Symbols - What does heaven look like
Dragonfly

The dragonfly has a somewhat similar meaning symbolically to the butterfly with its chrysalis.
First it may help to know the life cycle of a dragonfly:
T C Lethbridge – Ghost and Ghoul
Everyone nowadays knows the life-cycle of a dragonfly. Its child hatches out of an egg and becomes some-thing, known as a 'nymph', living at the bottom of a pond.
It is rather a repulsive-looking creature, grey-brown in colour, and appears not unlike a small dragon. Like the dragon too, it is carnivorous. It creeps about the bottom of the pond till it is full grown. Then it climbs up the stalk of a reed or some other aquatic plant into the daylight. Clinging to the stem, above the water, its body becomes dry. After a time the nymph appears to die. It splits open, and a perfect dragonfly, now known as an 'imago', emerges. When its wings are dry, it takes to the air, leaving its old cast-off body still clinging to the plant.

The dragonfly thus incorporates in its life cycle the concept of
- The Egg
- Water
- Earth
- Chrysalis – in this case the nymph stage with its husk is somewhat similar symbolically to the chrysalis
- Dragon
- Reed
- Higher spirit - Dragonfly/flying insect
- Death
- Air – or higher spirit levels
The dragonfly is thus a symbol of life on earth [the nymph] in its husk body with soft spiritual centre, apparent death, but after the death the emergence of the Higher spirit. In essence a symbol of the fact we do not die, we simply emerge from the husk to fly.
For those on the spiritual path it represents the sorts of 'death' that result from the more advanced types of experience for example the existence of the reed symbol shows the links with the Kundalini experience as the means of spiritual awakening.
Observations
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- Fleetwood Mac - Dragonfly
- Hawkes, Jacquetta - Symbols and Speculations - Instruments
- Lethbridge, T C - A Step in the Dark – The dragonfly
- Lethbridge, T C - Ghost and Ghoul - Dragonfly
- The Manuals of Taoist Sexual Practise – Joining Yin and Yang 02
- The Manuals of Taoist Sexual Practise – Talk on Supreme Guidance for the World 10