Quick Specs
- Type: Keychain with butterfly charms and eye beads
- Length of charms: About 4 1/2 inches in total
- Butterflies: 2 silver-toned charms, each about 1 1/4 inches by 1 inch at the widest points, set with small blue stones
- Eye beads: 2 round beads in deep blue, white and light blue, each in scalloped silver-toned caps
- Hardware: Silver-toned chain strands on a split key ring
Two Butterflies and Two Eye Beads on Silver Chain
The key ring at the top carries a short run of oval chain links that separates into two strands. On one strand, a round eye bead in deep blue, with a white ring, a light blue center and a black pupil, sits between scalloped silver-toned caps, and a butterfly hangs beneath it. The other strand drops past that butterfly to a second eye bead in its own caps, and a second butterfly closes the keychain at the bottom. The butterflies are silver-toned metal with open, cut-out wings and a dotted border along each wing edge. Small blue stones are set in a loose scatter around the wing tips, and the slender bodies carry curled antennae at the top. Because the two strands hang at different heights, one butterfly rides higher than the other, and the two sit slightly off-center from each other. The blue stones repeat the blue of the beads, so each butterfly and bead reads as part of one design. The round beads and the flat, open-worked wings give the strands two different shapes along one line. Silver tone and deep blue match most sets of keys and most bags.
A butterfly and an eye bead share each strand, and the two come from different places. The eye bead follows the nazar, which the Science Museum Group lists among the commonest evil eye amulets, found especially around the Mediterranean, Central Asia and the Middle East. In Wikipedia’s wording, the evil eye is a belief in a curse brought about by a malevolent glare, usually inspired by envy. These beads follow the nazar palette of dark blue, white, light blue and black, moving inward from the outer ring. In Turkey the eye bead is called nazar boncuğu, and Wikipedia describes it as most frequently seen there, in or on houses and vehicles or worn as beads. The same catalogue says such amulets are worn or carried, so a bead on a key ring is a modern way to do the same. The butterfly belongs to a separate set of associations. An article by Dr Oliver Tearle of Loughborough University says the butterfly stands for life, the life spirit and rebirth in many traditions, and often for transformation, and links the rebirth idea to the insect emerging from a chrysalis. The keychain pairs the two emblems on one ring, with a butterfly and an eye bead on each strand.
Practical Ways to Carry It
Clip it to your keys, a bag strap or a backpack zipper, where the two butterflies can swing at different heights. At about 4 1/2 inches in total it hangs a little below most key sets, so a bag or a hook near the door shows it off best, and a bag clip lets both butterflies show at once. A keychain with two butterflies and two eye beads suits a gift for someone starting a new chapter, such as a move, a new job or a graduation. At home it hangs from a mirror corner, a lamp pull or a cabinet knob, where the blue stones catch the light. For more pieces that carry the eye, see my evil eye collection.
How to Attach and Care for the Butterfly Keychain
Three steps cover checking the strands, choosing a spot and keeping the stones bright.
- Open Out the Strands
Hold the ring and let the two strands hang apart. Look at each butterfly where it joins its link, and check that the scalloped caps sit snugly at both ends of each eye bead. Run a finger along the wing edges to feel that every small blue stone is still in its setting.
- Choose Where It Swings
Thread the ring onto your keys or a bag clip. Both strands move freely, so a zipper pull or a strap gives the butterflies room to swing without catching on a pocket seam or a phone case. Lift the ring and let the strands fall into place to untangle them, and ease a butterfly free with two fingers if it catches.
- Dust and Store
Brush dust from the cut-out wings with a soft dry brush, then wipe the beads and caps with a dry cloth. A dry cotton swab reaches the dotted borders around the blue stones. Hang the keychain from a hook between uses, or lay it flat in a pouch with the two strands side by side.
The Tarot Fellow Standard
I stock this keychain as a pairing of two small butterflies and two eye beads on silver chain, sized to ride on a set of keys. The nazar is part of a living folk custom in Turkey, Greece and other places, and these beads are decorative references to it, never a replacement for how the people who keep it use it. If the eye bead is part of your family’s tradition, you already know how it’s given and carried. If it’s new to you, read about the custom from the communities who keep it before you decide what it means for you. The butterflies are a design pairing, and what they mean to you is yours to decide. For more to hang from a ring, see my key chain and ash chamber collection.
Frequently Asked Questions
Interesting Literature says butterflies symbolize life, the life spirit and rebirth in a range of traditions, a link it ties to the insect emerging from a chrysalis, and often metamorphosis too. In ancient Greek, psyche meant soul and could also mean butterfly, and Wikipedia notes that the myth's Psyche is often shown with butterfly wings. A Cambridge doctoral thesis dates the butterfly as a symbol of the soul in Greece to around the fourth century BCE.
A University of Kansas page gives several stories. In Turkish belief blue acts as a shield against evil and absorbs negativity. In the Middle East and the Mediterranean blue eyes are relatively rare, so the ancients believed that people with light eyes, particularly blue eyes, could curse with a single look. Wikipedia repeats both accounts and adds that blue disks with concentric circles are common talismans in West Asia and the Balkans.
Wikipedia lists Hesiod, Callimachus, Plato, Plutarch and other ancient Greek authors as referring to the evil eye, and says a 1978 study counted more than one hundred works that mention it. Greeks placed talismans in their houses, wore amulets and attached charms to animals. Today the Greek name for the eye amulet is mati, which means eye.
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