EAGLES CONDORS VULTURES AND NATIVE NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICANS
- magixman7
- 7 hours ago
- 13 min read
The Eagle and the Condor Prophesy: A 2000-Year-Old Message for the Future
The ancient Eagle and the Condor prophecy is a beautiful and interesting legend that reveals future changes in our society.
It's not only a message for the future and the changes that are bound to happen, but it also tells what happened in the past and how human societies split into two paths. It tells the story of conflict, but also peace and re-union.
Ancient Native Americans believe that humans were divided into two groups:
- One group followed The Path of The Eagle
- The other group followed The Path of The Condor
Native Americans have many prophecies that tell about changes that will take place in our "Now" Timelines.
Both of these Magnificent Avians are Powerful Symbols in Native American Mythology.
The Eagle represents the North and is associated with Masculine Energy and Focus of the Mind.
The path of the Condor is represented by the South and is Deeply connected to Feminine Energy and the softness of the Heart.
To Native Americans, the Eagle is a Symbol of Courage, Wisdom and Strength.
It's a messenger of the Creator and we must treat it with Respect.
The meaning of the symbol depends on a little on which tribe discusses it, but the meaning behind the powerful bird is more or less the same. It's sacred because it can fly highest of all birds and are therefore closest to the Great Spirit.
It was custom to hold an Eagle Feather aloft when saying a prayer and during special council meetings eagle feathers were held as an assurance that the person was telling the truth.
The Golden Eagle
is indeed an Iconic Native American Symbol, often seen incorporated into Native American Regalia, such as Indian Headdresses.
In addition to headdresses, Golden Eagle Feathers are also used in things like Dance Fans, Ceremonial Staffs, and even Necklaces and Beadwork.
They’re often incorporated into various types of Native American Regalia that holds cultural and spiritual significance. It really showcases the reverence and the symbolism that the Native Americans attached to the Golden Eagle.
NOTE: In the U.S., the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act makes it illegal to Possess, Collect, and Sell eagle feathers without proper authorization. This is to protect eagle populations, since they were once endangered.
However, recognizing the cultural significance of eagle feathers to Native American communities, the U.S. established the Eagle Feather Repository.
This program allows Native Americans to apply for and receive eagle feathers for religious and cultural purposes, and the feathers are collected by the government and then distributed through this repository.
It’s a balance between conservation efforts and respecting Native American traditions.
The feathers distributed through the Eagle Feather Repository are actually provided to Native Americans free of charge. The program is designed to ensure that these feathers are accessible for ceremonial and religious purposes without any cost to the Native communities.
It’s part of the federal government’s effort to support cultural heritage and maintain conservation efforts at the same time.
To get the proper authorization, Native Americans typically need to be enrolled members of a federally recognized tribe.
They usually have to provide documentation proving their tribal enrollment and a letter from their tribal leader or spiritual advisor that states the feathers are needed for religious or cultural purposes. Once all of that is verified, they can apply through the repository and receive the feathers they need.
On average, the National Eagle Repository receives about 2,500 to 3,500 dead eagles each year. They process several thousand orders annually, though the exact numbers can vary, and there's often a backlog, especially for Immature Golden Eagles.
The feathers and Birds are provided free of charge to Native American communities, and the Repository aims to balance Conservation with Cultural needs.
Contrary to what many think, feathers were not a sign of ranks among Native Americans. Each and every bird was special and so were their feathers.
Feathers were very important to Native Americans and they served as a symbol of the Indian way of life.
A feather could be a symbol of trust, honor, strength, wisdom, power, freedom and many more things. Native Americans believed that every bird species had its own character traits that could be transmitted to humans through the feathers.
Bald and Golden Eagles, as well as their feathers are highly revered and considered sacred within American Indian traditions, culture and religion.
Condor: A Symbol of The Sky
Native Americans consider the condor to be a sacred animal and there are various myths about how the bird is associated with creation of life on Earth.
The Condor was and is still admired as a symbol of power and majesty. Among many tribes.
The Wiyot Indians of California believe the Condor was the ancestor of their tribes... In the Quechua and Aymara cultures of South America, Condor is a symbol of the sky, and is frequently represented in tribal art.
The Mapuche people call Condor the King of Birds, and believe he embodies the four cardinal virtues of:
- Wisdom
- Justice
- Goodness
-Leadership
The Condor
is also an important Native American symbol.
The Condor was worshipped in South America too.
The Temple of the Condor in Machu Picchu in Peru, is a unique ancient structure built in honor of this wonderful bird.
The condor - South America's largest bird that granted the status of King of the Andes - was sacred, mystical bird, a deity to the Incas and to honor this bird, they skillfully shaped the small temple into the outspread wings of a flying condor, which is known to have a wingspan of up to 8 feet, and it can fly to great heights.
The Condor was a sacred bird for all the people of the Andes.
The bird was a divine symbol of fertility and people believed that by moving its enormous wings, the bird could gather clouds producing rain, the best fertilizer for the land.
The Eagle and The Condor Prophecy
New Level of Consciousness for Humanity and The Pachakuti Era
The Eagle and the Condor prophecy is a 2,000-year-old message for the future.
According to John Perkins, best-selling author and co-founder of Pachamama Alliance, every 500 years, there is an era called a Pachakuti. The Fourth Pachakuti started in the 1490's, and the Fifth began in the 1990's.
Although it is uncertain when and where the Eagle and the Condor legend originated from, it seems it comes from the Amazon about 2,000 years ago.
Perkins has found different version of the legend in in the Andes, through Central America, and have seen its influence on the Maya, the Aztec, the Hopi, and the Navajo.
When the Eagle of the North
flies with the Condor of the South,
the spirit of the land
she will re-awaken.
Inca prophecy
The ancient prophecy tells that after people have decided to split, one group following the Eagle and the other the Condor these two paths will not meet for many years.
During the fourth Pachakuti era, the Eagle and the Condor people would come together again and the Eagle would be so strong as to practically drive the Condor into extinction, but not quite.
The fifth Pachakuti era stands for a new level of consciousness for humanity.
During this time, people will re-unite.
"The Fifth Pachakuti would create a portal for the Eagle and Condor to fly together in one sky, to mate and create a new offspring: higher human consciousness.
Some say that this offspring is represented by the quetzal of Central America, the Mayan bird that is the symbol of bringing together the heart and mind, art and science, male and female," John Perkins says.
The Eagle and the Condor prophecy brings together the individual and the community.
Thus, we can look at the Eagle and the Condor as two individual birds or two individual people that come together.
The Condor is telling us, with its great intuitive sense that we are creating a nightmare now and looking at the condition of the world, one can only agree.
Rainbow prophecy.
Among Native Americans, we encounter another similar legend, known as the Prophecy of the Rainbow Warriors.
It also tells what about the inevitable changes that will take place in the future. According to Native American beliefs, under the symbol of the rainbow, all races and religions will unite to spread the wisdom of living in harmony with each other and with all creatures.
If you believe in prophecies, then there is much to ne learned from Native Americans, or maybe it is true that the past, present and future exists all at once.
Vulture Shamanism
10,000 Years Ago
The image above shows an impression of a room called the 'Vulture Shrine' in the town of Çatal Hüyük, an ancient site still being excavated at Anatolia, Turkey.
Çatal Hüyük culture dates back to 6,500 BCE and yet these people were surprisingly sophisticated. The vulture image appears to represent for them a god-form, responsible for removing the head (i.e. the soul?) of the deceased, as can be seen in the picture above.
They may have practiced 'sky-burials' (where corpses are left to the birds to eat) or the imagery may have been entirely metaphorical, or both.
There is some evidence to suggest that over time as this culture developed the bird image evolved into that of a 'vulture-goddess'. But most importantly at least one of the murals from Çatal Hüyük apparently shows a human being dressed in a vulture skin.
Taking an eight-thousand year old image of a "human in a vulture skin" and turning it into an early Vulture Shamanism culture could be stretching things a bit... and one should always be careful of making assumptions when the evidence in support of pet theories is tenuous.
However, in the last few decades archaeological research has come to light which, when added to the evidence from Çatal Hüyük, begins to lend very strong weight to the idea of a 'shamanic connection'.
In the 1950's the archaeologist/anthropologists Rose Solecki and her husband Ralph began excavating a cave site near the Greater Zab river in Kurdistan.
This cave had been used for burials by the Zawi Chemi people (as this small area is called) around 8870 BC (plus or minus 300 years, according to carbon-dating) - over 10,000 years ago - and 4,000 years before the beginnings of the various Mesopotamia cultures referred to here. What did they discover that was so significant?
They found a number of goat skulls placed next to the wing bones of large predatory birds, including the bearded vulture, the griffon vulture, the white-tailed sea eagle and the great bustard.
The Soleckis had to ask themselves what the purpose of such a 'ritual burial' was, and why it was that only certain species of birds had been selected.
In 1977 the journal Sumer published an article by Rose Solecki entitled 'Predatory Bird Rituals at Zawi Chemi Shanidar' where she described the findings, going on to suggest that the wings had almost certainly been utilized as part of some kind of ritualistic costume, worn either for personal decoration or for ceremonial purposes.
She connected the finds with the Vulture Shamanism of the protoneolithic Çatal Hüyük community in Central Anatolia mentioned above (which was 2000 years later in time, and several hundred miles away in distance).
Recognizing the importance of their discovery, however, Rose Solecki concluded the article by saying:
"The Zawi Chemi people must have endowed these great raptorial birds with special powers, and the faunal remains we have described for the site must represent special ritual paraphernalia.
Certainly, the remains represent a concerted effort by a goodly number of people just to hunt down and capture such a large number of birds and goats... either the wings were saved to pluck out the feathers, or that wing fans were made, or that they were used as part of a costume for a ritual.
One of the murals from a Catal Hayuk shrine ... depicts just such a ritual scene; i.e., a human figure dressed in a vulture skin"
The ritual coats of present-day Siberian Shamans are cut to look like birds: they are cut to a point and tasselled in a way that is suggestive of feathers, and this is quite deliberate.
And, although in all the forms of Shamanism across Asia there is little interest in creating any long-lasting images of winged humans, the notion of the Shaman being able to fly is nonetheless universal.
When stone-carved motifs do start to appear around 3,000 BC in Mesopotamia and the surrounding area, the wings of these winged beings seem to signify an ability to travel to places that ordinary people can't reach, along with an ability to 'mediate' between the human world and some other 'higher' state or states. Both of these qualities are (also) universally considered to be the main attributes of a Shaman.
Undoubtedly this also helps explain why Shamen across the world generally tend to have a strong connection with birds.
The Shaman can 'fly' in trance, travelling to the realm of the spirits where he can then either do battle against malign entities, or try and persuade, flatter, cajole or otherwise entreat the spirits to act for the benefit of one or more human beings.
THE VULTURE AS TOTEM
The Golden Purifier
(CATHARTES AURA)
by the Wanderling
The vulture is a very powerful totem. Its cycle of power is year-round. If you have a Vulture as a spirit guide or totem, it can show you how to use energy powerfully and efficiently.
It glides effortlessly on the winds, soaring high but using little energy.
It symbolized the distribution of energy so that gravity (or cares) do not weigh it down.
The Vulture uses air currents against the pull of gravity. It does not use its own energy, but uses the energies of the Earth instead, the energies of the Earth being ONE of the mainstay sources in The Power of the Shaman.
A very valuable lesson.
"One day, when I was around ten years old or so, I went for a hike deep into the desert unescorted. When my Uncle discovered I was gone he went looking for me.
During my walk I happened across the carcass of a dead rabbit and was fascinated by it for some reason. When my Uncle found me after cresting a small hill he saw me squatted down with the carcass.
Joining me quite comfortably in a circle with the rabbit were three what were, because of this incident, to eventually become my Totem Animal - VULTURES. From what he was able to discern from his initial vantage point I was neither afraid of them nor were they remotely afraid of me.
As well, and he swore this to be true - although I have absolutely no recollection of it and construe it as a possible total misinterpretation of facts - that the vultures and I were sharing meat from the carcass between us.
"When my Uncle told his estranged wife about the incident she suddenly was very interested in me. You see, for some reason, in today's neo-Shaman environment there has been a stress placed on finding one's "power animal."
The contemporary neo-Shaman workshops have a tendency to blind people to the fact that real animals are also spirit and power, and every bit as important, or even more so, than than a spirit guide that appears in some vision.
His estranged wife, a Midewiwin Medicine Woman, knew that. In workshops, the totem-animal-visions of participants are never frogs or gophers, they are always wolves, bears, eagles, and falcons. If it were only so."
The scientific name for the Turkey Vulture is CATHARTES AURA which means GOLDEN PURIFIER because as it goes about it's lifetime business it purifies the landscape and environment in it's own natural way, ensuring the continued health and life of other living things.
The Vulture is a promise that all hardship was temporary and necessary for a higher purpose. Once a Vulture enters your life as a totem or guide, it will remain with you for life.
Vultures live and work together, both in cooperation and friendliness.
They communicate with friends and neighbors when they find something to eat. They let the others know where the food is. And when there is a big feast they communicate with neighboring flocks in distant roosts.
Also, Turkey Vultures that range within California Condor habitat areas, when they find food they will go to the Condors and lead them to it.
One roost was observed when they had a dead cow in their neighborhood. They somehow contacted a roost of 100 vultures about 30 miles away to come join them. Several days later, before they finished their feast, two more cows died. Within a day the vultures had contacted another roost to join them. At night all the birds visited together in the same or neighboring trees.
There were now three different roosts living together. When the cows had been cleaned up the several visiting roosts went home. (source)
In Greek mythology, the Vulture is the descendant of the Griffin. It was a very Buddhist-like, Zen-like symbol of the non-dual oneness of heaven and earth, spirit and matter, good and evil, guardian and avenger.
The Vulture is the avenger of nature spirits. Ancient Assyrians believed the Vulture was, like Nagarjuna's middle way, Sunyata, the encompassing overall non-separated union between the day and night.
Ironically, regardless of the less than good image the vulture is typically granted by most, think about it:
Unlike the needs of nearly all other living creatures, vultures do not kill.
Their prey either dies or something else kills it. Herodorus Ponticus relates that great men of legend were always very joyful when a vulture appeared upon any action.
For it is a creature the least hurtful of any, pernicious neither to corn, fruit-tree, nor cattle; it preys only upon carrion, and never kills or hurts any living thing; and as for birds, it touches not them, though they are dead, as being of its own species, whereas eagles, owls, and hawks mangle and kill their own fellow-creatures.
That very same overall innate nature imbedded in the actions and life of the vulture, never killing or hurting a living thing or its own fellow creatures, is reflected for the most part, in and by the the actions and life of the person that truly has the vulture as a totem animal.
The noted Athenian writer Aeschylus (c. 525 BC-456 BC) says,
"What bird is clean that preys on fellow bird? - Besides, all other birds are, so to say, never out of our eyes; they let themselves be seen of us continually; but a vulture is a very rare sight, and you can seldom meet with a man that has seen their young; their rarity and infrequency has raised a strange opinion in some, that they come to us from some other world; as soothsayers ascribe a divine origination to all things not produced either of nature or of themselves."
Be as it may, the Assyrians, Greeks and other early civilization city-states were actually late comers to the use or representation of vultures in ritual, religious, or shamanistic rites.
In the 1950's the husband/wife archaelogist/anthropologist team of Ralph and Rose Solecki began excavating a cave site 250 miles north of Baghdad along a tributary of the Tigris River called the Greater Zab that rises out of the Turkey-Kurdistan border area.
The cave had been used for burials by an ancient tribal people called the Zawi Chami around 8870 BCE (plus or minus 300 years, according to carbon-dating) - over 10,000 years ago - which is well over 4,000 years before the beginnings of any of the various cultures mentioned above.
In their dig the Soleckis found a number of wing bones of large predatory birds, which turned out to be Gyptaeus barbatus (the bearded vulture) and Gyps fulvus (the griffon vulture).