BIRDS
Manabu
Waida, "Birds."
In: The Encyclopaedia of Religion, Second Edition, vol.
2. New
York, 1987, pp. 947 -949..

BIRDS are primarily the epiphanies of the
gods and spirits, but they also appear as messengers of the heavenly divine
beings. They announce new situations in advance and serve as guides. Moreover,
birds symbolize man’s soul or spirit as it is released from the body in ecstasy
or in death; the bird is a symbol of absolute freedom and transcendence of the
soul from the body, of the spiritual from the earthly. Hence, a bird is often
associated with divinity, immortality, power, victory, and royalty.
Birds and bird-masked figures are clearly
attested as early as the Palaeolithic period. In the cave painting at Lascaux in
the Dordogne, dating from approximately 15,000 BCE, a bird-masked person is
depicted as falling backward before a bison confronting him. At his feet lies
his spear-thrower, and the spear that he has discharged has pierced the bison’s
body. Quite close to them is a bird perched on a pole. Most scholars interpret
this scene as depicting a hunting tragedy: wearing a bird mask, the hunter has
been killed by the bison. The mask may have been used as a device to enable the
hunter to approach his prey without being noticed. The bird on a pole may
represent the soul of the dead man or the totem and mythical ancestor of the
tribe to which he belongs. For other scholars, the scene presents the shamanic
trance. The man wearing a bird mask is a shaman; he lies unconscious while his
soul has departed for the ecstatic journey to the world beyond. A companion on
this spiritual journey is his helping spirit, here symbolized by the bird on a
pole. The bison is possibly a sacrificial animal.
Although it is still uncertain whether
shamanism originated in the Palaeolithic period, birds undoubtedly occupy a very
important place in the spiritual world of hunters generally and of northern
Eurasia in particular, where shamanism has been a dominant magico-religious
force. In fact, the shaman of Inner Asia and Siberia receives help from the
spirits of wild animals and birds when undertaking an ecstatic journey. Bird
spirits (especially those of geese, eagles, owls, and crows) descend from
heaven and enter the shaman’s body to inspire him as he beats his drum, wearing
the shamanic costume of the bird type. Otherwise, they move into his drum or
sit on his shamanic costume. This is precisely when shamanic ecstasy occurs;
the shaman is transformed into a spiritual being, a bird in his inner
experience. He moves, sings, and flies like a bird; his soul leaves the body
and rises toward the heavens, accompanied by bird spirits. This motif of the ascending
bird spirit has been revalorized by Daoism on a new spiritual plane: in the Zhuangzi,
dating from the third century BCE, for example, a huge bird named Peng appears as
the symbol of the soaring spirit that enjoys absolute freedom and is
emancipated from mundane values and concerns. When a shaman dies among the
Yakuts, the Tunguz, and the Dolgans, it is customary to erect on his tomb poles
or sticks with a wooden bird at each tip. The bird symbolizes the soul of the
departed shaman.
Birds appear in the myths of creation that centre
on the theme of the cosmogonic dive or the earth diver. In the beginning, when
only the waters exist, aquatic birds (ducks, swans, geese, or swallows) dive to
the bottom of the primeval ocean to fetch a particle of soil. Birds dive
sometimes by God’s order and sometimes by their own initiative, but in some
variants God transforms himself into a bird and dives. This motif of the diving
bird, common among such Altaic peoples as the Buriats and the Yakuts, is also
found among the Russians and such Uralic peoples as the Samoyeds, the Mansi,
the Yenisei, and the Mari. Earth divers also appear in a certain number of
Indian cosmogonic myths of North America. The result of the courageous dive is
always the same: a small particle of soil that has been brought up grows miraculously
until it becomes the world as it is today. In Finnish and Estonian cosmogonic
myths, God flies down as a bird onto the primeval ocean and lays on it the
cosmic eggs from which the world emerges. This motif is also found in Indonesia
and Polynesia.
Myths of kingship in northern Eurasia are
often imbued with the symbolism of birds. According to the Mongolians, a
golden-winged eagle gave them the yasa,
or basic rules of life on the steppes, and helped them to establish the
foundation of the Mongol empire by installing Chinggis Khan on the royal
throne. Japanese myths tell how a crow (or raven) and a golden kite flew down
as messengers of the heavenly gods and served Jimmu, the first mythical emperor
of Japan, as guides in his march through the mountains to Yamato, where he
established his imperial dynasty. The Hungarians have the tradition that the
Magyars were guided by a giant turul
(falcon, eagle, or hawk) into the land where Árpád founded
the Hungarian nation. The turul
is known as the mythical ancestor of the Árpáds.
These myths of creation and kingship reveal
the prominent role played by birds in the formation of the cosmic order. As an
epiphany of a god, demiurge, or mythical ancestor, a bird appears in the
beginning of the world, and its appearance serves as an announcement of the
creation of the universe, of the alteration of the cosmic structure, or of the founding
of a people, a dynasty, or a nation. The eagle in Siberia, as well as the raven
and thunderbird in North America, is especially invested with the features of
the culture hero.
Often described as the creator of the world,
the bird is the Divine being who familiarizes the people with knowledge and techniques,
endows them with important cultural inventions, and presents them with the
rules of life and social institutions. In the ancient Near East and the
Greco-Mediterranean world, birds are charged with a complex of symbolic
meanings. Here, as elsewhere, the bird is essentially an epiphany of deity. In
the Near East the dove usually symbolizes the goddess of fertility by whatever
name she is known, and in Greece it is especially an epiphany of Aphrodite, the
goddess of love. The eagle is a manifestation of the solar deity, as is clearly
illustrated by the winged sun disks of Mesopotamia and later of Persia. The
eagle is often represented as engaged in fighting with the snake or dragon.
This archaic motif, attested in the Near East, India, and the southern Pacific,
shows the tension that exists between the celestial solar principle and that of
the maternal chthonic forces, but it also reveals man’s inextinguishable
aspiration for universal oneness or wholeness, which can be achieved by the
cooperation and synthesis of conflicting powers.
The bird, and particularly the dove, often
symbolizes love as an attribute of the goddess of fertility. In the cults of Dumuzi
and Adonis, the goddess appears as a mother who laments over her son’s
captivity in the underworld and descends there to rescue him, to raise him from
the dead. It is possible that the dove’s moaning contributed to making it the
special symbol of the goddess of love in the ancient Near East. In Greece the
dove is an epiphany of divinity, but divinity in its amorous aspect, as can be
seen from the dove’s association with Aphrodite. In the Greco-Mediterranean world
the dove has never lost this erotic connotation.
The eagle, the king of birds, is inseparably
associated with royalty as well as with the solar deity. Indeed, royalty has
never severed its symbolic ties with the sun and the eagle. In the Near East
certain coins depict Hellenistic kings wearing a tiara with a pair of eagles on
it facing the sun between them. In utilizing these symbols, the kings declare
that they are divine by nature or deified. The divinity of the Roman emperor is
expressed through the symbolism of Sol Invictus (“the invincible sun”) and the
eagle.
More generally, birds in the ancient Near
East also signify the immortal souls of the dead. This celebrated image seems
to have survived in Islam, where it is believed that the souls of the dead will
remain as birds until the Day of Judgment. In Greece, images of the dove on
graves may symbolize the soul of the departed, the divinity coming to help the
departed, or the soul now in divine form. In Syria, the eagle depicted on tombs
is the psychopomp, who leads the soul of the deceased to heaven. On Egyptian
tombs the soul of the dead is represented as an androcephalic bird. However, soul
birds (hawks, ducks, or geese) in Egypt have more than one function, usually in
connection with the mummy. Certainly they are immortal souls, but they also
symbolize divine presence and protection; birds bring all sorts of nourishment to
the corpse to revive it. Thus in Egypt as elsewhere, the bird is both the soul
of the departed and the divinity, regardless of what bird is depicted. The
peacock, which in the Greco-Roman world may have symbolized man’s hope for
immortality, is of Indian origin. In Buddhism not only the peacock but also the
owl and many other birds appear as epiphanies of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas,
preaching the message of enlightenment and compassion. The bodhisattva Mayurasana,
for example, is usually portrayed riding on a peacock. In Judaism the dove and
the eagle, the two most important birds, seem to have kept much the same
symbolic values intact although they have been given specific Jewish colourings.
The dove depicted on Jewish tombstones, in the wall paintings of Jewish
catacombs, and on the ceilings of synagogues signifies Israel the beloved of
God, the individual Israelite, or the salvation and immortality given to the
faithful by God. In rabbinic tradition, too, the dove symbolizes not only the
soul departing at death, but especially Israel the beloved. Moreover, the dove
serves as the psychopomp. The eagle is equally multivalent; it is an epiphany
of God of the power of God, but it is symbolic also of man’s hope for eternal life
and immortality.
The Christian symbolism of the dove and the
eagle has also undergone a process of revalorization. The dove signifies the
Holy Spirit in the baptism of Jesus, but is also becomes the erotic and
impregnating force in the Annunciation. The motif of soul birds is well
attested in early Christian literature and iconography. The soul becomes a dove
at baptism; it identifies thereby with the Holy Spirit, the dove of Jesus’ baptism.
As a dove, the soul of the departed becomes immortal, soaring up to heaven at
death, especially at martyrdom.
The eagle as a Christian symbol is bound up
with a complex of ideas and images. For early Christians the eagle was symbolic
of John the Evangelist because at the beginning of his gospel it is implied
that John has risen to the heights of the genealogy of the Logos. But the eagle
also symbolizes Jesus Christ himself, and it is believed that as an eagle
Christ has accompanied John on his flight in quest of visions. Moreover, the
eagle represents the Logos itself, just as in Judaism it signifies God or his
power. Finally, the eagle depicted on Christian sarcophagi is inseparably
associated with the hope for eternal life, light, and resurrection; it serves
as the escort of the souls of departed Christians into immortal life with God.
In Islamic literature and folklore, the
symbolism of birds abounds. Farıd al-Dın ‘Attar’s famous epic Mantiq al-tayr (Conversation
of the birds) uses the imagery of birds as human souls that journey through the
seven valleys and, at the end of the road, discover their identity with the
Simurgh, the divine bird that “has a name but no body,” a perfectly spiritual
being. The Turkish saying “Can ku¸su uçtu” (“His soul bird has flown away”),
uttered when someone dies, expresses the same concept. And throughout Persian
and Persianate poetry and literature, one finds repeatedly the image of the
nightingale (bulbul) in
love with the radiant rose (gul),
representing the soul longing for divine beauty.
Birds are not yet deprived of symbolic
meanings. Dreams of flying birds still haunt us. In his masterpiece Demian, Hermann Hesse
has given new life to bird symbolism when he speaks of the “bird struggling out
of the egg.” Modern man’s aspiration for freedom and transcendence has also been
admirably expressed by the sculptor Constantin Brancusi through images of
birds.
SEE ALSO Cocks;
Eagles and Hawks; Owls; Swans.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The
supreme importance of ornithomorphic symbolism and shamanism in the religious
life of Paleolithic hunters has been stressed by Horst Kirchner in his article
“Ein archäologischer
Beitrag
zur Urgeschichte des Schamanismus,” Anthropos
47 (1952): 244–286. On the shaman’s ecstasy and his
transformation into a bird, there is much useful material in Mircea Eliade’s Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
(New York, 1964). The bird type of the shamanic costume is
illustrated in two works by Uno Harva (formerly Holmberg): The Mythology of All Races,
vol. 4, Finno-Ugric, Siberian (Boston,
1927), and Die religiosen
Vorstellungen der altaischen
Volker (Helsinki,
1938). On the cosmogonic myths of the earth-diver type in which birds play a
prominent role, see Mircea Eliade’s “The Devil and God,” in his Zalmoxis, the Vanishing God: Comparative
Studies in the Religions and Folklore of Dacia and Eastern Europe (Chicago,
1972), pp. 76–130. On birds and kingship in Inner Asia and North Asia, see my
article “Birds in the Mythology of Sacred Kingship,” East and West,
n.s. 28 (1978): 283–289. The symbolism of birds in Judaism has been admirably
studied by Erwin R. Goodenough in Pagan
Symbols in Judaism (New York, 1958), volume 8 of his Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period.
The best single book by a folklorist on folk beliefs and customs concerning
birds is Edward A. Armstrong’s The
Folklore of Birds: An Enquiry into the Origin and Distribution of Some
Magico-Religious Traditions, 2d ed., rev. & enl. (New York,
1970).
New
Sources
Estela
Núñez, Carmen. “Asai, a Mythic Personage of the Ayoreo.” Latin American Indian Literatures 5
(Fall 1981): 64–67.
Luxton,
Richard N. “Language of the Birds: Tales, Texts and Poems of the Interspecies
Communication.” Latin
American Indian Literatures Journal 3, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 61–62.
Seligmann,
Linda J. “The Chicken in Andean History and Myth: The Quechua Concept of
Wallpa.” Ethnohistory 34
(Spring 1987): 139–170.
Waida,
Manabu. “Problems of Central Asian and Siberian Shamanism.” Numen 30 (December
1983): 215–239.
MANABU
WAIDA (1987)