Thursday, August 16, 2018

Monarchs

My friend is raising monarch butterflies.

They've just gone into their chrysalis (what's the plural of chrysalis? Chrysali?), and today we watched a video of how they do it.

It's stunning.

Insects have been big this summer, especially as Jupiter has been transiting the one insect sign of the zodiac, Scorpio. The insect kingdom has been a great teacher these last few months. Butterflies have always resonated as masters of transformation, but somehow this summer, more than ever, this metamorphosing wonder has revealed its presence to me in a deeper way.

It's really hitting home.

I even acquired a banner this summer while Mars has been making its retrograde journey through my profected ascendant, opposite my natal Mars in the last face of Leo known as, you guessed it, The Banner.

I didn't realize at the time that I had in fact been granted my emblem of a hand holding a moth, and that moths are Mars-ruled animals.

It really feels right. Worthy. Wise.

What stunned me about the monarch caterpillar entering its chrysalis was the way it didn't even "enter" it at all; the chrysalis emerged from within the caterpillar!

WHAT?!

Watching every new phase of being emerge from within my Scorpio teachers amazes me. From the egg emerges the larva, from the larva the pupa, and from the pupa the adult. Every time something completely different bursts forth as an old skin is shed. What is this Mystery? How is the future self there already within? Who knows this secret?

Mars is the guide for this process.

I can report that it hurts. Given its ruler, I can't say I'm surprised (said with bitter dryness).

Maybe if we've fallen out of step with our inner blacksmith the transformations are forced, resulting in pain. "Now you have no choice: Change."

Maybe we have to get hurt in order to begin the process, I don't know. The butterfly seems pretty in synch with it all, so maybe it can tell me something.

The chrysali will open in probably a week and a half. In rapt imagination I wonder what's going on in there. Does a solid form exist anymore? If it's a tube of monarch jelly, does that jelly have a consciousness? What does a blob of goo think about? Does it hurt? Is it scary? Does it remember its caterpillar form? Or has it always been in touch with its future-within?

I hope I'm there when they open. I have questions.