Owlswood, Salisbury

Owlswood is on the Bishops Mead estate to the south of Salisbury.

The owls are, of course, particularly distinctive birds of prey. There are 200 species of owl, scattered through most of the world. ¹

In today’s Anglo-American culture, I think it’s fair to say that the owl now more than anything else symbolizes wisdom. For example, in T.H. Whites version of the Arthurian legend, Merlin is accompanied by an archetypal ‘wise old owl’, Archimedes.

This might partly derive from Ancient Greece – the Owl is the symbol of the Greek goddess Athena. Athena was the child of Zeus and Metis, whose name means ‘wisdom’. The owl was adopted as a symbol of Athens, and was featured on Athenian coins for hundreds of years ².

However, owls are seen as symbolic of many other things in other cultures. There is a list of some of the owl superstitions from around the world at the ‘Owl Pages’ website – World Owl Mythology – The Owl Pages. Many of these see the owl as a bad omen, as in Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’, where Caesar’s death is pre-figured by the fact that ‘the bird of night did sit Even at noonday, upon the market place, Hooting and shrieking’.

My favourite of these superstitions is that in parts of the USA:

if you hear an Owl-cry you must return the call, or else take off an item of clothing and put it on again inside-out.³

In Harry Potter, the owls are both pets and messengers providing a postal service for ‘the wizarding community’.⁴

There are other traditions of owls being messengers, among the Japanese, the Mayarts and the Mexicans, but in all of these the owl is rather sinister – for example in Mexico, the owl is “messenger of the lord of the land of the dead”. This is at odds with JK Rowling’s benign messengers – I’d be interested to know what inspired her to choose the owl.

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Planning a short break in Salisbury?

For accommodation, see the Hotels in Salisbury page.

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Footnotes

1. Wikipedia – Owl [↩]
2. Athenian owls [↩]
3. World Owl Mythology – The Owl Pages – in one of my favourite films, ‘Hear My Song’, two if the characters take of their jackets and put them on again inside-out ‘to confuse the pixies’ – it’s clearly a useful technique :) [↩]
4. There is a discussion of the owls of Harry Potter on the Nature Conservancy website (Nature Conservancy – The Owls of Harry Potter). Harry’s owl Hedwig is a Snowy Owl and Ron’s bird Pigwidgeon is a Scops Owl (one of the world’s smallest owls). Draco Malfoy has a Eurasian owl, which have ‘a haughty, imperial looking face, with yellow or orange eyes and prominent ear tufts’. The closest match to this on the ‘Owl Pages’ is the West African tradition that the owl is ‘the messenger of wizards and witches’, although ‘the Owl’s cry presages evil.’ World Owl Mythology – The Owl Pages [↩]