Good and bad omens of the butterfly

There's a superstition in Japan that if there's a butterfly in your guest room and settles atop a folding screen, your next guest will be your lover. The origin of this might be because the top of a screen substitutes the branch of a tree, and it's at such locations where pairs of butterflies mate.

The life cycle of most butterflies starts with an egg, from which hatches a caterpillar (larva), who builds itself a cosy chrysalis (pupa), inside which it goes through its miraculous metamorphosis to emerge as an adult butterfly (imago).

The egg and pupa stages are not so interesting to most observers, but the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly is spectacular. It's as though the caterpillar "dies", is entombed, then emerges to flutter away into the sky.

It's easy to see why, in Japanese folklore, the butterfly was considered the personification of a person's soul. Surprisingly, this was the case whether the person was dead or still living.

Due to its delicate beauty, the sight a butterfly is a good omen in Japan, but a cloud of butterflies is a terribly bad omen.

In the 10th century, the powerful samurai Taira no Masakado led a bloody uprising against Japan's central government in Kyōto. Just before the battle began, a cloud of butterflies appeared in Kyoto.

Since then, such phenomenon has been considered a portent of mass death.