Chicken - in Religion and Mythology

In Religion and Mythology

Since antiquity chickens have been, and still are, a sacred animal in some cultures and deeply embedded within various belief systems and religious worship. The term "Persian bird" for the cock would appear to been given by the Greeks after Persian contact "because of his great importance and his religious use among the Persians".

In Indonesia the chicken has great significance during the Hindu cremation ceremony. A chicken is considered a channel for evil spirits which may be present during the ceremony. A chicken is tethered by the leg and kept present at the ceremony for its duration to ensure that any evil spirits present during the ceremony go into the chicken and not the family members present. The chicken is then taken home and returns to its normal life. Similarly, within Agama Hindu Dharma religious beliefs and evil spirit appeasement within Hinduism as practiced in Indonesia, lay within this spiritual realm a required religious cockfight of the Balinese Hinduism spiritual appeasement exercise of Tabuh Rah(spilling blood), a sacred cockfight which in Balinese is known as tajen telung seet, (which otherwise would be a secular tajen, meklecan or ngadu) required at temple and purification (mecaru) ceremonies as a religious duty even today. That religious cockfight is not just allowed at every Balinese temple festival or religious ceremony, it is required, as a form of animal sacrifice.

In ancient Greece, the chicken was not normally used for sacrifices, perhaps because it was still considered an exotic animal. Because of its valor, the cock is found as an attribute of Ares, Heracles, and Athena. The alleged last words of Socrates as he died from hemlock poisoning, as recounted by Plato, were "Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?", signifying that death was a cure for the illness of life.

The Greeks believed that even lions were afraid of cocks. Several of Aesop's Fables reference this belief.

In the New Testament, Jesus prophesied the betrayal by Peter: "Jesus answered, 'I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.'" (Luke 22:34) Thus it happened (Luke 22:61), and Peter cried bitterly. This made the cock a symbol for both vigilance and betrayal. The rooster(cock) serves as a tangible vessel of Christ for some as in the gospel of Matthew, Mark and Luke in the New Testament with Christ speaking through the cock. In the sixth century, Pope Gregory I declared the cock the emblem of Christianity and another Papal enactment of the ninth century by Pope Nicholas I ordered the figure of the cock to be placed on every church steeple.

Earlier, Jesus compares himself to a mother hen when talking about Jerusalem: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." (Matthew 23:37; also Luke 13:34).

In many Central European folk tales, the devil is believed to flee at the first crowing of a cock.

In traditional Jewish practice, a kosher animal is swung around the head and then slaughtered on the afternoon before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, in a ritual called kapparos;it is now common practice to cradle the bird and move it around the head. A chicken or fish is typically used because it is commonly available (and small enough to hold). The sacrifice of the animal is to receive atonement, for the animal symbolically takes on all the person's sins in kapparos. The meat is then donated to the poor. A woman brings a hen for the ceremony, while a man brings a rooster. Although not actually a sacrifice in the biblical sense, the death of the animal reminds the penitent sinner that his or her life is in God's hands.

The Talmud speaks of learning "courtesy toward one's mate" from the rooster (Eruvin 100b). This might refer to the fact that when a rooster finds something good to eat, he calls his hens to eat first. The Talmud likewise provides us with the statement "Had the Torah not been given to us, we would have learned modesty from cats, honest toil from ants, chastity from doves and gallantry from cocks" - (Jonathan ben Nappaha. Talmud: Erubin 100b), which may be further understood as to that of the gallantry of cocks being taken in the context of a religious instilling vessel of "a girt one of the loins"(Young's Literal Translation) that which is "stately in his stride" and "move with stately bearing" within the Book of Proverbs 30:29-31 as referenced by Michael V. Fox in his book Proverbs 10-31 where Saʻadiah ben Yosef Gaon(Saadia Gaon) identifies the definitive trait of "A cock girded about the loins" within Proverbs 30:31(Douay–Rheims Bible) as "the honesty of their behavior and their success", identifying a spiritual purpose of a religious vessel within that religious instilling schema of purpose and use.

The chicken is one of the Zodiac symbols of the Chinese calendar. Also in Chinese religion, a cooked chicken as a religious offering is usually limited to ancestor veneration and worship of village deities. Vegetarian deities such as the Buddha are not one of the recipients of such offerings. Under some observations, an offering of chicken is presented with "serious" prayer (while roasted pork is offered during a joyous celebration). In Confucian Chinese Weddings, a chicken can be used as a substitute for one who is seriously ill or not available (e.g. sudden death) to attend the ceremony. A red silk scarf is placed on the chicken's head and a close relative of the absent bride/groom holds the chicken so the ceremony may proceed. However, this practice is rare today.

A cockatrice was supposed to have been born from an egg laid by a rooster, as well as killed by a Rooster's call.