Sha Sha Island and the Butterfly Tree
by Elinor Dickson
Georgian Bay l986
A brilliant blue sky shimmered in the clear, crystal waters of the Bay. I sat cross-legged on an old wooden dock waiting for Dan, the Indigenous marina owner, to taxi me to the Island, to Sha Sha, which as legend says, was once a gift to a Kanien'kehà:ka (Mohawk) princess.
Nature’s warm hum lulled me away from city busyness into a deeper, slower rhythm. I was content to wait, adjusting my inner clock to the harmony of nature. I was going to Sha Sha to meet Marion, and her delight in sharing the island became an experience that drew me deeper into work I still feel called to do. The outer clarity and energy of nature would penetrate to an inner clarity and connectedness within me. The island would become a container, a sacred place, that spoke of the origins of consciousness, of mystery, and of power.
From earliest times, convergences of rocks, trees, and water have been regarded as sacred places, the feminine container that calls down the divine spirit. Many Indigenous Canadians call the great glacial rocks that formed the Island the bones of Mother Earth, the moss her yielding flesh. In this place, Her body revealed many sacred spaces, but none riveted me more than the place Marion called “Star Chamber.” I stepped into this untamed space walled by huge vine-covered stones.(1) The ground was blanketed with ferns. Jutting up among the ferns were stone “steps” that sloped up to a large, natural rock altar framed by the roots of a tree. I stood there suddenly aware of my heart pounding, until Marion broke the silence by observing that some people could not stay in this place; it was too overwhelming. The sheer unremitting immensity of nature, even in a tranquil state, was awe inspiring.
In the face of the wild feminine energy of nature and the frenzied masculine energy that had fixed the rocks in place, there was a need to contain, to reveal a gentler meaning of relatedness. I felt a deep need to relate to that place, to clear away the encroaching dead leaves, moss, and vines. The following day, after working three to four hours on the book, I reminded Marion of our decision to return to “Star Chamber.” In silent communion, we labored in the afternoon sun with sticks and a broom, knowing what all ancient peoples instinctively knew, that the Great Mother must be honored.
The end of our concrete service, however, was to reveal the deeper, symbolic story written in the stones—archetypal images that immediately began to weave their own meaning in my mind. As in all sacred groves, the central focus was the altar proclaiming the durability of the divine presence, while the encircling trees revealed the dual nature of the divine in its changing and renewing form. Together they told of the immutable and the transitory, of the order and the chaos inherent in the divine presence. On the steps leading up to the altar was the “great frog rock,” while further down, as if waiting in the wings, was the “Madonna.” These symbols of fertility, chthonic and spiritual, are natural stone metaphors of the power and potential contained in the womb of the Mother. Looking up to the left of the altar were the aniconic symbols of masculine and feminine power, the shield and the great stone axe, the sacred union of sky god and earth goddess. The preserving, sheltering power of the feminine upholds the great axe with which the sun god will cut down the dualistic tree of knowledge. This ancient proclamation has not yet been fulfilled and so on the right, above the altar, it did not surprise me to find a great circular rock smashed and half embedded in the earth. The round table of totality and centeredness is broken. The Grail has not been found. Instead, there is fragmentation and fear.
“Star Chamber” is a sobering place with its silent message. It is to be wrestled with as people have always wrestled with the mystery and power that compels us to look within and beyond our incarnate existence for meaning. It contains the mystery, which both wounds us and calls us to the sacred power within that reveals our true identity.
I returned from the Island full of energy and with massive amounts of material that made perfect sense in my mind. However, it soon became clear to me that I needed an integrating symbol that would allow me to talk about the complex historical roots of the human journey now manifested in the unconscious content of the dreams of modern men and women. Three nights after my return, the Island, as I was to discover, gave me a final gift. That night I had the following dream:
I am in an ancient garden, and there is a tree in the center covered with verdant green leaves. The leaves are fresh, but they are rolled up into a kind of tube. My task is to carefully unroll each leaf and release the gold butterflies inside.
Immediately, I thought of the Tree of Life that permeates nearly all cultures, but after reflection, I knew this dream was about something else. Mythology has trees with flowers, jewels, and fruit, but nowhere did I come across butterflies. Four weeks later, I had an impulse to go into a neighborhood bookstore. I was not looking for anything in particular, but I was startled to come face to face with Lynn Andrew’s recent book, Jaguar Woman and the Wisdom of the Butterfly Tree. Immediately, I knew this was related to my sojourn on Sha Sha as this was an old native legend. The Butterfly Tree was the gift of the Great Spirit. It is the Tree Mother who suckled the first man and woman.
The sisters say that upon the branches of this tree are billions of leaves. Written upon these leaves is the destiny of each new person. So when a person is born, a leaf falls from the butterfly tree. The spirit light descends from one of these leaves and surrounds the egg at conception.
It is a person’s destiny to realize that we are one with the sacred tree. We are not just a leaf. We are light. And we are the light of Butterfly Tree, and all will return to it. All suffering is a result of a loss of knowledge of our origins. When we realize that we are the great tree, our state is happiness.(2)
To be enlightened, a person must climb to the top of the tree. In retelling her own odyssey of entering the void, Lynn tells of having to look into a mirror to face the most hideous reflection of herself, of having to face fear and to make of death an ally. At the top, she encounters Butterfly Woman at whose hands she must die and be reborn.
She dismembered my body, each part floating away, until only my spirit remained looking at this scene. I felt no pain and no fear. Somehow, I knew this was supposed to be. Then she brought the pieces of my body back down out of the sky and took crystals from the spring beside her. I watched her open places in my body and insert crystals in my heart, my head, all over. (3)
Such a myth recognizably speaks of individuation, the journey we must take toward our own inner integration and subsequently our integration into the world around us. This stands alongside all great hero/heroine myths that undertake the night sea journey to their real identity. In rereading Lynn’s journey, aside from obvious delight, I resonated deeply with at least three major insights. In the first place, the journey to the top, or to the core, is always an encounter with Sacred Power, with the Self. This always results in a death. The seeker must be prepared to wrestle with their own fear and darkness to withstand the Sacred Encounter. This is not a pleasant experience as many who are in analysis will attest too. However, it is necessary because only through having encountered ourselves fully do we have the courage to surrender, to let go without danger of being annihilated. The seeker must realize that who they thought they were, the competent, acceptable persona that the ego struggles to maintain, is an illusion.
A second aspect that resonated with my own experience is that in the death experience the body is transformed. In this case crystals are placed within both the heart and the head. Crystals, besides being pure, capture and focus energy. They are the best transmitters and receivers and have long been used as such, for example, in radios. Fear and desire reside in the body, and, until the body is listened to, our perception of ourselves and others is distorted. The crystals purify the feelings and, therefore, can connect us with others. They are the gift of the goddess.
A deep encounter with the Sacred is an experience of our own sacredness. If we become sufficiently empty, we are trusted with sacred power. Such is the turning point in all deep inner journeys. However, it is only the turning point. The seeker must return, must bring the treasure home. Sacred power involves a discerning responsibility towards oneself and consequently towards others. It involves being centered in one’s own life. There is always a temptation to be special in the eyes of others, to be “somebody”, rather than to risk relating from our own unique core.
A third resonance for me in Lynn’s vision is the necessity of establishing a true empowering feminine. The Butterfly Tree myth comes out of an earlier tribal society still closely connected to the earth, and for this reason, it has a particular truth to reveal to us at this time in our history. As Whistling Elk states: “We all come into this earth walk to heal our femaleness. Man or woman, it makes no difference.”
It is our understanding of the feminine container of life that must be transformed. This transformation takes a period of intense and focused awareness as all stories and myths attest. Although feminine and masculine energies constantly reveal each other, a conscious feminine must precede the revelation of a conscious masculine. Our inner sacred masculine must have a viable container within before it can be focused and directed outward in an empowering way. This is what the Grail legend tried to reinstate in the Middle Ages, the need to find and bring back in our culture the conscious feminine container. The wounded masculinity that has laid the earth desolate is urging us once more to go in search of the Grail, the Tree of Life, the Butterfly Tree, to find a conscious feminine power and wisdom centered enough to receive the masculine spirit that can take wisdom out into the world.
Sha Sha and the dream of the Butterfly Tree affirms for me my own task of finding within the verdant green of nature, in the body, the soul essence that needs to be released, not only for myself, but for all those I encounter. Folly would be to think that my ego could make that happen. I can only be aware, open, and surrendered to how that energy wants to work through me. I can only embrace the humility that T.S. Eliot reminds us is endless.
(1) There was a practice, embraced by the Indigenous people, of anyone visiting and tending to this space.
(2) Andrews, Lynn V. Jaquar Woman and the Wisdom of the Butterfly Tree, Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1986, p. 192.
(3) Ibid., p. 13.