Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's almost midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. With certain exceptions, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note:  Any question received after then will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. (I've been getting an increasing number of people trying to post after these are closed, so will have to draw a harder line than before.) If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.0 of The Magic Monday FAQ here. Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says. 

The picture?  I'm working my way through photos of my lineage, focusing on the teachers whose work has influenced me and the teachers who influenced them in turn. Quite a while ago we reached Israel Regardie, and then chased his lineage back through Aleister Crowley et al. After he left Crowley, however, Regardie also spent a while studying with this week's honoree, the redoubtable Violet Firth Evans, better known to generations of occultists as Dion Fortune. Born in Wales and raised in a Christian Science family, Fortune got into occultism after a stint as a Freudian lay therapist -- that was an option in her time.  She was active in the Theosophical Society, belonged to two different branches of the Golden Dawn, studied with a number of teachers, and then founded her own magical order, the Fraternity (now Society) of the Inner Light. She also wrote some first-rate magical novels and no shortage of books and essays on occultism, including The Cosmic Doctrine, the twentieth century's most important work of occult philosophy. I'm pleased to be only four degrees of separation from her.

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With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not sure if this is in your wheelhouse JMG or if it's more one for others here, but any thought would be appreciated :)

My newborn has recently started 'cooing'.
Not long after he started, I said to him 'oh you sound like a little owl'.
The same night my husband called out to me to quickly come out to the back yard. When I did he pointed to a large owl perched on our clothesline.
We've lived in the same house for a number of years and have never seen an owl like that before - so it feels quite meaningful to me and I can't stop thinking about what it might mean.

Birds seem to be the dominant symbols in my life (or the ones that I notice). I had a few fly directly in my path last year right before I received very bad news. I also saw crows pretty much everywhere while I was pregnant - a couple that were in my front yard almost every day.

So does anyone have any guesses/interpretations on what the owl might mean?

Also, does anyone have any recommendations for learning more about birds and their symbolism?

Symbolic thinking is not my forte - the tarot and I are not friends (yet!)

[ecosophia]

Fascinating. That's not something I know much about, though, so I'll leave it to the commentariat. Anyone?

[(Anonymous)]

What an owl may symbolize depends on your cultural background. If you are Kikuyu or Mayan it can be an ill omen but if your ancestry is European, it can mean wisdom and/or vigilance. In Japan they are considered lucky.

The number of crows can indicate good or bad luck; two is good, three is bad. But be careful not to overthink it. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a bird is just a bird. If you see flocks of healthy looking birds around, consider it a good sign the environment is not down and out just yet.

The flock of robins I saw the other day symbolizes Spring gradually making its way here even with snow still on the ground.

JLfromNH/Umber Squamous Aardvark

[thinking_turtle]

Perhaps your newborn heard an owl at night, and is now copying it?

[walt_f]

What a beautiful encounter.

I've had a number of unusual and meaningful interactions with birds since moving to my present place and deciding to be open to communication with the local nature spirits. Some of them would sound quite unbelievable (to most audiences, maybe not to present company) were I to relate them. It's tempting (especially given the history of augury) to think there's some fixed vocabulary, species X doing thing Y always means exactly Z, but I don't think that was true even for the practiced Roman augurs. (That's not how other divinatory practices work, after all.) I've come to think of the meanings of my encounters in terms of an ongoing conversation, rather than dispatches to be decoded by headquarters.

I go by this general principle: the first layer of meaning of any message, especially when you don't know the vocabulary well, is the emotion it elicits in you, the listener. Emotional communication is especially a good starting place for establishing contact. Consider the connection between the astral plane and emotions (and also, why the typical question from a therapist is "how did that make you feel?"). That it feels so meaningful to you suggests it's an invitation. One that, under the circumstances, appears to also involve your son. But, consider the therapist's question: what other emotions did you feel?

That said, it also makes sense to consider the tiny bit of bird lore we still possess, and there's a long traditional association, practically a cliché, of owls with wisdom. And also, with circumstances requiring wisdom. Omens of the latter are warnings, but a need for wisdom in parenting your newborn shouldn't be any great revelation. Perhaps your child will himself be wise, which is certainly a circumstance that would require you to be as well.

Any encounter with owls also reminds me of the song "Fukurou" by Japanese artist Kokia. It's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOa-VO2_SLg I urge you to give it a listen. I (and apparently, many other people) find it so remarkably evocative and meaningful that there must be some truth behind it. (One detail: where the translation in that video says "unwelcome guest" I'd translate in context as "uninvited guest," an important difference.)

"Fukurou ga shiraseru nanika ga hajimaru yokan" -- "The owl(s) let (you) know the feeling something is about to begin."

As for learning more, beyond the few well-worn scraps we have that can be covered in a few pages, what we can do is keep paying attention.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd love to hear more about these interactions if you'd be open to sharing any :)

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe the child has a connection with Athena?