Hamsa
Also called hansa.
The cosmic gander of Indian tradition, ridden by the gods and heard in the breath itself, whose two syllables are inhalation and exhalation.
At a glance
- Tradition
- Buddhist mythologyIndian folklore
- Region
- India (place of origin)
- Trait family
- The Threshold-Keepers
- Symbols
- Bird
Near this figure
Symbols
Judged against the description by a model. Meanings are our own paraphrase.
- Bird is image-domain The bird denotes the soul and its flight between worlds, carrying aspiration, prophecy and divine essence, and moving freely where the earthbound cannot follow.
why
The hamsa is usually rendered swan in English and is more precisely a gander — the sources give it as the cosmic gander, and the bird actually behind the word is a goose rather than the mute swan the translation tends to conjure.
Traits
Read from the figure's description, which a model wrote. Open "why" for the sentence a trait came from.
Utility powers
- Beast of burden
why
It is before anything else a vehicle: carried by Brahma in the older material, assigned to the Asvins, the divine twin horsemen, in other accounts, and frequently represented in art as the vahana of Vishnu.