Richard Williamson's Country Life Column, December 29 2005

Harry Potter's snowy owl is no stranger to magic. A pair of snowy owls (Nyctea scandiaca)with their owlet were engraved on a wall in the final passage of the Trois Freres cave in France by Palaeolithic 'Old Stone Age' hunters as part of their magico-religious beliefs. To travel deep into the interior of the earth was in itself an experience of supernatural quality.

To then totemise one species as an emblem of your needs raises that creature into the realms of divinity.

What did those ancient hunters need from the spirit of the snowy owl and what was an arctic bird doing in France anyway?

It is known that such owls were eaten, along with any bird or mammal or reptile that could be caught. But to engrave these birds on stone with their wide round eyes and round bodies protecting their young shows a need to programme future behaviour of the young human initiates who are known to have been indoctrinated at puberty in this cave.

Another symbol is the 'sorcerer' of the Trois Freres cavern who wears a deer's hide and antlers and the painting is so placed that an elder of the tribe could have stepped out in front of a group of nephytes as if the painting had come alive.

Read Richard Williamson's full column in the West Sussex Gazette, December 29 2005