*Lady stearn Robinson & Tom Gorbett/The Dreamer's Dictionary:
The meaning of this nasty bird in your dream depends on the action; if you just observed it sitting somehere, it is a sign that you have an enemy or comeptitor waiting for to you make a mistake; if you saw one devouring its prey, it is a contrary omen and signifies that you will overcome your difficulties; if you killed a vulture in your dream, it forecasts a sure stroke of good luck.
*Denise Linn/The Secret Language of Signs:
Vultures feed amost exclusively on carrion. They perform a very useful function, in that they are eliminating potential sources of disease, although this often causes people to think that they are unclean birds. However, they are very clean. In Egyptian hieroglyphs, the vulture was depicted along with mother symbols, which, according to Jung, was because Mother Earth contains both death and life. The Parsi placed their dead where vultures could consume them, believing that this would allow them a rebirth.
Is there a potential problem that you are being asked to clean up? Are you always putting yourself in positions where you are asked to clean up messy situations? Look within to discover if there is an underlying pattern that is drawing these situations to you. Do you feel a need to clean away something that you may consider complete or dead? Is there someone in your life who seems vulturelike? do you fee there is a competitor waiting for you to make an error or someone who has ill feelings toward you?
*Zolar/Encyclopedia of Signs, Omens, and Superstitions:
Vultures have long been thought of as birds of divination. They never kill their prey, but, rather, devour abandoned corpses. Because of this practice, they are held an omen of coming death. In legends surrounding the founding of rome, the god Jupiter caused six vultures to appear to Remus and twelve to Romulus to indicate the future site of Rome. According to Pliny, a vulture has the ability to "smell" death as much as three days in advance. Hence, should it hover over a house, such is said to be an omen of coming death. In the Old Testament, vultures are often confused with eagles. In Exodus one can read, "I bore you on vulture's wings rather than "on eagle's wings". (Exodus 19:4) Likewise, in Deuteronomy: "like a vulture...that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings." (Deuteronomy 32:11.) Since the Hebrew word for "vulture" and "compassion" are similar, an association was made between these large birds and parental care. Some experts believe that the traditional myth that a pelican feeds it young on its own blood may indeed be traced to vultures, who were seen to return to the nest with bloody morsels for their chicks.
*Barbara G. Walker/The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets:
One of the oldest totems of the Great Mother in Egypt was the vulture, eater of the dead. Vultures who devoured corpses were regarded as her angels of death, since they carried the dead piecemeal to heaven. In Neolithic times it was a common practice to expose dead bodies to carrion birds, who embodied the Mother's spirit. For this reason even the Greeks and Romans fostered a belief that all vultures are female. On the Stele of the Vultures from Catal Huyuk, 7th mellenium B.C., dead bodies are carried off by vultures--in a time and place where only the female principle was worshipped.
Ancient Iranians didn't bury their dead, but exposed them to vultures in open-topped "towers of silence" called dakhmas, many of which still stand today. Such towers were built when Iranians worshipped the Moon-goddess Mah, the Mother, and believed that vultures carried the deceased to her heavenly realm. Even after burial was instituted in persia, a dead body couldn't be interred until it was first torn by vultures.
Egyptians worshipped the vulture-headed Mother as the origin of all things, calling her Mut, Isis, or Nekhbet. In combination with the serpent goddess Buto (Per-Uatchet), the vulture-mother gave rise to the Two Mistresses, guardians of royal dynastic clans, and nurses of deceased kings in the after-life. Temples had special chapels for the Two Mistresses: on the east, the serpent Goddess brought the sun to birth; on the west, the vulture Goddess daily ordained his death. Sometimes both Goddesses appeared as vultures on the sacred mount of Sehseh, where the deceased pharaoh became an eternal infant at their breasts.
Egypt's oldest oracle was the shrine of the vulture goddess Nekhbet at Nekhen (modern Al-Kab), the original "necropolis" or city of the dead. Because it was a birth shrine as well as a death shrine, Greeks called it Ilithyiaspolis after their own Great Mother of childbirth, Aphrodite Ilithyia. romans called it Civitas Lucinae, the city of Juno Lucina, Goddess of childbirth.
Egypt's symbol for "grandmother" was the vulture goddess bearing a flail of authority: a totemic form of the pre-dynastic clan matriarch. The word "mother" was written in hieroglyphics with the sign of the vulture. Nekhbet the Vulture once ruled all of Upper Egypt, wearing the white crown in token of sovereignty. As Isis, she appeared in vulture form on mummy-pillows, crowned with a vulture skin and bearing in each claw the ankh or Cross of Life. As a vulture she devoured her dead consort Osiris, just as Kali devoured her dead Shiva. Then she reincarnated him in her body, and gave him rebirth as a new Holy Child, Horus.
Osiris was dismembered, which was the funerary custom of primitive Egypt, dating from a remote time when the dead probably were eaten, after the manner of primitive Greece's omophagia. Funerary magic lay in the hands of dancing priestesses called muu, "mothers", who may have worn costumes of vulture feathers to represent "eaters" and, like Isis, reconstitute the dead in their own bodies. The Book of Ani said the first gate of the uterine underworld was guarded by the vulture Goddess, whose tearing beak could admit the dead to the place whence they rose again.
The vulture-mother was known also in northern Europe and Asia. Valkyries were "corpse-eaters" to the Saxons and often took the form of carrion-eating birds such as crows or ravens. In Siberia, each shaman had a "Bird-of-Prey Mother" who appeared twice in his life, at his spiritual death-and-rebirth--like the Dove-mother appearing at Jesus's baptismal ceremony--and again at his physical death. This spirit-mother was a large carrion bird "with an iron beak, hooked claws, and a long tail."
Funerary priestesses came to be called "dirty" in classic myths, as they appear in the tale of the vulture-feathered Harpies. However, the ancient claim that all fultures are female was believed well into the Christian era. church fathers cited, in defense of teh Virgin Birth, the "fact" that vultures conceived their eggs only because they were fertilized by spirits of the wind.
*Patricia Telesco/The Language of Dreams:
Targeting a vulnerable situation or person. Ill feelings aimed toward you from a exploitative or predatory person. The desire to focus on particularly susceptible opportunity for personal gain. Ancient meaning: An archetype for the goddess of death and reincarnation among the Egyptians especially. Here, vultures were believed to nurse the spirit of the dead Pharaohs, maintaining them in the afterlife.
*Bobby Lake-Thom/Spirits of the Earth:
Buzzards and Vultures are bad signs. They are messengers who warn us of interruptions or problems forthcoming. While traveling to San Francisco, I saw a number of Buzzards come flying in on different sides of the road; sometimes they crisscrossed back and forth. I knew that they were trying to warn me of road construction ahead, barriers and problems, or the possiblity of pedestrians, bike riders, or animals in the road. One time I was leaving my house to catch a plane and I made prayers for protection to the sky for the airplane, and was just warming up the car and getting ready to head for the airport. Suddenlly a flock of Buzzards came in and began to circle over my house, and then the car, and then they went out toward the airport. I couldn't figure out what they were trying to say at first, so I prayed and talked to them. I offered them tobacco. Immediately aferward a large Buzzard landed on the roof of the house with a bag in his beak. The it dawned on me to check my luggage. I had forgotten it and left it in the house while rustling around to catch a plane on time!
Another time I was in Nevada and heading toward a Native spiritual gathering in Susanville, California. Approximately 20 miles out of town, I saw a group of Buzzards on the side of the road eating and fighting with one another. I knew it was a warning to be careful of the food up ahead. So once again I prayed to the Great Spirit, burned and offered my sacred angelica root to the Buzzards as a gesture of thaks, and went to the meeting/gathering. I did not eat the food, despite the fact that this meant I was violating Indian custom and law (according to tribal custom, a guest should always eat food when offered; otherwise it is an insult). I found out later that a lot of people got sick from eating spoiled turkey.
Another time I took my children swimming on a hot day to a spot on the river outside Spokane, Washington. We were all walking barefoot over rocks, heading toward a more sandy spot. Suddenly a Buzzard swooped down and flew directly over the nice spot we intended to use, so I told the children to avoid it and pick a different place, which they grudgingly did. shortly afterward another family came and went directly to the sandy place we had originally picked out. Once again the Buzzard flew in, but they ignored it. As they proceeded to spread out the blanket and get settled in, chaos erupted. One of the children cut his foot badly on a broken beer bottle, the mother stepped in dog feces and was cussing about it, the father unearthed a dead dog under his large towel while trying to rearrange the spot for comfort, and the other child almost drowned in the swift but hidden undertow of the river current directly in front of them. I was certainly glad I had known Nature's secret language system!
The meaning of this nasty bird in your dream depends on the action; if you just observed it sitting somehere, it is a sign that you have an enemy or comeptitor waiting for to you make a mistake; if you saw one devouring its prey, it is a contrary omen and signifies that you will overcome your difficulties; if you killed a vulture in your dream, it forecasts a sure stroke of good luck.
*Denise Linn/The Secret Language of Signs:
Vultures feed amost exclusively on carrion. They perform a very useful function, in that they are eliminating potential sources of disease, although this often causes people to think that they are unclean birds. However, they are very clean. In Egyptian hieroglyphs, the vulture was depicted along with mother symbols, which, according to Jung, was because Mother Earth contains both death and life. The Parsi placed their dead where vultures could consume them, believing that this would allow them a rebirth.
Is there a potential problem that you are being asked to clean up? Are you always putting yourself in positions where you are asked to clean up messy situations? Look within to discover if there is an underlying pattern that is drawing these situations to you. Do you feel a need to clean away something that you may consider complete or dead? Is there someone in your life who seems vulturelike? do you fee there is a competitor waiting for you to make an error or someone who has ill feelings toward you?
*Zolar/Encyclopedia of Signs, Omens, and Superstitions:
Vultures have long been thought of as birds of divination. They never kill their prey, but, rather, devour abandoned corpses. Because of this practice, they are held an omen of coming death. In legends surrounding the founding of rome, the god Jupiter caused six vultures to appear to Remus and twelve to Romulus to indicate the future site of Rome. According to Pliny, a vulture has the ability to "smell" death as much as three days in advance. Hence, should it hover over a house, such is said to be an omen of coming death. In the Old Testament, vultures are often confused with eagles. In Exodus one can read, "I bore you on vulture's wings rather than "on eagle's wings". (Exodus 19:4) Likewise, in Deuteronomy: "like a vulture...that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings." (Deuteronomy 32:11.) Since the Hebrew word for "vulture" and "compassion" are similar, an association was made between these large birds and parental care. Some experts believe that the traditional myth that a pelican feeds it young on its own blood may indeed be traced to vultures, who were seen to return to the nest with bloody morsels for their chicks.
*Barbara G. Walker/The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets:
One of the oldest totems of the Great Mother in Egypt was the vulture, eater of the dead. Vultures who devoured corpses were regarded as her angels of death, since they carried the dead piecemeal to heaven. In Neolithic times it was a common practice to expose dead bodies to carrion birds, who embodied the Mother's spirit. For this reason even the Greeks and Romans fostered a belief that all vultures are female. On the Stele of the Vultures from Catal Huyuk, 7th mellenium B.C., dead bodies are carried off by vultures--in a time and place where only the female principle was worshipped.
Ancient Iranians didn't bury their dead, but exposed them to vultures in open-topped "towers of silence" called dakhmas, many of which still stand today. Such towers were built when Iranians worshipped the Moon-goddess Mah, the Mother, and believed that vultures carried the deceased to her heavenly realm. Even after burial was instituted in persia, a dead body couldn't be interred until it was first torn by vultures.
Egyptians worshipped the vulture-headed Mother as the origin of all things, calling her Mut, Isis, or Nekhbet. In combination with the serpent goddess Buto (Per-Uatchet), the vulture-mother gave rise to the Two Mistresses, guardians of royal dynastic clans, and nurses of deceased kings in the after-life. Temples had special chapels for the Two Mistresses: on the east, the serpent Goddess brought the sun to birth; on the west, the vulture Goddess daily ordained his death. Sometimes both Goddesses appeared as vultures on the sacred mount of Sehseh, where the deceased pharaoh became an eternal infant at their breasts.
Egypt's oldest oracle was the shrine of the vulture goddess Nekhbet at Nekhen (modern Al-Kab), the original "necropolis" or city of the dead. Because it was a birth shrine as well as a death shrine, Greeks called it Ilithyiaspolis after their own Great Mother of childbirth, Aphrodite Ilithyia. romans called it Civitas Lucinae, the city of Juno Lucina, Goddess of childbirth.
Egypt's symbol for "grandmother" was the vulture goddess bearing a flail of authority: a totemic form of the pre-dynastic clan matriarch. The word "mother" was written in hieroglyphics with the sign of the vulture. Nekhbet the Vulture once ruled all of Upper Egypt, wearing the white crown in token of sovereignty. As Isis, she appeared in vulture form on mummy-pillows, crowned with a vulture skin and bearing in each claw the ankh or Cross of Life. As a vulture she devoured her dead consort Osiris, just as Kali devoured her dead Shiva. Then she reincarnated him in her body, and gave him rebirth as a new Holy Child, Horus.
Osiris was dismembered, which was the funerary custom of primitive Egypt, dating from a remote time when the dead probably were eaten, after the manner of primitive Greece's omophagia. Funerary magic lay in the hands of dancing priestesses called muu, "mothers", who may have worn costumes of vulture feathers to represent "eaters" and, like Isis, reconstitute the dead in their own bodies. The Book of Ani said the first gate of the uterine underworld was guarded by the vulture Goddess, whose tearing beak could admit the dead to the place whence they rose again.
The vulture-mother was known also in northern Europe and Asia. Valkyries were "corpse-eaters" to the Saxons and often took the form of carrion-eating birds such as crows or ravens. In Siberia, each shaman had a "Bird-of-Prey Mother" who appeared twice in his life, at his spiritual death-and-rebirth--like the Dove-mother appearing at Jesus's baptismal ceremony--and again at his physical death. This spirit-mother was a large carrion bird "with an iron beak, hooked claws, and a long tail."
Funerary priestesses came to be called "dirty" in classic myths, as they appear in the tale of the vulture-feathered Harpies. However, the ancient claim that all fultures are female was believed well into the Christian era. church fathers cited, in defense of teh Virgin Birth, the "fact" that vultures conceived their eggs only because they were fertilized by spirits of the wind.
*Patricia Telesco/The Language of Dreams:
Targeting a vulnerable situation or person. Ill feelings aimed toward you from a exploitative or predatory person. The desire to focus on particularly susceptible opportunity for personal gain. Ancient meaning: An archetype for the goddess of death and reincarnation among the Egyptians especially. Here, vultures were believed to nurse the spirit of the dead Pharaohs, maintaining them in the afterlife.
*Bobby Lake-Thom/Spirits of the Earth:
Buzzards and Vultures are bad signs. They are messengers who warn us of interruptions or problems forthcoming. While traveling to San Francisco, I saw a number of Buzzards come flying in on different sides of the road; sometimes they crisscrossed back and forth. I knew that they were trying to warn me of road construction ahead, barriers and problems, or the possiblity of pedestrians, bike riders, or animals in the road. One time I was leaving my house to catch a plane and I made prayers for protection to the sky for the airplane, and was just warming up the car and getting ready to head for the airport. Suddenlly a flock of Buzzards came in and began to circle over my house, and then the car, and then they went out toward the airport. I couldn't figure out what they were trying to say at first, so I prayed and talked to them. I offered them tobacco. Immediately aferward a large Buzzard landed on the roof of the house with a bag in his beak. The it dawned on me to check my luggage. I had forgotten it and left it in the house while rustling around to catch a plane on time!
Another time I was in Nevada and heading toward a Native spiritual gathering in Susanville, California. Approximately 20 miles out of town, I saw a group of Buzzards on the side of the road eating and fighting with one another. I knew it was a warning to be careful of the food up ahead. So once again I prayed to the Great Spirit, burned and offered my sacred angelica root to the Buzzards as a gesture of thaks, and went to the meeting/gathering. I did not eat the food, despite the fact that this meant I was violating Indian custom and law (according to tribal custom, a guest should always eat food when offered; otherwise it is an insult). I found out later that a lot of people got sick from eating spoiled turkey.
Another time I took my children swimming on a hot day to a spot on the river outside Spokane, Washington. We were all walking barefoot over rocks, heading toward a more sandy spot. Suddenly a Buzzard swooped down and flew directly over the nice spot we intended to use, so I told the children to avoid it and pick a different place, which they grudgingly did. shortly afterward another family came and went directly to the sandy place we had originally picked out. Once again the Buzzard flew in, but they ignored it. As they proceeded to spread out the blanket and get settled in, chaos erupted. One of the children cut his foot badly on a broken beer bottle, the mother stepped in dog feces and was cussing about it, the father unearthed a dead dog under his large towel while trying to rearrange the spot for comfort, and the other child almost drowned in the swift but hidden undertow of the river current directly in front of them. I was certainly glad I had known Nature's secret language system!
