Bird Magic: Wisdom of the Ancient Goddess for Pagans & Wiccans - Sandra Kynes 2016
Introduction
The ancient goddess-worshipping cultures of Europe have fascinated me for a long time, and I have spent more than twenty years researching them because they speak to the root of my beliefs as a Pagan. Throughout the years, the intention of my reading and research has been to personalize the essence of the Great Goddess for my own spiritual practice. Books about the Goddess by archaeologist and professor Marija Gimbutas sparked a major shift in how many of us regard the Divine. Even though scholars debate about the civilization of Old Europe as portrayed by Gimbutas, her work is far from romantic mysticism. She brought to light the fact that civilization started long before the time of the Greeks and the Egyptians, and that it was centered on the concept of a Great Mother Goddess.
Part of this book actually started out as a workshop that I presented in the late 1990s that was based on the work of Gimbutas. Although I had wanted to turn the workshop material into a book then, I felt something was missing. I had a sense that there was a basic, important connection that I had not made.
Over the years, the idea of putting my research into a book kept calling me back. As I continued to look at the material I had collected, the consistent note that resonated with me was the Bird Goddess. At first I thought that this was a reflection of my backyard birding and connecting with the natural world at our local Audubon preserves. But then about five years ago I went back to the works of Marija Gimbutas, Riane Eisler, Merlin Stone, and others who have influenced me, and I found what I had been missing. It was the Bird Goddess after all.
Many creatures served as symbols of the Great Goddess, but one of the earliest and most pervasive was the bird. For a span of almost twenty-five thousand years, the Divine was portrayed as a woman/bird fusion, the Bird Goddess.1 According to author and artist Buffie Johnson, “Avian symbolism is found all over the world” and the bird was “sacred above all other creatures” to goddess worshippers.2
Animals depicted with the Great Goddess were not just her totems; they embodied her and represented her power. Of course, the other highly important creature associated with the Great Goddess was the snake. However, while religious zealots bent on extinguishing goddess worship made the snake into something abhorrent, the power of the bird was too strong and appealing. These creatures of the air were adopted as representatives, messengers, and the ultimate emblem of the Divine. Associating birds with spirit is something that people of many faiths have done for millennia.
The Great Goddess was and is considered to be immanent, her presence felt everywhere: sky, earth, and sea. Her most fundamental and long-standing icon, birds, are everywhere, too. They exist in every type of ecosystem and have been present through all of the civilizations that have come and gone. For thousands of years birds have been a sign of freedom, the immortal soul, messengers of gods and goddesses, and shaman’s helpers. Although the emblematic roles of birds have evolved over time, they have been consistently associated with spirit and divinity.
We humans have a special affinity with birds. Like us they are bipeds, they sing, they can be showy, and they build homes. While birds are so common in our lives, they remain mysterious. They are highly visible but elusive. Birds live amongst us and do not hide from us, yet they easily avoid capture. We may feel close to them because we can observe most of their activities, yet they remain wild. They are familiar but still hold an air of mystery because they have mastered the air while we must rely on machines to lift us from the bonds of Earth. Even today when we understand and can explain a great deal about the natural world, birds hold enough mystique to inspire us.
My purpose in finally writing this book is twofold. First, I want to share the wonder and meaning I find between the Great Goddess and birds. After all, the Bird Goddess was the form by which she was known for so many millennia. My second reason is that birds provide us with a simple yet powerful way to stay in tune with the natural world. We spend so much time indoors or in cars that we lose the intimate connection with nature and seasonal markers. Birds help us maintain this connection. In addition, they can help us access different levels of energy and awareness no matter where we are, even in the concrete canyons of Manhattan.
I chose the quote from Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions to begin this book because it sums up three major aspects of the Goddess as highlighted by Gimbutas. While the concept of maiden, mother, crone is a nice way to relate the Goddess to a woman’s life stages (or son, father, sage for men), it does not encompass the profound and interwoven mysteries of life, death, and spirituality.
All things come from her, return to her, and are her. “Come from her” is the life-giving/nurturing aspect of the mother, the creatrix. “Return to her” is the death-wielder/regeneratrix aspect. “Are her” is the aspect that Gimbutas referred to as transformation, energy, and unfolding. To me, in this aspect she is transformer and eternal spirit. These three interwoven aspects of the Goddess encompass the profound mysteries of life, death, and spirit and create the dynamic energy of cyclical time that turns the great wheel of life.
In this book, we will explore the Great Goddess through these aspects and discover how closely birds are associated with them. We will also see how her association with birds echoed through millennia to later goddesses. We will learn how birds can deepen our celebrations of nature’s cycles as we move through the wheel of the year. We will also learn about some of the spiritual symbols used by the people of Old Europe, which Gimbutas called “an alphabet of the metaphysical.” 3 We will discover the deeper meanings of these symbols and how to incorporate them into our magic, rituals, and spiritual paths.
This book is divided into two parts. The first I have called the Practices. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 provide historical information about the Bird Goddess and about birds in religion, shamanism, and divination. Chapter 3, Chapter 5, and Chapter 7 each focus on an aspect of the Great Goddess as life-giver/nurturer, death-wielder/regeneratrix, and transformer/eternal spirit. Each of these chapters is followed by an associated one containing practices, activities, and a ritual to help you connect with these aspects. Chapter 8 and Chapter 9 present additional practices to connect with the energy and power of birds.
Part Two is called the Profiles and includes history, myths, folklore, and magical information as well as how to connect with the energy of more than one hundred species of birds. Also included is a physical description for identifying these birds and information on where to find them.
Working with birds helps us awaken intuition and psychic abilities, and it aids in tapping into the subtle energies around us. Birds help strengthen our connection with the natural world and bring us closer to the Goddess. And now, let us start with a flight back in time to begin our journey to the Bird Goddess.
1. Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image (New York: Penguin Putnam, 1993), 58.
2. Buffie Johnson, Lady of the Beasts: The Goddess and Her Sacred Animals (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1994), 8.
3. Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess (San Francisco: HarperSanFancisco, 1991), xv.