(Friday, September 27, 2013) We’ve been watching the spectacular “Earthflight” series on PBS. The Europe episode included scenes of the migration of brown pelicans. During the show Chris googled pelicans on his iPad and found this from a website on alchemy:
“The active working with the soul forces is perfectly pictured in the Pelican. The Pelican is shown stabbing its breast with its beak and nourishing its young with its own blood. The alchemist must enter into a kind of sacrificial relationship with his inner being. He must nourish with his own soul forces, the developing spiritual embryo within. Anyone who has made true spiritual development will know well this experience. One’s image of one’s self must be changed, transformed, sacrificed to the developing spiritual self. This is almost invariably a deeply painful experience, which tests one’s inner resources. Out of this will eventually emerge the spiritual self, transformed through the Pelican experience. The Pelican was in this spiritual sense a valid image of the Christ experience and was used as such by the early alchemists.”
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/alcbirds.html
Tuesday at noon I took my usual walk at Oheyawahi. The sky was brilliant blue without a single cloud. I found myself saddened by the fact that I can no longer view a clear sky without seeing “floaters,” the remnants of damage to my aging retinas. The floaters look a bit like dark birds far in the distance of my vision.
As I came upon the Mendota Bridge I sensed a fluttering in the airspace above my head. A flock of large white birds with dark-tipped wings was flying low over the river, coming in from the west. Their long necks were pulled back like egrets or herons but they bobbed on the wind like balloons. I stopped on the path and looked straight up. More and more small flocks kept arriving; soon the sky was full of drifting white birds. I started to count them: the first formation was over 30 birds so I knew that there were at least a hundred all together. Because of their size I wondered if they were cranes, but I later realized they had to be pelicans. They filled the heavens and I felt as though I was being visited by angels. Blessed.
From Earthflight: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/earthflight/video-pelicans-and-whales/8402/
(The Vampire King is the shadow of the alchemical pelican mother.)
Wednesday’s weather was equally beautiful. On my walk that day, a family of nine turkeys crossed the trail in front of me. Birds are definitely trying to get my attention. I saw three turkeys the day I went to Coldwater Spring. Turkeys also symbolize sacrifice.
From the website on alchemy: “What did the alchemists wish to symbolise by birds? The essential thing about birds is that they, having as their domain the air element, mediate between the earthly realm and the heaven world. The alchemist in observing the flight of birds, recognised in them a picture of the human soul undergoing spiritual development. The soul, aspiring upwards, flying free of the restraints of the earth bound body seeking the heavenly light, only to have to return to the earthly consciousness again after the meditation, the alchemist symbolised by the bird.”
