The Symbolism of the Owl and the Constellation Noctua
Introduction
Why is it that the Owl in Asia and the East
is regarded as symbolically favourable.
But that in the West, its Constellation Noctua
has been removed from the sky?
And mystics like William Blake aligned it with Asses,
cat headed bats and snakes in his painting
The Night of Enitharmon's Joy
The Celtic mysteries included a Goddess [Blodewedd]
whose familiar was the owl, and she was benign.
Blodewedd
Welsh Virgin Goddess of Spring, totem the owl,
bird of wisdom and lunar mysteries.
The Ninefold Goddess of the western isles of Paradise
Arianrhod
So why the change that William Blake incorporated,
where his owl is described as "the mournful owl
of false understanding"?
And one of the clues as to why can be found in a quote
by A. A. Milne
about his character of the Owl in his children’s books:
Owl hasn’t exactly got Brain, but he knows things.
The "Eastern" symbolism of the Owl - Hindu thought
The Owl, or the Ulooka in Sanskrit,
is Devi Lakshmi's vahana [mount or familiar].
and there is a deep spiritual significance
as to why this creature is her mount.
The owl, in the Bhagavad Gita is likened to an enlightened person
and especially one who remains steadfast
in the face of either adversity or joy.
The owl has a stoical attitude to life engendered by true wisdom.
The difference is that true wisdom is recognised
as the harnessing of spiritual wisdom,
not book learning or the product of memory.
In Hindu symbolic thought a "night owl"
is thus not one who pores over books,
but one who seeks the spiritual wealth of the Night
and it is part of the sadhu’s and spiritual seekers journey.
The "Eastern" symbolism of the Owl - the Ninja
Ninja is the on'yomi (Early Middle Chinese-influenced)
reading of the two kanji "".
In the native kun'yomi reading, it is pronounced shinobi.
The word shinobi means "to steal away; to hide"
but this has nothing to do with the martial arts.
In its purest form ninja were accomplished seers
- monomi ("one who sees"), and the "owls" were the wisest.
Dr Masaaki Hatsumi - Essence of Ninjutsu
You will be laughed at by owls unless you know these things ...
when you walk through the dark world of desires,
owls can be your good guides.
A true Ninja can see through everything in the world of desires.
As such in parts of the world where spirituality never died and never crushed,
an Owl was indeed a "wise old bird" - a guide.
The Constellation Noctua
Noctua (Latin: owl) was once a constellation near the tail of Hydra
in the southern celestial hemisphere, but it is no longer recognized.
It was introduced by Alexander Jamieson in his 1822 work,
A Celestial Atlas,
and it appeared in a derived collection of illustrated cards,
Urania's Mirror.
Jamieson - an amateur astronomer - said he thought it was strange
that no such bird had previously been placed among the constellations
"considering the frequency it is met with on all Egyptian monuments".
He posed it side-on but with its head facing the onlooker
as though in a hieroglyph.
But no sooner had it appeared when it was removed
by the French professional astronomer Pierre Charles Le Monnier
who introduced the constellation Rodrigues Solitaire.
The trouble was that the picture he used was not of the Solitaire,
which by then had gone extinct, because it was flightless.
The image was actually that of a rock thrush
which had been classified in the genus Turdus.
And thus we now have a constellation named Turdus Solitarius,
which seems somehow rather apt and is symbolically...
Well ... nothing.
It should be noted that Le Monnier was regarded
as a most distinguished scientist, but ...
Encyclopaedia Britannica
His temper was irritable, and his hasty utterances exposed him
to retorts which he did not readily forgive.
Against Lalande, owing to some trifling pique, he closed his doors
"during an entire revolution of the moon's nodes".
William Blake and the defeat of the spiritual
So why did William Blake incorporate a mournful owl in his painting
and why did A. A. Milne make fun of his Owl character
with his misspelled notices, and half-truths?
Because Owl had lost the spiritual connection
and openness to Wisdom and inspiration,
whereas Pooh and Piglet had that connection all the time
because they were honest, innocent, loving and humble.
"Supposing a tree fell down Pooh,
when we were underneath it?" said Piglet.
"Supposing it didn't" said Pooh after careful thought.
Owl had become a fact collecting, semi book learning,
intellectual, unable to receive wisdom, unable to see truths
because his intellect and ego blocked them.
A. A. Milne
"Owl licked the end of his pencil, and wondered how to spell "birthday".
"Can you read, Pooh?" he asked a little anxiously.
"He wrote ... HIPY HAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY.
"It's a nice long one," said Pooh, very much impressed by it."
And although A. A. Milne managed to capture the pomposity
and arrogance that such a person has
Blake also understood the consequences and captured them perfectly
in the painting The Night of Enitharmon's Joy.
Enitharmon represents the "feminine" and thus the key
to spiritual connection, when she has been spurned
By ignoring spirituality, and the role of divine inspiration,
by declaring spirituality "dead",
we are given the "wisdom" of an ass and not the owl.
In Blake’s mythology Enitharmon declared that women will rule the world
and would do so by giving Women Pride instead of Humility
and by dominating men via sexual desire, frustration,
sexual repression and eventually war.
War, misery and revolution
are the ultimate result of sexual repression.
And this can be seen in the world wars
and the war between the sexes - constant strife and arguments.
Love is supposed to lead one to a higher state,
but the perversion of sexuality - shown in Blake's picture
by the naked couple hiding - leads to destruction.
As such his painting is depicting
far more than just a shell shocked owl.
He is trying to warn us that by denying the existence of spirit
and the role it plays in all real wisdom,
we open the door to its perversion,
women play the roles of men to survive.
And the masculine intellect, full of its own "rightness"
finds no outlet for its sexual desires,
as women are now competing with men
- head on.
Science is then seen as dogged determined materialism [the lion]
directly combatting spirituality [the unicorn]
Hermann Northrop Frye - Fearful Symmetry
The Female Will is born from an object of affection
refusing to give up its independence,
and the concept represents what prohibits
an individual from being able to have true vision.
Hecate
There are some who believe the woman in Blake’s picture is Hecate.
But this is not true.
The real Hecate was a triple goddess based on the Hindu Trimurti
- the great triad of Hindu gods comprising Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva.
In the Trimurti, the three most important functions
or attributes of Brahman are shown,
to help Hindus understand the true nature of God
and the universe - creator, sustainer and destroyer.
But Blake's goddess has only one face,
and that face is turned towards the snake of the tree of knowledge
and her books lay before her.
Hecate was a pre-Olympian goddess.
The first literature mentioning Hecate is the Theogony
(c. 700 BCE) by Hesiod.
And he has nothing but praise for her:
And [Asteria] conceived and bore Hecate
whom Zeus the son of Cronos honoured above all.
He gave her splendid gifts,
to have a share of the earth and the unfruitful sea.
She received honour also in starry heaven,
and is honoured exceedingly by the deathless gods.
The son of Cronos did her no wrong nor took anything away
of all that was her portion among the former Titan gods:
but she holds, as the division was at the first from the beginning,
privilege both in earth, and in heaven, and in sea.
The special position given to Hecate by Zeus
is upheld throughout her history by depictions found on coins.
In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (composed c. 600 BCE),
Hecate is called "tender-hearted", when she assisted Demeter
with her search for Persephone following her abduction by Hades.
Because of this association,
Hecate was one of the chief goddesses of the Eleusinian Mysteries,
and there was a temple dedicated to her
near the main sanctuary at Eleusis.
Hecate was also greatly revered in Byzantium.
The Byzantines dedicated a statue to her as the "lamp carrier".
Hecate is the primary feminine figure in the Chaldean Oracles
(2nd - 3rd century CE),
where she is associated in fragment 194 with a strophalos.
And it may be we have missed something very key here -
as Ancient Greek (stróphalos),
strophalos (plural strophaloi) is a wheel or spinner.
Making Hecate an absolutely key figure in the civilisation of man,
as both the spinning wheel and spindle were fundamental
to the making of fabrics and clothes.
Furthermore the wheel, the gyre, top and similar
are absolutely key metaphysical symbols.
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre"
W. B. Yeats - The Second Coming
So the figure in William Blake’s painting is not Hecate,
it is as he said Enitharmon.
And whereas Hecate loved dogs,
this lady is ruled by a cat.
And no doubt the very people who renamed the picture
are the ones that Blake is accusing
I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen;
A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And "Thou shalt not" writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.
Scientism and its partner dogmatic religion.
The Hope of the Unicorn
But there is hope. And part of that hope lies in the Unicorn,
whose symbolism is explained in our video
"The Symbolism of the Unicorn"
The Unicorn - spiritually - never dies, as it is immortal.
Even when its horn is removed,
in time it regrows a new one, bigger and longer.
Instead the Unicorn bides its time getting plumper and stronger
waiting for the chance to return.
But first Scientism must be banished, and materialism quelled,
science must acknowledge the debt it owes to inspiration and wisdom
The Owl can return, but this time as an eastern Owl
relying on both the intellectual reasoning of the masculine
and the inspiration and wisdom of the feminine.
And maybe Piglet and Pooh can return.