The Homa Pakshi and the Limitations of Imagination by Orlando Bartro
The Homa Pakshi (or Huma bird) is a bird from Persian mythology that never alights. It flies high beyond our vision, and if anyone happens to see only its shadow on the ground, it is enough to make a person happy for all of one’s life.
The Homa Pakshi is quite fertile, and she lays her eggs while in flight. They hatch before they strike the ground, and the hatchling learns to fly in midair.
Thus, all Homa Pakshi fly perpetually beyond our view.
Sufi Inayat Khan says of this bird: “Its true meaning is that when a person’s thoughts so evolve that they break all limitation, then he becomes as a king.”
Imagination seeks always to live where the Homa Pakshi flies but rises only to the edge of what can be thought.
In the highest reaches of our imagination, we see only the shadows of conceptions that aren’t quite within our reach.
I’ve often tried to picture to myself a color outside the range of the visible spectrum, but I can’t. I can only imagine infrared or ultraviolet enough to suppose that I’d be able to guess which is which, were I to be able to see them, because infrared probably looks more like red, just like red looks more like orange; and ultraviolet probably looks more like violet, just like violet looks more like blue. But what infrared and ultraviolet actually appear as—is beyond what I can envision.
*Orlando Bartro is the author of Toward Two Words, a comical & surreal novel about a man who finds yet another woman he never knew, usually available at Amazon for $4.91.