The divine roles played by angels and the Holy Spirit in the Bible were much like the roles inhabited previously by sacred birds in the nature religions. Most scholars agree the Book of Genesis was written down starting about 3,400 years ago. The people of the time were familiar with the concept of a healing world tree growing in a heavenly garden, with divine birds in its higher branches and a serpent at the base. While there were two world... Read more
Myths of creation are filled with fantastical characters, surrealistic plot lines and supernatural magic. There are cosmic giants, serpents and goddesses who dance on the primordial waters, not to mention fireballs, vapors and thought-waves. And a planetary ocean without an inch of dry land. While many collections of creation stories have been published, there’s no single definitive list and no serious academic effort has been undertaken to define the genre or categorize the range of characters, themes and symbols. And... Read more
Towards the end of my slim novel of historical fiction, People of the Flow (2019, Beacon Publishing Group), the characters discover that ancient temples in Ireland and India aligned to dawn on the winter solstice were built on the wintering ground of migratory birds. After finishing the novel I continued to find more solstice-aligned temples located on the wintering grounds of migratory birds, enough to be sure the connection was no coincidence. The result is the nonfiction Church of Birds:... Read more
On April 22, 1978, a lightning strike hit Jamaica’s National Stadium as Bob Marley sang at the One Love Concert, held to calm the political violence raging between presidential candidates Edward Seaga and Michael Manley. The thunderbolt came as Marley was inviting Seaga and Manley to the stage, where moments later the reggae superstar created an iconic image by joining the two bitter enemies’ hands above his own head. The timing of the thunderbolt resonated with religious beliefs held by... Read more
Contemplative writers and artists across religious traditions have used cloud imagery to describe a personal connection to god. The formless cloud is a meditative model for Contemplative Christians, Daoists, Buddhists, Hindus, Sufis, Transcendentalists and others. Written by an anonymous English monk in the 14th century, The Cloud of Unknowing used clouds as a metaphor for getting closer to God: “(We need) a cloud of forgetting between us and the whole created world.” The book is intended to be a journey... Read more
During the soul’s transitional journey between lifetimes, the circumstantial evidence suggests that spirit travels in various forms of water, such as vapor, mist, clouds, rain, rivers, ponds and snow. But water is the ambassador of all the elements, easily mixing with just about anything, so it turns out the soul can exist in the sap of trees and the water trapped in stones. Yet souls are also said to travel in moonlight, starlight and rock crystals. Perhaps what spirits require... Read more
It was February when Brindle was diagnosed with kidney disease and given about six months to live. After that I made sure to take the time to say an affectionate goodnight every evening. I had never really taken her for granted only because she wouldn’t allow it — still I was lucky to have that time to savor every walk and hike and new Brindle-friend along the way. At the time I was living in Carbondale, CO, and Brindle was... Read more
Across indigenous cultures in rural areas, mythic floods usually came in response to a specific bad act. A punishing flood might come after a village refused food to a god disguised as a beggar, or two brothers argue with a neighbor, or a ritual is carelessly performed. Other transgressions found in rural flood myths include a woman hoarding water, a son who won’t follow directions, the pollution of a water source with menstruation or someone killing a sacred bird. Some... Read more
It will come as no surprise that western scholarship has long overlooked symbols of female power, including the long cross-cultural history of the cosmic egg. But it takes willful blindness to ignore the abundant evidence of oval forms incorporated into sacred sites across cultures and eons of time. Although no one knows what it was used for, the oldest structure in the historical record is an egg-shaped stone ring dating back 1.7 million years egg to the days of Homo... Read more
The belief that birds guided souls through the afterlife was shared by ancient and indigenous cultures around the world for at least 9,000 years. The oldest method of soul flight was the sky burial, in which vultures devour the dead and fly their souls to the heavens. The oldest image of a sky burial appears in a 9,000-year-old mural at Çatalhöyük in eastern Turkey, showing two vultures atop a pillar with a human head between them. Most ancient cultures believed... Read more
Adventures in Eco-Mythology
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