Owls in mythology

What follows is an excerpt from a book in progress. This is the opening segment of the chapter on owls in mythology. Please do not reproduce (but linking is fine).

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Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human manifestation... 

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987)

Hero with a Thousand Faces

The power of myth 

When asked to define mythology in one sentence, comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell said that would be like trying to define life in a single sentence. He then went on to say that his simplest on-the-street definition of myth would be a story told almost exclusively in symbolic terms. 

Mythology as a word has two parts, the prefix myth, which by most definitions equates to a fable, or something that isn’t true. All too often the word myth implies a purely fictitious narrative that was told and re-told throughout ancient cultures. The suffix ology means “the study of,” so mythology means the study of myths. Looking in the dictionary, the word myth means something that is not true, a widely held but false belief or idea. When using the term myth, most people will hear it as something without any meaningful value. 

mythologist Joseph Campbell

Campbell spoke of two schools of thought on the study of myth. The objectivitist would view myth as nothing more than primitive fairy tales, something obsolete. A dusty book on a shelf, full of old fables that can be scrutinized by the rational academic.

The second school, the subjectivists, would see myths as something much more vital, a timeless reflections of universal truths, values and archetypes. Myths carry a significance in our lives, playing an important role. As I proceed forward, I will be weighting the subjectivist side of the scale with a disproportionate zeal. If the ideas in this book seem biased towards the mystical, that’s because they are. 

Campbell also said, “Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.”

Intro to owl myths

The owl has two major symbolic meanings. One is wisdom, the other is death. These divergent meanings probably stem from the owl itself. With their huge eyes and intense gaze, they have an aura of intelligence and regal serenity. A biologist would see those huge eyes as a well evolved tools for hunting in the dark, the poet would see those same eyes as being able to penetrate into your soul. Owls don’t simply appear as wise, they seem too wise. So much so that they come across as mystical.

Owls can see into the darkness, and this is the overriding metaphor for it’s spiritual powers. It can see into the other world, the underworld, the realm of the dead or the dark world. Like the shaman, the owl can travel to the other realms and then come back with it’s message. The owl as messenger is interwoven into much of this lore, whether delivering wisdom or a portent of death.

The ancient owl motif is connected to the feminine. The day is masculine and the night is feminine, with the sun and moon as counterparts. The 28-day lunar cycle equates to a woman’s cycle. Owls tend to gravitate towards goddesses and fertility icons. In ancient Babylon, the hooting of an owl at night was thought to meant the cries of a woman who had died in childbirth, now searching for her lost baby. This is a grim insight into an era where giving birth was dangerous, often the cause of a young woman’s death.

Owl as night omen

The owl, as a symbol, can be a total downer. This role is paralleled across the ages and across almost every mythic tradition, the owl is seen as an evil omen. Nighttime must have had an entirely different meaning before the electric lightbulb, and all sorts of folklore evolved that painted the darkness as something ominous and sinister. The owl represents the night, and thus it became the totem for all the menacing things hidden in the dark. That includes the internal darkness of the mind and the subconscious. Goya, no stranger to metaphoric symbolism, used owls (along with bats and cats) in a depiction of a nightmare. In his 1799 etching, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, a group of sinister owls hovers over the tortured sleeper.

Goya’s The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

Owls and death

Darkness, the domain of the owl is equated with death. This connection is easy to understand, the owl is an animal of the night, rarely seen in the daylight. Death, darkness and owls can all be seen as sinister. Even today, seeing an owl can be unsettling, there is something about them that projects a menacing intensity. In China, the owl is called the bird who snatches away souls.

For most of the world’s cultures, the owl is an ominous sign. Many traditions believed that merely hearing it’s screech in the night was a harbinger of death. In Hungary, the owl is called the bird of death. This storyline continues right now in real stories from real people. I have collected a wealth reports of owls showing up either right before a loved one dies or just after, so many that they get their own chapter.

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owl physiology / book excerpt

Here is a work in progress from my owl book project. This excerpt is mostly focused on the physiology of owls and how that plays into their odd connection to UFO reports. It's long, over 12,000 words.

I am open to any feedback or editing suggestions. Please note, as the book nears publication, I will take this page down.

The first half is my attempt to show how seriously well designed the owl is, they are remarkable on a lot of levels. If this initial text seems too dry and "scientific" scroll down to page 14, things get a little more zippy at that point.

Text posted in PDF reader below.

Owl Physiology, a chapter for book in progress

and this too (linked HERE)
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The Hobbit and Sword and the Stone

One more excerpt from the work-in-progress, the owl book.

Owlamoo drawn by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1928

Author J.R.R. Tolkien made this drawing of Owlamoo, he drew it to allay the fears of his eight year old son Michael, who had been having nightmares of an evil owl. This owl would perch atop high furniture and picture frames, glaring down at the boy. Tolkien said, “I tried to draw Owlamoo from his descriptions, which seemed to rob it of terror.” He created this highly stylized owl in 1928, nine years before the publication of The Hobbit in 1937. Any abduction researcher would take keen interest when a child tells of nightmares involving glaring owls, the implication being that this might be some sort of screen memory.

Owls get mentioned a few times in The Hobbit. When Bilbo Baggins was spying on the Trolls he was to "…hoot twice like a barn-owl and once like a screech-owl…" as a way to signal the Dwarves. For an author so deeply steeped in the mythological the owl is, for the most part, absent from any of Tolkien’s books.

The owl plays a bigger role in a counterpart work of English fantasy. T. H. White published The Sword and the Stone in 1938, initially as a stand-alone work but eventually as the first part of a trilogy, The Once and Future King. This first book is a fantasy re-telling of the boyhood of King Arthur under the tutelage of the wizard Merlin.

rationalism vs mystisism

White’s novel features a talking owl, Archimedes, as Merlin’s side-kick. The name Archimedes is an overt nod to the ancient Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor and astronomer. The wizard and his owl represent two separate lines of ancient wisdom traditions. Merlin as the master of esoteric magic and Archimedes as Greek Rationalism. The imagery of the wizard and his little owl is wonderful in it’s symbolism, it perfectly personifies the western cultural idea of the wise owl.

Walt Disney later adapted Sword and the Stone to an animated film and it was released on Christmas day, 1963. An apt date given that it’s the story of a boy who performs a miracle and is later crowned a king.

Gandalf reads about Merlin

Both Tolkien and White present us with a wizard with a long white beard and a tall pointed hat, and both authors use legend and fantasy to define something idealized in the English character. These two enduring works emerged right on the heels of each other, The Hobbit in 1937, The Sword and the Stone in 1938. One year later, in 1939, England would be at war with Germany. Neither work is a harbinger of doom (like the folklore of the owl), and neither is propaganda, but each seems more a glorified call to define what is best within it’s home culture.

Also, White’s The Once and Future King was the inspiration for the Broadway musical Camelot, as well as Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

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Kenneth Arnold and UFO history

Kenneth Arnold
1915 - 1984

This is an excerpt from a work-in-progress. This was written for my owl book project. What follows probably won't make it into the final draft, instead there will be a much shorter version.

The name Kenneth Arnold holds a special place in UFO history. The dawn of the modern UFO era can be traced back to June 24h in 1947, the day Arnold saw something very unusual while flying alone in his private plane. His wasn’t the first sighting of this kind, but it was the one that exploded onto the national stage, ushering in the flying saucer craze of that forever changed the popular conciseness.

Here’s something I find delightful,
Kenneth Arnold had a pet owl!

Arnold built a cage for his daughter Kim so she could raise an injured Great Horned Owl. Kim had been driving in a car with her sister and her husband when they saw a young owl that had fallen from it’s nest. It had an injured eye and they took the little bird to a veterinarian. Kim would put ointment on it’s eye each day for weeks until the bird recovered. As the owl grew it was getting harder and harder to deal with, the stronger it got, the more dangerous it felt any time she needed to handle it. Eventually Kim and her father donated the adult owl to the Boise zoo.

Reflecting back, Kim says the owl wasn’t really a pet. That said, she thought it was really incredible that her father would actually let her keep a wild owl. She described the cage her father built as an expression of his character, it was something truly wonderful.

  Here is an excellent audio interview with Kim Arnold  

Kenneth Arnold is credited with unwittingly coining the term flying saucer. He was mis-quoted in the press after he reported seeing nine silvery objects flying at a tremendous speed in the summer of 1947. He saw these craft from his private plane while flying in the skies above Mount Rainier in Washington state. He described what he saw to reporters, "they flew erratic, like a saucer if you skip it across the water." The iconic words Flying Saucer ended up in the headlines and from that moment on Arnold became a reluctant celebrity.

 read more below 

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White owls and UFOs in among the sacred sites of England

This is an excerpt from a book project with the working title; Owls, Sychronicity and the UFO Abductee. I plan on posting a few samples from time to time. 

—Mike C

I am adding these excerpts from my work-in-progress. My hope is to give folks an insight into the flavor of the project. The stories that follows are from two different researchers, both focusing on the ancient sacred sites in Wiltshire county in the UK. Maria Wheatley and Bert Janssen both tell an eerily similar experiences. Both stories invoke a white owl and an orange orb. (click on the "Read more" link below left)

 read more below 

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Peter Maxwell Slattery and seeing big owls

This is an excerpt from a book project with the working title; Owls, Sychronicity and the UFO Abductee. I plan on posting a few samples from time to time. 

—Mike C

Peter Maxwell Slattery is a young outspoken contactee from Australia. One question that any researcher will ask someone with a history of contact events is, “Do you feel a sense of mission.” Just looking at Peter’s site and recent history, it’s obvious that he’s on fire with this sense of mission. In just a little over a year he has written four books about his experiences, been the subject of more than one documentary, started website, produced an audio podcast interview series and he’s video taped hundreds of unusual lights in the sky.

Peter saw his first UFO in the summer of 1995 when he was just twelve years old. It was a hot sunny day and he saw a huge gray disc, about three times the size of a football field above him in the sky. The object hovered silently and then started moving, he watched it for 30 to 40 seconds until it glided out of view.

In the follow up years he’s had a powerful set of ongoing experiences, including UFO sightings, psychic awareness, telepathic downloads, ghost sightings, poltergeist happenings and profound synchronicities. Many of these events were seen by multiple witnesses. Add to this a bunch of really odd owl sightings.

The first happened when Peter was working as a security guard, his job meant driving a route at night with a partner, checking on a set of businesses. This was at a time before his more intense experiences had started. They were driving slowly through a dark industrial area, Peter was new to the job and he was learning the route.

Then a big white owl appeared out of nowhere, it was moving toward the windshield in a weird static pose. He hit the brakes and came to a complete stop.

Just as suddenly it was gone and they both exclaimed, “What the hell just happened?”

The whole thing was much stranger than just seeing an over sized bird at night. Even though the owl had rushed at them, he was very clear that it wasn’t flying. In the aftermath, they were both reacting as if something wasn’t right. Peter said, “Something was off. We just weren’t normal. The whole rest night we both kept talking about that bloody owl.”


It was just a few months later he was flooded with an onslaught of intense UFO sightings, some were seen by others and even posted on the local news. These sightings started on October 10th 2010, that plays out as 10-10-10.

 read more below 

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Archetypes and screen memories

Chapter in progress: This is an excerpt from a book project with the working title; Owls, Sychronicity and the UFO Abductee. I plan on posting a few samples from time to time. 

—Mike C

Most of the research for this book has been me reaching out to folks with curious stories, and just asking the question, “Do you have any odd owl experiences?” Most of the time the reply would be no. I got a lot of replies that played out as screen memories, the smallest percentage were the extremely unusual experiences that involved, as far as I can tell, real owls. I would ask this of folks through email, phone calls and in face to face meetings. A lot of the time I would ask this question to complete strangers, or to people I barely knew.

Peter was one of the experiencers featured in Dr. John Mack’s 1994 book Abduction, and the events in his life have been extremely intense. I’ve talked on the phone with him only once, and we've shared a few emails over the years. He’s been supportive and insightful in all of my correspondence.

As part of this book project, I sent Peter one of these emails, asking him that same question, had he ever had any odd owl experiences. He replied:

That is what got me in the door, so to say, to begin looking at this in my life. When I lived in Hawaii, there was a big old owl (that’s what I thought at the time) that would come to the sliding glass door off my bedroom at night. Of course under regression when I looked at the owl it was a whole other creature. So yeah, me and owls and ET's have a connection.

This owl fits cleanly into the screen memory category, it seems to play out as deceptive owl imagery projected into Peter’s mind, presumably so he wouldn’t be terrified of seeing a creepy gray alien. How this is done is a mystery, why is another question. One easy way to frame this is that the owl is nothing more that a convenient disguise, it’s a common enough animal, and those big penetrating eyes seem to match the likeness of the iconic alien. This might be exactly the reason for the owl deception, but it just feels too simple.

I suspect that this contact experience has been ongoing throughout the entirety of human history, and the reverence for the owl in folklore and mythology can be traced back to experiences just like what Peter described. The shamans and sages throughout time might have confronted similar owls, staring at them from their own doorways.

 read more below 

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