We often think of deities as being less tethered to the Earth than we are, so it only makes sense that many of them have winged creatures among their symbols and iconography.
I've written about birds in Minoan art before, but from a more general perspective, looking back toward the Minoans' ancestors in Neolithic Anatolia. But a lot happened after those people migrated down to Crete and began a new life there. So let's discover which birds - and other winged creatures - are associated with which deities in Modern Minoan Paganism.
Bluebirds are so famous they have given their name to the bluebird of happiness. The robin has been associated with the same signs of cheerfulness and joy. Seeing a bluebird or robin, you should immediately make a wish: it must be something unselfish, and not dependent on anyone else. As the bird flies off, set your wish ascending. Wish hard for steadily increasing happiness and release from strains. Whether a bluebird or a robin, if you see the bird again with a few days in exactly the same place, your wish will certainly be granted.
Birds abound in Minoan art: swallows (shown above in a detail from the Spring fresco from Akrotiri), doves, partridges, hoopoes, and other birds whose exact species we can't identify. I've looked before at the variety of our feathered friends who appear in the frescoes, statuary, and other Minoan art.
In Modern Minoan Paganism, we associate swallows with Therasia, doves with Rhea, and larks with Korydallos. But how did the Minoans view birds, through the lens of their culture and beliefs?
Last time, we looked at some of the land animals the Minoans depicted in their art: cattle, monkeys, lions, and so on. Today, we're going to explore the Minoans' images of animals of the sky, the domain of our Sun goddess Therasia - so, essentially, birds, though I think bees also count.
Sometimes it's easy to tell which type of bird is being shown. For instance, that's a swallow flying by some lilies in the image at the top, which is a segment of the Spring fresco from Akrotiri. Here's the whole thing, with quite a few swallows:
These quarantine times give us medievalists plenty of parallels to draw: times of plague and difficulties of travel -- but the effects are the same on us. Normally I would be with my family in Scotland by this time. There I would be hearing the screams of the gulls, the occasional melodic outburst of a blackbird and the friendly croaks of my beloved magpies.
Now I lie awake in the (earlier every day) dawn light listening to a very different set of birds: sparrows galore, North American robins -- enormous athletic birds so different from the jolly European kind -- finches, wrens, catbirds, four kinds of woodpeckers including the giant pileated woodpecker whose laugh echoes often. The crows come by to eat the corn. The bluejays tend to come in a pack and chatter loudly to one another. In the morning and at dusk you can hear the turkeys gobble.
According to the internet, ‘one swallow does not a summer make’ is a quote that can be attributed to Aristotle. The connection between summer and swallows is clearly a longstanding one. British swallows winter in South Africa. Or, arguably, South African swallows come to the UK to breed. There are many other birds whose migration to the UK at this time of year is part of the coming of summer.
Swifts, swallows and house martins aren’t always easy to tell apart in flight, and at twilight when they hunt for insects, telling them apart from bats can also be tricky. It’s the way the hunter is obliged to follow their prey through the air that means insect eating birds and bats are similar. There’s a rather (accidentally) amusing poem by D.H. Lawrence in which the poet is rather upset that his birds turn out to be bats. You can read that here - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44574/bat
Archer
Thanks as always Jamie! Very interesting about stoicism and Buddhism and Marcus Aurelius. (You know, whenever I look up Spock's philosophy, stoicism c...
Anthony Gresham
I know that one of Odin's titles was Lord of the Spear, and that he hung himself on Yggdrasil for 9 days. By any chance was Kveldulf dedicated to Odi...
