SOMETIME this year, I was alerted to the presence of an owl perching on the PHCN line overlooking my apartment. And so what, I asked! The response I got shocked me: Don’t you know that owls are evil birds? I quickly jumped out of bed! I really never knew anything about owls. I went to my window and saw it. I began to “bind and cast”. I followed this up by picking up a stone and going after it. It flew away before I could reach it. Days later, the owl appeared again. I went after it again with prayer and action. Again, it flew away before I could reach it. Every night afterwards I checked the PHCN line before going to bed and whenever I woke up in the night. There was no sight of it. Still, I prayed.
Not long afterwards, a classmate and friend who had suffered a stroke earlier died. He was 69. Shortly afterwards, my in-law, a mentor, died at the age of 89. Then real tragedy struck in the same month with the death of his daughter and my niece, at 54. In July alone, a chorister in my church lost her father who was 65. My panel beater lost a 14-year-old child; a pastor friend died at a relatively young age, and then another schoolmate and professional colleague also passed on at the age of 67. More deaths of colleagues and known faces have since followed.
Are owls evil birds? Are they the harbingers or messengers of death? This is what Google has to say about this mysterious bird: “No, owls are not evil birds; they are simply wild, nocturnal animals fulfilling a natural role in the environment.”
But owls, all the same, have a really bad reputation. Their nocturnal lifestyle is one. They hunt and move around in the dark and people historically associate darkness with fear and the unknown. Owls also fly silently: Their specialised feathers let them fly completely silently, causing them to appear suddenly out of nowhere.
They also have human-like facial features, with their forward-facing eyes giving them an intense, penetrating gaze that can feel uncanny or unsettling. Owls’ eerie sounds, strange screeches, clicks, and hoots in the dead of night have also fuelled ghost stories for centuries. There are also a lot of cultural myths and superstitions pertaining to owls. Many cultures around the world historically view owls as bad omens or messengers of death.
“In general, owls are viewed as harbingers of bad luck, ill health, or death. The belief is widespread even today.” According to Wikipedia, this belief cuts across the globe. Among the Kikuyu of Kenya, it was believed that owls were harbingers of death. If one saw an owl or heard its hoot, someone was going to die.
In the Americas, the culture of the Uto-Aztec tribe, the Hopi, has “taboos surrounding 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: ‘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 the 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 broad daylight and an owl flies over your head, a family member or loved one would die within the coming week. In the Middle East, Arab mythology sees owls as bad omens.”
Some other cultures, however, see owls in a different light, i.e. as a wise creature (for example, Hinduism in India). In Japan, souvenir shops display little owl figurines that are supposed to bring good luck. The Japanese word for owl is ‘fukurou’, and the first part of the word (‘fuku’) can be written with the same character as ‘luck’ or the whole word can literally be written as ‘no suffering/troubles’.
So, what is it really about owls? It would appear owls signify different strokes for different people – and for different reasons as well. Superstition exists everywhere. And every superstitious belief has a logic behind it. Most of the time, this is woven around the fear of the unknown and the recoil from what Cicero, a Roman philosopher, called the ultimate evil.
Cicero, also noted for his oratorical gift, defined the Latin term “summum malum” as “the highest evil” and “summum bonum” as “the highest good” in his foundational ethical treatise titled “On the Ends of Good and Evil”. He reportedly used these concepts to compare how different ancient Greek schools such as the Stoics, Epicureans, and Peripatetics defined the ultimate goal of human life (summum bonum) vis-a-vis what they sought most to avoid (summum malum). Cicero, however, merely built on the thoughts of earlier ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle.
Thomas Hobbes, another Western philosopher and famous author of the “Leviathan” (1651), rejected the idea of a universal “summum bonum” due to conflicting human desires, but agreed that a definitive “summum malum” did exist: the fear of violent death.
What is certain, and which is known to all civilisations, is that the traffic between heaven and earth is never ending; and that this is as sure as day follows night. As Orlando Owoh crooned, just as babies are born on a daily basis, so also do people die – owl or not owl. Were the universe to be rid of owls, people would still die! All the same, because I am not Japanese, owls are not the kind of birds I love to see!
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