┌─╷─┐ ╵┌┼┐╵ polyphanes.smol.pub ╷└┼┘╷ by polyphanes └─╵─┘
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I recall seeing an old tweet, a short poem:
Vultures are holy creatures. Tending the dead. Bowing low. Bared head. Whispers to cold flesh, "Your old name is not your king. I rename you 'Everything.'"
To me, vultures are truly among the holiest of creatures, and one of the birds I love the most. Vultures purify the world, and in so doing maintain its beauty; how could such a creature itself not be beautiful? They take away debris and decay, and are among the few birds to have the strength to truly soar to unimaginable heights. The vulture, to me, is a symbol of sacrifice, the very mechanism by which the world sacrifices to itself in an ongoing and neverending cycle of generation and formation, and which corruption and dissolution are critical aspects that are inseparable from life itself.
In orisha myth, when Olodumaré withheld the rain as punishment for the world, Oshún was the only one who could make the ascent, since none of the other orisha had the strength to make that climb. Initially taking her form of the resplendent peacock, she flew higher and higher, and in the process of that grueling journey that took her to the Sun and past it, she lost her plumage, her feathers were scorched, her crest fell away. The orisha of beauty itself, the youngest and sweetest of the orisha, turned haggard and disfigured—all for the sake of the world. But, after everything, she made it; after everything, and nearly on the verge of dying herself, her sheer determination, bravery, and love for the whole world to ensure its continued survival got her to reach the house of the Creator. This did not go unrecognized, and Olodumaré witnessed her devotion to all in the course of her work; her sacrifice of herself saved the world. But don't confuse what happened to her: although she transformed from the peacock to the vulture, she did not turn hard in the process—no, she was already hard, unyielding as any river, unstoppable as any resounding echo of laughter across a canyon. Her hardness is indeed part of her beauty, not something that fights against it.
The vulture is beauty, too—raw, unfiltered, complete beauty. It, too, is the presence of beauty in its totality, denying nothing and perfecting everything. The vulture is a holy creature, because both life and death are holy—because the whole of the world is holy.
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Also, fun fact: vultures have different collective nouns based on context!