The Language of Birds and How to Communicate with the Wholeness

The Fairies´ Tiff with the Birds, by Arthur Rackham

Birds have been creatures of the mythic imagination since the very earliest times. Various birds, from eagles to starlings, serve as messengers to the gods in stories the world over, carrying blessings to humankind and prayers up to the heavens. They lead shamans into the Spirit World and dead souls to the Realm Beyond; they follow heroes on quests, uncover secrets, give warning and shrewd council.

The movements, cries and migratory patterns of birds have been studied as oracles. In Celtic lands, ravens were domesticated as divinatory birds, although eagles, geese and the humble wren also had their prophetic powers.

In Norse myth, the two ravens of Odin flew throughout the world each dawn, then perched on the raven-god's shoulder to whisper news into his ears. A dove with the power of human speech sat in the branches of the sacred oak grove at Zeus's oracle at Dodona; a woodpecker was the oracular bird in groves sacred to Mars.

According to various Siberian tribes, the eagle was the very first shaman, sent to humankind by the gods (the Wholeness) to heal sickness and suffering. Frustrated that human beings could not understand its speech or ways, the bird mated with a human woman, and she soon gave birth to a child from whom all shamans are now descended. In a mystic cloak of bird feathers, the shaman chants, drums and prays him- or herself into a trance. The soul takes flight, soaring into the spirit world beyond our everyday perception.

Perhaps you have listened to another person for a number of years, unfortunately; and you get used to it; you get used to the person´s language, the person´s gesture, how the person looks and so on, and you gradually slip off. And you say, ‘Why haven’t I, after years of listening to this person, changed?’

It is because you have actually not listened with your heart, with your mind, with your whole energy. So, don’t blame the other person, but rather learn, if one may suggest most respectfully, the way of listening.

So, please learn the art of listening, to your wife, to your husband, to your children, to the birds, to the wind, to the breeze, so that you become extraordinarily sensitive in listening.

When you listen, you catch up quickly, you don’t have to have a lot of explanations, analyses and descriptions; you are flowing with each other.

When talking to another person, then talk together as two friends sitting in a park, or in a wood, quiet, birds are singing, there’s plenty of light coming through the leaves on the floor and there is a sense of appreciation of beauty.

When you so listen, the miracle takes place. When you so listen, it is like sowing a seed. If the seed is vital, strong, healthy, and the ground is properly prepared, it inevitably grows.

So one has to learn the art of listening. If you listen very, very carefully, you capture it so quickly, the meaning of what the other is saying.

There is great beauty in listening to a bird, to the wind among the leaves, and to a word that is spoken with depth, with meaning, with passion.

“I pray to the birds," says Terry Tempest Williams (in her gorgeous book Refuge) "because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.”