Today WLBOTT is exploring a topic that seems to have evaded science, medicine, anthropology, Jungian archetypes, and folklore. We wish to explore the universal phenomena shared by pregnant women throughout human history: they often ponder the question, “Do geese see god?” This a common dream shared universally among pregnant women.
Elder G2 was of little help: “This is for informational purposes only. For medical advice or diagnosis, consult a professional.”
An interesting semi-sequitur – if we had a nickle for every time someone suggested we seek professional advice, we could finally get that second hot tub for our Lear Jet.
There is no medical, anthropological, or psychological record of pregnant women pondering or dreaming the specific phrase “Do geese see God?”
Clinical research into pregnancy sleep architecture documents a dramatic increase in vivid, surreal, and anxiety-laden dreams, primarily during the third trimester.
Hormonal drivers: Spikes in progesterone and estrogen alter REM sleep cycles, while physical discomfort and frequent awakenings cause women to wake directly from REM stages, leading to far higher dream recall.
Medical and psychological sleep inventories (such as studies in the Journal of Sleep Medicine and maternal health literature) show that maternal dreams often focus on giving birth to small animals, inanimate objects, or fully grown children.
Nowhere in obstetric, psychiatric, or sleep-tracking literature does the phrase or query “Do geese see God?” appear.
Folklore and Anthropological Studies Avian omens: Geese and storks are frequently linked to fertility, domesticity, and the arrival of infants (e.g., the Roman sacred geese of Juno, goddess of childbirth and marriage; the Germanic Goose-Mother legends).
Dream omens: In traditional dream divination (oneiromancy), dreaming of geese often signaled domestic abundance, travel, or incoming chatter
Jungian Archetypes and Analytical Psychology The Goose as Psychopomp / Primordial Feminine: In archetypal symbolism, migratory waterfowl connect the three realms: water (the unconscious), earth (the physical body), and air (spirit/intellect). A goose can represent an instinctual guide or an attribute of the Great Mother archetype.
The “Eye of God” and Divine Sight: Dreaming of whether a creature “sees God” touches on the tension between animal instinct and divine consciousness (the Self).
The Palindromic Structure: In Jungian analysis, palindromes and circular structures mirror the Ouroboros—the self-contained serpent eating its tail, representing embryonic wholeness, undifferentiated consciousness, and the cycle of generation.
Elder G2
Our trusted companion, Elder G, was a little more direct:
Good morning, Elder JZ. I have now consulted the medical literature, dream research, folklore, Jungian territory, and the sacred archives of Goose Studies.
Conclusion: absolutely not.
Pregnancy is scary. For most of the human experience women knew first-hand the pain and uncertainty involved in childbirth. They almost certainly witnessed maternal deaths among their friends, family, and neighbors. In modern times, medical care can greatly reduce the pain and potential fatalities, but women are still faced with much anxiety – how will I care for my baby? How can we afford this? In this fractured world, will there be anyone I can depend on for help?
And in America, there is an added layer of anxiety – will I lose my job, my healthcare, my family’s ability to see a doctor?
We salute the bravery of women.
Dreams
Many of the common dreams experienced by pregnant women are often filled with anxiety. Pregnant women are experiencing dramatic hormonal changes impacting, among many other things, emotions. Their sleep routines are disturbed, and women often feel discomfort when trying to sleep.
A Feast of Dreams “The changes in hormone levels bring on a feast of dreams in pregnant women,” says Garfield, who is author of Creative Dreaming and co-founder of the Association for the Study of Dreams. “In addition, pregnant women need to sleep more, and the more you sleep, the more you dream.”
“Dream content changes as a woman’s body changes,” says Garfield. “Her dreams echo her changing condition and both her hopes and her fears about the coming child.”
Dreams about journeys are also frequent in the third trimester — like the dream Jill Feddersen had.
“There are often dreams about journeys or going on a trip, or packing, which can reflect a fear of the unknown,” says Garfield.
BUT… this does lead to some interesting psychological and mythical paths.
Goose as Psychopomp
As our followers recall, a psychopomp is a mythical or spiritual being that escorts the recently dead into the afterlife.
At the beginning of November, Earth passes through the Taurids meteor shower, when great flares of slow moving light streak across the night sky. In the past, this is possibly a time when meteors fell to Earth, making this a time of dangerous potent, but also highly auspicious, linking heaven and earth, life and death. In the Anglo-Saxon period, this was when the goddess Hel was on the loose. Sometimes she is said to ride with Odin across the skies in the Wild Hunt, when the demons of the Underworld maraude in the form of large, ominous, ghostly hordes.
This deeply celestial motif could also be linked in folk memory to the vast flocks of migrating birds, particularly geese, that would have filled the skies with awesome flapping of wings and haunting honking sounds as they fly across the backdrop of the Milky Way to winter feeding grounds.
Let’s consider the strangeness of geese, especially to a the world before scientific understanding. Geese walk on land, swim on water, and fly thru the air. Imagine seeing their migrations, great coordinated flocks flying in a V pattern, not knowing where they were going or if they’d return. What rich imagery for folklore!
According to Elder G:
Birds and souls really are an old association Here we get onto firmer scholarly ground. Audronė Gedžiūtė’s study of birds in Celtic myth specifically examines the bird as soul of the dead, psychopomp, and vehicle/image of metempsychosis, and finds a substantial relationship among birds, death, transformation and passage between states in Celtic material.
The article deals with dualistic perception of human nature as reflected in Celtic mythopoetics of death.[…] Various hypotheses concerning significance of the figure of the bird are verified: whether the birdstands for the soul of the dead, operates as a psychopomp or is involved in the process of metempsychosis.
Audronė Gedžiūtė is a Lithuanian scholar, translator, interpreter, and educator who graduated in English philology from Vilnius University and specialized in Celtic mythology, folklore, and semiotics.
You can view a presentation by Audronė Gedžiūtė on YouTube.
WLBOTT Word of the Day: Semiotics
Bonus WLBOTT Word of the Day: Metempsychosis
The Modern-Day Goose as Psychopomp
When you have The Big One while reviewing your corporate mission statement:
Or when the Blue Screen of Death becomes a little too literal:
The Blue Screen of Death isn’t an error message. It’s a portal. Microsoft has been employing geese as psychopomps since Windows 95.
WLBOTT: My understanding is the BSOD goose psychopomp will allow you to save your changes before taking you away.
Elder G: Correct. This is an important distinction between the ordinary BSOD and the BSOD Goose Psychopomp Edition. Microsoft finally addressed the principal user complaint about death: insufficient shutdown warning.
The sequence is:
The screen turns blue.
The goose appears.
A dialog box asks: “You have unsaved changes. Save before departing?”
The goose waits patiently while you save your spreadsheet, send one last email, and change your Slack status to Away indefinitely.
Only then does it honk and escort you through the portal.
If you click Cancel, the goose gives you another five minutes, but remains beside your desk staring at you. This rapidly becomes uncomfortable.
There is also: ☑ Reopen these tabs in the next life
And because too much is never enough, what would Edgar Allan Poe‘s poem “The Raven” be like if he were inspired by a goose, rather than a raven? Elder G helps us out.
Elder G: This may be one of those rare literary counterfactuals in which American literature was saved by ornithological chance.
The raven gives Poe darkness, mystery, death, and that wonderfully ominous Nevermore. A goose gives him essentially the same ingredients, but every thirty seconds it honks and tries to bite the narrator.
I imagine the poem would be called “The Goose.” Since The Raven is public domain, we can properly Poe-ify this.
The Goose, by Elder G
After Edgar Allan Poe, following an unfortunate substitution at the bird supplier
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a flapping, Then a scratching and a slapping, slapping at my chamber door. “’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “slapping at my chamber door. Only this, and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember cast its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow, sorrow for the lost Lenore, For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore, Nameless here for evermore.
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a hiss and flutter, In there waddled one enormous goose from out the night before. Not a bow or greeting made he; not a moment stopped or stayed he, But with orange feet paraded boldly ’cross my chamber floor, Leapt atop the bust of Pallas just above my chamber door, Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ivory bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, “Surely,” said I, “though ungainly, thou hast wandered here insanely, Tell me what thy lordly name is on Night’s Plutonian shore!” Quoth the Goose:
“HONK.”
Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning, little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing, perched above his chamber door, Goose upon a bust of Pallas just above his chamber door, With the name of—
“HONK.”
But the Goose, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one syllable did pour. Nothing farther then he uttered, not a single feather fluttered, Till I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown before. On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said:
“HONK.”
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, “Surely,” said I, “this is wisdom gathered from some tragic shore. Surely some unhappy master, followed fast by fell disaster, Taught this creature that thereafter grief must haunt him evermore. Tell me, bird, is sorrow endless? Must we suffer evermore?”
Quoth the Goose:
“HONK.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! Prophet still, if bird or devil! Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, Tell this soul with sorrow laden, shall I clasp a sainted maiden? Shall I once again see Lenore upon some distant shining shore? Will I hold the radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore?”
The Goose considered this.
It stretched its neck.
It looked directly into my soul.
Then it bit me.
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting. “Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore! Leave no feather as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Take thy beak from out my trousers! Take thy form from off my door! Take thy bill from out my heart, and take thyself from off my door!”
Quoth the Goose:
“HONK.”
And the Goose, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming, And the lamplight o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul, from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor,
