In researching Saturniidae, looking for the balance to the bombyx mori: wild vs. tamed, I found another moth: Automeris io. In a convoluted - fitting all my concepts - way, it's perfect. The most obvious being the io moth is a brightly colorful, vs. the colorless mulberry moth, and the catepillars have spines that release poison when touched, the exact opposite of the soft velvety harmless mulberry catepillars.
Io was the name of the prietess of Hera, a naiad who was seduced by Zeus and turned into a cow. According to Ovid, Hera had Io guarded by a hundred eyed monster. Through adventures of mythical level (haha) including a stay with Prometheus (the poor bloke who gave fire to humans and was condemned to having his liver eaten by a giant eagle every day), Io became human again, gave birth to Zeus' kids, married a king, and was an ancestress to Hercules.
Io is also the name of a Maori god - infinite, who is everything yet absolute nothingness, encompassing Positive and Negative, always existing without beginning or end, the double spiral... (http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~dominic/io-writn.html) The way I read Io religion, ignoring the Maori culture-specific terms, the belief is almost Tao Buddhist!
Finally, the moths themselves: the females have reddish brown wings and body parts while the males have yellow wings (with bluish eye spots) and body parts - Orange AND Lemon! Seriously, how perfect is that?
Funny how that works out.
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