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At the ancient oracle at Dodona, Dione Ð rather than Hera Ð was the goddess described as accompanying Zeus, as many surviving votive inscriptions show. The birds associated with her at Dodona were doves and her priestesses at Dodona were called peliades or "doves". Although Dione was no...
An interesting ceremony to Tlaloc by his priests was for the priests to throw themselves into frigid lake waters at midnight and imitate the sound and splashing of water birds to the point of exhaustion. This was apparently done just to please Tlaloc. In another ritual a priest would climb a...
Aphrodite was associated with the dove. Another of her sacred birds was the goose, on which she is seen to ride in a vase painting from antiquity. Hesiod's reference to Aphrodite's having been born from the sea inspired the Renaissance artist Botticelli's famous painting of the goddess on ...
(Pegasus) checked it by striking the summit with his hoof. Since these mortals had taken upon themselves to strive with goddesses, the Mousai changed them into nine birds. To this day people refer to them as the grebe, the wryneck, the ortolan, the jay, the greenfinch, the goldfinch, ...
The gods took pity and turned the two into birds (Alcyone became a halcyon, or a kingfisher, and Ceyx became a ceyx, or a gannet). Alcyone made her nest on the beach, and waves were big and scary, but the gods made the sea calm so she could lay her eggs. Therefore, 'halcyon ...
SIRENS (Seirenes) Three dangerous sea Daemones with the heads of women and the bodies of birds. They lured sailors to their deaths with their irresistable siren-song. Some say they leapt into the sea in despair when Odysseus sailed past unharmed....
the sparrow were her birds. In addition to her natural gifts, she had a magical girdle that made anyone she wished to love her. There were two accounts of her birth. One says she was born from the bubbles in the ocean. The other went back to the time when Cronus castrated Uranus...
The Phrygian and Thracian goddesses seem to have several features in common, including worship in open-air rock sanctuaries, representations on monuments accompanied by wild animals (lions and birds of prey such as hawks and falcons); and connections with Phrygian and Thracian ruling elite ...