Busy day, so just a few quick thoughts based on what I’ve been reading about literary owls this week.
But first, a story from my own childhood.
When I was little, I remember spending the night at my aunt and uncle’s house and hearing an owl hoot for the first time. The night was still — no crickets, no frogs, no wind through the trees. Just that long, haunting call echoing across the dark. It gave me the jitters.
Even now, I think about that moment. The owl’s sound was beautiful, but also eerie — a reminder that some things we don’t understand can still reach us deeply.
Owls have always been that way: mysterious, watchful, tied to both wisdom and fear.
The Greeks saw Athena’s owl as a symbol of wisdom and insight, the creature who sees what others cannot in the dark. But the Romans viewed owls differently — as harbingers of doom. The daemon Ascalaphus, transformed into an owl, became one of the spirits of the underworld.
Across Native American traditions, owls carry a similar duality.
- The Apache believed dreaming of an owl meant death was near.
- The Cherokee saw Eastern Screech-Owls as messengers for shamans, capable of bringing sickness as punishment.
- The Cree believed that if you answered a Boreal Owl’s whistle and didn’t hear a reply, your own spirit was being called.
- The Hopis honored the Burrowing Owl, Ko’ko — “Watcher of the Dark” — as guardian of the dead and keeper of seeds underground.
- And in the Sierras, some tribes said the Great Horned Owl captured the souls of the dead and carried them below.
It’s fascinating — and a little unsettling — how the same bird can symbolize wisdom and death, knowledge and fear.
But maybe those aren’t opposites at all.
Fear often guards the doorway to wisdom. We fear what we don’t yet understand. But once we face it — once we turn toward the darkness and listen instead of hiding — we grow.
Maybe that’s part of what it means to “live golden” or to “learn like an owl.”
To sit in the unknown, not in panic but in patience.
To let curiosity replace fear.
To realize that what once frightened us might, in the end, teach us something.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
— Proverbs 1:7
Perhaps wisdom isn’t the absence of fear — it’s learning to see clearly in the dark.
#OwlWaysLearning
Ramblings from That Guy 