When I took this image outside of an Edinburgh pub the myths of ancient Greece could not have been further from my mind. Then I started reading the works of Homer.<\/p>\n
A recurring theme in both Homer’s ‘The Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’ is the omen of a bird in flight. Even more powerful is where a bird of prey carries in its talons livestock or other quarry.<\/p>\n
A bird seen on the right and the omen would be one of success but on the left such an omen would spell downfall or disaster.<\/p>\n
In the Greek myths the bird of prey is always a great eagle carrying a sheep or pig or goat. If you squint a little and use your imagination this hawk could be that great eagle and the rat, a young pig.<\/p>\n
Regardless, just make sure it stays on your right.<\/p>\n
Photo: Robert Rath, ‘An Omen on My Right’, 1\/200s f\/2.8 ISO100 200mm<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I took this image outside of an Edinburgh pub the myths of ancient Greece could not have been further from my mind. Then I started reading the works of Homer. A recurring theme in both Homer’s ‘The Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’ is the omen of a bird in flight. Even more powerful is where a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[417,1933,1462,1930,2077,2073,2078,2079,2080,2075,1737,2074,1461,2076],"class_list":["post-7267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-birds","tag-birdsofprey","tag-bronze","tag-edinburgh","tag-greekmythology","tag-hawkandrat","tag-homer","tag-iliad","tag-odyssey","tag-prey","tag-pub","tag-rat","tag-statue","tag-talons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7269,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7267\/revisions\/7269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}