Nature is, of course, our great Healer. Probably because we are Nature.
What happened to me on Saturday 13th July this year is a wonderful example of this, and of Synchronicity, as described by Carl Jung. More details below…
For quite a while I’ve been struggling with frequent periods of intense anxiety, which sometimes tips over into symptoms of depression.
On this particular day I was experiencing some unusually low feelings and was mulling over the apparent pointlessness of everything – which is not my normal self – as I walked with my camera and dog through one of the open fields of St Helen’s Woods, here in Hastings.
As usual I was on the lookout for wildlife to photograph, when I saw an orangey butterfly winging its way towards me. But instead of flying past, it proceeded to land right on my T-shirt, over my stomach.
It opened its wings for about two seconds, revealing its identity, before flying off again. A Large Tortoiseshell!
I’m not sure I can get across the momentousness of this moment, but I’ll try.
When I was a child delving into butterfly books and dreaming of seeing the rarities pictured there, like the Purple Emperor or Camberwell Beauty, the Large Tortoiseshell was already endangered – the stuff of lepidopterists’ fantasies; later to become sadly extinct in Britain.
In more recent years, through both reintroduction and migration, the Large Tortoiseshell has been making a comeback in England, but still remains a rare and extra-special sighting for anyone into butterflies.
The encounter was too brief, and the butterfly too close (despite camera in hand), to get a photo. I was left simultaneously gutted not to have been able to photograph it and elated over this lifetime first sighting. The excitement was immense.
But to be honest, the latter far outweighed the former.
(As a rare exception, I’m using a photo here that’s not my own. Full credit above.)
For a split-second, during that momentary meeting, it felt like a dream. I worked out recently that I was eight when my enthralment with butterflies was ignited – that’s 50 years ago – and have literally dreamt of seeing rarities, so I knew what I was seeing. But after the event, I couldn’t help but doubt myself. Could it really have been a Large Tortoiseshell? I later learned that LTs are known to have been breeding in Hastings in the last two years. If I needed any confirmation, that was it.
Back to Jung (1875-1961)…
I stand with the esteemed psychologist and psychotherapist in his controversial theory of Synchronicity, whereby everyday events and phenomena that we encounter may be external manifestations of our internal processes. Jung, with a Christian background and pluralistic interest in multiple expressions of faith, had a distinctly spiritual outlook which didn’t always go down so well with his associates who preferred a solely observable, measurable and rationalistic approach.
It’s not uncommon for people, of any faith or even none, to interpret the world around us in a similar way to Jung – finding meaning in the things that happen to us and around us. Although we know that, by the laws of probability, coincidences will inevitably happen, there are some coincidences that seem so significant as to make us sit up and take notice – occurrences that just seem to shout (or whisper) a deeper message to us.
And to me, that seems quite rational. (Christians sometimes refer to these as “God-incidences”.)
In my case, the meaning I found in the extraordinary episode went something like this:
In my low state, experiencing a sense of hopelessness, the Divine (aka God) connected with me through this lifetime first sighting of a rare butterfly, reassuring me of their ongoing Presence.
I think the significance of the fact that this unexpected friend made literal, physical contact with me, cannot be over-emphasised. This once-in-a-lifetime butterfly “chose” to land on me in my time of depression!
Connection or re-connection is, I would argue, what Life is all about.
There are long associations in folklore between butterflies (and birds) and divine messengers or angels. With their colourful wings, captivating beauty, and their miraculous metamorphosis serving as an archetype of transformation, it’s easy to see why.
While not equating butterflies with angelic beings, like Jesus and the biblical prophets I do see the whole natural world as “supernaturally natural”, with glimpses of the Divine visible, and whispers audible, to a lesser or greater extent by those with eyes to see and ears to hear.
In my spiritual worldview (something like Jung’s, with a Christian base and an open mind), the Large Tortoiseshell meeting served as a sign that God, the eternal I Am, who is Love, is still with me, still reconciling all things, still turning all things to good.
That, in the words of Julian of Norwich, “All will be well, and all will be well and all manner of thing shall be well”.
For me, Nature is an expression and extension of the Divine. Immersing ourselves in Nature is to immerse ourselves in God, thereby connecting with ourselves, healing and wholeness in the process.
Anxiety-wise, I may not be out of the woods yet – pun intended! – but things are looking up and moments like this give me hope.
Less than three weeks after that encounter in St Helen’s Woods, this article was published by the BBC:
Kent: Butterfly ‘extinct’ for 60 years now breeding in woodland – BBC News,
in which conservationist William Malpas speaks of his incredulity at his first sighting of a Large Tortoiseshell in 2022. Malpas poignantly mentions that it happened at a particularly difficult time, having just lost a close friend.
Nature and her synchronicity at their finest.
Spirit of Nature 