Bird Magic: Wisdom of the Ancient Goddess for Pagans & Wiccans - Sandra Kynes 2016

Birds and Divinity
The Practices

Birds exist everywhere and are so common that we take them for granted, often considering them part of the landscape. In ancient times, birds were regarded as mysterious creatures. They seemed to suddenly appear and disappear into the clouds as though they held the power of the sky. Birds were recognized as radically different from other creatures. They could go where humans could not, travel to unknown regions, return with the morning sun, or make their presence known when darkness fell. In addition, the migrations of some birds gave rise to their reputation as heralds of particular seasons and keepers of the rhythms of nature.

In the Beginning

The Bird Goddess is believed to be the earliest and best-documented deity. During the Paleolithic period (Old Stone Age), carved figurines and cave paintings began to appear in a vast area that stretched from the Pyrenees of France to Lake Baikal in Siberia, just north of Mongolia. A commonality of imagery existed throughout this area that stretched through seven modern time zones. Figurines of the Goddess were carved from stone, bone, and ivory, and they were small enough that people could take them along on their seasonal journeys for hunting and gathering food.

One such figurine, known as the Lespugue goddess, was found on a hearth stone in a cave in France. Carved of mammoth ivory and only about six inches tall, she has a birdlike head, long neck, and upper arms that appear winglike. Her breasts, thighs, and buttocks are exaggerated and egg-shaped. Other similar figurines and cave paintings depict women with egg-shaped buttocks or buttocks that were exceedingly rounded as though holding an egg. This human/avian fusion of the Bird Goddess as creatrix represented the source of life, which contained the cosmic/world egg. Millennia later, the egg would be a central component in creation myths worldwide.

Archaeological evidence shows that the caves of southern France were occupied for about twenty thousand years.⁴ While this was not always continuous, as people needed to follow their food sources, the caves were used year after year. For these people, the caves were sanctuaries of the Goddess in two ways: as a safe place in which to live and as a sacred site for ritual and worship. While living quarters were usually situated just inside a cave, rituals took place in the deeper caverns, often a mile or two from the entrance. Although a few are well known, such as Lascaux and Chauvet, more than one hundred painted caves have been discovered. As the climate warmed and people moved out of caves, their use for ritual often continued.

Beginning in approximately 10,000 BCE, Neolithic (New Stone Age) culture blossomed in isolated centers at different times in eastern Europe, southern Turkey, Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and India.⁵ This change from Paleolithic culture was a gradual process that took several thousand years. The hallmark that distinguished this change was the development of agriculture and settled life; no longer did people have to follow food sources. This big revolution is believed to have also occurred in people’s minds. Being settled meant that people had a more controlling hand in directing their lives. However, they did not lose touch with the Goddess. If anything, agriculture tied them more intimately to the cycles of nature and to her.

This more stable life enabled the development of crafts such as spinning, weaving, cloth dyeing, metallurgy, and pottery. These crafts reflected people’s connection with the Goddess. And just as in the Paleolithic era, when commonalities stretched across a large area, so too did Neolithic images and symbols that would have been recognized and understood by people from Europe to India. This imagery revealed that a single deity—the Bird Goddess—presided over life, death, and rebirth, providing a cyclical continuity to their spirituality.

The civilization that Marija Gimbutas referred to as Old Europe existed for approximately four thousand years and encompassed an area that stretched roughly from Vienna to Kiev, through Central Europe, the Balkans and Greece, southern Italy, Sicily, Malta, Crete, and the Aegean islands.⁶ Occupying the western area of Turkey, the Anatolian region had a distinctive culture of its own, but like Old Europe it was centered on a Mother Goddess. In both Old Europe and Anatolia, people used spiritual symbols and had “a religion focused on the wheel of life and its cyclical turning.” ⁷ The Goddess was also the spiritual focus of the slightly later megalithic culture of western Europe and the British Isles where great stone tombs and mounds were constructed to represent the womb of the Goddess.

Figure 1.1: Map of Old Europe

From the beginning of pottery making, figurines were part of the creative inventory, and approximately thirty thousand of them have been excavated from about three thousand Neolithic sites.⁸ Many of them depict the Bird Goddess as a woman/bird fusion with a beak or ducklike bill. In addition, some of these figurines had small holes in the shoulders where feathers may have been inserted. These and other types of pottery were incised or painted with symbols associated with the Bird Goddess.

In addition to typical pottery, clay temple models and miniature shrines have been found, and they are thought to have served as votive gifts. Marked with symbols of the Bird Goddess, many were discovered near altars and in temple courtyards. Some resembled human dwellings and were topped with a bird’s head, while others were entirely shaped like birds.

Dating to around 4000 BCE, Egyptian figurines that have come to be known as Nile goddesses had beaked faces and upraised arms suggesting flight.⁹ In later times, Isis carried some of the power of the Bird Goddess, and she was often portrayed with wings on her upraised arms. In addition, she was said to have the ability to turn into a bird. Isis was one of the great mother goddesses of Egypt who also had the power of regeneration. According to legend, it was in the form of a bird that she breathed life into her dead husband Osiris.

The Sumerian Inanna was another goddess who retained some of the Bird Goddess’s powers. As Queen of Heaven and Earth she was associated with the creatures of the sky.

The Bird Goddess was important to the Minoans of Crete and Mycenaeans of Greece. In both of these civilizations, the Goddess’s wings evolved into upraised arms like the Nile goddess, a gesture that we will explore in the next chapter. On Crete, the Goddess continued to hold the power of life, death, and regeneration. Because the dove was one of her principal emblems, clay doves found in many caves in Europe are believed to have been offerings. In the building complex at Knossos, doves atop pillars are believed to have represented the presence of the Goddess.

As we have seen, vestiges of the Bird Goddess can be found in later goddesses. However, where the Bird Goddess had offered continuity in the cycle of life, death, and regeneration, these aspects became separated into different deities. Without the promise of rebirth, death became a dark and fearsome aspect. Although not directly associated with birds, Lilith was depicted with wings and was greatly feared. Her roots go back to Mesopotamia, where she was considered a demon whose name meant “air.” In Hebrew her name meant “night,” which is when she was said to bring death.¹⁰ Despite the fear of night-flying creatures, the owl was later allied with the Greek Athena and Roman Minerva. While these goddesses were associated with war, they also carried the owl’s attributes of protection and wisdom.

Due to outside cultural upheaval and invasion, the concept of deity changed radically in Old Europe and Anatolia. As the Goddess’s power was compartmentalized and diminished, male deities took center stage. Although the snake, the Goddess’s other important creature, was vilified and subverted, the mystery and power of the bird was too great to discard and so it was usurped as a symbol of many gods.

The New Gods and Birds

Despite the Goddess’s title of Queen of Heaven throughout the Middle East, a major shift occurred. The Sumerian word for divinity was also the name of their sky god Anu, who for a while became the supreme god of the Babylonians.¹¹ Although the very early Greek goddess Gaia held the power of the Great Mother, later mythology provided her with a husband, Ouranos. Gaia personified the earth while Ouranos held the power of the sky. And thus, the sky gods took over the symbolism and power of the mightiest birds.

Hindu, Sumerian, and Egyptian sky gods became associated with high-flying birds such as hawks, eagles, and vultures. These birds were considered exceptional because they seemed able to approach the sun, which was now considered the source of life instead of the life-giving moisture of the Goddess. In turn, the sun itself also became associated with birds. In India, the sun was often depicted as a large bird, usually an eagle or swan. The Egyptians portrayed it as a winged disc. In addition to their association with the sun, flying high in the sky where weather originated linked these birds with the power to control these formidable forces.

The attribute of mighty, weather-ruling power was adopted for gods of many pantheons. Zeus, Thor, and others were associated with storms, thunder, and lightning. The Babylonian storm god Zu was represented as a large bird. The Hindu Garuda, a wind deity in the form of an eagle, was believed to stoke the power of storms by flapping his wings.

Also in India, the fire god Agni was called the Eagle of the Sky, and the god Indra was said to take the form of an eagle. Birds served the Indian gods in various capacities. The eagle deity Garuda served as a vehicle for Vishnu, and a swan or goose carried Brahma. In Egypt, the falcon became a symbol of high power as expressed in the gods Horus and Ra, who were depicted as having falcon heads.

While Aquila the eagle carried Zeus’s thunderbolts, the wily god used the guise of a swan or a cuckoo for seduction. The Celtic solar god Lugh was also associated with the eagle as well as the raven and crow. The Hebrews employed bird imagery and noted that Yahweh’s presence was known by the sound of wings. This was carried over to the Holy Spirit of Christianity, which is represented as a dove.

Many of these gods were associated with high places, especially mountaintops. These were places that only birds could easily transverse, giving them the role of emissaries of gods. Myths about birds serving as messengers come from cultures around the world. However, the avian highway was a two-way thoroughfare: birds brought messages and blessings from on high and were believed to carry human wishes and prayers to deities. In addition to their association with deities, birds were integral to a number of metaphysical and spiritual practices, which we shall explore in the next chapter.

4. Baring and Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess, 16.

5. Ibid., 47.

6 . Marija Gimbutas, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), 16.

7 . Marija Gimbutas, The Living Goddess (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), 3.

8 . Baring and Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess, 54.

9. Cassandra Eason, Fabulous Creatures, Mythical Monsters, and Animal Power Symbols: A Handbook (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008), 52.

10. Geoffrey W. Dennis, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2007), 67.

11. Anthony Stevens, Ariadne’s Clue: A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 178.