Seeing a ladybug
A ladybug on your sleeve is one of the best-loved small omens, and children across Europe had rhymes for it. Its spots, though, point to its species rather than any fortune, a fitting nudge about the numbers you let define you.
What it may mean
People have always wanted the spots on a ladybug to say something: how old the beetle is, how good the harvest will be, whether a wish will come true. In fact the spots are mainly a clue to which of the many kinds of lady beetle you are holding. Seven spots, two spots, none at all: it is a name tag, not a forecast. That is a gentle way into a question about the numbers in your own life (your age, your salary, your step count, your followers) and how often you treat a label as if it were a verdict. A ladybug crawling over your knuckles does not care about any of them.
Depending on how you saw it
A ladybug with many spots, or none
The multicolored Asian lady beetle can have anywhere from no spots to about twenty, all within one species. The pattern varies; the beetle is the same. Has someone attached a number to you that tells them much less about you than they think?
Dozens gathering on a sunny wall in fall
On warm October afternoons, lady beetles collect on the sunny side of houses and slip into cracks to spend the winter together. They pick their shelter by the light on the wall. Where do you go when the season turns, and do you choose it, or just follow the warmth?
Climbing to your fingertip
A ladybug on your hand nearly always walks upward to the highest point, the tip of a finger, before it opens its wing covers and flies. It needs a little height to take off. Where could a small step up, a better starting point, help you before you try to launch something?
A yellow smudge on your fingers
Handled roughly, a ladybug releases a drop of bitter yellow fluid from its knees, an honest warning that it tastes bad. Its bright colors say the same thing ahead of time. Where would it help you to signal your limits as clearly, before anyone reaches for you?
Why it happens in nature
Ladybugs, or lady beetles, are beetles, and most kinds eat aphids and other soft-bodied insects, which is why gardeners welcome them. The number of spots helps identify the species and does not change with age. In fall the multicolored Asian lady beetle gathers on sunny walls and moves indoors to spend the winter.
What folk beliefs say
Sweden
In Sweden, if the black spots on a ladybug's wing covers numbered more than seven, it was a sign of famine; fewer than seven promised a good harvest.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 655. View the page
Bohemia (Czech lands)
When Bohemian children found a ladybug, they set it on their hand and called out "Pinko linko, pinko linko, fly away into God's window!"
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 1 (1903), vol. 1, p. 38. View the page
Ottoman Turkey (Abdah district)
Children in the Abdah district of Asiatic Turkey, the 1903 collection reports, put a ladybug on a finger and chanted almost the same rhyme as children in Europe and America: "Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home."
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 1 (1903), vol. 1, p. 38. View the page
To reflect on
Which number in your life have you been treating as a verdict instead of a label?