Tread not into my spaces, said the Owl,

And I’ve green lands where the kine graze, and yield

The riches of prudence. ’gainst death there’s the shield

Although burdened with sin and age you might growl

And curse that, you but carry a grudging bowl.

But under drippy shade of the moon is concealed

The joy of time; it can to you be revealed

Should in my hoot flawlessly mingle your howl.

My great name is Athene Noctua and keep

Through the long interminable night the sense

Of the nocturnal and the infinite;

Hid from the mortal eye in the dark and deep

Hole of the banyan I live, and know whence

Comes wisdom, streams the inexhaustible light!

RY Deshpande

10 May 2009

Athene Noctua—the owl nesting on the banyan tree facing the Matrimandir

—Photo by Paulette

Paulette writes to me:

In the West the owls occupy a special place because the Athene noctua was sacred to Pallas Athena, the goddess of wisdom, whom Sri Aurobindo also celebrates; they are seen as symbols of wisdom in many fairy tales as well. The owl is an ambivalent symbol, with divergent and even clashing interpretations according to culture and epoch. This phenomenon corresponds to the ‘collective unconscious’ (the repository of legends, epics, myths, fairy tales, etc as recorded by Jung, and which the Mother and Sri Aurobindo also point out, in their own language) that, the closer it comes to the present age, the more gets diversified according to the countries and regions, although at the origin everything is clubbed together.

I have taken several pictures of the Athene noctua owl nesting on the banyan tree and displayed them along with the many pictures of Matrimandir I took, for the official exhibition I put up to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Auroville. But in fact, my previous exhibition on Matrimandir, The Mother’s Shrine and its Inhabitants was dedicated to squirrels, drongos, crows, minas—plus the owl and parrot nesting on the banyan tree, next to each other!

One evening, while I was washing dishes, an owl entered from the back terrace and stood on the top shelves of the kitchen, silently watching me… What a darshan! I was transfixed, feeling at the presence of a sacred being… After a while the owl left, as silent as it had come…

Thanks so much, Paulette, for the lovely picture! It's so living and luminously powerful. ~ RYD