The Butterfly Cross
I am here to share with you an incredible revelation that helped me further see how wiser and greater powers than anything that’s ever been human are at play around us, at all times.
If you’re reading this, most of you know that the discovery of Runes helped launch me into a spiritual path. For lack of a better term, my “spiritual awakening” happened after a DNA test that led me to subsequent ancestry research. Now, my spiritual practices are varied but I do often say this: the spirits came first, then the practice. As is my nature, I have to have tangible evidence of an event or situation before I can call it real. I’m not sure what it says about me as a person if anything at all, but the spirits came first and showed themselves to me...and then my practice of venerating and working with them followed.
I think if that says anything about me as a person, it’s that I am guilty - like any modern person, really - of being conditioned, programmed, and desensitized to matters of spirit. While I did not grow up in a religious home, I did grow up in modern Western civilization, where Christianity is the predominant religion. It’s impossible to escape the programming of “If it’s not of God and Jesus, it’s of the Devil and Demons.” I could write on and on about how the Christian religion set up everything that didn’t fall in line with it as “other,” and therefore evil, but I won’t waste the time here.
The fact is, we live in a world where even if you’re not raised as a Christian, you have some inherent programming. We live in a science-based world as well, so if we can’t quantify it, measure it, dissect it, it becomes fiction. I was very much that person - while my husband was very spiritual before I met him, I was the guy who was very much all “Babe, you’re talking about spirits -- please don’t talk about them around other people or they’ll think you’re crazy.” This was who I was before that DNA test.
The Runes, if you’re not familiar with them, are northern Europe’s very first alphabet, at least according to the archaeological record. Writing and symbols carried with them a lot of mystique and magic, and soon they grew from symbols of writing to symbols of magic. Each of the Runes carry with them different meanings or concepts, made stronger by a person’s relationship with them.
And before we jump into the meat of my story here, I offer you this: I am no expert, I am no guru. I offer no dogma here. I ask you to not reorganize the way you see your life or the Universe. What I offer here are conclusions based on my own experience.
Since I’ve discovered Runes, I include pulling one as part of my daily devotionals. I offer up gratitude for the ancestors and (what I call) my Benefactors Unseen, thanking them all for all that they did and all they continue to do to bring blessings upon me and mine. Then, after this morning ritual, I pull a Rune, asking for insight into how my day’s going to go, asking for a heads-up for certain energies, those I should be aware of and those I should cultivate. That’s how you build a relationship with any divination tool.
The Butterfly Card from the “Medicine Cards”
After a year of working with the Runes themselves, I decided to bring cards into my morning devotionals. It’s interesting to use two different methods of divination but it’s certainly a great way to see which energies are being repeated and also, by using two different methods next to one another, it helps you unpack and understand more about one form of divination versus another. I used to use Tarot cards for a time but after a while I learned they didn’t want to be pulled singly, next to a Rune. I found over time - again, my experience only - that the Tarot cards ended up having nothing to do with my day at all...and that’s an important message: if you’re method of divination isn’t working, isn’t communicating, is falling short and not “working” for you: move on. Know when to call it quits.
What I did move to was pulling a Medicine Card each morning, alongside my morning Rune pulls. This has proved incredible. The Medicine Cards, if you’re not familiar, are a set of oracle cards first published in 1988. Popular with many, these cards include depictions of common animals and meanings associated with them. According to the description of the cards, the Medicine cards, “using teachings from the Choctaw, Lakota, Seneca, Aztec, Yaqui, Cheyenne, Cherokee, Iroquois, and Mayan traditions, the authors have identified the medicine of 44 animals that have traditionally been considered as guides.”
The Medicine Cards are like any other form of divination, really: symbols, cards, signs all created or used with specific meanings and concepts in mind. Then, through the prolonged use of them over time, they gain more power and spiritual “oomph” through the use of the collective unconscious of humanity. I find both the Medicine Cards both basic and simple enough to complement my rune pulls each morning and both the cards and the runes have helped me see connections between them that I otherwise would have missed.
So, to give you some context, imagine my daily devotionals - that time in the morning when I step in front of my altar, offer thanks to my ancestors and Benefactors Unseen - and then finish those devotionals by pulling first a rune, then a Medicine Card. While I’ve seen incredible insight using both tools beside one another (and again, only recommend this is you’ve developed a relationship with one divination tool first) there have been mornings and connections that have been stronger than others. One morning, and I couldn’t tell you when it was specifically, I pulled the Dagaz rune, followed by the Butterfly Card.
To provide context, the Dagaz rune is one of “day” - it represents the “new day,” change and transformation for the better. It also represents balance, that point where two opposites are perfectly balanced. When the sun first peeks its head over the horizon, day and night are essentially perfectly balanced. The Butterfly card stands, simply, for “Transformation.” This was an exciting and interesting divination, as you can already see how they fit together. As I stood there, looking at how Dagaz very much looks like a butterfly and how interesting those two together stand for “transformation,” I heard something...in that special way that I “hear” things.
The word “Michael.” Looking at both the rune and card together, I hear “That’s Michael.” And when I say “Michael” here, I mean the spirit or angel known as Michael. I say this as a person who isn’t Christian or Catholic and never has been...but if you haven’t seen in posts prior to this one, I do indeed believe in the energies that are angels. You can read a blog HERE about how the angel Gabriel made him (or her?) self known to me. What I can tell you about these energies, as far as I can tell, is that they aren’t Christian or Catholic - those types of things don’t matter to them. They are older, much older, than humanity and thus older than the major world religions that would claim them. I believe these angelic energies (call them angelos, gods, goddesses, deities, etc) have shown up in all sorts of world religions and mythologies, filtered through whatever representation that was easiest for those cultures to understand.
So, please know - when I say I “hear” those symbols “are” Michael, that doesn’t come from a place of religious indoctrination. I see these energies - angels, gods, goddesses, etc - as greater and wiser spirits than anything that has ever been human. Some of them, like Michael and Gabriel, are benevolent towards us, have compassion even, and want to help and protect us. Some of these energies...do not.
After this morning divination, when I heard this name that I’ve never heard before, really, I just went about my day as I normally do. I can’t say that anything particularly “transformative” happened, yet I don’t remember the day specifically as pieces began to fall in place later on. That morning divination was just the first step in a very bizarre relationship.
A couple of weeks later, I was having lunch as I normally would. I spent some quiet time in front of my laptop, enjoying my lunch, and taking in some light reading. I usually do this by looking up archaeological stories as I’m fascinated by ancient and medieval history. As I was chewing my food, I found an article (you can see it HERE) with the headline of: “Scans Reveal Archangel Michael Tattoo on Mummy's Thigh” - so, in consideration of what I heard the other morning, I decided to click on it and read through.
And after getting a bit into it, I almost spit out my lunch. Things had just gotten really, really weird.
A photograph, left, and an infra-red reflectography of the tattoo found on the mummified remains of a Sudanese woman. Photo credit: Trustees of the British Museum
Please read the article and see the pictures of the tattoo they shared. Not only did this woman from Sudan have a tattoo of Michael on her leg, this tattoo contained the Dagaz rune.
I was blown away. I don’t’ know how else to say it. If this had happened in reverse, it wouldn’t have been a thing to me at all: read an interesting article, then make some correlations around my divinations and symbols that I use. I would’ve just thought “Cool!” and moved on.
Yet this wasn’t the way it happened. I experienced that divination of the Dagaz rune and the Butterfly Card heard that it was “Michael” and then had that experience. It is always an exciting and world-redefining thing when Spirit, in whatever form they choose, make themselves known to us. This tattoo, while containing the Dagaz rune, contains the monogram of Michael’s name spelled in Greek. You can think of a monogram as a group of letters and symbols, compiled upon one another, that creates a new symbol.
At this point, I’m totally weirded out. Yes, I speak to the dead and to ancestors for a living. Up to this point, I hadn’t normally conversed or heard anything from these angelic beings, these super spirits that interact with us. I was so excited that I had to call Isaac, my husband. At this point in our spiritual journeys, he’s pretty cavalier about all of this stuff, to the point of pretty much being “So, yeah?”
I guess I am still - and will probably continue to be - amazed to the Wonder of it all.
Now my mind, that part of me that just has to know what it can know, decided to start digging into the history of this symbol, this symbol that I have tattooed on my right shoulder, this Dagaz rune. I had to see if I could find anything regarding this symbol and how it relates to Michael, this spirit that made itself known to me.
Butterfly cross mason’s mark, Tewkesbury. Photograph by Linda Wilson
One of the most fascinating articles that I found (which you can read HERE) is entitled: “Saint Michael the Archangel in pre-Reformation England, and implications for the ‘butterfly cross’ graffito.” While I won’t get caught up here in the difference between Saint Michael and Michael the Archangel (if there even is one) the scope of this article is fascinating. The symbol that I currently knew as Dagaz has been known for centuries as the “Butterfly Cross.”
If you go back to that morning when I drew the Dagaz rune and the Butterfly card, and then take into consideration what I “heard”, it’s all very fascinating, isn’t it? Also, this butterfly cross in its use as a protective symbol on thresholds and hearths is not only fascinating...but from the part of England from which I have ancestors. That, in fact, there were several “cults of Michael” all across England and Europe.
As my work with Spirit continues, I’m forced to lose more of my dualistic thinking. When I say dualistic thinking, it’s that part of our brains that sorts things into a black-or-white paradigm. Up or down, north or south, good or bad, etc. I’ve found that as I work with Spirits more, those ancestors of ours on the Other Side, as well as any Greater and Wiser spirits that work with me, I lose more of my ability to see things through a lens of “good” or “bad.” Part of that has to do with the fact I’m seeing more and more how everything - and I mean everything - is connected. As humans, we like to throw labels of “good” or “bad” on situations, people, places, etc. Here’s an example that I share often to show people how those labels don’t serve us…
Imagine a deer in a forest. Now, in your imagination, see this deer doing fun, deer-y things - chewing on grass, moving through the forest with its kin and brethren. Then, imagine a wolf or predator in that very same forest, taking down this deer, killing it and eating it as a way to survive. To the deer, that wolf is bad. To the wolf and the rest of the forest, there is no bad or good. That wolf is doing just what it does, right? How can we see a wolf just doing what any other animal, including us, would do?
In all things, especially those of a spiritual nature, it’s better to not think about “good vs. bad” but in terms of balance. Most of us are familiar with the work of Charles Darwin and how he describes an ecosystem in balance. Think of how in nature, without the effect of humanity, everything stays in balance. The deer population may raise, then in response does the population of the wolves...and as they do so, they seek to create balance.
When researching Michael (either the Saint or the angel) it’s very hard to not find pure archaeological information - as you can imagine, most of what’s out there is filtered through some sort of dogma. Historically, Michael is found in Judaic, Christian, and Islamic teachings. We see that while he’s the Patron Saint of Sudan, he’s also known as the Archangel to fight Satan and his forces in the war of Heaven. He’s known as the protector of the Faithful and the Innocent.
While I’ve been working with Spirit for several years now, I can tell you the spiritual world and the fundamental ecosystem that make it up is far more complicated and complex than we really know. You may have firm conclusions as to what you think these energies are, these gods, angels, and the such. If you do, great! I can tell you this for sure: I really have no idea who or what they are. I’ve felt them, these gigantic forces, in other religions and spiritualities of people to whom I’ve given readings. This power has a certain sense to it and it’s in a lot of mythologies and religions around the world. To communicate with them, to interface with them, I think would strip us of most of our sanity. While we may think we have the stuff it takes to communicate on these levels, you couldn’t grasp the enormity of the ocean, or a mountain range, or the sun. And if the sun or the ocean decided to turn its attention to you and to speak with you? Well, you may very well not make it through the sheer amount of power behind that. I also think that part of the human condition is to simply be human and not obsess over what “Over There” looks like so much. If we concentrate too much on putting one foot in the other world, we miss out on our foot in this world.
Which brings me to the biggest point regarding the motivations of these great spirits: balance.
From what I can tell, these spirits aren’t fully interested in what we call “Good” or “Bad.” They are interested in balance. With that in mind, I can see why some of them are so concerned about humans: we are the only animal that creates cruelty. We are the only ones who find it within us to take from others, to create pain in the lives of others (be them human, animal, or other), simply for no more reason than to simply create it.
So from this larger perspective of balance, I’m not sure there are greater and wiser beings out there (who very well could be building blocks of creation) that are concerned whether someone took the Lord’s name in vain. I could go on and on about the problems with organized religion and what kind of control mechanisms lay within, but I won’t. I just think that these beings have concepts and philosophies that are much greater than what we can initially understand...yet if we were to understand them, how can we see their influence through the lens of balance?
How can we see our actions through the lens of balance?
Interesting to think that one of the definitions of Dagaz is that of balance. Interesting to think that, should we seek transformation and change within our own lives, pretty much the only way to do it is to think of balance.
Are my deeds creating balance in my life, as well as the life of my family and community?
Are my words?
Are my thoughts?
Pay close attention to those spiritual wavelengths that come out of nowhere, even the ones you don’t ask for. Pay close attention to how you can further create balance in your life, and in the lives of others.
And pay close attention to butterflies.
They can mean a lot more in any given moment than you could ever know.