The Symbolism of the Goose
Introduction
The term goose was reserved for someone who was
an aspiring mystic or who was shamanically of very high ability.
Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
"Didn't you hear me say "Feather"?" the Sheep cried angrily,
taking up quite a bunch of needles.
"In the Water, of course!" said the Sheep,
sticking some of the needles into her hair, as her hands were full.
"Feather, I say!".
"WHY do you say "feather" so often?" Alice asked at last, rather vexed.
"I'm not a bird!"
"You are," said the Sheep: "you're a little goose."
The world-wide existence of Goose symbolism
Goose symbolism was used extensively in those countries
where geese made their appearance regularly - Siberia,
the Norse and Inuit cultures, and North America.
Geese were a Totem bird for the Picts
In search of the Picts by Elizabeth Sutherland
Two geese appear on Class I stones.
On Roseisle of Easterton, Moray, the goose is most gracefully carved...
Caesar tells us that the goose was sacred to the Britons and its flesh taboo.
And in India and the Far East, Geese are symbolically treated like Swans.
Philosophies of India by Dr Heinrich Zimmer (edited by Joseph Campbell)
The Brahman pilgrim-mendicant has always been likened
to the wild goose or swan (hamsa) which has no fixed home
but wanders, migrating with the rain clouds
north to the Himalayas and back south again,
at home on every lake or sheet of water,
as also in the infinite, unbounded reaches of the sky.
They are symbolic of the Geisha.
In Hiroshige’s painting -
"A shrine among trees on a moor - descending geese at Haneda"
we see a marshy landscape with a grove of trees on an island
and a shrine with a gate dedicated to the goddess Benten.
Two flocks of geese descend from the sky.
The Rig Veda (translated by Wendy Doniger)
Let your swift gliding teams bring you here.
Flying swiftly with your arms, come forward.
Sit down on the sacred grass; a wide seat has been made for you
drink in ecstasy from the sweet juice...
"Among all things that fly the mind is the swiftest"...
The Gifts of the Goose
As the symbolism of the Goose was almost exclusively reserved for women,
one term used for the especially gifted was that of Mother Goose.
Mother Goose could fly with her mind
- have an out of body experience and not just a fleeting one.
By implication she could travel long distances with her mind.
But the METHODS USED to do so were mostly shamanic in origin.
The Sacred Mushroom by Andrija Puharich
... The ointment is to be rubbed in the skull on the joints for trance ...
If the dose is too much you can get in a trance and never wake up.
You are so changed in body that you can’t get back. Be very careful.
Start out with very little and work up. Find what you can stand.
Mother Goose was nearly always a healer using plants
(and spells) and a teacher, using stories to teach children.
In a very early Pantomime based on the Commedia dell'arte tradition...
...and in the first scene,
the stage directions show Mother Goose raising a storm and flying.
And she later raises a ghost in a macabre churchyard scene.
But the very nature of the shamanic powers all the Mother Geese had,
travelling between the Dark and the Light,
made them a target of the jealous,
the frightened and the religious and not just fanatically religious
often just the religious.
Until eventually Mother Geese were renamed witches, and demonised.
Hans Peter Duerr - Dreamtime
In 1661, a number of people were strangled
and burned as witches in Gutenhag in Styria.
Among them was one Ursula Kollarin,
who at her trial testified that "the old Wollwerkthin
smeared them all with a black salve, rubbing it into their armpits.
Soon their bodies became covered with feathers
and forthwith they flew to Rohitsch".
Seventy year old Michael Zotter reported that
he had "found it hard to keep up with the others during the flight".
And it is for this reason that although the Eagle, Swan, Dove, Raven,
Owl and Hawk, all have - according to the Science of Correspondences
- an equivalent symbolic Planet, the Owl and the Moon,
the Raven and Saturn etc. - the Goose does not.
And it is for this reason that the Constellation
originally known as Vulpecula cum Ansere: the Fox and the Goose,
shows a Goose pictured in the jaws of a Fox,
the symbolic Fox being the wily old theologian
appointed to seek out and remove them all.
And this is why the Goose is no longer officially in the sky.
Every last healer, or myth teller, or Keeper of Secrets or out of body flier
has been killed - strangled, burnt, tortured or just quietly murdered.
The Goose that laid the Golden Egg
Once the murdering spree was over,
many - appalled at the brutality and carnage that had taken place -
started to realise the enormity of their error.
Not only had they lost the Keepers of the morals
and history of their people told in myth.
But they had murdered nearly all their healers.
And the rise of the pharmacy industry with its emphasis on masking symptoms,
as opposed to finding cures is an almost direct result.
Healers are not allowed to charge for their services.
In ancient times they were simply supported by the community.
And if they failed, the support stopped.
And the terrible crime and idiocy of the crime is told in the Aesop Fable
- the Goose that laid the Golden Egg.
But we would be wrong to assume
that the legacy of Mother Goose has been entirely lost.
Mother Goose and Nursery Rhymes
The Mother Geese may have been cooked, but their stories live on.
Jean Loret, for example, in La Muse Historique,
of 1650 used the expression, comme un conte de la Mère Oye
"like a Mother Goose story",
showing that the term was already well known.
And in 1695, Charles Perrault published a collection of such past tales
subtitled Contes de ma mère l'Oye or Tales of My Mother Goose
An English translation Histories or Tales of Past Times,
Told by Mother Goose, appeared in 1729.
And today we know them as Nursery Rhymes
- usually referred to as Mother Goose songs in the US.
From Traditional Nursery Rhymes (collected by Michael Foss)
Goosey goosey gander Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs And in my lady's chamber.
There I met an old man Who would not say his prayers
I took him by the left leg And threw him down the stairs.
Sadly without geese, the old men are having a field day,
but then that was what they wanted all along.
Carols and other Traditional Songs
The Goose is also still celebrated
in a number of Traditional English Christmas carols and songs.
"The Twelve Days of Christmas"
On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
Twelve drummers drumming, Eleven pipers piping,
Ten lords a-leaping, Nine ladies dancing,
Eight maids a-milking, Seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying, Five gold rings,
Four calling birds, Three French hens,
Two turtle doves, And a partridge in a pear tree!
And are found in Pantomime.
The Goose and Pantomime
Pantomimes (see our website) are another way
in which mystic symbolism has been coded in the UK.
It is a play for all ages with slapstick,
music and audience participation held around mid-Winter.
A very successful pantomime, that included a Mother Goose figure,
was first performed in 1806.
But it is possibly the Mother Goose pantomime
written for the comedian Dan Leno by J. Hickory Wood in 1902,
that is the forerunner of all the pantomimes of that title that followed,
adaptations of which continue to appear.
The story has the poor but happy Mother Goose tempted by the Devil.
And indeed it appears to have been the naivety, innocence
and trusting nature of Mother Goose that was her downfall.
The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck by Beatrix Potter
Jemima is an Aylesbury domestic duck, whose eggs are routinely confiscated
by the farmer's wife because she believes Jemima to be a poor sitter.
Jemima searches for a place away from the farm
where she can hatch her eggs without human interference,
and naively confides her woes to a suave fox
who invites her to nest in a shed at his home.
Jemima accepts his invitation, little realising her danger:
the fox plans to kill and roast her.
Kep, a collie on the farm,
discovers Jemima's whereabouts and rescues her just in time.