Add a touch of farmhouse charm to your living space with this pair of rustic cast iron rooster paperweight figurines. Made from high-quality cast iron, these figurines are perfect for collectors and lovers of metalware. The silver color gives them a timeless appeal that will complement any decor.

Crafted with intricate details, these rooster figurines are sure to impress your guests and add a touch of personality to your home. Whether you're looking to decorate your living room, bedroom, or farmhouse-style kitchen, these figurines are the perfect addition. Purchase now and enjoy the beauty and charm of these rustic cast iron rooster paperweight figurines.

All items are sold used and as is. Please see photos for condition and feel free to message me with any questions. Check out the other stuff in my store! I’m always willing to make a deal on multiple items & combine shipping!

The chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is a large and round short-winged bird, domesticated from the red junglefowl of Southeast Asia around 8,000 years ago. Most chickens are raised for food, providing meat and eggs; others are kept as pets or for cockfighting.

Chickens are common and widespread domestic animals, with a total population of 23.7 billion as of 2018, and an annual production of more than 50 billion birds. A hen bred for laying can produce over 300 eggs per year. There are numerous cultural references to chickens in folklore, religion, and literature

There are numerous cultural references to chickens in myth, folklore, religion, and literature. Chickens are a sacred animal in many cultures, being deeply embedded in belief systems and religious worship practices.

Chickens are ritually sacrificed in the Santería religion which originated in Cuba and developed from native Caribbean culture, Catholicism, and the Yoruba religion of West Africa.

In Greek mythology, Alectryon was the guard of Ares, waiting beside his door and alerting him if anyone came near while he was sleeping with Aphrodite, wife of Hephaestus. However, Alectryon once fell asleep, and Helios, the sun, saw the two lovers and alerted Hephaestus. In anger over Alectryon's incompetence, Ares turned Alectryon into a rooster for his disobedience, thus fulfilling his promise to Ares for eternity.[3][4] The rooster was one of Helios' sacred animals.[5]

In Ancient Greece, chickens were not normally used for sacrifices, perhaps because they were still considered exotic animals. Due to its valor, the cock is often depicted as an attribute of Ares, Heracles, and Athena. The alleged last words of Socrates, 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 term "Persian bird" for the rooster appears to have been given by the Greeks after Persian contact because of their great importance and religious use among Persians.[6]

The Greeks believed that even lions were afraid of roosters. Several of Aesop's Fables reference this belief. The poet Cratinus (mid-5th century BC, according to the later Greek author Athenaeus) calls the chicken "the Persian alarm". In Aristophanes's comedy The Birds (414 BC) a chicken is called "the Median bird", which points to an introduction from the East. Pictures of chickens are found on Greek red figure and black-figure pottery.

In Ancient Greece, chickens were still rare and were rather prestigious food for symposia.[7] Delos seems to have been a center of chicken breeding (Columella, De Re Rustica 8.3.4). "About 3200 BC chickens were common in Sindh. After the attacks of the Aria people, these fowls spread from Sindh to Balakh and Iran. During attacks and wars between Iranians and Greeks, the chickens of Hellanic breed came to Iran and about 1000 BC Hellenic chickens came into Sindh through Medan".[8]

The mythological basilisk or cockatrice is depicted as a reptile-like creature with the upper body of a rooster.[9][10] Abraxas, a figure in Gnosticism, is portrayed similarly as well.[11]

The Romans used chickens as oracles, both when flying ("ex avibus", Augury) and when feeding ("auspicium ex tripudiis", Alectryomancy). The hen gave a favourable omen ("auspicium ratum"), when appearing from the left (Cic., de Div. ii.26), like the crow and the owl.

According to Cicero (Cic. de Div. ii.34) any bird could be used in auspice, and at one point any bird could perform the tripudium.[12] Normally only chickens were consulted. The chickens were cared for by the pullarius, who fed them pulses or a special kind of cake when an augury was needed. If the chickens stayed in their cage, made noises, beat their wings, or flew away, the omen was bad; if they ate, the omen was good.[13]

In 249 BC, the Roman general Publius Claudius Pulcher had his sacred chickens[14] thrown overboard when they refused to feed before the battle of Drepana, saying "If they won't eat, perhaps they will drink." He promptly lost the battle against the Carthaginians, and was heavily fined for impiety back in Rome.[15]

In 162 BC, the Lex Faunia forbade fattening hens on grain, a measure enacted to reduce grain demand.[16] To get around this, the Romans castrated roosters (capon), which resulted in a doubling of size, despite a law in Rome forbidding the consumption of fattened chickens. [16]: 305  According to Aldrovandi, capons were produced by burning "the hind part of the bowels, or loins or spurs"[17] with a hot iron. Fattening chickens with bread soaked in milk was thought to give especially delicious results. The Roman gourmet Apicius offers 17 recipes for chicken, mainly boiled chicken with sauce. All parts of the animal are used: the recipes include the stomach, liver, testicles, and even the pygostyle.

The Roman author Columella advises on chicken breeding in the eighth book of his treatise, De Re Rustica (On Agriculture). He commented on various breeds of chicken and their uses in different functions, ideal practices of flock keeping, construction of chicken coops, what feed to use, and when to slaughter.

The Rooster is the tenth of the twelve animal symbols in the Chinese zodiac. In Taoism, the spring Hanshi or Cold Food festival was a traditional holiday in which fires were left to die down and then re-lit. Both fire and the rooster are symbols of yang and the sun. Thus, to have a rooster fight another rooster was the same in substance as the fire-renewal custom, and cockfighting was instituted as a springtime ritual.[18] The Hanshi festival was eventually moved to coincide with the Qingming Festival (also called the Pure Brightness Festival), retaining the rooster and cockfights.[19]

Many roosters are found around Shinto shrines, with the rooster being associated with the sun goddess Amaterasu.

Indigenous beliefs on the veneration of spirits and deities still remain strong in Southeast Asia. The veneration of traditional spirits (Antio) still exists for practicing Christians. A popular form of fertility worship among most of Southeast Asia is the Animist belief in the rooster and the cockfight.[21] Some Judeo-Christians consider this a form of Baal or Baalim.

In East Timor the cock is admired for courage and perseverance. Man's courage is often compared with that of the cock, and cockfights are a regular occurrence. Many tais designs include the cock.[22]

In Indonesia, many religions place symbolic importance on the rooster. A sect of Balinese Hinduism within the Toraja society called Aluk, or Aluk To Dolo, embraces rituals such as funeral ceremonies including a sacred cockfight.[23] In several myths, the cock has the power to revive the dead or to make a wish come true.[24] Kaharingan, an animist folk religion of the Iban branch of the Dayak people, includes the belief in a deity associated with the rooster and cockfighting, and the belief that humans become the fighting cocks of god. The Iban further believe that the rooster and cockfight was introduced to them by god.[citation needed] Gawai Dayak, a festival of the Dayaks, includes the cockfight and the waving of a rooster over offerings while asking for guidance and blessings; the rooster is then sacrificed.[25] The Tiwah festival involves the sacrifice of animals such as chickens as offerings to the Supreme God.[citation needed]

Miao (i.e. Hmong) are animists, shamanists, and ancestor worshipers with beliefs influenced by Taoism, Buddhism and Christianity. At the Miao New Year, there may be domestic animal sacrifices or cockfights.[26] The Hmong of Southeast Guizhou cover the rooster with a piece of red cloth, then hold it up to worship and sacrifice. In Hmong Shamanism, a shaman may use a rooster in a religious ceremony; it is said that the rooster shields the shaman from evil spirits, as the evil spirits see only the rooster's spirit. In a 2010 trial of a Sheboygan Wisconsin Hmong charged with staging a cockfight, it was stated that the roosters were "kept for both food and religious purposes",[27] resulting in an acquittal.[28] In Vietnam fighting roosters or fighting cocks are colloquially called "sacred chickens".[29]

The Bayon Temple in Cambodia is an ancient Buddhist temple which includes a depiction of a cockfight within its walls.[30] During April, the Three Pagodas Pass becomes the site of the Songkran Festival, which includes cockfights.[31] Many sacred Buddhist amulets depict Buddha with cocks in fighting stance. Cocks are also interpreted as a symbol of greed in Tibetan Buddhist murals.

The Khasi people of Northeast India believe the rooster is sacrificed as a substitute for humans, as it's thought that the cock "bears the sins of the man." in sacrifice.[33]

Kukkuta Sastra, or cock astrology, is a form of divination based on the rooster fight common in coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh, India. It is prevalent in the districts of Krishna, Guntur, East Godavari and West Godavari and the Sankranti festival.

Hindu war god Kartikeya is depicted with a rooster on his flag. A demon Surapadman was split into two and the halves turned into the peacock (his mount) and the rooster in his flag. Balinese Hinduism includes the religious belief of Tabuh Rah, a religious cockfight where a rooster is used to fight against another rooster. The altar and deity Ida Ratu Saung may be seen with a fighting cock in his hand[34] with the spilling of blood serving as a purification rite to appease the evil spirits. Ritual fights usually occur outside the temple and follow an ancient and complex ritual set out in the sacred lontar manuscripts.[35]

Likewise, a popular Hindu ritual form of worship from North Malabar in Kerala, India is the blood offering to the Theyyam gods. Despite being forbidden in the Vedic philosophy of sattvic Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism,[citation needed] Theyyam deities are propitiated through a rooster sacrifice in which the religious cockfight serves as an offering of blood to the Theyyam gods. Pongal or Makar Sankranti is a Hindu harvest festival. In the southern state of Tamil Nadu and the western state of Gujarat, one event of the celebrations is rooster fighting, also known as Seval Sandai or Kozhi kettu. It is also practised in Tulunadu.[36] Kozhi kettu organized as part of religious events are permitted.

Yoruba oral history tells of God lowering Oduduwa down from the sky, the ancestor of all people, bringing with him a rooster, some dirt, and a palm seed. The dirt was thrown into the water and the cock scratched it to form land, and the seed grew into a tree with sixteen limbs, the original sixteen kingdoms.[38] Ikenga, an alusi of the Igbo people in southeastern Nigeria, requires consecration with offerings before religious use, which include the sacrificial blood of a rooster or ram for the spirit.

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

In modern Greece, when laying the foundation of a new building, it is customary to sacrifice a cock, ram, or lamb, and let its blood flow on the stone of the foundation.[39]

The Imbolc festivities in honor of the pan-Celtic goddess Brighid included the ritual sacrifice of a rooster and cockfighting.[40] In the 20th century, Imbolc was resurrected as a religious festival in Neopaganism, specifically in Wicca, Neo-druidry and Celtic reconstructionism.[41][42]

A black cockerel was believed in Medieval Europe to be a symbol of witchcraft along with the black cat.[43] A cockatrice is an English mythological creature said to have been born from an egg laid by a rooster and hatched by a serpent, and which could be killed by a rooster's call.[44]

Norse mythology

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In Norse mythology, the crowing of three particular roosters occurs at the beginning of the foretold events of Ragnarök. In the Poetic Edda poem Völuspá, references to Ragnarök begin from stanza 40 until 58, with the rest describing the aftermath. In the poem, a völva—a Norse seeress—recites information to the wisdom-seeking god Odin. In stanza 41, the völva says:

Old Norse:

Fylliz fiǫrvi

feigra manna,

rýðr ragna siǫt

rauðom dreyra.

Svǫrt verða sólskin

of sumor eptir,

veðr ǫll válynd.

Vitoð ér enn, eða hvat?[45]

English:

It sates itself on the life-blood

of fated men,

paints red the powers' homes

with crimson gore.

Black become the sun's beams

in the summers that follow,

weathers all treacherous.

Do you still seek to know? And what?[45]

The völva then describes three roosters crowing: In stanza 42, the jötunn herdsman Eggthér sits on a mound and cheerfully plays his harp while the crimson rooster Fjalar (Old Norse "hider, deceiver"[46]) crows in the forest Gálgviðr. The golden rooster Gullinkambi crows to the Æsir in Valhalla, and the third, unnamed soot-red rooster crows in the halls of the underworld location of Hel in stanza 43.[47] The poem Fjölsvinnsmál also mentions a rooster by the name of Víðópnir.[48] According to the poem, the rooster sits atop the tree Mímameiðr, likely another name for the central cosmological tree Yggdrasil.[49] It is suggested that the Pleiades were called the hens of Frigg or of Freya by Norse peoples.[50] The three stars of Orion's belt were called the Distaff of Frigg.

In Iran, during the Kianian Period, from about 2000 BC to about 700 BC, the cock was a highly sacred animal; after Persian contact, the Greeks began to refer to the cock as the "Persian bird" due to its significance in Persian culture.[52]

Astrology and the constellations comprising the zodiac originated in ancient Babylonia, modern day Iraq. The lore of the True Shepherd of Anu (SIPA.ZI.AN.NA) – Orion and his accompanying animal symbol, the Rooster, with both representing the herald of the gods, being their divinely ordained role in communicating messages of the gods.[citation needed] "The Heavenly Shepherd" or "True Shepherd of Anu" – Anu being the chief god of the heavenly realms.[53] On the star map, the figure of the Rooster was shown below and behind the figure of the True Shepherd, both representing the herald of the gods, in his bird and human forms respectively.[54]

Nergal is an idol of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, and Persians whose name means, "a dunghill cock".[54][55] According to astrological mythology, Nergal represented the planet Mars, the emblem of violence and bloodshed.[56] The Samaritans or 'Cutheans' also worshiped the Mesopotamian deity Nergal.[57][58]

Islam

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The understanding of the divine spiritual endowment of the rooster within Islam, may be evidenced in the words of Muhammad of that Abrahamic religion in one of the six canonical hadith collections of Sunni Islam, stating that of "when you hear the crowing of cocks, ask for Allah's Blessings for they have seen an angel".[59]

Zoroastrianism

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Zoroastrianism opposes animal sacrifices. In it, the rooster is a "symbol of light."[60] The cock in Zoroastrianism is associated with "good against evil"[60] because of its heraldic actions.[clarification needed] In Iran during the Kianian Period, from about 2000 B.C. to about 700 B.C., among domestic birds, "the cock was the most sacred"[52] and within that religion the devout, "had a cock to guard [them] and ward off evil spirits"

Judaism includes many references to roosters as important animals. The Zohar, a book of Jewish mysticism and collection of writings on the Torah, tells of a celestial manifestation causing the crowing of roosters. (iii. 22b, 23a, 49b). The Talmud includes the excerpt: "blessed be He who has given the cock intelligence", (Ber. 60b).[62] In the rabbinic literature, the cockcrow is used as general marking of time,[63] and some of the Sages interpreted the "cockcrow" to mean the voice of the Temple officer who summoned all priests, Levites, and Israelites to their duties. The Hebrew gever was used to mean a "rooster" in addition to the meaning of "man, strong man".[64]

The Talmud provides 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"[65] (Jonathan Ben Nappaha. Talmud: Erubin 100b), which may be understood as the gallantry of cocks being taken in a religious context of a "girt one of the loins" (Young's Literal Translation) which is to be "stately in his stride" or "move with stately bearing" as within the Book of Proverbs 30:29-31. 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",[66] identifying a spiritual purpose and use within Judaeo-Christian traditions. The Hebrew term zarzir, which means "girt"; "that which is girt in the loins" (BDB 267 s.v.) is recognized in the Targum as well as the Chaldaic, Syriac, Arabic, LXX, and Vulgate, all referencing the fighting rooster or fighting cock as a religious vessel. The ancient Hebrew versions identified the Hebrew "a girt one of the loins" of Proverbs 30:31 as a rooster, "which most of the old translations and Rabbis understood to be a fighting cock",[67] the Arabic sarsar or sirsir being an onomatopoeia for rooster (alektor) as the Hebrew zarzir of Proverbs 30:31. "Rooster bones were identified at Lachish dating to early Iron II",[68] but even earlier is not to be ruled out, as "for Palestine, the earliest chicken bones are present in Iron Age I strata in Lachish and Tell Hasben".[69]

The rooster has also been placed within the Star of David, known in Hebrew as the Shield of David or Magen David and recognized to be of Jewish identity and Judaism. Excavations at Gibeon have found potsherds dating to the seventh century B.C. incised with cocks and placed within the six-pointed star of the Magen David.[70] The seal of Jaazaniah carries the insignia of a rooster from the ruins of the biblical Judean kingdom at Mizpah, with the inscription of "belonging to Jaazaniah, servant to the king",[71][72] the first known representation of the chicken in Palestine. As told in II Kings 25:23, Jaazaniah the Maschathit was an official under Gedalish at Mizpah.

Plutarch said the inhabitants of Caria carried the emblem of the rooster on the end of their lances and relates that origin to Artaxerxes, who awarded a Carian who was said to have killed Cyrus the Younger at the battle of Cunaxa in 401 B.C "the privilege of carrying ever after a golden cock upon his spear before the first ranks of the army in all expeditions".[73] The Carians also wore crested helmets at the time of Herodotus, for which reason "the Persians gave the Carians the name of cocks".[74] It is Carites in 2 Kings 11 who were used by Jehoiada to protect Joash son of Ahaziah of the line of David, ancestor to Christ from Athaliah. In the Jewish religious practice of Kapparos, a rooster as a religious vessel is swung around the head and then slaughtered on the afternoon before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The meat is then distributed among the poor for their pre-fast meal. The purpose of the ritual is the atonement of the sins of the man as the animal symbolically receives the man's sins, which is based on the reconciliation of Isaiah 1:18. The religious practice is mentioned for the first time by Natronai ben Hilai, Gaon of the Academy of Sura in Babylonia, in 853 C.E., who describes it as a custom of the Babylonian Jews and further explained by Jewish scholars in the ninth century by the Hebrew word geber (Gever)[75] meaning both "man" and "rooster", the rooster may act or serve as a palpable substitute as a religious vessel in place of the man. The practice has also been as a custom of the Persian Jews.

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.'"[76] It happened,[77] and Peter cried bitterly. 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."[78]

Within the Christian "Tomb of the Cocks" in Bayt Jibrin, a Palestinian Arab village located 13 miles northwest of the city of Hebron and part of the Kingdom of Israel, "we find two spirited cocks painted in red in the spandrels with a cross just over the center of the arch".[79] Similarly, a multitude of sarcophagi are found with the rooster and the sacred cockfight with the understanding of striving for resurrection and eternal life in Christianity. This sacred subject is carved on early Christian tombs, where the sepulchral carvings have an important purpose, "a faithful wish for immortality, with the victory of the cock and his supporting genius analogous to the hope of resurrection, the victory of the soul over death".[80]

Reverend Dr. Kosuke Koyama's tried to spread Christianity through the medium of cockfighting.[81] Numerous representations of the rooster or cock as a religious vessel can be found in catacombs from the earliest period[82] including a painting from the Catacomb of St. Priscilla (mentioned in all the ancient liturgical sources and known as the "Queen of the Catacombs" in antiquity) reproduced in Giovanni Gaetano Bottari's folio of 1754, where the Good Shepherd is depicted as feeding the lambs, with a crowing cock on His right and left hand.[83]

Similar illustrations of cocks in fighting stance[84] are found within the Vivian Bible as well as the fighting cocks capitals in the Basilica of St. Andoche in Saulieu[85] and the Cathédrale Saint-Lazare d'Autun provides "alternate documentation"[86] of the rooster and the religious, spiritual and sacred cockfight. All four canonical gospels state that, either during or after the Last Supper, Jesus foretold of Peter's denial (Saint Peter) and that he would deny Christ three times before the cock's crow.[87] Augustine of Hippo, Catholic saint and pre-eminent Doctor of the Church understood "a visible sign of an invisible reality" of the rooster to include that as described by St. Augustine in DeOrdine as that which "in every motion of these animals unendowed with reason there was nothing ungraceful since, of course, another higher reason was guiding everything they did".[88] In the sixth century, it is reputed that Pope Gregory I declared the cock the emblem of Christianity saying the rooster was "the most suitable emblem of Christianity",[89] being "the emblem of St Peter".[90][91] Some say that it was as a result of this that the cock began to be used as a weather vane on church steeples, and some a Papal enactment of the ninth century ordered the figure of the cock to be placed on every church steeple.[92]

It is known that Pope Leo IV had the figure of the cock placed on the Old St. Peter's Basilica or old Constantinian basilica[93] and has served as a religious icon and reminder of Peter's denial of Christ since that time, with some churches still having the rooster on the steeple today. Alternative theories about the origin of weathercocks on church steeples are that it was an emblem of the vigilance of the clergy calling the people to prayer,[94] that it was derived from the Goths[95] and is only possibly a Christian symbol,[96] and that it is an emblem of the sun.[97] The Vatican Persian cock denoting a sacred and religious vessel acknowledged by and from the Vatican, "a girt one of the loins" of Proverbs 30:31, the Hebrew zarzir, Arabic sarsar, Greek alektor, French coq, Persian bird, Persian cock or the acknowledged rooster from the Hebrew Torah, the Christian Old Testament, the Holy Scriptures of Job, Isaiah and of the Apostles John, Luke, Matthew and Mark.

In the Bayeux Tapestry of the 1070s, originally of the Bayeux Cathedral and now exhibited at Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux in Bayeux, Normandy, there is a depiction of a man installing a rooster on Westminster Abbey. The cornerstone is the first stone set in the construction of a masonry foundation, and over time, it became a ceremonial stone, with the laying of the stone being generally important metaphorically in sacred architecture.

Visual depictions of cockfighting include Jeunes Grecs faisant battre des coqs (1846), a painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme; Vainqueur au combat de coqs (1864) a bronze statue by Alexandre Falguière; the painting Hanengevecht in Vlaanderen (1882) by Emile Claus; and some works by Robin Philipson.

Abraham Valdelomar's 1918 tale El Caballero Carmelo depicts a cockfight between the protagonist, a cock named Carmelo, and his rival Ajiseco from a child's perspective, who considered this bird as a heroic member of his family. Nathanael West's 1939 novel The Day of the Locust includes a detailed and graphic cockfighting scene, as does the Alex Haley novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family and the miniseries based on it.

In Gabriel García Márquez's Nobel-Prize-winning 1967 novel One Hundred Years Of Solitude, cockfighting is outlawed in the town of Macondo after the patriarch of the Buendia family murders his cockfighting rival and is haunted by the man's ghost.[98] Cockfighting is central to García Marquez's 1965 novella No One Writes to the Colonel in which the unnamed protagonist sells all of his belongings to feed his murdered son's gamecock.

Charles Willeford's Cockfighter (1962) gives a detailed account of the protagonist's life as a 'cocker'. The book On the Border: Portraits of America's Southwestern Frontier describes a cockfight at a fiesta.[99] In Lasana M. Sekou’s 1997 novella Brotherhood of the Spurs, the title story of his James Michener Fellow collection of short stories, a cockfight in the 1960s is central to uniting the people of Sint Maarten during the partition by the French and Dutch in the Caribbean in 1648.