White horses feature a lot in Midlands folklore. Spitting was considered to avert all evil, and to meet a white horse face-to-face without spitting (usually over the left shoulder) was considered very unlucky indeed. It has been suggested that negative associations with white horses were formed in this area because Saxon hordes laid to waste much of the Midlands; they rode under a banner with a white horse (white horses were sacred to Odin).
To dream of a white horse meant that death was coming. This superstition might have come from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as one of the riders sits upon a white horse. Another local superstition indicating death was to dream of riding in a cart “greased with bacon” which is very weird, and very precise!
White horses appear a lot in mythology. In Celtic mythology, Rhiannon rides a white horse and is linked to the Celtic fertility horse goddess, Epona. In Irish mythology “god of the dead”, Donn, is a phantom horseman riding a white horse. Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology, was the son of Poseidon and Medusa. Poseidon was challenged to create a beautiful land mammal and created horses from the breaking waves of the ocean.
I regularly see a white horse when I travel to the Otherworld. He allows me to ride him and he is indescribably beautiful. White horses have always been very special to me.
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