By Kerry Greenaway

The Black Butterfly  

It’s not often you get the chance to go inside a Roman Long barrow so when the opportunity arose, we took the opportunity. The Long barrow in question is on an island that is joined to the mainland by a causeway, a little thrill is you get stuck at high tide, it’s only for around about an hour but still. The Island is called Mersea, and it is steeped in history, breath-taking views and we also visited 2 Churches but that’s not the purpose of this article. 

In the Victorian period it was quite unusual to have a long barrow in your garden, but this is exactly the case with Mersea’s, that period was notorious for exploring the macabre and unusual. It wasn’t unusual to be invited to a Mummy unwrapping or attend a live dissection. Preserving the layers of what they unearthed wasn’t the focus, uncovering what lay beneath was. Therefore, when the long barrow was excavated in 1912 it seems that they dug straight through the middle and when they came across a burial chamber and that was as far as the excavations went. What they did discover was a lead box containing a green glass Bowl jar containing the remains of some bones. The good people of Mersea raised the money to get these bones analyzed with some interesting results, you can find out more about the long barrow here; https://merseamuseum.org.uk/mmbarrow.php 

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I entered the barrow, one thing for sure I didn’t expect to see was a Black Butterfly. They were resting, wings closed on the walls of the barrow entrance. Now one thing I do know is that with spirit messages they can come in all shapes and sizes, an unexpected encounter with an animal or insect is one of them.  

The Black butterfly’s significance was incredibly relevant. We visited the barrow on the equinox of the moon, the halfway point between the full moon and the new moon. The up-and-coming new moon was also the last eclipse of the year and was shaping up to be a powerful one. The sighting of the butterfly was a reminder of the Soul’s journey and of its evolution. That the metamorphic symbolism was earthed in the ground. This omen indicated there was going to be a powerful energetic shift. The black butterfly crosses realms and can traverse the land of the dead as easily as the land of the living and here it was in an ancient tomb. This was deep ancestral energy at work. 

The barrow itself is fascinating, and I feel like there’s a lot more to uncover there but the butterfly had caught my attention. When I returned home, I tried to find out the exact species of the butterfly and the best I could come up with was a Peacock Butterfly, whom when their wings are shut have dark brown, black bark like appearance. It would be good to clarify the exact species as this would add another layer of meaning. If it is indeed the Peacock Butterfly just think of the colours that are exposed when the wings are open.  The deep red background with the distinctive four eyes, this shift would be hitting in all the four elements within the root.  

This would be akin to an earthquake hitting in the root chakra. It seems a weird coincidence that I finally got around to writing about the black butterfly the day after the new moon eclipse after having experienced the energy hit in the root. It was a pure test of faith to get through it; every old past wound reappeared and was brought forward to be released again. This hit on a deeper soul level of healing and on this the Autumn Equinox, balance has resumed.