Every little girl loves horses, they all dream of owning their own horse. I believe this is because horses are so mythological. For instance, Pegasus, the horse God born of Medusa and Posiden; a winged horse that allowed hero's to ride him in their final stand off with a monster.
Story of Pegasus, according to Wikipedia.
Pegasus (Greek
Πήγασος/Pegasos, Latin
Pegasus) is one of the best known fantastical as well as mythological creatures in
Greek mythology. He is a winged divine horse, usually white in color. He was sired by
Poseidon, in his role as horse-god, and foaled by the
Gorgon Medusa.
[1] He was the brother of
Chrysaor, born at a single birthing when his mother was decapitated by Perseus. Greco-Roman poets write about his ascent to heaven after his birth and his obeisance to
Zeus, king of the gods, who instructed him to bring lightning and thunder from Olympus. Friend of the Muses, Pegasus is the creator of
Hippocrene, the fountain on
Mt. Helicon. He was captured by the Greek hero
Bellerophon near the fountain Peirene with the help of Athena and Poseidon. Pegasus allows the hero to ride him to defeat a monster, the Chimera, before realizing many other exploits. His rider, however, falls off his back trying to reach Mount Olympus. Zeus transformed him into the constellation
Pegasus and placed him in the sky.
Hypotheses have been proposed regarding its relationship with the
Muses, the gods
Athena,
Poseidon,
Zeus,
Apollo, and the hero
Perseus.
The symbolism of Pegasus varies with time. Symbol of wisdom and especially of fame from the Middle Ages until the Renaissance, he became one symbol of the poetry and the creator of sources in which the poets come to draw inspiration, particularly in the 19th century. Pegasus is the subject of a very rich iconography, especially through the ancient Greek pottery and paintings and sculptures of the Renaissance. Personification of the water, solar myth, or shaman mount, Carl Jung and his followers have seen in Pegasus a profound symbolic esoteric in relation to the spiritual energy that allows to access to the realm of the gods on Mount Olympus.
I jump horses and each time I am flying through the air, I always feel like I am riding Pegasus. Every summer when running my horse for excercise I couldnt help but feel like his feet were never touching the ground, instead the hoof beats I heard were that of Pegasus, carrying Zeus's lightningbolts, his feet making the sound of the thunder. Horses are very majestic animals, and it is easy to see how they relate to the noble Pegasus. For my presentation I covered how we are all hero's, and I feel like each time I am on a horse, I am just the hero that he is allowing to ride him into the last standoff.
If you have ever heard a herd of horses running, it is very easy to see how Pegasus could have been the carrier of Zeus's lightning bolts. Their pounding feet very clearly sound like thunder. If you have ever ridden a running horse, you can also see how easy it is to believe that they are the thunder themselves, almost as fast as the lightning, but not quite there yet. The dust they kick up almost looks as though it is a growing storm.
Pegasus is almost always depicted as a white horse. Growing up, my family played this game called white horse, first one to spot one wins...Now if you knew anything about white horse color, you would well know that it does not actually exist. The horse would have to have white skin, and white hair...however the closest to that is either pink skin white hair (albino) or black skin white hair (gray). SO the white horse is in fact a myth. I learned about the coat colors in Biology! Myth in every day life! I also Wikipediaed white horse...here are my results.
From earliest times white horses have been mythologised as possessing exceptional properties, transcending the normal world by having wings (e.g.
Pegasus from Greek mythology), or having horns (the
unicorn). As part of its legendary dimension, the white horse in myth may be depicted with seven heads (
Uchaishravas) or eight feet (
Sleipnir), sometimes in groups or singly. There are also white horses which are divinatory, who prophesy or warn of danger.
As a rare or distinguished symbol, a white horse typically bears the hero- or god-figure in ceremonial roles or in triumph over negative forces.
Herodotus reported that white horses were held as
sacred animals in the
Achaemenid court of
Xerxes the Great (ruled 486-465 BC),
[2] while in other traditions the reverse happens when it was sacrificed to the gods.
In more than one tradition, the white horse carries
patron saints or the world saviour in the end times (as in
Hinduism,
Christianity, and
Islam), is associated with the sun or sun chariot (
Ossetia) or bursts into existence in a fantastic way, emerging from the sea or a lightning bolt.
Though some mythologies are stories from earliest beliefs, other tales, though visionary or metaphorical, are found in liturgical sources as part of preserved, on-going traditions (see, for example, "Iranian tradition" below).
[edit] Mythologies and traditions
[edit] Indo-European
[edit] Celtic
In
Celtic mythology,
Rhiannon, a mythic figure in the
Mabinogion collection of legends, rides a "pale-white" horse.
[3] Because of this, she has been linked to the Romano-Celtic fertility horse goddess
Epona and other instances of the veneration of horses in early Indo-European culture.
[4]
White horses are the most common type of
hill figure in England. Though many are modern, the
Uffington White Horse at least dates back to the
Bronze Age.
In Scottish folklore, the
kelpie or
each uisge, a deadly supernatural water demon in the shape of a horse, is sometimes described as white, though other stories say it is black.
In
Greek mythology, the white winged horse
Pegasus was the son of
Poseidon and the
gorgon Medusa. Poseidon was the creator of horses. He created them out of the breaking waves.
White horses appear many times in
Hindu mythology. The
Vedic horse sacrifice or
Ashvamedha was a fertility and kingship ritual involving the sacrifice of a sacred gray or white stallion.
[5] Similar rituals may have taken place among Roman, Celtic and Norse peoples, but the descriptions are not so complete.
In the
Puranas, one of the precious objects that emerged while the
devas and
demons were
churning the milky ocean was
Uchaishravas, a snow-white horse with seven heads.
[5] (A white horse of the sun is sometimes also mentioned as emerging separately).
[6] Uchaishravas was at times ridden by
Indra, lord of the devas. Indra is depicted as having a liking for white horses in several legends - he often steals the sacrificial horse to the consternation of all involved, such as in the story of
Sagara,
[7] or the story of King
Prithu.
[8]
The chariot of the solar deity
Surya is drawn by seven horses, alternately described as all white, or as the colours of the rainbow.
Hayagriva the
Avatar of
Vishnu is worshipped as the God of knowledge and wisdom, with a human body and a horse's head, brilliant white in color, with white garments and seated on a white lotus.
Kalki, the tenth
incarnation of Vishnu and final world saviour, is predicted to appear riding a white horse, or in the form of a white horse.
[5]
[edit] Iranian
In
Zoroastrianism, one of the three representations of
Tishtrya, the
hypostasis of the star
Sirius, is that of a white stallion (the other two are as a young man, and as a bull). The divinity takes this form during the last 10 days of every month of the
Zoroastrian calendar, and also in a
cosmogonical battle for control of rain. In this latter tale (
Yasht 8.21-29), which appears in the
Avesta's hymns dedicated to Tishtrya, the divinity is opposed by
Apaosha, the demon of drought, which appears as a black stallion.
[9]
White horses are also said to draw divine chariots, such as that of
Aredvi Sura Anahita, who is the Avesta's divinity of the waters. Representing various forms of water, her four horses are named "wind", "rain", "clouds" and "sleet" (
Yasht 5.120).
In
Norse mythology,
Odin's eight-legged horse
Sleipnir, "the best horse among gods and men", is described as gray.
[10] Sleipnir is also the ancestor of another gray horse,
Grani, who is owned by the hero
Sigurd.
[11]
[edit] Slavic
In
Slavic mythology, the war and fertility deity
Svantovit owned an oracular white horse; the historian
Saxo Grammaticus, in descriptions similar to those of
Tacitus centuries before, says the priests divined the future by leading the white stallion between a series of fences and watching which leg, right or left, stepped first in each row.
[12]
[edit] Buddhist
Kanthaka was a white horse that was a royal servant and favourite horse of Prince Siddhartha, who later became
Gautama Buddha. Siddhartha used Kanthaka in all major events described in
Buddhist texts prior to his renunciation of the world. Following the departure of Siddhartha, it was said that Kanthaka died of a broken heart.
[13]
[edit] Finno-Ugric
The war god in
Hungarian mythology was
Hadúr, who wears pure copper and is a metalsmith. The ancient
Magyars sacrificed white stallions to him before a battle.
[14] Additionally, there is a story (mentioned for example in
Gesta Hungarorum) that conquering Magyars paid a white horse to
Moravian chieftain
Svatopluk I (in other forms of the story, it is instead the
Bulgarian chieftain
Salan) for a part of the land that later became the
Kingdom of Hungary.
[citation needed] Actual historical background of the story is dubious because Svatopluk I was already dead when the first Hungarian tribes arrived. On the other hand, even
Herodotus mentions in his
Histories an Eastern custom, where sending a white horse as payment in exchange for land means
casus belli. This custom roots in the ancient Eastern belief that stolen land would lose its fertility.
[citation needed]
[edit] Abrahamic
[edit] Islamic
Pul Sirat means the straight path of God in
Islam, and refers to a narrow path (thinner than a string of hair) 3,000 miles long that the souls of the dead must cross on the judgment day to reach heaven. In one version of the tale, the souls of the virtuous are helped to navigate it because their good deeds turn into a white horse they can ride to the end.
The
Buraq in Islamic belief is said to be a celestial creature resembling a white steed.
[edit] Christian
In the New Testament, the
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse include one seated on a white horse
[15] and one on a pale horse - the pale horse carried the rider, Death.
[16] However, the Greek word translated as
pale is often interpreted as sickly green or ashen grey rather than white. Later in the
Book of Revelation,
Christ rides a white horse out of
heaven at the head of the armies of heaven to judge and make war upon the earth.
[17]
Two Christian saints are associated with white steeds:
Saint James, as patron saint of
Spain, rides a white horse in his martial aspect.
[18][19][20] Saint George, the patron saint of horsemen
[21] among other things, also rides a white horse.
[22] In
Ossetia, the deity
Uastyrdzhi, who embodied both the warrior and sun motifs often associated with white horses, became identified with the figure of St. George after the region adopted Christianity.
[23]
Gesta Francorum contains a description of the
First Crusade, where soldiers fighting at
Antioch claimed to have been heartened by a vision of St. George and white horses during the battle:
There came out from the mountains, also, countless armies with white horses, whose standards were all white. And so, when our leaders saw this army, they ... recognized the aid of Christ, whose leaders were St. George, Mercurius, and Demetrius.[24]
[edit] Far East
[edit] Korean
A huge white horse appears in
Korean mythology in the story of the kingdom of
Silla. When the people gathered to pray for a king, the horse emerged from a bolt of lightning, bowing to a shining egg. After the horse flew back to heaven, the egg opened and the boy
Park Hyeokgeose emerged. When he grew up, he united six warring states.
[edit] Philippine
The city of
Pangantucan has as its symbol a white stallion who saved an ancient tribe from massacre by uprooting a bamboo and thus warning them of the enemy's approach.
[edit] Vietnamese
The city of
Hanoi honors a white horse as its
patron saint with a temple dedicated to this revered spirit, the
White Horse or
Bach Ma Temple ( "bach" means
white and "ma" is
horse). The 11th century king, Ly Cong Uan (also known as King
Ly Thai To) had a vision of a white horse representing a
river spirit which showed him where to build his citadel.
[25]
[edit] Native American
In
Blackfoot mythology, the snow deity
Aisoyimstan is a white-colored man in white clothing who rides a white horse.
[edit] Popular culture
The statue of the "fine lady upon a white horse" at Banbury Cross.
The mythological symbolism of white horses has been picked up as a
trope in literature, film, and other storytelling. For example, the
heroic prince or
white knight of
fairy tales often rides a white horse.
Unicorns are (generally white) horse-like creatures with a single horn. And the English
nursery rhyme "
Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross" refers to a lady on a white horse who may be associated with the Celtic goddess
Rhiannon.
[26]
A "white
palfrey" appears in the fairy tale "
Virgilius the Sorcerer" by
Andrew Lang. It appears in
The Violet Fairy Book and attributes more than usual magical powers to the ancient Roman poet
Virgil (see also
Virgil#Mysticism and hidden meanings).
The British author
G.K. Chesterton wrote an epic poem titled
Ballad of the White Horse. In Book I, "The Vision of the King," he writes of earliest England, invoking the white horse hill figure and the gods:
Before the gods that made the gods
Had seen their sunrise pass,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was cut out of the grass.[27]
Horses are so popular as you can see in myths! Clearly is is easy to see Pegasus in all of these stories, helping the hero, or coming from a bolt of lightening. I feel closer to myth now than ever whenever I am upon the back of these majestic animals.
