The Story of the Stork
There is a lot of mystery around the story of the Stork bringing the baby to its mother. Of all the postings on the internet about this particular topic, none of them have ever made reference to the verse in the Bible that talks of the two female Celestial Beings with wings like storks. Zechariah 5:9 reads:
9 Then I looked up and saw two women flying toward us, gliding on the wind. They had wings like a stork, and they picked up the basket and flew into the sky. (NLT)
Upgrading Our DNA
Very few teachers of what is written in the Bible understand that it is the story of our climb back up to Christ Consciousness after our DNA was interfered with by Beings who had the technology to do so. In the book of Zechariah, we are shown how Zechariah is given visions whereupon a heavenly angel interprets their meaning (Zec. 1:9, 19; 2:3; 3:1; 4:1, 13; 5:3; 5:5 – 11). The visions aren’t literal – they are metaphorical. They are representations of spiritual events and truths.
The angel explains to Zechariah the meaning of the symbols that have appeared in his visions, however the whole of the Bible is a symbolic story about the restoration of our DNA and the upgrading of it from Serpent Strands to the Pearly Gates of Heaven. Unfortunately we don’t have time to go into that in this article, so I’ll leave that explanation for another time.
Female Angels
With regards to the female angels with wings like storks, “The stork is a long-haul migratory bird with powerful wings. The power of the wings represents the stamina of the returnee community to deal with harassment and send off their enemies far away. Similar Hebrew for the female forms with wings here in verse 9, clause 3 can be seen in Ezekiel 1:5-6 (“v’lhena c’nafayim”). The Hebrew here in verse 9 clause 2 is “v’ruah b’canfeihem”, (with wind in their wings) where “ruah” can mean either wind or spirit. In this case the probable intent is “ruah hakodesh”, the holy spirit, indicating that these women are indeed angels on a holy mission [A.S. Hartum, student of M.D. Cassuto].
Ancient Belief Systems
In order to gain a full understanding of where myth of the stork bringing the baby may have its origins and why the Bible refers to the two female angels as having wings like storks, we must look at the belief systems of the ancients as well as the actual traits and characteristics of the stork itself. The old testament was written at a time when Egypt was one of the main religious study regions (along with India), so all things Egyptian had an influence on what went into the writings of the book of Zechariah.
So too did other books of the old testament, including those that are missing from the current version of the Bible. These books are the Book of Enoch, Tobit, Judith, Esther, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Jews, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon etc,. The books of the new testament that are missing are the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and the Gospel of Philip, just to name a few.
Isis, Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene
The Female Angels with wings like storks represent the two female deities who incarnate here on earth at various times. Isis was an incarnation of the same soul who also incarnated into Mother Mary. People think that new religions copy older religious teachings and create new divine people ie. people who are human angels. However, what in fact occurs is that The Goddess just keeps splitting and incarnating again and again. So even though she has different representatives throughout the ages, they all lead back to Her.
In the celestial realm where these two Female Angels come from, the realm was created by a vast Divine being that Stuart Wilde called The Goddess of a Trillion Universes. One of her many daughters is one of the two Female Angels spoken of in the Bible. The other female angel is a daughter of the first – a granddaughter to The Goddess of a Trillion Universes. In the Hindu philosophy, we know the first daughter as Goddess Kali/Durga. We know the second as Goddess Lakshmi. Both Kali/Durga and Lakshmi allow small shards of their vast souls to divide off from the main and then incarnate into various women (and men) who have lived on earth over the thousands of years that modern humans have been here. Goddess Kali/Durga is also known as Gaia, or Mother Earth. Goddess Lakshmi has appeared as Mary Magdalene and Gwendolyn, wife of Merlin, just to name two.
The Father’s Children
In the realm where these Goddesses are from, they give birth to many many children. Because they come from such a high vibrating dimension, their bodies are light bodies, not physical bodies. Those light bodies split into shards and enter into the physical bodies of babies who are born here on earth. Those shards don’t necessarily get born to mothers who have a shard of their spiritual mother’s soul, and because of that, the children of the Goddess don’t always have an easy time here on earth.
The second female angel who assists Kali/Durga (Isis) is the Being we know of as Mary Magdalene – Jesus’s wife. In the celestial dimensions, Jesus and Mary have many children whose light bodies divide and enter into the humans here on earth. These two Female Angels are the only female angels spoken of in the Bible, and that is because they are the two mothers of the souls of the race of beings from that particular family who live on earth. We truly do come from a celestial family, and we are all part of the same family of souls.
Ba – A Manifestation of the Divine
In Egypt, the stork was associated with the ba, whose notion spanned from the divine to the manifestation of the divine, and from the supernatural (or rather super-human) manifestation of the dead to the notion of the soul (psyche) or reputation, counts among the most important Egyptian religious concepts. The term and its hieroglyphic renderings are attested for all periods of ancient Egyptian history. In the process of time the word ba was written with various signs, including that of a stork, a ram, and a human-headed falcon. Its representation with the saddle-billed stork (Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis) – is both the earliest and the most attested depiction connected to the religious concept of the ba. Thus it serves as a crucial witness to the original meaning and main aspect of the ba.
Saddle-Billed Stork
The stork is easily recognised in Egyptian artwork as the saddle-billed stork since it usually shows the bird’s most characteristic features. There are many paintings, murals and engravings from that period of history that have the saddle-billed stork depicted on them. The saddle-billed stork is a tall and majestic bird that can grow to a height of 150cm, attaining a wingspan of up to 270cm. White and black dominate its striking colouration. Its wings are mainly black, tipped with white feathers. The head and neck are completely black and feature a large, pointed bill, which is mainly red with a black band. A yellow frontal shield (called the “saddle”) at the upper end of the bill represents one of the most characteristic features of this bird.
At the base of the lower mandible, where it meets the neck, the saddle-billed stork has the diagnostic small yellow wattle. All of these characteristics (together with its specific posture and long legs) are usually present in its ancient Egyptian representations. The bird is, however, depicted with varying accuracy in different historical periods. These non-migratory birds prefer to breed in marshes and waterlands, where they feed on fish, frogs, small reptiles, or even small birds. Nowadays, the saddle-billed stork is a permanent resident in sub-Saharan Africa; there have been no attested observations of this bird in present-day Egypt.
Divinity Manifest
The saddle-billed stork was probably the largest flying bird of ancient Egypt. Its impressive size and stately appearance might have largely influenced its significance to the Egyptians. These characteristics might also have played a key role in connecting this particular bird with the ba-concept. It seems logical that such an impressive bird should represent an earthly manifestation of divine powers. Most breeds of storks are big birds. White storks measure 1 metre to 1.3 metres tall with a wingspan of 1.5 metres to 1.8 metres. They weigh between 2 and 4 kilos — potentially large enough to at least imagine carrying an infant. In Western culture, pictures of a stork carrying a baby in a sling dangling from its bill have become commonplace.
It is interesting to note that the ancient Egyptians believed that the soul had five different parts, and that the ba aspect of the soul represented the personality. The Egyptians believed that this aspect went on to live in the afterlife, enjoying all the same material benefits as the ones that we have while we are still alive here. They did not believe that the ba/personality aspect just phased itself out. They believed that the ba WAS the individual, and when the body dropped, the ba continued on in what Stuart Wilde calls the Mirror Worlds, eating, drinking, making love and being merry. The return of a stork meant the return of the soul to a human body, at which point the ba/personality could become animated again.
Honouring Marriage and Fertility
In many cultures, storks represent fertility, springtime and good luck. Although the saddle-billed stork is not a migratory stork, there are other storks who do migrate. White storks from Europe do migrate back and forth each year. They routinely flew south in autumn and returned to Europe nine months later to nest in March and April.
The pagan celebration of the summer solstice is done to honour marriage and fertility, and is called Midsummer’s Eve. Much joy is had during the time of the summer solstice by people who take part in this ritual. Many babies are conceived around June 21. So as the storks began to fly north back to Europe, the babies who had been conceived the previous year were being born. Children associated the storks with the babies’ births, thus a legend was made. They failed to connect the biblical reference to the Storks though, although at some deep level they would have known.
Storks are also represented in Chinese, Israeli, and various European cultures mythologies. However, the association of storks bringing couples a newborn baby is believed to have started in Germany. It was there that babies were found in caves called Adeborsteines which means “stork stone” in German. Adeborsteine can also refer to stones from which babies would “hatch”; black and white stones that children threw over their heads to tell the storks that they wanted a sibling; or stones that babies were laid upon to dry after they were pulled from the sea. A slight variation of that word is “adebar,” meaning “luck-bringer,” so storks are also considered lucky in Germany.
Fairy Tales
Danish Hans Christian Andersen wrote about these birds in a short story that he titled The Storks in 1838. In Scandinavia parents needed a convenient explanation for how babies arrived. So they repeated the story of a stork delivering new bundles of joy down the chimney chute. Later, Hans wove this into his book called the Stork. Here he wrote about how the storks who flew over a village were teased and bullied by a young boy. In order to get their revenge they delivered a dead baby down the chimney chute to the boy’s family. In this particular story, the storks would pluck babies from a pond where they lay dreaming. Then they could deliver them to the families of good children.
Telling stories such as this became a way for parents to answer awkward questions from their children. If they didn’t think their children were old enough to know the full details about conception, this story sufficed. Yet isn’t it interesting how similar the chimney chute is to the birth canal? Funnily enough, Santa likes to arrive down the chimney chute too!!
Stories about storks appear in many different ancient cultures across the globe. Storks in Greece were associated with stealing babies. This was because Goddess Hera turned her rival into a stork, and the stork-woman attempted to steal her son. In Norse mythology, the stork represented family values and commitment to one another. Storks in the Netherlands nesting on one’s roof are viewed as a good omen for the family who lives there. In Roman times, if a stork built a nest on your roof, it was seen as a blessing. It was also seen as a promise of never-ending love from Venus. Because of this Aristotle went as far as to make killing storks a crime.
Mates for Life
Storks are loyal and are believed to mate for life. Thus in several mythologies, storks are a symbol of fidelity and monogamous marriage. In truth, they don’t actually mate for life, but rather will return to the same nests every year. There they usually mate with the same partner, adding new material each year. Some nests have grown as large as 2.5 metres in diameter and 2 metres high. They weigh between a whopping 500 and 900 kilos.
Storks make good parents. The adult birds are known for their parental dedication; they continue to feed and care for their offspring well after they can fly. The prolonged association suggests that it was actually the young birds that were taking care of their parents. This might explain why a law of ancient Greece that instructs children to look after their elderly parents. It is called the “pelargonia,” from pelargos, meaning “stork.
So the fairytale that we tell our children has a much deeper meaning when you actually look into it. Interesting hey?!
References: the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, the King James Bible of 1611
