On Pelicans
To his good friend thus wide, Ill ope my arms
And, like the kind, life-rendering pelicanĀ
Repast them with my blood.
- Hamlet
In Heraldry, āThe Pelican In Her Pietyā is the attitude of a pelican wounding her own breast with her beak to feed the blood to her chicks. She is the rare female animal in heraldry and iconography, and is an inversion of the phoenix, who dies selfishly and eternally, forever alone. The pelican in Western folklore is female and ancient, and while she is associated with sacrifice, she does not necessary die from it, and she performs the sacrifice if her young are starving or wounded.
Figure 1. The Pelican In Her Piety. Nobody involved in this embroidery had ever seen a pelican.
By feeding her children the blood from her breast, she can actually resurrect them from literal death. In medieval times she was conveniently associated with Christ, who gave his blood in sacrifice to āresurrectā his āchildren.āĀ
Now the significance of the pelican is mostly forgotten, though you may notice her in pieces of art history around Europe.
Figure 2. More pelican, more piety.
This Kate Beaton comic shows Elizabeth I of England and her famous quote about having the heart and stomach of a king. TheĀ āalbatrossā thing is a joke that Kate Beaton made because itās funny.
Figure 3. Nobody ever links to Kate Beaton properly, have you noticed that?
However, itās ALSO funny because Elizabeth I took the pelican as a personal symbol and called herself the mother pelican of England. She was painted in a matching pair of portraits with a phoenix jewel in one portrait and a pelican jewel in the other.
āNance, delighting in her pelican, erected a lapis lazuli shrine, and set the holy pelican by her feet.āĀ
- Nanshe Converses with the Birds
Nanshe, the Sumerian goddess of Social Justice, had some kind of long conversations with pelicans, which were her symbol.Ā
ā I am like a pelican of the wilderness; I am become as an owl of the waste places.ā
- Psalms 102:6
David, the psalmist, is also having some pelican feelings.
In Ancient Egypt, pelicans were associated with the dead and were protective against snakes.Ā The Ancient Egyptians were much better at drawing pelicans than the medieval Europeans.
Figure 4: The Pelicans in the Tomb of Horemheb Know Something.
Figure 5: British WW2 pelican poster depicting a mother pelican in her piety, but the nest is actually a solderās helmet [x].
Personally, I think the mother pelican would have been a better Metaphorical Animal for resurrection/protection than a shitty phoenix in Harry Potter, especially as you could pick up on lovely resonance from that frankly stupid Lily Evans plothole. If the ~*~fancy magic of a motherās sacrifice~*~ can spontaneously shatter an evil wizardās soul, but the mechanism is fundamentally ignored thereafter, then what was the fucking point? Surely anyone who sacrificed themselves in love during two great wizarding wars - and there were many - would have simultaneously protected their loved ones from harm while destroying their attackers. Even Narcissa would probably have done it if she had been guaranteed to protect Draco and kill Voldemort while doing so. You have all this ~*~magical love~*~ that turns every family into a war-ending bomb but nobody bothers to do anything about it. Theyāre all faffing around with Christ allegories and noble self-sacrifice and Ā And all they ever do is fawn around their silly phoenix and have an Order of it, when the whole time.
But nobody really gets tattoos of pelicans.
Figure 6: the Order of the Pelican. think about it
The noble, mythological aspect of the pelican has very little do with pelicans in real life. Like wolves/lions and other Romantic and Charismatic Animals who are elevated in human folklore but ridiculous in private moments, pelicans are incredibly silly and awkward animals.
I have petted them. And it was good. Their faces are leathery and they are silly. They have no nostrils. Everyone should like pelicans more.
Figure 7: I hope this has convinced you.
