With September & Fires Comes Moth Medicine

Around the first of September where we live, Moth starts to appear. Along with shorter days and that fresh chill in the air towards evening, Moth flutters in on the beginnings of the Fall winds - what the Celts called ‘airts’ or winds from the 4 directions.

Found worldwide in a stunning array of colours and biological diversity, there are thought to be around 160,000 species of moth. Different from their more colourful, kaleidoscoping butterfly cousins, moths are actually much, much older, with fossils being found that may be 190 million years old.

I love them for entirely different reasons than I love butterflies. They have this delicate, understated poise that is reminiscent of Victorian era fairies.

Nocturnal for the most part, they are as mysterious and magical as butterflies are light-bringers.

In the Pacific Northwest last year (as yet to know if it will repeat this year) we had a moth ‘infestation’ - Looper Moths to be precise. Beautiful creatures that shuffle along the walls quietly, with delicate, mirrored wings that look like ballgowns or long trailing cloaks.

It’s funny though, when something is called an ‘infestation’ or an ‘invasive species’, my first question is always - what is its spirit? What message is it bringing us? What medicine? As the herbalists that I know will say, our natural world often brings us something we need, especially in times of crisis or imbalance.

What is ‘Medicine’?

In an animistic/shamanic world-view, the term ‘medicine’ refers to what some Peruvian pathways call ‘the living energy’ - that is, the energy that infuses everything that is alive, also called it prana or chi or ki - and an individual’s personal power or way of being inside the living energies. Their medicine is their own personal wavelength that vibrates out on the luminous threads of “wyrd” or fate. As one of my teachers says, “The medicine moves through us, as though we were a instrument.”

How do you know a creature’s medicine?

Moth from The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast 1973

These days, you can always Google to find a gazillion hits on any piece of info you need. However, when working with the spirits, it’s always better to ask for direction, observe and come to your own knowings. This is a practice of heightening your inner intuition.

Our animal cousins all have their own ways of moving through the world. If we observe, and then employ symbolic language and divination, we can begin to discern the attributes of each individual’s medicine and any message that may be there for us.

Unlike Butterfly, Moth is nocturnal for the most part, and drawn to the light in darkness so intensely sometimes, that she burns up in it. A willing sacrifice, Moth teaches us about the dark places, dreaming, the shadow-side and the delicate balance between the light and the dark. It is a universal cosmic law - one only exists in contrast to the other.

Moth is a great and stately beauty. She starts out as a caterpillar who goes into a chrysalis stage, building a cocoon around herself. Inside the cocoon, the caterpillar is literally dissolved and then reconstituted into the moth that emerges. Just think of that for a moment. It’s this utter transfiguration that makes Moth the ultimate symbol of rebirth, change, transformation and alchemy.

In Celtic countries Moth was thought to be the souls of the ancestors showing up as we move towards Samhain, when the veils between the worlds grow thin. Her eyes are a multitude and live in the back of her cloak, always seeing behind her into the past and forward to the future.

Penguin’s Dictionary of Symbols, speaks of a thread that runs through Persian mystical poetry where the moth is “a symbol of humanity in the chilly darkness, yearning for wings to take flight towards the heights of divine love”.

For us on the West Coast, where everything is burning, Moth comes to teach us this year - a profound time of transformation and change is upon us. It’s not so much a message of hope, as an omen of impending equilibrium. We humans are so far into our collective shadow and out of step with the natural order, Nature simply must step in a restore balance, however that may look for us. It’s a welcome balm and yet not without a tumultuous and sometimes even catastrophic birthing room.

So what do we do as individuals? Moth tells us to pay attention to dreams, track the shadow-side of happenings, check our own motives and know that our sacrifices are ultimately for the return of balance and the light, however hard that may be to swallow. Rebirth awaits.

Are you seeing Moth this Fall? What does she say to you? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.

First published Fall 2020