The Owl as a law firm symbol....but not only

by Former Senior Partner
Shortly after the good-omen encounter with my (now former) partners, in early 2002, we all had a heated but funny debate about the owl, the symbol of our law firm. A dark green one, to be more precise, and not very stern looking. That owl represented our collective wisdom, endurance, experience. It haunted me to the point that I started revisiting fifteen century Dutch paintings to find something I knew was there, but maybe misplaced in my memory. I re-read about owls and other creatures, everything from Poe to Campbell to Eco, in search of the perfect owl to match the symbol on our business card. It finally dawned on me within the suitably gloomy walls of the Prado museum a couple of years later. The owl was the symbol of inner demons we've conquered. A depth more than the other-worldly, more powerful than hope, more durable than the paintings I was staring at.

Jeroen Bosch, a.k.a. Hieronymus Bosch. It all made sense, owl and all. His fifteenth century metaphors were so telling about today's world. How could a provincial Dutch painter be so visionary, so timeless - and depict certain owls in his work, for us to discover and compare centuries later. It all came together - my first ever e-mail address, hieronymus @.....; my elementary school nickname. I had all along believed it was the name of the Latin translator of the Bible, but in hindsight it's another Hieronymus we should take a closer look at, and find the right owl to look up to.

Today, no doubt, the right owl looks beyond darkness and leads to light through its wisdom. One cannot prevent all evil but one must see beyond it and overcome it. Don't delve too much in its laird. And resist temptation. The garden of delights is short lived.