Sun Stealer

RAVEN EYE: Sun Stealer

They say you stole the sun.
This is inexact.
You hid the light in darkness
where the light-killers could not find it
so the sun could shine brighter than before.


They say you are black
because you are evil and unkind.
They do not say you swallowed
your own shadow and mastered it
at the price of wearing its colors.


Shivering, they call you death-knell,
Death-eater, bad omen, flying banshee
because you feed on death that feeds on men.
You strip what rots from what remains.
You give us the purity of the bones.


Trickster, they call you.
Oh yes, you'll do your wickedest
to ensure our way is never routine
and we are forced to improvise and transform.
You won't let us swap our souls for a plan.


At least they don't accuse you
of minor crimes.
I praise and claim your gifts
of putting on darkness to come and go safely
in the darkest places, joking with Death.


COMMENT: The kindness of ravens. Our collective noun for a group of crows is "murder". The word for a group of ravens is even crueler; those who know it speak of an "unkindness" of ravens. Yet I have found the raven to be an impeccable ally in seeing into dark places, and in training frequent flyers in the arts of the dream seer, I often call in the ravenous eye. Be it noted that in working with Raven this way, it is vastly desirable to call in a pair, as Odin knew when he sent off his twin ravens, Thought and Memory, to scout for him. I wrote this poem for Raven at the end of a marvelous adventure in group dreaming, when many of us were able to see true with the help of that raven eye. I am posting it today because of further excellent adventures in tracking with the help of the Two Ravens in my recent workshop in Frankfurt.

This tribute to Raven is included in my new collection of poems and stories, Here,

Everything Is Dreaming, published by Exclesior Editions, an imprint of State University of New York Press.







Raven shaman: drawing by Robert Moss

The Red Bull and the Morrigan

I see a huge red bull, with long silky hair. I know that he is the focus of an ancient battle.
    I see the warriors of two rival armies clashing together - kilted men swinging killing irons.
    Riding through the field of battle comes an immense dark figure, standing proudly erect in a chariot. She is three women in one. Their bodies are joined. Her chariot is not drawn by horses but races forward, powered by the intention of the War Goddess. Its great wheels are armed with scything blades, that mow down the fighting men like tall grass.
     As the bodies of the slain lie in heaps on the ground, the Morrigan divides into three huge black birds. They soar into the air, then swoop down on the fallen, picking out the eyes, stripping the flesh from the bones. They are separating what rots from what endures.
    When their work is done, they come together and the Goddess shows herself as a single being - a ripe, naked woman wearing deer antlers.
     In this form, she rises above the earth. She glides at tremendous speed from the site of the battle to a mountain whose name is Slievnamun. She shows herself here in yet another form - as a lovely young woman who sits above a natural cauldron, a bubbling spring among the rocks. Here and only here (I am informed) can the dread Morrigan be approached in beneficent human form.

from a dawn vision during a weekend of Active Dreaming and mythic drama on Gore Mountain.

Graphic: Louis le Brocquy, The Morrígan, 1969, lithograph. Illustration for Thomas Kinsella's translation of The Táin.

The contention of hawk and crows

Bird-watching in human history has been the favorite form of divination, second only to dream interpretation. The most famous Greek dream interpreter, Artemidorus wrote a (lost) book on bird omens as well as his classic work The Interpretation of Dreams fom which Freud borrowed the title of his book a mere 1,700 years later. The Romans were devoted to getting messages from the behavior of birds. Before making any important state decision, top Roman officials, accompanied by the council of augurs ("bird-watchers) would go up on the Capitoline Hill to observe what was going on with the birds in a certain quarter of the sky. From the numbers, flight and voices of the birds the augurs would determine whether it was a "good day" or a "bad day" for state action. In recent years, I have wondered whether we could have done any worse - in the management of national and global affairs - if our leaders had based their decisions on the behavior of birds rather than the prognostications of economic forecasters and expert advisers.

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I value bird signs highly among my personal omens, in the category of omina oblativa (to borrow the language of the ancient augurs) which means the signs that are "given" by the play of natural phenomena. rather than "provoked" through a divinatory practice. A red-tailed hawk, in fine shape, usually gives me the sense that a day will go well.

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Like other everyday oracles, bird omens can be ambiguous or obscure. Take my experience this morning. On my first walk of the day with my dog, I observe a tremendous flurry of activity among the crows that gather in great numbers in this season in a neighborhood park. Thirty or more are wheeling and flapping, cawing and squalling. I realize they are trying to drive away a red-tailed hawk, a female to judge by her size. The hawk isn't easily driven. She lands on a branch of a leafless maple, maybe ten feet from the top. Crows land above her, croaking and jabbing their beaks at her. Others flap in midair, as if trying to sweep her from her perch. A daring crow dives down at the hawk, talons outstretched, braking and wheeling away just before contact. The hawk is unmoved.

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The crows are suddenly distracted by the appearance of a second hawk in the distance. Many take off after this new threat. One - now two - stay at the top of the maple, keeping watch on the hawk perched below, leaning so close to their branches that they temporarily lose the profile of birds and look like part of the tree. The other crows come back. No sign of the second hawk. Half a dozen - now more - of the crows join the sentinels atop the maple. Others flutter around, cawing but less aggressive than before. The hawk waits. When she moves, it seems it will be on her own schedule.

I watched this avian drama for twenty minutes. It's not clear to me what it means, but if I were a Roman augur I might suggest that this is not the day to rush a decision. I might feel that the day was revealing itself as one of the dies intercisi, one of the "divided" or indeterminate days that are neither fasti (when things are "allowed") or nefasti (when they are not). Then again, if I were an augur with the Senate depending on me I might have been willing to stay in place, on a cold morning, to see how the stand-off between the hawk and the crows played out. Instead, on the day before Thanksgiving, I'll just stay open to what the rest of today brings. Later, with hindsight, I can look back at the bird contest and try to determine whether it provided clues to something that happened later. I may have missed those clues this morning, but maybe I can get a message quicker next time I see a hawk engaged with a murder of crows.