Monarch butterfly
The orange-and-black butterfly that reaches the mountain forests of Michoacán and the State of Mexico around Día de Muertos. The Purépecha hold that the monarchs are the souls of the dead.
Meaning
Monarchs (Danaus plexippus) from Canada and the United States east of the Rocky Mountains fly about 4,800 km (3,000 miles) south each autumn to winter in the oyamel fir forests of central Mexico, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service notes that their arrival coincides with 1 and 2 November. UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere programme writes that the Purépecha consider the monarch the soul of the dead, its arrival falling at Día de Muertos, while the Mazahua and Otomí call it “the harvester”, because it comes as the land is prepared for sowing. The Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage names the Purépecha of Michoacán and the Mazahua of the State of Mexico as communities who revere the monarchs, and calls the belief that the butterflies carry the souls of ancestors pre-Hispanic folklore. Monarch images go on ofrendas among the candles, sugar skulls and cempasúchil, and dancers wear monarch costumes at the festivities.
Origin and history
The sources call the link between monarchs and the dead old, but give it no date. For the Smithsonian it is pre-Hispanic folklore. The National Park Service, writing from San Antonio, Texas, on the route south, says it “has long been believed” in those regions that monarchs are the returning spirits of dead relatives, and that local Aztec tradition holds that the dead return as hummingbirds and butterflies. The Fish and Wildlife Service says customs vary, but that to many the returning monarch is the souls of the dead coming back to visit.
The belief is told in more than one form. José Luis Álvarez Alcalá, founder of the conservation group Forests for Monarchs, told the Smithsonian that in Purépecha legend the butterflies carry the spirits of warriors, and the beating of their wings carries messages from the afterlife. Noemi Hernandez-Balcazar, an artist and educator, remembers from her childhood in Mexico City that you did not mistreat a monarch, “because they contained a soul within them”.
The Purépecha story of the first monarchs
UNESCO records a story the Purépecha grandmothers tell. Their ancestors walked from the cold lands in the centre of the country, and when the children and the old people could go no further, they covered their bodies with the orange resin of the trees and the yellow pollen of the flowers to keep warm. The pollen and resin turned them into monarch butterflies, and they flew together to the forests where the butterflies winter now.
The reserve
Those forests are the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, 56,259 hectares of pine, oyamel and oak in Michoacán and the State of Mexico. Millions of monarchs gather there from November to March, and in 2008 it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The butterfly page follows butterfly beliefs in other traditions.
Read next
- Next in Day of the Dead symbolsXoloitzcuintleMexico’s hairless dog. In the Mexica belief recorded by Sahagún, a dog carried the dead across a river on the way to Mictlan; today the xolo is the dog of Día de Muertos.
- The butterfly as the soul in other traditionsButterfly symbolismIn Japanese belief a butterfly can be the soul of a living or a dead person, and in Greek the word psyche meant both soul and butterfly. American folk belief reads a white butterfly as a coming wedding or a coming death, and in Mexico many see the returning monarchs as the souls of the dead.
See also
Cempasúchil (Mexican marigold), Ofrenda (altar), Pan de muerto, Papel picado, Copal, Sugar skull (calavera de azúcar).
Sources
- Mariposa Monarca Biosphere Reserve, Mexico (UNESCO Man and the Biosphere, 50th anniversary), UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme, 50th anniversary feature, UNESCO, feature text
- Winged Messengers: How Monarch Butterflies Connect Culture and Conservation in Mexico (Tia Merotto, Smithsonian, 2022), Tia Merotto, Folklife magazine, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, 31 October 2022; as archived September 2026, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, article text
- Monarchs arrive for Day of the Dead (US Fish and Wildlife Service), US Fish and Wildlife Service, story, US Fish and Wildlife Service, story text
- Dias de los Monarchs (National Park Service), National Park Service, article, National Park Service, article text
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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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