The Butterfly Girl • Meaning • Design • Realisation of the Clay Model • Colour • Final Result
THE FLYING BUTTERFLY IS A LIBERATING SYMBOL. On a spiritual level, the butterfly is the symbol of the immortal soul and the short-livedness of life.
VULNERABLE, BEAUTIFUL AND FRAGILE: A butterfly is very beautiful and graceful, but you can hardly hold it without hurting it. The same is true when it comes to people: we must treat each person with admiration for his beauty, but with great caution and respect. We must not catch or hold children, lovers, friends, ... people, but release them. When they love you, they will stay with you or they will come back to you. To hold them is not only useless, it is suffocating, dangerous and unnecessarily endangers emotions of affection and love. The butterfly you are holding cannot fly.
DANCING, MOVING, FEELING: Butterflies encourage us to rise, take off and move. When they move, it's as if they're dancing. Thus they remind us that we should not take things so seriously in life. They awaken in us a sense of lightness and joy and make us see life as a dance. Dancing in itself gives great joy. Dancing gives us the sweetness of life. This is further underlined by the fact that butterflies have taste receptors on their front legs. Walking around on flowers, they taste them.
BEAUTY, JOY AND HAPPINESS: The Chinese and Japanese see in the butterfly a symbol of beauty, marriage happiness and joy. In Greek mythology, the butterfly is representative of Psyche, whose name translates to soul. Psyche is linked to love, because of her passionate bond with Eros, the god of love. These two are described as hopelessly in love. For this reason, releasing butterflies during a wedding is a symbolic gesture of celebrating the love between the newlyweds. To express their love, as well as the joy of this new life transition, the bride and groom can perform a release of one or more butterflies.
CHANGE: The dance of the butterfly also reflects the need for change; from where we were and are, to the next phase of our existence. The light playfulness of the butterfly gives a double message: Yes, there is a deep, powerful transformation taking place, from earthly, material things to a higher, spiritual world, but all this shrouded in color, joy and lightness. If a butterfly appears, ask yourself how much or how little joy you experience in your life. Look up, look forward to change. Realize that change is good.
An old Native American belief is that in order for a wish to come true, a person must first capture a butterfly, whisper his or her wish to it and then let it go. The butterfly would then fly silently to the heavens, unable to reveal the wish to anyone but the Creator, who would grant it. To send your personal wishes to the universe, you release your own butterfly, whispering your wishes before sending them out into the universe.
TRANSFORMATION: The literal metamorphosis from caterpillar, cocoon, to butterfly is the ultimate symbol in our nature for transformation. Presumably no other animal has become so symbolic for the process of transformation and shape change as the butterfly.
Every new idea and every step of self-development is reflected in the development of the butterfly. 1/ His egg phase stands for the birth of an idea. 2/ In the larval stage it is up to the time to determine whether this idea will be converted into an act. 3/ In the cocoon one has to go inside himself to connect the idea with his own person. 4/ The emergence of the butterfly is the birth of a new reality. Now the joy of the new creation can be shared with others. These four steps of change takes place constantly in life. They are necessary for our further development. The power of the butterfly helps to organize thinking and to make the next step conscious.
Every day we transform, every day we change. Experience your transformation to the fullest, see it as a wonderful gift and discover and develop the range of possibilities that you obtain and already possess. Use your wings and fly into the wide world!
RELIGIOUS MEANING: For Christians, death is the transition to a better life, the transition from a vale of tears to the Heavenly Kingdom. The butterfly symbolizes that the soul, upon the death of a human being, transcends its physical envelope, much like a tranforming butterfly. The butterfly also symbolizes the three stages that the human soul goes through: life, death and resurrection.
sources: https://marreiki.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/symboliek-vlinder/ - Mariane - Eigenwijzer https://www.butterfliesathome.com/live-butterfly-releases.htm
The original design showed a kneeling girl with a number of butterflies taking of from het outstretched hand. Soon, it was decided to use only one butterfly because the hand with the multiple butterflies might have opened copyright discussions, since a sculpture of a hand alone with a flight of butterflies taking off from it, already existed. By keeping only one butterfly and making the girl lean forward some more, the statue became stronger and its meaning more clearly expressed.
The butterfly girl Clay Mold
Playing with colour in order to obtain the best visual result
Contact me at Eddyadriaens@yahoo.com For more information about the Butterfly Girl bronze statue for gardens and parcs