Deer symbolism
In Christian legend a stag with a crucifix between its antlers turned the hunters Eustace and Hubert to God; in Buddhist art two deer beside the wheel of the teaching recall the Deer Park where the Buddha first taught. Cherokee hunters asked pardon of the Little Deer, chief of the deer, for every deer they killed.
Meaning
The deer is a hunter's animal in most of its stories, and often a sacred one. The Cherokee held that the Little Deer watches over every deer and punishes a hunter who kills without asking pardon. Christian legend gives a stag bearing a crucifix to two saints, Eustace and Hubert, both honoured as patrons of hunters. In Buddhist art a pair of deer flanks the dharma wheel. Greek myth has Actaeon, turned into a stag by Diana. In Norse myth stags feed in the branches of the world tree.
Origin and history
In Greek myth, as Ovid tells it in the Metamorphoses, the hunter Actaeon wandered into the valley where the goddess Diana was bathing with her nymphs. She threw water in his face and set “the horns of a lively stag” on his head, and his own hounds tore him to pieces.
In Norse myth, in Snorri Sturluson's Edda, four stags “leap about in the branches of the ash” Yggdrasil and bite its leaves, and the hart Eikthyrnir stands over Valhalla; so many drops fall from his antlers that rivers flow from them.
In the Psalms the deer is the soul's thirst for God: “my whole soul longs for thee, as a deer for running water” (Psalm 42, numbered 41 in the Knox translation).
The Cherokee hunter and the Little Deer
The deer was the main game of the Cherokee hunter, and one of the seven Cherokee clans is the Ani'-Kawi', “Deer People”, James Mooney recorded in the years 1887 to 1890. The deer have a chief, Awi Usdi, the Little Deer, pure white, the size of a small dog, with branching antlers, and invisible to all but the greatest hunters. When a hunter kills a deer, the Little Deer asks the blood on the ground whether the hunter has asked pardon for the life he took. If he has not, the Little Deer follows the blood to his house and puts the spirit of rheumatism into his body. Mooney found belief in the Little Deer among the older Cherokee “almost as strong and universal” as belief in a life after death.
A Cherokee story tells how the deer got his antlers. The animals set a race between the Deer and the Rabbit with a pair of antlers as the prize; the Rabbit was caught cutting a road through the thicket, so the horns went to the Deer, “and he has worn them ever since.”
The stag with the crucifix
Two Christian legends tell of a hunted stag with a crucifix between its antlers. In the older one, Eustace (Eustachius), a Roman general under Trajan, saw a stag coming towards him “with a crucifix between its horns” and was baptised; the Catholic Encyclopedia calls his Acts “certainly fabulous”, but Eustace's emblems are still a crucifix and a stag, and he is patron of hunters. In the other, Hubert, later bishop of Maastricht and Liège, went hunting on Good Friday and saw the crucifix between the antlers of the stag he was chasing. Hubert was honoured in the Middle Ages as the patron of huntsmen.
Deer beside the dharma wheel
Buddhist temples and monasteries often show a pair of deer on either side of the dharma wheel. The Tibetan Language Institute, quoting Robert Beer, explains the deer as “a direct reference to the Buddha's first teaching in the Deer Park, Sarnath”, and says a Tibetan monastery holding the Kangyur and Tengyur scriptures would have the deer and wheel on its roof.
The deer of Kasuga in Japan
In Shinto the deer is the sacred animal of the Great Deity of Kasuga, as the fox is Inari's, according to Lafcadio Hearn's account of Japanese belief (1894).
Seeing a deer as a sign
Websites that say what it “means” to see a deer offer no source older than their own pages that we could find. The older beliefs on this page are about hunting a deer, not seeing one.
Related animals
The Rabbit symbolism lost the antlers to the deer in the Cherokee race. The Wolf symbolism, Fox symbolism and deer share a Cherokee song against frostbite, and the Snake symbolism and the deer are allies in Cherokee belief, each avenging injury to the other.
Where you’ll see it today
whatdoesthissymbolmean.comDeer crossing signThe deer on a road signSee also
Dharmachakra, Yggdrasil, Rabbit symbolism, Butterfly symbolism, Dragonfly symbolism, Moth symbolism.
Sources
- Myths of the Cherokee (James Mooney, 1900), James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee, Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, part 1, Project Gutenberg, I. Introduction; 15. The four-footed tribes; 26. How the Deer got his horns; 49. The snake tribe
- The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I–VII, Book VI, Fable I, translated by Henry T. Riley, Project Gutenberg, Book III, Fable III
- The Younger Edda (Anderson translation), Snorri Sturluson, trans. Rasmus B. Anderson, 1880, Project Gutenberg, The Fooling of Gylfe: Ygdrasil; Eikthyrner
- Psalms, psalm 41 (42 in Hebrew numbering), The Holy Bible, Knox translation, via New Advent, verse 2
- Sts. Eustachius and Companions (Catholic Encyclopedia), The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 5 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1909), New Advent, article text
- St. Hubert (Catholic Encyclopedia), The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 7 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1910), New Advent, article text
- The Eight Auspicious Symbols, Tibetan Language Institute, quoting Robert Beer, The Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols and Motifs, Dharma Wheel
- Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, First Series (Lafcadio Hearn, 1894), Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, First Series (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1894), chapter 15, Kitsune, Project Gutenberg, chapter 15, Kitsune, section 3
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Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research