Yesterday, the boys and I went down to my parents' house for the day. We were celebrating Grampa's birthday. It was a very relaxing day. Brian took a special ride on the wave runner with Grampa. They sought out some waves so they could ride the "bumps". The boys played. Grampa relaxed. And I got to get an oil change - excitement abounding!
One of the neatest moments of the day, however, was when a peacock couple decided to roost and preen on the top of my car that was parked in the driveway. It was a most amazing site.
After leaving my car top, they wandered around the side of my parents' house to the backyard where they promptly hopped up onto the gate surrounding the pool.
This led the female to hop down to the pool deck, and wander about,
while the male hopped up to the higher part of the fence, onto the table,
and eventually right up to the doors.
I did some checking on the significance of the peacock, and this is what I found:
What the peacock is meant to represent is open to many, many interpretations -- many of them likely valid and true, others a bit more fanciful. Amongst the most common are these:
- There was an ancient Greek tradition that a peacock's flesh did not decay; hence it was a particularly potent symbol of eternal life.
- Over the life of a peacock, its grows new feathers each year; and each year these are more brighter than those of the past. As such, there is an image in this of newness of life and lustre.
- The 'eye' patterns in the peacock's tail feathers, when the tail is spread open, have often been taken to represent the vault of heaven bespeckled with the sun, moon, and stars, giving the bird the symbolic significance of the cosmos.
- More commonly, the 'many eyes' of the peacock's tail are taken to symbolize the all-seeing vision of God.
- Following an old Persian and Babylonian custom, the peacock was associated with Paradise and the Tree of Life (which is why it is so often seen next to the Tree of Life in religious depictions), and hence associated with immortality.
