The Symbolism of the Swan
Introduction
A Swan symbolises a mystic, but a mystic of exceptional importance,
one who is to have, or has had, a major impact on humanity at large.
All swans are very strong flyers
both actually and thus symbolically too, at home,
figuratively speaking, on Water and in the Air,
but perhaps less at home, perhaps even a little ungainly, on Earth.
W. B. Yeats Collected Poems
I know of the sleepy country, where swans fly round,
Coupled with golden chains, and sing as they fly.
A king and a queen are wandering there,
and the sound has made them so happy and hopeless,
so deaf and so blind with wisdom,
they wander till all the years have gone by.
I know, and the curlew and the peewit on Echtge of streams
No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;
The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.
Cygnus
As one would expect, there is a major constellation
called Cygnus that celebrates the symbolism of the Swan.
It lies above the constellation of the fox and the goose,
but almost touching the lyre symbol of its song
[of which more in a moment]
Furthermore, as is befitting, being mere mortals,
we only see the Swan pictorially from below.
Shankara
At Dawn I call to mind the ‘essence of Self’ (Higher spirit)
radiantly shining forth in my heart, ... existence eternal,
pure spiritual consciousness and bliss
- the goal and salvation of the ‘Highest Swans’ [para hamsas]
Swan songs
A swan song is symbolically a final gesture,
or performance given just before a person’s death.
The phrase refers to an ancient belief
that swans sing a beautiful song just before their death,
having been silent during most of their lifetime.
Plato - from Phaedo
Socrates:
... Swans may sing at other times,
but when they feel that they are to die, sing most and best,
in their joy that they are to go to the god whose servants they are.
But men, because of their own fear of death,
misrepresent the swans and say that they sing for sorrow,
in mourning for their own death ...
they do not sing for grief, ... they are Apollo's birds,
I believe they have prophetic vision,
and because they have foreknowledge of the blessings in the other world
they sing and rejoice on that day more than ever before.
And I think that I am myself a fellow-servant of the swans;
and ... that I go out from life with as little sorrow as they.
This general belief that a Swan - a true mystic
- has absolutely no fear of dying, indeed,
looks on it as a final release from a body
that it is just an encumbrance, is echoed by SRI AUROBINDO
The Silence
Into the Silence, into the Silence, Arise, O Spirit immortal,
away from the turning Wheel, breaking the magical Circle.
Ascend, single and deathless:
Care no more for the whispers and the shoutings in the darkness,
Pass from the sphere of the grey and the little,
Leaving the cry and the struggle, Into the Silence for ever.
Vast and immobile, formless and marvellous,
Higher than Heaven, wider than the universe,
In a pure glory of being, In a bright stillness of self-seeing,
Communing with a boundlessness voiceless and intimate,
Make thy knowledge too high for thought,
thy joy too deep for emotion; At rest in the unchanging Light,
mute with the wordless self-vision, Spirit, pass out of thyself.
Soul, escape from the clutch of Nature.
All thou hast seen cast from thee, O Witness.
Turn to the Alone and the Absolute, turn to the Eternal:
Be only eternity, peace and silence,
world-transcending nameless Oneness, Spirit immortal.
Annihilation of Self - Beyond the Silence
By definition, Swans have not only reached
the end of the spiritual path [Dawn],
but have continued after the final annihilation of the self
[the Personality and big I am].
In some cases they ‘come back’
- choose an earthly existence to help mankind,
and this is the true meaning of sacrifice for any mystic.
"The Lord of the Rushie River" is by Cecily Mary Barker.
It tells the story of a young girl
who is rescued by her beloved swan,
Jack the Lord of the Rushdie River,
from her cruel and dishonest guardian.
Jack is a swan Sue's father had saved as a cygnet.
The story is of how the swans keep Susan safe
until her father comes home.
The pictures are from this book.
SRI AUROBINDO Beyond the Silence
Out from the Silence, out from the Silence,
Carrying with thee the ineffable Substance,
Carrying with thee the splendour and wideness,
Ascend, O Spirit immortal.
Assigning to Time its endless meaning,
Blissful, enter into the clasp of the Timeless.
Awake in the living Eternal,
taken to the bosom of love of the Infinite,
Live self-found in his endless completeness,
Thy heart close to the heart of the Godhead for ever.
Embraced by the Wonderful,
Lifted by the All-Beautiful into the infinite beauty,
Love shall envelop thee endless and fathomless,
Joy unimaginable, Ecstasy illimitable,
Knowledge omnipotent, Might omniscient,
Light without darkness, Truth that is dateless.
One with the Transcendent, calm, universal,
Single and free, yet innumerably living,
All in thyself and thyself in all dwelling,
Act in the world with thy being beyond it.
Soul, exceed life’s boundaries; Spirit, surpass the universe.
Outclimbing the summits of Nature,
Transcending and uplifting the soul of the finite,
Rise with the world in thy bosom,
O Word gathered into the heart of the Ineffable.
One with the Eternal, live in his infinity,
Drowned in the Absolute, found in the Godhead,
Swan of the supreme and spaceless ether
wandering winged through the universe, Spirit immortal.