BIRD TOTEMS AND THE INITIATION OF AIR
Birds have an ancient mythology and mysticism. In most societies, animals were visible signs of invisible forces, and people realized that you could only understand the Divine through its creations. This was especially true of birds. The behaviors, the characteristics, and the other qualities of the birds took on both natural and supernatural significance.
Birds were often thought of as deities or the thoughts of deities. In Norse mythology, the god Odin had two ravens as messengers, Hugin (Thought) and Munin (Memory). In Central American mythology, the god of the air, Quetzlcoatl, is most often depicted as a feathered serpent. In Native American tradition, the Thunder Bird is a spirit creature of great creative power and might. The Egyptian god Horus is usually depicted with a hawk’s head, while Maat, the Egyptian goddess of truth, is often shown with a vulture feather. To the Hindus, birds represented a higher state of being.
Legends, folklore, and mythology are filled with winged creatures that touched humanity in many ways. Pegasus is the Greek winged horse. Harpies were birdlike women, and the ancient griffin is a combination of animals with great wings and a bird’s head. The phoenix is a mythical bird that is burnt in the fires of sacrifice and then rises from its own ashes. Most tales of angelic contact depict these beings with wings, reflecting birdlike characteristics.
To primitive humans, birds were gods. Birds could make the thunder and bring the rain. Their feathered wings and their flight stirred the imagination of humans. Because of this unique ability to fly, much mystical and symbolic significance came to be applied to birds. Birds foretold of death and they could bring either good or ill luck. Birds were often seen as angels and teachers, or devils and destroyers. Many believed they were the souls of the dead. In a catechism class I attended when I was very young, a nun told a story of how a child would become a bird if it died before it was baptized.
Birds are one of the most ancient forms of life upon the planet. Many scientists believe that birds evolved from reptiles over 140,000,000 years ago. The oldest bird known to humanity is the archaeopteryx, Greek for “ancient wing.”9 The fossil of this bird, dated from the late Jurassic period, shows that it had a lizard-like tail, jaws with sharp teeth, and claws on the outer joint of its wings.
Flight is a means of leaving the earth and rising to the heavens. It is a means of descending out of the sky to land upon the Earth. Birds are the bridge between humans and the divine, the Earth and Heaven. They are the symbols of transcendence, the rising above lower natures. They reflect a taming or rising above a juvenile nature. Often times liberation from any state of being that is too fixed, final or immature is reflected through bird symbology and appearances. They are the ultimate symbols of transcendence and release from any pattern of existence to a more superior one.
Birds reflect a union of the conscious mind with the unconscious. They reflect the achievement of full realization. Because of their ability to fly, they are associated with aspiration, flights of intuition, beauty, and levitation. Birds are a source of creative imagination, and they have the ability to awaken within us our own flights of magic.
Each bird has its own unique qualities and characteristics. Examining those you encounter will do much in helping you recognize and use your own creative faculties. Each has the ability to help you in your life, to realize that everyday of your life presents opportunities to soar to new heights.
I believe there is a very good reason that crows are found everywhere. Traditionally, they were symbolic of magic. They squawk and call out to everyone. This should remind you constantly that magic is around you at all times, just calling out for you to use it within your own life. The behaviors, movements, and activities of the crows you specifically encounter will help you to understand how to apply magic in your life.
Learning to attune and recognize the spiritual significance of birds will help you open new faculties of perception-past, present, and future. Birds hold the knowledge of speaking with all animals. They hold the knowledge of how to make our ideas concrete and effective. As you approach periods in your life where you will be able to make new leaps in higher consciousness and new expressions of your true essence, birds will become more prominent. They will become signs, guideposts, protectors, and teachers.
As you begin to study and honor the birds you encounter at such times, you will find yourself being gifted with feathers. You will find them everywhere you go. You will also be presented them by others in your life who may not know why they are giving you such a present but only that it feels right for you. These gifts should be honored.
Feathers have long been associated with the wind, the mind, new flights, and all creator gods/ goddesses. They are a form of supplementary language, and, as signs and gifts, they serve specific functions, the most common of which are:
• A direct connection to gods, goddesses, and specific divine forces,
• A form the god/goddess (divine force) takes when traveling,
• A signal between human and human,
• Qualities and characteristics within or around you which you must deal with,
• A medicine or quality you can develop,
• A link to teachers of specific aspects of Nature including animal, angelic, and/ or Faerie Kingdom beings.
• Omens and signs,
• Tools for prayers, petitions, and alignment with specific natural forces,
• A reflection of new changes and new leaps of consciousness about to unfold for you,
• A call to unfold the wings of enchantment within your life.
Most of these will be explored in detail in the next several chapters. Always keep in mind that a bird’s wings and its feathers make it a part of heaven. Every feather is a special gift and a promise. Every feather can connect you with the specific archetypal energies of any bird. You don’t have to have a hawk feather to link with hawks. Honoring and using any feather available will help you in your alignment.
This is because all feathers relate to the human spirit and its innate connection to the Divine. Even though there are general applications for any feather, each individual bird and its feathers must be examined for its own unique qualities, if you are to understand its function within your own life circumstances. You must examine its characteristics and behaviors and draw the connections to your own life. As you do this, the forces that manifest through that bird and its feathers, will begin to manifest more dynamically to you.
This is when you begin to understand the process of alchemy that is beginning to unfold within your life. Alchemy is the process of burning away the dross to reveal the gold beneath. You will begin to see the leaps into higher consciousness that are about to unfold. Birds and feathers have often been used as traditional symbols for the alchemical process-especially through the force of activation. The location and the action of the bird(s) will help you to determine how the alchemical process will manifest in your life.
In alchemy there is a two-step process to create distillation, the purifying and condensing of a substance so as to extract its truest essence. One step is usually through volatilization, a heating up to dissipate and evaporate what is non-essential. The second step is through precipitation and condensation, the extracting of the essence after the non-essential aspects have evaporated.
Winged Enchantment
Whether a hawk, an eagle or a tiny hummingbird, all birds awaken a sense of wonder and enchantment by their ability to fly. They remind us that we all can rise above our circumstances. They are the ultimate symbols of transcendence.
The volatilization is symbolized by a bird flying skyward, and the condensation through the bird swooping earthward. The colors, the behaviors, and all aspects of the bird must be examined, though, to determine its true power and how it reflects the alchemical process in your life. What aspects of your life does this bird totem show as non-essential and needing to be evaporated? What aspects of your life need to be condensed and extracted for greater power and magic?
Birds are the primary symbols for the Initiation of Air. This initiation reflects a period in which you begin to open to higher knowledge and wisdom, with an increased ability and opportunity to use it to raise yourself up. The Initiation of Air is the learning to open more fully to Divine ideas, ideas that link normal consciousness to the universal. It speaks of opportunity to develop and manifest the highest forms of intuition. If left undeveloped, it will manifest in lower forms of psychism. The Initiation of Air is the opening to realms beyond physical time and space.
Through this initiation you learn to understand and control the workings of the mind. This understanding does not come through a mere collection of knowledge. It is understanding based on higher wisdom and sensitivity, founded in transmuting psychic perceptions into spiritual intuition.
Air is what separates Heaven and Earth. It is the realm of birds, who move easily between both. Air and birds are thus a link between your own spirituality and your physical consciousness.
Air in motion is a force. It is the wind. This wind and the ability to fly and soar upon it resides within the mind. Birds reflect the archetypal energies most actively playing upon the mind, while also reminding you to learn to ride those winds. They remind you that you can fly if you learn to use your own wings your inspiration, creativity and your intuition.
Air is also essential to life. You live through breathing and you breathe in air. Whatever air is blowing around you is what you will take into yourself. This initiation reflects new learning in control of your surroundings and your life. Learning to control what you allow in your life is what your bird totems can teach you most effectively.
Strength and self-mastery-with a new sense of responsibility is part of this initiation. Learning to bridge and open to new energies and dimensions is what birds often reflect. Birds are calls to creative expression that will enable you to rise over certain elements of your life.
Birds are the extended kin of human. They are unique among most animal life. Like humans, they stand upon two feet. (The bear, because of its ability to walk on two legs, is also considered extended kin to humans.) They are more than just part of Nature and part of the Divine. They are the agents of both. When you begin to work with birds and receive from them, the mysteries of both the Earth and the Heavens open to you. Birds invite us to new flights of spiritual awareness and creativity. The following chapters will show you how to accept that invitation.
The Eagle Dancer
Costumes and movements are employed to awaken the archetypal force behind various animals. Eagle dances were employed by many groups of people. The eagle is a powerful totem because it soars out of sight. It is believed to have a close relationship with the sun. Its power is often sought in healing. The feathers in the costume, along with the movements mimicking flight, help manifest its energy. The different feathers are symbols of different qualities of energies of the eagle. Flight feathers are for strength, and fluff feathers symbolize the breath of life.
9. Bantock, Nick. Wings (New York, Random House, 1991), p. 5.