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“The domestic trade of owls is highly lucrative, and it is appalling that the festival of Diwali is used as a front by wildlife traffickers to peddle endangered birds for monetary gain.

“Driven by religious myths and superstitious beliefs tied to them, owls are poached for their body parts such as talons, skulls, bones, feathers, meat and blood, which are then used in talismans, black magic, traditional medicines, etc,” said Kartick Satyanarayan, co-founder and CEO of Wildlife SOS, a nonprofit organisation that rescues and rehabilitates wildlife in distress. “It’s crude and cruel logic, but it’s led to thousands of owls being sacrificed.”Įvery year around Diwali, the nocturnal birds of prey are hunted down by poachers and black magic practitioners – or “tantriks” – for use in occult practices. The idea, then, is that with Laxmi trapped in the house, the ill-fortune or malaise would be warded off.

“Some people think killing her vahana, the owl, will force Laxmi to stay in their house because she won’t have a means to return,” Dipak Kumar Singh, the principal secretary of the Environment, Forest, and Climate Change department (DEFCC) of the eastern Indian state of Bihar, told VICE.

Hindu black magic removal