Omen Or No Omen.

Blessings, Darlings!

Dear Gods, I just tried 'reading' the same of a murmeration of birds as an omen.  Not that I had just asked a question or had an issue that I needed guidance on in my mind.  Hey, it looks like boobies!  That, and the cow that was nursing, must mean that everything is tits!  And tits are great!  So everything is great!

Well ... that's not quite how omens work.

While omens can come in myriad forms ... there are some constraints on what constitutes one.

One vital constraint is setting.  If you haven't just asked a question or have an issue preoccupying you - then whatever you see is probably not an omen.  Most stuff is just the world doing its thing.  Cows with calves nurse their calves.  Murmerations of birds happen when a lawn tractor moves towards where they are feeding.  Snakes - or deer or bunnies or turtles or squirrels or whatever - cross roads.  The beautiful yellow flickers now around the house are here because the thistles have gone to seed and these birds LOVE thistle seeds.  As noted in the Psychopomp blog: it's not all about you.  But if I just asked a question or was pondering an issue - that one of them showed up RIGHT THEN might be an omen/message/whatever.

Another constraint is that you understand it/can interpret it.  A message you can't understand is worthless as an omen (or a message from the Gods.)  If it's a symbol that means nothing to you, then it's extremely unlikely to be an omen.  You shouldn't have to do further research on an omen.   If it's a message from something that comes in Gaelic ... that message isn't going to be something I can use, so isn't what my psyche will have picked up as an omen.  Th FACt that I'm picking up Gaelic MIGHT be.  An omen in Hebrew I'd be able to understand, even if it coming in Hebrew is unlikely to be important.

Sometimes repetition indicates an omen.  That wouldn't be true here about the 'cow nursing', even tho' Hathor and I have somewhat of a relationship - the fields around my house feature at least 25 cows that are still nursing their calves.  Mice in my basement is just an sign that we failed to block all the ways that they have been getting in.  Deer around here tend to eat the same patch of vegetation every day at the same time until they've eaten it all.  Crows are common.  But if I have something on my mind, and while I'm out doing things I repeatedly see murders of crows on the buildings I'm entering that day ... that's a sign.

Go forth and be amazing.

Frondly, Fern

The Crows Spoke Again.

Blessings Darlings!

I don't know if crows act as messengers from the Goddess who has me collared, but there are these times when ... well, they can certainly be omens.  So far, always omens about crap going down at work.  It happened again yesterday.

I was just driving in to the job.  The Chubby Hubby and Spawn, who had been out in the car earlier, had left me an almost empty gas tank, so I went to fill it before work rather than after.  Snow was predicted, after all. 

All along the drive there were crows, in abnormal numbers, in abnormal places.  I figured it was just due to the oncoming snow - just crows being crows, and confirming the weather report.  In fact I felt a bit smug, as I reviewed that I was filling the gas tank, had pretty new tires, my radiator was finally fixed, I'd replaced a burnt out turn signal bulb myself, etc.

Well.

Thirty minutes after I got to work, or no reason, the damn 'fire suppressant system' goes off.  Green chemical pours down on the grills and my stove (where I had a large batch of vegetable soup started), mist from it goes EVERYWHERE. 

The rest of my time there was spent cleaning up toxic chemicals.  Oh joy, oh rapture.

Maybe I should have warned the managers when I got in. 

Frondly, Fern

Omen or not?

Blessings Darlings!

Neatly bucketed black walnuts, now scattered over the deck.
Very cute garter snake sunning itself on the back step.
Dreams for a week all about the same area of Chicago.
Barking foxes every night at 11. 

Are any of them omens?  How would you know?

None of them are actually 'magically significant' for my life, as it turns out. Black walnuts scattered? Squirrel! Garter snake sunning? It's fall, but that was before the first frost - they are sunning themselves EVERYWHERE, lots of them run over on the roads. Barking foxes? they have a den in the larger copse by the house, and there's another under the big altar in the wooded area on the East of the house. Dreams about Chicago? That's my guilty conscience telling me to call my Mother more often.

Know what's normal for your area, and what's not.  Only the unusual should be looked at as an omen at all.  Certainly that the daughter of a Jewish mother is feeling guilty is NOT unusual. 

Frondly, Fern