EPIPHANY BUTTERFLY: SOMEONE SAVED MY LIFE TONIGHT

 "They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods." ~Edith Wharton

I came across a lost and frozen astral messenger lying on the sidewalk yesterday.   I thought it was probably dead, but it was so bright and yellow in the grey overcast day.  Almost fluerescent, it's wings spread out perfectly.   And along the edges it is pink and green.

A "clouded sulphur" butterfly, common to Missouri from March to December.

http://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/field-guide/clouded-sulphur

It's colouring made me think of the astral chakra cleansing visualisation and meditation I do, where you use the energies of earth and heaven (or earth and the Universe) to come through you and send out the beautiful green light of Universal Love, and the pink earthly love of the human heart to the whole world and everything and everyone upon it.**

I always see the pink light coming from my heart as little pink hearts and they are  fluttering like butterflies, riding upon the almost liquid green light out, and circling around the globe, 7 billion of them, without reservation or pause.

I picked it up carefully with two business cards, and it did close its wings.  I took off one glove and put it in the opening, trying not to touch its wings.  When I got to work I brought it in, but it began to move around a lot in the well-heated building.  I didn't want it to hurt itself and I had no idea what to do for it or feed it, etc.

I took it outside in my glove and left it in a planter, protected from the wind and the cold.  I wanted it to be able to move on if it was able to.

It waited patiently for me while I worked and then I took it home, holding the glove carefully.  I put it in a jar with a washcloth and some mums clipped from a Christmas arrangment, and an apple peel.  I put the jar to the window with the window cracked.

Later, after consulting many facebook friends via text and email, I replaced the mum with a branch from the front yard, still green.  Also sugar water replaced the apple peel, in the cap of a food storage container, and then a little later and little more information later, a mesh bag over the sugar water,  for easier feeding.

Thank goddess this creature survived me and my ignorance!  I was as inadequate to the task as a medieval serf hosting the Queen of the Sidhe.   I have no gossamer, no nectar, and for this Royal Sylph creature-- no alfalfa or dandelion flowers, or flowers of the sunflower thistle family.  

http://www.keepinginsects.com/butterfly/care/

After talking to the totally wonderful people at the Missouri Botanical Garden's Climatron I was guided to consider either just making the creature as comfortable as possible before death and/or trying to release if the temperature went over 40 degrees.  She assured me that butterflies don't need any GPS and if it were to fly away outside it would know where to go.

If the wee winged one wanted to get to Florida, it would be possible in two days, and definitely could get to warmer climes by night fall.

She also informed that they didn't have anything at all there to feed this kind of butterfly.  (The zoo had told me straight away no because nothing can go in or out.  It is a closed system.  They have special air suction and stuff, I was informed by a facebook friend in the know.)

So at about noon I took the butterfly outside in the wire mesh hamper and pulled back the mesh garment bag that I had put across the top.  The butterfly had been hanging upside down from it.  It stayed there, and did not fly away, upright and bobbing like a surfer sitting on the waves, as the wind went over its body. 

It actually gave me a "LOOK".  A "it is way too cold out here, I'd much rather go back to the warm with some fresh sugar water, thanks.  Maybe we can try tomorrow" look.

So it is back in the back room.  I cracked the window a wee bit, I don't want it to get too warm and comfy if it is going to fly out tomorrow, and also I don't want to suffocate it with any cooking smoke or incense, or even if the microwave or television or something disrupts its senses.  So the back room, where it is warm, but not Florida warm, with a wee bit of fresh air, seemed best.

I've been practicing my inter-species telepathic skills.  After we got back inside I told it if it was hanging upside down to start laying eggs and cocooning it should wait til tomorrow night because possibly it could go catch up with its peeps down south.

I left the room and when I came back in was sitting on the bottom, upright, in the middle of garment bag-- not near the food or branches.  I took it as a sign it agreed with me.

I think it might have flown back down.  I have not seen it fly except it was fluttering in the jar when I came in this morning, before I moved it to the mesh laundry hamper.

And it actually walked up the mesh to the top and then positioned itself in the middle, hanging upside down by only one leg.

That was extremely cool to observe!  I don't think I could have spent money and had such a great and unexpected experience!

I am kind of OCD checking on it.  Which in my imagined telepathic communications the creature finds both annoying and amusing: "Again?  You were just here five seconds ago- we agreed to wait til tomorrow, let me sleep."

And me: "I suspect you of flying when I am not in the room."

Butterfly: "Well, if all goes well you will see me fly tomorrow."

No matter what happens, I have thanked all the nature spirits and gods, and Lord and Lady Paralda especially, repeatedly for this blessing and opportunity.

I am naming the butterfly "Epiphany" even though I think it is a male, and that is kind of a girly name.  But whether a creature of the astral or supernatural or just a victim of global warming and strange weather patterns, this is one unique little butterfly, and he deserves a special name!

Elton John Someone Saved My Life Tonight on Youtube

"You give me butterflies inside..." Michael Jackson on Youtube

** In this system I use for cleansing the chakras this way, and sending out love energy, the colour yellow is linked to the ego or solar plexus chakra and the ego. It is the New Age chakra correspondences, not necessarily the Hindu yogic system.  The butterfly is mostly yellow.

Of course, in Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude, and also in his Erendira,yellow butterflies are love:
“It was then that she realized that the yellow butterflies preceded the appearances of Mauricio Babilonia.” ― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

And here are a few more:

The fluttering of a butterfly's wings can effect climate changes on the other side of the planet.  ~Paul Erlich  

 It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.  How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?  For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone.  That is where the writer scores over his fellows:  he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.  ~Vita Sackville-West


Know thyself!  A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly.  Whoever observes himself arrests his own development.  A caterpillar who wanted to know itself well would never become a butterfly.  ~Andre Gide


Go on, hitch a ride on the back of a butterfly.  There's no better way to fly.  ~Pat Monahan, Scott Michael Underwood, and James W. Stafford, "Get To Me