The fact that the cicada feeds on the juices of plants apparently connected it with the idea of the Tree of Life, the source of “soul substance”.
Another insect symbol of resurrection was the butterfly, which was connected with the Plum Tree of Life. Laufer notes that some butterflies carved from jade, which were used as mortuary amulets, have a plum-blossom pattern between the antennæ and plum-blossoms “carved à jour in the wings”.[34]
He notes that “in modern times the combination of butterfly and plum-blossom is used to express a rebus with the meaning ‘Always great age’”. This amulet is of great antiquity.
The butterfly symbol of resurrection is found in Mexico. The Codex Remensis shows an anthropomorphic butterfly from whose mouth a human face emerges. Freyja, the Scandinavian goddess, is connected with the butterfly, and in Greece and Italy the same insect was associated with the idea of resurrection. Psyche (a name signifying “soul”) has butterfly wings. Apparently the butterfly, like the cicada, was supposed to derive its vitality from the mother-goddess’s Tree of Life.
Another important Chinese mortuary jade object was the frog or toad amulet. As we have seen, the frog was [[226]]connected with the moon and the lunar goddess, and in China, as in ancient Egypt, was a symbol of resurrection.
Among the interesting jade amulets shown by Laufer are two that roughly resemble in shape the Egyptian scarabs. “The two pieces”, he writes, “show traces of gilding, and resemble helmets in their shape, and are moulded into the figures of a curious monster which it is difficult to name. It seems to me that it is possibly some fabulous giant bird, for on the sides, two wings, each marked by five pinions, are brought out, a long, curved neck rises from below, though the two triangular ears do not fit the conception of a bird.”[35] The figure apparently represents a “composite wonder beast”. Fishes and composite quadrapeds were also depicted in jade and placed in graves. Human figures are rare.
Stone coffins were used in ancient times. The books of the later Han Dynasty (at the beginning of our era) tell about a pious governor, Wang Khiao, who receives a jade coffin from heaven. It was placed by unseen hands in his hall. His servants endeavoured to take it away, but found it could not be moved.
De Groot,[36] who translates the story, continues: “Khiao said, ‘Can this mean that the Emperor of Heaven calls me towards him?’ He bathed himself, put on his official attire with its ornaments, and lay down in the coffin, the lid being immediately closed over him. When the night had passed, they buried him on the east side of the city, and the earth heaped itself over him in the shape a tumulus. All the cows in the district on that evening were wet with perspiration and got out of breath, and nobody knew whence this came. The people thereupon erected a temple for him.”
De Groot quotes from another work written in the [[227]]fifth century, which relates that “at Lin-siang there is in the water a couch of stone, upon which stand two coffins of solid stone, green like copper mirrors. There is nobody who can give information regarding them.”[37]
Here we have jade used for the preservation of the dead, associated with the sky, with cows, water, and stone, and, in addition, a reference to green copper. Jade has taken the place of pearls, and pearls were, as has been shown, connected with the mother-goddess, the sky and cow deity who was the source of fertilizing and creative moisture and “soul substance”. The standing stones of the mother-goddess were supposed to perspire, and to split and give birth to dragons or gods. This idea appears to lie behind the story regarding the perspiring cows. An influence was at work on the night when the sage was buried in the jade coffin, and that influence came from the sky, and was concentrated in jade. It is necessary, therefore, at this point, to get at Chinese ideas regarding the connection between jade and the mysterious influence or influences in what we call “Nature”.