🌌 When the Night Fills With Wings: Lessons from Flying Ants

Last night in Sri Lanka, as I worked deep into the night, my room filled with wings.

Winged ants — alates — swarmed toward the lamp and fan, fluttered for a short while, then dropped to the ground. By morning, their wings lay scattered like confetti across the tiles.

What many would call a nuisance felt to me like a collective ritual — a natural meditation on impermanence, renewal, and belonging.

🌿 The Natural Script

Biologically, these are alates, the reproductive stage of ants and termites. They emerge after rain, sensing humidity and soil softness, ready to create new colonies. Their flight lasts only a few hours. Then they shed their wings, mate, and return to the earth — or die in place, nourishing the soil for the next cycle.

It is nature’s ancient choreography of transformation, death, and renewal.

🌏 Cultural Traditions and the Swarm

Across the world, flying ants have never been “just insects.” They appear in folklore, agriculture, and spirituality as messengers of change:

🌺 Sri Lanka & South Asia

• Their swarming is tied to monsoon rains — an omen of abundance and renewal.

• In some rural Sri Lankan homes, alates were even gathered and placed on shrines as a thank you for fertility and seasonal blessing.

🌍 Africa

• In Nigeria, Ghana, and Uganda, termite alates are seen as both food and fortune. Roasted or fried, they sustain families after rains, symbolizing prosperity, nourishment, and resilience.

• Among the Shona people of Zimbabwe, their appearance signals ancestral presence and seasonal cleansing.

🌀 Indigenous Australia

• Aboriginal Dreamtime stories link insect swarms to life cycles — a reminder that endings are never final, only transitions into new beginnings.

🌄 Latin America

• Among Andean and Mayan communities, flying ants are read as spiritual messengers. Their wings are like prayers: rising briefly, then falling back to earth as offerings.

🔮 Collective Archetypes

Despite cultural differences, three shared meanings repeat everywhere:

1. Transformation — their wings symbolize elevation, release, and rebirth.

2. Impermanence — their lives as fliers last only hours, teaching us to honor the moment.

3. Collective Rhythm — they emerge in perfect synchrony, reflecting the invisible systems that guide all life — much like the work of communities, movements, and yes, even entrepreneurs and artists.

🌙 A Sasha Reflection

As I sat surrounded by their fallen wings, I felt the resonance with my own life and work:

• Yorkseed Victoria rising as a collective swarm of changemakers.

• Outloving Extinction singing about cycles of loss and renewal.

• HypnoChic and Thiscourse ™️offering tools to shed what no longer serves, and step into new consciousness.

What appeared chaotic was actually order, rhythm, and cosmic timing.

It reminded me that my own projects, like these insects, are seasonal, emergent, and alive within larger cycles.

🌺 Closing Thought

Flying ants are fleeting. Yet they appear at thresholds — after rain, before renewal.

They remind us:

• To rise when conditions are right.

• To let go when the time has come.

• To trust the collective pulse of nature and humanity.

✨ In their short-lived wings lies an invitation: honor the impermanence, and trust the renewal.