When crow calls back

So what does this literary crow want me to write about?

How about this:

Crows are marvelous messengers. And like their larger cousin, the raven, they can be impeccable allies in shamanic lucid dreaming and tracking. We know this from legend and folklore.

In the Iroquois story of the real Hiawatha, a force is gathering to challenge the dark power of the tyrant-sorcerer, Tododaho. They need scouts to report on his defenses. The scouts who perform this task, unerringly, are Crow People, shamanic dreamers who take on the form of crows, fly to the tyrant's redoubt, and return to Hiawatha with accurate intelligence. I recount this story in full detail in my book Dreamways of the Iroquois.

Raven has an even larger history as a seer. Odin, who was a shaman before he became a god, works with two ravens, who are found perched on his shoulders when they are not out and about gathering information for him. Their names are Huninn and Muninn, Thought and Memory. When I teach the arts of seership, I often encourage members of my workshops to borrow the wings and the sharp sight of Thought and Memory as they go out on assignment - powered by shamanic drumming - to collect information for a partner. Sometimes the assignment involves traveling a certain distance into the future to scout out a possible future situation or event. Sometimes it requires opening a path for healing, or breaking the terror of a nightmare left unresolved.

We worked this way in my last Active Dreaming workshop in southern France. I noticed that there was an especially gifted shamanic tracker in the group named Anne, who came with a previous connection with the crows, and used it to deliver excellent results.

When we call on an ally, it sometimes calls back. Anne's friend, Jean-Alain, sent me these photos of some recent close encounters.

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.