Metamorphosis Through the Imaginal

Green twigs with buds hold chrysalises of Monarch butterflies. One butterfly has emerged from their chrysalis, the other can be seen still within theirs.

Think back to elementary school - do you remember the story of caterpillar to butterfly?

If you asked Caterpillar to tell their own story, what would it be? Would Butterfly’s be the same?

For the caterpillar, transformation is an existential threat made good. Their life up to now has been almost entirely focused on consuming all that they can. And now, suddenly, caterpillar in their cocoon rightly perceives metamorphosis as death. They are dying, and the immune system does exactly what immune systems are built to do: attack.

This transformation is not gentle – the caterpillar is liquified, digested within itself. 

But from their very beginning, from their time within the egg, these beings have held something magic inside - they hold within them possibility, creation: imaginal discs.

These discs made of cells are the keys to what will become. They are the map for Butterfly: instructions for Wings, Eyes, Proboscis.

These discs are potential made material, and replicating.

When the dying caterpillar first fully encounters the imagination held within these discs, the collection of cells is seen as enemy and invader. Though they arise from within, the discs and the possibility they contain are believed to be alien, terrorist, killer. The immune system fights these cells, fights against what they are and can be - fights against utter, radical, complete and total change. 

But the imagination wins out. The attacks of the dying only make the cells stronger. They arise more and more quickly, building and strengthening, creating something new from what once was. 

Something with wings, a being that can fly and create anew. 

I hold close reminders like this one. Reminders that within our living world there are ancient, sophisticated systems and structures that can do magic. Reminders that even when all seems lost and hopeless, there is always possibility - and that what is possible could be beyond what we ever hoped or dreamed.

Alixa García brings this process and these ideas to life, in this stunning animation.