You can see in this photo directly above why the monarch butterfly gets its colors--gets it wings, so to speak! It is like the tiger: orange and black. They also both have white markings. Both these animals (though one is an insect it can still be referred to as an animal for the sake of animal totems) have unusual colors. We tend to think of orange and black as rather odd colors for camouflage, yet these colors work in places where the grass is tall and where there is the play of light and shadow.
Orange is a common color of the stone amber and black is the color of obsidian, jet, or Apache Tears. The amber color is a symbol of life (orange or yellow-orange most commonly like the sun) and black is a symbol of the night and mysteries. Tiger eye too is a good stone for those with a tiger totem or wishing to work with the energies of the tiger. But, for now, I am writing about the monarch butterfly as one of my main totems and my experiences therein.
The colors of the monarch teach us to be able to play and dance in the shadows as well as the light--and about their interplay where there is that moment of transcendence of the opposites, as depth psychologist C. G. Jung described this bridging of opposites. Day and night and where they bridge are times of dawn and dusk. Even when we see a monarch at mid-day or any time in morning or afternoon there is the reminder of the night in its blackness of mystery.
Aside from universal or common attributes/qualities, how the monarch speaks to you can be also individual. In other words, though we may both experience the universal symbols of the monarch and its effects upon the psyche, my specific individual experience or dream of a monarch can be different from your experience or dream of this butterfly. Of course, butterflies are known for grace, and for liking the nectar of life as do bees and hummingbirds.
In one dream I had of a monarch, it was flying towards me with what would normally be grace yet in this dream it was flying in slow motion as if an invisible hand was directing it to me like a conductor of an orchestra directs music. It seemed it was being either pushed or pulled--but definitely led--to me as if by some magnetic force. The monarch then landed on my lips and wanted to enter my mouth to be inside me.
At first I was taken aback, and startled, I closed my mouth which I had opened in astonishment so that it would not end up in my mouth and so that I would not swallow it. I did not want that experience and I did not want it to die by my ingesting it.
However, at the time I was guided by a great dream and dream medicine teacher and Jungian shaman to go ahead and let the butterfly in and see what happened--in a session of Active Imagination which is like meditation (though has many forms/types).
When I did as was suggested, I realized that the butterfly and I had had two different interpretations of its activity. By entering through my mouth, it was not going to be ingested in my dream the same way we would ingest things in our regular waking world. It was the spirit of the monarch that wanted to enter my being. I was then able to dance the monarch dance to in spirit fly with it for the healing of its medicine.
One animal medicine it had to share with me is that by landing on my lips and wanting to be in my mouth it wanted to be with me in speech. It wanted to assist me in making my speech and expression graceful and beautiful. Another medicine it had to offer me that I had to find out much later is that I had a stomach ailment that needed attention and medicine in the 'real' world. It wanted to help me with my digestive system--and here I did not want to ingest it! The thought of ingesting it according to the laws of the physical world in our every day lives averted me from letting the butterfly do its medicine. I had to get used to the idea of being able to work with the medicine of the monarch this way. I had to find out how different the dream and imaginal worlds can be from our world we are used to, in quite a new way. I had worked with my dream world before and my imaginal world before but this was an entirely new experience from which to learn.
You will find as you explore your dream world and imaginal world in Active Imagination that plenty of surprises will be in store. They are there now, waiting for you.
This monarch waited for years of my lifetime for me to engage it in my imaginal world--it had been there since my childhood. In fact, it was my childhood friend, my cousin, who in the dream held out a small jewelry treasure box to me and opened it when the monarch flew out; together, when we were children, we would watch and chase the monarch butterflies along the banks of the lagoon off the lake. We were always delighted to see them. And finally, the monarch was delighted I could work with it as a totem in this dream.
I had other monarch dreams before this one before, but in those particular cases I was not called to work with the animal in quite that way or in such a personalized manner.
In an earlier dream some years before, I had a dream I was in a science lab and had a notebook and pen and camera and around me were a whole bunch of monarchs flying all around the room. This, I learnred later, was an announcement that I was somehow going to work with monarchs. I now often do things to help save the monarchs such as plant indigenous flowers that the monarchs like and also their caterpillars, such as milkweed.
Other times monarchs come to me in 'real' life by giving me an omen of things. Once when I had quit a job I loved for a higher paid position and more hours, when I got to my car to open my driver's seat door, I looked down and saw a dead monarch at my feet laying right at the door. My heart 'sunk' in that moment and I knew my decision was taking me off my path. I eventually was able to make my way back on track.
Other times Monarch has showed up when I am thinking about something I need to make a decision on; it seems like an affirmation of a particular idea I have when I need to decide. This has happened often. This is called the symbolic life and ancient shamans viewed the world this way in symbols--in an animated sense that the animals spoke to them--from the anima mundi or world soul. Ancient people had the sense of animism in life.
In active imagination sessions I drew my monarch totem. In one session I drew it in a sort of non-realistic way but it meant the same essence of the animal to me.
I did not quite finish this one and may go back and finish it. I tried in this drawing to capture the magnetic pull of the monarch as it seemed to be directed to me by some magnetic force of fate. The unusual movement surely was a signal to me to pay attention, that something very unusual and special was going on. This was one case where animal medicine actually helped diagnosed an illness. Of course, this is not to replace any regular medicine--but it did alert me to the fact that something was wrong and perhaps to see my doctor.
Animal medicine is there too to teach us lessons and give us gifts. In my dream, the gift presented itself by first showing to me it was indeed a gift by appearing from out of a treasure box. It also hinted at how long it had waited to be released into my imaginal life and dream world in that manner through the dream-fact that it was my childhood cousin who presented the box to me like a more positive Pandora's box. It was like the Hope that was the last ghing left in Pandora's box perhaps! (Not that anything prior had been all the ugliness escaped out into the world!) It seemed it was the butterfly who was the one that was curious about me and wanted to be in my being to help me, to give me a portion of butterfly spirit--portion being almost like a secret potion medicine as I did find later I needed medical attention and medicine of not just the totem sort.
Your totem can be a friend to your soul and your psyche and spirit. Animal talk is a potent medicine. Animal qualities are there around us and we can learn how to work with them--we can learn their animal talk and learn how to talk the talk and walk the animal walk, and walk with our animals. They are already there walking with us and just waiting for us to become conscious of them by making the unconscious conscious.
(I have shared this post elsewhere, before, on one of my websites.)
