Swans
SWANS. Related to the elements of both air and water, the swan is a symbol of breath, spirit, transcendence, and freedom. In many religious traditions it is interchangeable with the goose or duck in signifying the soul. Swans connote both death beneath the waters and rebirth, or victory over death, in the air. The complexity of the symbol is reflected in its alchemical representation as the union of opposites, the mystic center.
A prominent motif among origin myths is the cosmogonic dive, in which a swan or other aquatic bird is sent by God to the depths of the primordial waters to bring back the "seed of earth," from which God creates the world. This image existed in manifold versions among prehistoric populations of northern and eastern Europe and, from the third millennium BCE, among the peoples of America.
In Hindu iconography the swan personifies brahman-ātman, the transcendent yet immanent ground of being, the Self. Brahmā is often depicted borne on a swan, the divine bird that laid upon the waters the cosmic egg from which the god emerged. Variations of this image are common in Bali and Sri Lanka. The paraṃahamsa ("supreme swan" or gander) represents freedom from bondage in the phenomenal sphere and is a term of honor addressed to mendicant ascetics. The haṃsa bird is carved on the ornamental bands of Kesava temple at Somnathpur, erected in 1268 and dedicated to Viṣṇu.
In ancient Egypt, swans were associated with the mystic journey to the otherworld, as they are in the shamanistic religions of North Asia. In ancient Greece, priests of the Eleusinian mysteries were regarded as descendants of the birds; after their immersion in the purifying waters they were called swans. Vase paintings of the fifth century BCE show the swan as their attribute. In its amatory aspect, the swan was sacred to Aphrodite and Venus and was the form assumed by Zeus as Leda's lover.
As a solar sign, the swan was the sun god's vehicle in Greece; it was assimilated to the yang principle in China and inscribed on one of the wings of Mithra, the Persian god of light. In Celtic myths, swan deities represent the beneficent, healing power of the sun. In the ancient religion of the Sioux Indians of the North American Plains, birds are reflections of divine principles, and the sacred white swan symbolizes the Great Spirit who controls all that moves and to whom prayers are addressed.
An ambivalent symbol in Judaism, the swan (or the duck or goose) is conspicuous on ceremonial objects although categorized as a bird of defilement in the Bible. In the Christian tradition, it symbolizes purity and grace and is emblematic of the Virgin. The belief that swans sing with their dying breath has linked them with martyrs.
Folklore is rich in legends of swan maidens and swan knights. Believed to have been totemistic figures and original founders of clans, the half-human, half-supernatural beings who metamorphosed into swans became images of spiritual power. The skiff that carried the archangelic grail knight Lohengrin, a savior sent by God to overcome evil, was drawn by a swan. The motif of the swan maiden or knight is widely disseminated in mythology and ritual throughout Europe, India, Persia, Japan, Oceania, Africa, and South America.
The bird's sweet song has made it a perennial metaphor in the arts. The Egyptians associated it with the harp; the Greeks, with the god of music; and the Celts deemed its song magical. Shakespeare was known as the Swan of Avon; Homer, the Swan of Maeander; and Vergil, the Mantuan Swan. Ever since Plato had Socrates aver that swans "sing more merrily at the approach of death because of the joy they have in going to the god they serve," the term swan song has been an epithet for an artist's last work.
Horses; Prehistoric Religions.
Bibliography
Bachelard, Gaston. L'eau et les rêves: Essai sur l'imagination de la matière. 4th ed. Paris, 1978. A poetic and psychological meditation on the symbolic meaning of the swan in literature and poetry. The author's views are based mainly on poetry and dreams but are cognate with sacred and archaic myths.
Brown, Joseph Epes, ed. The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. Norman, Okla., 1953. The swan as symbol of the Great Spirit; the concept of birds as reflections of divine principles.
Campbell, Joseph. The Flight of the Wild Gander. New York, 1969. An examination of the complex of motifs in which the swan, interchangeable with the gander, is linked to the flight of the entranced shaman and to the brahman-ātman with which the yogin seeks to identify.
Eliade, Mircea. Zalmoxis, the Vanishing God: Comparative Studies in the Religions and Folklore of Dacia and Eastern Europe. Chicago, 1972. The relation of the swan to prehistoric myths of the cosmogonic dive.
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