THE BUTTERFLY: A Symbol of Conscious Evolution

A probing introduction by Terry Winter Owens explores many implications embedded in King's writing (and in the ideas themselves) and offers compelling insights and perspectives.

Owens, a pianist and internationally published composer, is herself a long-time student of the Gurdjieff Work. Her 1960 reviews of Gurdjieff's All and Everything and Meetings with Remarkable Men were published respectively in The Psychedelic Review and by University Books.

An early group leader in America, King received a Ph.D. in Psychology at Columbia University and was a member of A.R. Orage's New York group. This book invokes a lineage of the transmission of ideas from Gurdjieff to Orage, Gurdjieff's first emissary to America, a lineage which by-passes the Ouspensky influence.

The Greeks presented Psyche, the butterfly, as a symbol for the Soul. King suggests that this symbol derives from important esoteric knowledge of an even more ancient culture. Elaborating on the symbol of the Butterfly, King postulates a transformation possible for people, one that is produced by intentional, conscious effort. That intentional, conscious effort is the theme of his book. An excerpt from chapter 1:

     [T]he caterpillar spins itself a silken web against some suitable surface. In this it entangles its hind legs, and hangs downward until presently its skin once more splits along the centre of the back. It next shrinks considerably in size until it comes free of the old skin, but is still attached to the web. It is now in a half-way state between larva and chrysalis; by a wriggling motion it attaches a front set of hooks to the web and the old skin falls away completely. Shrinking still further, it soon becomes a true chrysalis, a small, cone-shaped object hanging point downward from a branch or beam.

      This chrysalis is no longer a larva, or caterpillar. It is a definite stage... of transition, and somehow or other it is alive. Its outer shell is a hard formation unlike any of its former skins; within is a formless creamy fluid without structure or organization... There is apparently a complete disintegration of the former worm, its members, even its nerves and tissues, breaking down into a viscous liquid matter, a living water as it might be called.

      [F]requently an outlined tracing of the creature to be, appears on the chrysalis shell before the interior organization has yet formed. It is all the more remarkable because this casing or container is never destined to be part of the butterfly... When we note that the later, developed wing-pattern can sometimes be seen plainly traced upon the shell, and further, that the liquid molecules of super protoplasm, within are still in an entirely formless fluid state, we can scarcely be censured for our astonishment and our vague attempts to imagine a kind of sub-molecular, magnetic reflection...

      And now a completely new and different animal has gradually been formed from the broken-down molecular constituents of the former worm. It has disintegrated (we can call it death in life or life in death, for it is a state that is both life and death); and then the very elements of which the worm was composed have been reunited in a different pattern and structure, bringing into existence a quite dissimilar animal. And it has all taken place without the apparent addition of any feed or absorb elements exterior to itself ... At length the chrysalis bursts open ... and the new being emerges... [S]oon the body juices flow into the crumpled wings, filling them out and providing their vivid colouring... It flies away to its future life and functions as a fertilizer of flowers, the most delicate plants in the vegetable kingdom, and as the parent of future caterpillars.

      We cannot fail to remark the overwhelming character of the transformation that has taken place. It is as if a horse had drawn in its legs and tail, altered the shape of its head, and rolled off a jetty to live henceforward as a whale.