Beetle

Perseverance and deep trust

Uniquely among insects, many beetles have evolved very hard forewings that protect a much softer pair of wings beneath: the wings they use to fly. This hard ‘shell’ of the beetle symbolises the powerful protection that comes when there is trust. When you trust life, the world, and yourself, everything else can bloom. Trust is like the armour of the beetle: it is the foundation from which you can take flight.

The protection of deep trust

Trust offers a very different kind of protection from the one provided by fear. Fear closes you down, shuts down the heart, and isolates you from other people and the world around you. Healthy protection means that although you can defend yourself when needed, you live from a place of deep trust. Trust in the overall rightness of the world, in spite of the crazy things that are going on. Trust in the rightness of who you are.

With deep trust as your foundation, you can keep going, one step at a time, like the beetle. This is another of its qualities: perseverance. Beetles can appear slow, and they are overlooked or disliked by many, but they endure.

Renewal and the spirit

There are many species of beetle, and one of the most well-known is the dung beetle. In Egypt the scarab is a sacred symbol of light and the rising sun. The scarab crafts a ball out of dung, rolls it across the earth, then buries it in the ground, so that, like a setting sun, it seems to disappear from the surface of the earth and there is darkness. In underground tunnels the scarabs will mate. The female plants an egg in the dung ball, and eventually new life emerges out of the ground. The sun rises again, and the scarab thus represents renewal and the overcoming of death by your spirit.

Transforming waste into fecundity

Another message dung beetles bring is that everything has a purpose. What others see as waste, and even look down on and feel contempt for, holds hidden treasure. Some dung beetles will eat the dung, and bury it inside the earth, raising its fertility. Dung beetles can reduce the size of dung pats in in a relatively short amount of time, preventing grass die-back and the fouling of fields which would keep animals from grazing those areas. Many endangered beetles rely on woodland habitat to sustain their life cycle; you can protect and respect your local woodlands to help support them.
The next time you see a beetle, let it remind you of the power of trust and perseverance. Let it teach you about renewal and overcoming obstacles, and show you how to transform that which may seem like waste into fertile ground. The humble beetle represents the source, the light, and the spirit that endures.

Find out more about the latest book by Chris Lüttichau

“Written with quiet power and fluency. Chris Lüttichau offers us wisdom distilled from many years of profound enquiry. His is a voice of authenticity, of clarity, and of heartfelt truthfulness. We are a people searching home and this book offers many potent insights that like lanterns strung along a dark forest pathway, illuminate the way ahead.”

Mac Macartney, Speaker, Writer, Founder of Embercombe