In most Native American tribes, owls are a symbol of death. Hearing owls hooting is considered an unlucky omen, and they are the subject of numerous 'bogeyman' stories told to warn children to stay inside at night or not cry too much, otherwise the owl may carry them away. In some tribes, owls are associated with ghosts, and the bony circles around an owl's eyes are said to be made up of the fingernails of ghosts. Sometimes owls are said to carry messages from beyond the grave or deliver supernatural warnings to people who have broken tribal taboos. And in the Aztec and Mayan religions of Mexico, owls served as the messengers and companions of the gods of death.
Owls are not always viewed as eerie harbingers of death, however. In the Hopi tribe, the great horned owl, Mongwu, is a humorless lawman who plays the role of 'straight man' against the antics of the Koshari clowns. And in the owl myths of some tribes, the birds are portrayed as bumbling good-for-nothings who are banished to the night-time hours as punishment for their lazy or annoying behavior.
Owls are also used as clan animals in some Native American cultures. Tribes with Owl Clans include the Hopi tribe (whose Burrowing Owl Clan is called Kokongyam or Kokop-wungwa), the Tlingit, and the Mohave. On the Northwest Coast, the owl is often used as a totem pole crest. The Creeks also have a Screech Owl Dance and a Horned Owl Dance among their tribal dance traditions.
In the culture of the Uto-Aztec tribe, the Hopi, taboos surround owls, which are associated with sorcery and other evils. The Aztecs and Maya, along with other natives of Mesoamerica, considered the owl a symbol of death and destruction. In fact, the Aztec god of death, Mictlantecuhtli, was often depicted with owls. There is an old saying in Mexico that is still in use: Cuando el tecolote canta, el indio muere ("When the owl cries/sings, the Indian dies"). The Popol Vuh, a Mayan religious text, describes owls as messengers of Xibalba (the Mayan "Place of Fright").
The belief that owls are messengers and harbingers of the dark powers is also found among the Hočągara (Winnebago) of Wisconsin. When in earlier days the Hočągara committed the sin of killing enemies while they were within the sanctuary of the chief's lodge, an owl appeared and spoke to them in the voice of a human, saying, "From now on the Hočągara will have no luck." This marked the beginning of the decline of their tribe. An owl appeared to Glory of the Morning, the only female chief of the Hočąk nation, and uttered her name. Soon afterwards she died.People often allude to the reputation of owls as bearers of supernatural danger when they tell misbehaving children, "the owls will get you.Also, in the Cherokee culture, as well as many other Native American cultures, owls are a very bad omen. It is said that if you are outside in the broad day light and an owl flies over your head a family member or loved one would die within the coming week.
Middle East
In Arab mythology, owls are seen as bad omens.
Hinduism
the Hindu Goddess Lakshmi with the owl
In Hinduism, an owl is the vahana, mount, of the Goddess Lakshmi.
The modern West generally associates owls with wisdom. This link goes back at least as far as Ancient Greece, where Athens, noted for art and scholarship, and Athena, Athens' patron goddess and the goddess of wisdom, had the owl as a symbol. Marija Gimbutas traces veneration of the owl as a goddess, among other birds, to the culture of Old Europe, long pre-dating Indo-European cultures
T. F. Thiselton-Dyer in his Folk-lore of Shakespeare says that "from the earliest period it has been considered a bird of ill-omen," and Pliny tells us how, on one occasion, even Rome itself underwent a lustration, because one of them strayed into the Capitol. He represents it also as a funereal bird, a monster of the night, the very abomination of human kind. Virgil describes its death-howl from the top of the temple by night, a circumstance introduced as a precursor of Dido's death. Ovid, too, constantly speaks of this bird's presence as an evil omen; and indeed the same notions respecting it may be found among the writings of most of the ancient poets." A list of "omens drear" in John Keats' Hyperion includes the "gloom-bird's hated screech." Pliny the Elder reports that owl's eggs were commonly used as a hangover cure.
The coat of arms of Leeds, seen here on Leeds Bridge, displays three owls.
In France, Belgium and the Netherlands, where owls are divided into eared owls (fr. hiboux / d. oehoes) and earless owls (fr. chouettes/ d. bosuilen), the former are seen as symbols of wisdom while the latter are assigned the grimmer meaning.[citation needed]
Three Canadian provinces have owls as provincial symbols: the great horned owl in Alberta, the great grey owl in Manitoba, and the snowy owl in Quebec.[citation needed]
Three owls appear on the coat of arms of the English city of Leeds, as the crest and the two supporters. They are derived from the arms of the city's first alderman, Sir John Saville.[citation needed]
In contrast, in Finnish culture, the owl has been considered a stupid animal, probably due to its wide-open eyes. The word pöllö means both "owl" and "idiot", and silmät pöllöllään "eyes owl-y" means "disoriented, dazed".
Babylon - Owl amulets protected women during childbirth.
Newfoundland - The hoot of the Horned Owl signals the approach of bad weather
If you really want to be superstitious, then here is what a few cultures believe:
France - When a pregnant woman hears an Owl it is an omen that her child will be a girl.
Saxony - The Wend people say that the sight of an Owl makes child-birth easier.
Wales - An Owl heard among houses means an unmarried girl has lost her virginity. If a woman is pregnant and she alone hears an owl hoot outside her house at night then her child will be blessed
Owls are one of the oldest species of vertebrate animal in existence, fossils have been found dating back 60 million years, showing the bird to have changed very little in that time.
Throughout the history of mankind, the owl has featured significantly in mythology & folklore. Owls are one of the few birds that have been found in prehistoric cave paintings. Owls have been both revered & feared throughout many civilisations from ancient to more recent times.
In ancient Greece, owls were often seen as a symbol of good fortune. The idea of the 'wise old owl' may have come into being from the association of the Little Owl with the Greek goddess of wisdom, Athene.
In contrast, the Romans saw owls as omens of impending disaster. Hearing the hoot of an owl indicated an imminent death, it is thought that the deaths of many famous Romans was predicted by the hoot of an owl, including Julius Caesar, Augustus & Agrippa. While the Greeks believed that sight of an owl predicted victory for their armies, the Romans saw it as a sign of defeat. They believed that a dream of an owl could be an omen of shipwreck for sailors & of being robbed. To ward off the evil caused by an owl, it was believed that the offending owl should be killed & nailed to the door of the affected house.
Beliefs on owls varied between ancient American Indian tribes. Some tribes viewed owls as harbingers of sickness & death. Other tribes saw them as protective spirits, others believed them to be the souls of living or recently departed people & should be treated with respect. Some tribes even saw the owls as earthly incarnations of their gods, the Hopis believed the Burrowing Owl to be their god of the dead. The Inuit explain the flat face & short beak of owls, in the story of a beautiful young girl who was magically changed into an owl with a long beak, as an owl, she became frightened & flew into the wall of her house & flattened her face & beak. Some tribes referred to death as "crossing the owls bridge".
Some people believed that owls were particular bad to children, in Malaya it was believed that owls ate new-born babies, the Swahili believed that owls brought sickness to children, in Arabia it was believed that owls were evil spirits that carried children off in the night.
Some people believed that owls had magic powers, in Arabia it was thought that each female Owl laid two eggs - one with the power to make hair fall out, the other with the power to restore it. In Algeria, it was believed that if the right eye of an Eagle Owl was placed in the hand of a sleeping woman, that she would tell everything you wanted to know (now that is stretching the imagination too far).
British beliefs about owls include the Welsh belief that if a owl is heard amongst houses then an unmarried girl has lost her virginity. Another Welsh belief is that if a pregnant woman hears an owl, her child will be blessed. In Yorkshire owl broth is believed to cure whooping cough, amongst other things (see entries for Barn Owl & Little Owl). Because of its ability to turns its head so far & its habit of watching things intently, it was believed that you could get an owl to effectively wring its own neck by walking in circles around it.
While there are many cultures that believe the owl to be bad (in Cameroon, it has no name, it is only referred to as "the bird that makes you afraid"), there are others that believe owls to be good. In Babylon, owl amulets were used to protect pregnant women. In the Lorraine region of France, owls are believed to help spinsters find husbands. In Romania, it is said that the souls of repentant sinners fly to heaven as Snowy Owls.
In India 'food' made from owls was believed to have many medicinal properties curing seizures in children (owl eye broth) & rheumatism (owl meat). Eating owl eyes was believed to enable a person to see in the dark, while owl meat was believed to be an aphrodisiac. There were also beliefs about events predicted by the number of owl hoots (similar to seeing numbers of magpies in this country) :
1 : impending death
2 : success in imminent venture
3 : woman will be married into the family
4 : disturbance
5 : imminent travel
6 : guests arriving
7 : mental distress
8 : sudden death
9 : good fortune
It is believed that over 1000 owls, including the endangered Brown Fish Owl (Ketupa zeylonensis), are killed very year during Diwali by black magicians in the hope of warding off bad luck & gaining magical powers. This is despite the fact that owls are identified with the goddess of Wealth, Lakshmi, in whose honour the celebration is held (when she travels alone, without Vishnu, she travels on an owl - when she travels with Vishnu they travel on the eagle Garuda). Amulets made from the bones, beaks & talons of owls are in great demand.
Blakiston's Fish Owl (Ketupa blakistoni) is one of the most important gods of the native Ainu people of Hokkaidu, in Japan. It is called "kotan kor kamuy", which means the "god of the village" or "god who defends the village".
In France owls were also considered with great esteem, with several named as dukes, for example the European Eagle Owl was called Hibou Grand-Duc & the long-eared owl was called Hibou Moyen-Duc. This probably stemmed from the custom during the middle ages that nobles below the rank of a duke could not wear a plume of feathers, hence the 'eared' owls must be of rank of a duke. Somewhere along the way though, this attitude changed, with the European Eagle Owl being classified as vermin until the late 1960's.
In China, the popular name for owls, especially "eared" owls, is "cat-eared hawk".
One of the Chinese names for owls is "xiao", these owls have the associated legend of being evil birds that ate their own mothers. The Chinese character representing "xiao" is used in expressions relating to ferocity & bravery.
In Poland it was believed that girls who died unmarried turned into doves, while those who died married turned into owls. It was also believed that owls did not come out during the day because they were so beautiful & would be mobbed by other birds out of jealousy.
In Russia, hunters used to carry owl claws, so that their souls could use them to climb to heaven when they died. The Kalmuks held owls sacred because one was believed to have saved the life of Genghis Khan.
In Welsh mythology, Blodeuwedd, the Goddess of Betrayal, is associated with the owl. According to the story in "The Mabinogion", Blodeuwedd was created from flowers by the magician Gwydion for the prince Llew Llaw Gyffes. She had an affair with Goronwy & they contrived to kill Llew. On his death, Llew was transformed into an eagle, but was healed & returned to human form by Gwydion. Llew returned to seek revenge, rather than killing Blodeuwedd, Gwydion turned her into a white owl, to haunt the night in loneliness & sorrow, saying "I will not slay thee, but I will do unto thee worse than that. For I will turn thee into a bird; and because of the shame thou hast done unto Llew Llaw Gyffes, you shall never show thy face in the light of day. And thou shall not lose thy name, but shall be always called Blodeuwedd." The word Blodeuwedd is still used in Wales to mean owl.