Owl. Among the Kikuyu of Kenya, it was believed that owls were harbingers of death.
If one saw an owl or heard its hoot, someone was going to die. In general, owls are viewed as harbingers of bad luck, ill health, or death.
The belief is widespread even today. In Mongolia the owl is regarded as a benign omen.
In one story, Genghis Khan was hiding from enemies in a small coppice when an owl roosted in the tree above him, which caused his pursuers to think no man could be hidden there. In modern Japan, owls are regarded as lucky and are carried in the form of a talisman or charm.
The modern West generally associates owls with wisdom and vigilance. This link goes back at least as far as Ancient Greece, where Athens, noted for art and scholarship, and Athena, Athens' patron goddess and the goddess of wisdom, had the owl as a symbol. Marija Gimbutas traces veneration of the owl as a goddess, among other birds, to the culture of Old Europe, long pre-dating Indo-European cultures. T. F. Thiselton-Dyer in his Folk-lore of Shakespeare says that from the earliest period it has been considered a bird of ill-omen, and Pliny tells us how, on one occasion, even Rome itself underwent a lustration, because one of them strayed into the Capitol. He represents it also as a funereal bird, a monster of the night, the very abomination of human kind. Virgil describes its death-howl from the top of the tem
If one saw an owl or heard its hoot, someone was going to die. In general, owls are viewed as harbingers of bad luck, ill health, or death.
The belief is widespread even today. In Mongolia the owl is regarded as a benign omen.
In one story, Genghis Khan was hiding from enemies in a small coppice when an owl roosted in the tree above him, which caused his pursuers to think no man could be hidden there. In modern Japan, owls are regarded as lucky and are carried in the form of a talisman or charm.
The modern West generally associates owls with wisdom and vigilance. This link goes back at least as far as Ancient Greece, where Athens, noted for art and scholarship, and Athena, Athens' patron goddess and the goddess of wisdom, had the owl as a symbol. Marija Gimbutas traces veneration of the owl as a goddess, among other birds, to the culture of Old Europe, long pre-dating Indo-European cultures. T. F. Thiselton-Dyer in his Folk-lore of Shakespeare says that from the earliest period it has been considered a bird of ill-omen, and Pliny tells us how, on one occasion, even Rome itself underwent a lustration, because one of them strayed into the Capitol. He represents it also as a funereal bird, a monster of the night, the very abomination of human kind. Virgil describes its death-howl from the top of the tem
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