have a home. It’s brought me a sense of peace for many years, though I’d never really considered the reason I held on to this item and gave up most others. I liked the way it looked and my grandfather gave it to me. That was enough at the time.

Growing up, the butterfly as a symbol for transformation felt a little trite. The idea that it just kind of rested until wings grew from it’s back wasn’t particularly evocative. Not gritty enough for me. I preferred the image of a snake shedding it’s skin or a phoenix rising from the ashes or molting. These were sensations I could relate to or images that I found poignant. I felt them in a way I didn’t feel the arc of the journey from caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly. 

But then sometime in my twenties (after I’d taken my new name), my thoughts about this particular process of transformation shifted. Seemingly still and unspectacular on the outside, the cocoon not only provides the caterpillar shelter and safety as it begins it’s transformation into a butterfly- it holds the form of the caterpillar while it dissolves COMPLETELY into GOO. The caterpillar builds its cocoon, MELTS INTO GOO, and reforms itself into a winged creature. 

An undertaking that’s so much more impressive than the idea of a caterpillar that simply grows wings. 

This little creature just, likely unknowingly(?), builds itself a protective case and lets itself be completely eviscerated by the transition it’s going through. I marvel (and balk) at that level of surrender and trust and am still filled with such curiosity. Does it think it’s dying? I bet it feels like that case it’s built is a burial pod! And if this happens with the caterpillar to butterfly cycle, where else does this happen in nature? We know nature repeats itself and patterns are everywhere if you look closely enough. So where else can we find examples of this kind of resurrection? 

This revelation was very moving for me and became a part of my language. I’d moved into a little yellow bungalow with a couple of other people interested in spiritual work -we lovingly called it WitchHouse- and we found ourselves using the phrase “I’m in the goo” to describe that particular state of being where you’re aware there’s transformation happening but all you can really feel in the moment is the pain of transition. In these moments it’s hard to show up the way we want to. Sometimes hard to articulate our needs or even speak at all. But the phrase “in the goo” encapsulated what it meant to be in the cocoon of transfiguration and was our way of letting each other know we needed stillness, quiet, and maybe some patience. 

This alone was enough for me to change my disposition towards the symbolism of the butterfly. I can’t tell you how many people I passionately shared the story of the goo with. But I recently learned that butterflies retain their memory from caterpillar-hood. Through the melting and reforming into their state as a butterfly. 

Let me break this down as best I can: In some experiment somewhere, caterpillars were periodically exposed to the smell of (a substance in) nail polish remover and given little shocks at the same time. They learned to associate the smell of nail polish remover with pain or threat. 
Those fearful-of-nail-polish-remover caterpillars went into their cocoon and emerged as moths who panicked and fluttered all around at the smell of nail polish remover, even absent of shocks. 

Suggesting that even though these creatures completely dissolve, they retain memory from their caterpillar stage. At the cellular level, these moths understood the threat of the smell of nail polish remover and used their newly formed wings to escape this threat. 

This made me weep for a long time as I thought about epigenetics (which has its flaws and is a new area we’re all learning how to talk about) and what has been passed down to me from my lineages. There’s a lot of fear, trauma, bloody history, I could go on. And when I think about epigenetics, I jump to thinking about intergenerational trauma like so many of us involved in trauma work. And yes we get the shit passed down to us that’s heavy to hold and hard to muddle through. But we also get these brilliant survival mechanisms. Inherited survival mechanisms after a particular diaspora has experienced the devastation of war, attempted genocide, and/or economic destruction for example. These inherent knowings that live in our bodies. And even if no one is left to teach us these lessons, these skill sets, didactically- they live in us somewhere, waiting to be tapped into. 

We get ancestral/lineage gifts, knowledge, and talents passed down to us too and we get to spend our lifetime remembering them. Alongside the grief. Alongside what’s hard to be with. Alongside those family secrets that surface as we get older. We remember by dropping into our bodies and our inherent knowing. By doing embodied research- feeling the tug of something and pulling on the thread, eventually disentangling a whole bundle of ancestral information before deciding how to reweave it into something useful, supportive, practical, inspirational, magical, or something that sparks our advocacy. And then we get to carry that with us into every room we enter. We may not use it, but this tapestry we’ve come to understand and reweave presses against us in our pocket, reminding us that it’s there. 

This is the crux of the work that I do. This weaving together of somatics (body-based practices), ancestral connection, and ritual is what’s allowed me to remember who I am. Who I was before I was even born- just a dream an ancestor had once. It allows me to remember what came before the goo. 

A photo of some of my ancestors with a complicated history. This is the Lugo line.

The butterfly curio now sits on my ancestor altar in my office, next to photos my kin- the people I share with my Grandpa Fred- who lived and died for generations on the very land I now live on. (I often wonder if they walked these streets or know some of the same trees I know.) The butterfly flutters, reminding me to remember and to stay curious. Maybe the caterpillar does know what’s to come. Maybe it knew what it would become and the process that would take it there . Maybe this object knew the symbolism it carried all along and only showed me what I was ready for. All of this, stored in this tangible ancestral gift.