Moth symbolism
In English and Slavic folklore a moth could be a soul, and Yorkshire people called night-flying white moths “souls”. The death’s-head hawkmoth, with its skull-like mark, is traditionally an omen of death, and in Mexico and the Caribbean so is the black witch moth.
Meaning
The moth shares many of the butterfly’s meanings. Several of the soul beliefs Dyer collected in The Ghost World (1893) are about moths, and Liddell and Scott’s Greek lexicon gives psyche, the soul, the further sense “butterfly or moth”. Two moths have meanings of their own: the death’s-head hawkmoth of Europe, an omen of death, and the North American luna moth, whose popular meanings are modern.
Origin and history
Kentucky folklore gathered by Daniel and Lucy Thomas in 1920 still made a white moth a visiting spirit: “A white moth flying is the spirit of a grandparent hovering near.”
Moths as souls
Departed souls, according to Cornish folklore Dyer recorded, sometimes take the form of moths, and in Yorkshire country people called night-flying white moths, especially Hepialus humuli, “souls”. Elizabeth Mary Wright’s survey of dialect (1913) gives soul as the word for a night-flying white moth in Yorkshire and Gloucestershire. In the Russian government of Kherson, Dyer reports, if the usual alms were not given at a funeral, the dead man’s soul would show itself to his family as a moth flying round a candle, and the next day they called the poor together and fed them.
The death’s-head hawkmoth
The death’s-head hawkmoth has a skull-like mark on its thorax and squeaks when alarmed, and Butterfly Conservation says it was traditionally seen as an omen of death. The entomologists William Kirby and William Spence wrote that in some countries its appearance caused “the most violent alarm and trepidation”, and people took it for “the messenger of pestilence and death”. It is a prophecy of doom in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native and an ill-omened love token in William Holman Hunt’s painting The Hireling Shepherd (1851). In the film The Silence of the Lambs (1991) its pupa is the killer’s calling card, though the director used the pupa of another species. Two large moths found in George III’s bedroom at Kew in 1801 were rumoured to have brought on one of his bouts of madness.
The black witch moth
The black witch (Ascalapha odorata) is a large moth of Central and South America, the Bahamas and the south-western United States. In Mexican and Caribbean folklore it is a harbinger of death, Kathy Keatley Garvey writes in the University of California’s Bug Squad blog.
The luna moth
The luna moth is a large sea-green silk moth of North America, named for Luna, the Roman moon goddess, and also called the American moon moth (Clemson University’s extension service). Adults do not feed. The meanings that spiritual and tattoo websites give it are modern, and we found no older source for them.
A moth round the lamp
In Hampshire, Wright recorded, if you kill a miller, a moth, while it flies round a lighted lamp, you will get a letter the next day.
Related animals
Most of the soul beliefs about moths are told of the Butterfly symbolism too.
See also
Butterfly symbolism, Dragonfly symbolism, Ladybug symbolism, Bee symbolism, Spider symbolism, Cat symbolism.
Sources
- The Ghost World (T. F. Thiselton Dyer, 1893), T. F. Thiselton Dyer, The Ghost World (London: Ward & Downey, 1893), Project Gutenberg, chapter XI, Phantom Butterflies
- ψυχή (Liddell and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon), Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, revised by Henry Stuart Jones, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, senses II, III and VI
- Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore (Elizabeth Mary Wright, 1913), Elizabeth Mary Wright, Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore (London: Oxford University Press, 1913), Project Gutenberg
- Kentucky Superstitions (Daniel Lindsay Thomas and Lucy Blayney Thomas, 1920), Daniel Lindsay Thomas and Lucy Blayney Thomas, Kentucky Superstitions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1920), Internet Archive (University of Toronto copy), no. 3704
- An Introduction to Entomology, vol. 1 (William Kirby and William Spence, 5th ed., 1828), William Kirby and William Spence, An Introduction to Entomology, vol. 1, fifth edition (London: Longman, 1828), Project Gutenberg, Letter IV
- Meet The Death’s-head Hawk-moth (Butterfly Conservation), Butterfly Conservation
- Like a Moth to a Flame (Kathy Keatley Garvey, Bug Squad, 2014), Kathy Keatley Garvey, Bug Squad blog, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, 1 May 2014, University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources
- Luna Moth (Clemson University Home & Garden Information Center), Clemson Cooperative Extension
Browse symbols formed from circles or curves and waves.
Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research