Butterfly Dreamtime Story

Brendan McKeague mckeague at iprimus.com.au
Mon Jan 10 17:04:02 PST 2005


G'day folks - I came across this marvellous story recently and would like 
to share it with you - such wonderful imagery and symbolism from indigenous 
mythology (dreamtime) for the role of butterflies in Open Space - I 
couldn't resist passing it on....enjoy.
Brendan
in warm and sun-filled Australia


Birth of the Butterflies
An Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime Story

When the world was young, the birds and animals had a common language and 
there was no death. No creature had any experience of its mystery, until 
one day a young cockatoo fell from a tree and broke its neck. The birds and 
animals could not wake it, and a meeting of the wise ones decided that the 
spirits had taken back the bird to change it into another form.

Everyone thought this was a reasonable explanation, but to prove the theory 
the leaders called for volunteers who would imitate the dead cockatoo by 
going up into the sky for a whole winter. During this time, they would not 
be allowed to see, hear, smell or taste anything. In the spring they were 
to return to earth to relate their experiences to the others. The 
caterpillars offered to try this experiment, and went up in the sky into a 
huge cloud.

On the first warm day of spring a pair of excited dragonflies told the 
gathering that the caterpillars were returning with new bodies. Soon the 
dragonflies led back into the camp a great pageant of white, yellow, red, 
blue, green creatures – the first butterflies, and proof that the spirits 
had changed the caterpillars’ bodies into another form.

They clustered in large groups on the trees and bushes, and everything 
looked so gay and colourful that the wise ones decided this was a good and 
happy thing that had happened, and decreed that it must always be so. Since 
then caterpillars always spend winter hidden in cocoons, preparing for 
their dramatic change into one of spring’s most beautiful symbols.




*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20050111/151f4da6/attachment-0015.htm>


More information about the OSList mailing list