How Terri Got Her Corvus Albus

One of my kindred spirits over at the Derrick Jensen Forums (and no, don't go there unless you are also prepared to throw yourself into the Machine to stop it) was relating his tale of how the Crows interacted with him just after his grandfather passed away from/with Alzheimer's.

The story sounded so similar to my own that I've been chewing over my own interactions with the Pied Crow all this morning. At the risk of boring everyone out there silly, I'm going to revisit the Tale of Terri and the Crows.

My Mum had died with Alzheimer's two years before (this was either just before or just after my Dad followed his wife into death) I first noticed the Pied Crows. Stalking around on the ground under a Eucalyptus tree I passed every day as I walked to the local shops were a pair of the beautiful black and white birds. They don't stalk around under trees very often, I have since found - but this pair were there every day. It caused me to learn more about these creatures who were so manifestly unafraid of me, and who had become something of a familiar.

As most people reading this probably already know, I learn things very, very slowly in this incarnation - when I learn them at all, that is. It took me another couple of years to start suddenly seeing Pied Crows everywhere - wheeling over the highway, perched in trees and on masts, in flocks usually.

Then, one day while I was on annual leave (about this time of year actually) I looked up from where I was weeding the flower garden, and found that I was the ground focus of a pair of the birds, flapping slowly and stately in a circle in the air around me. I stood and addressed them - I don't remember what I said but it must have been acceptable, for one of them cawed back to me as they kept on wheeling round and around me. I was turning in a circle by now, head craned back and my focus entirely on the birds, as theirs was on me.Then, without warning, they peeled off at a tangent to their circle and flew away.

A couple of days later, now back at work, I was relating this story to a friend while we stood on the smokers' balcony. I had just got to the part where the Pied Crow spoke to me, when, coming suddenly from the East, from behind the building and behind our backs, flying high and fast, was a lone Pied Crow. Caw. And he disappeared into the West. Everyone outside at that time was gaping.

It wasn't too long after this that I invited the spirit of Pied Crow to accompany me upon my shamanic journeys, He readily agreed, and he's been a part of my spirit - and I of his - ever since.

I don't see Pied Crows as often now as then. Sometimes, high and lonely flying next to the road I'll spot one. Or there'll be a solo bird perched upon the cellphone mast as I'm giving a Tarot reading outside at work.

But now that we've interpenetrated each other's fields, it seems the material form of the bird doesn't have to appear so often. It's as if Pied Crow was jumping up and down and waving , for a while there, until he had my attention. then he'd keep pitching up, sometimes spectacularly, until our spirits had joined in the Other Realms. Now he just gently reminds me, now and again, that as well as a spirit presence, he's also a materially living form upon this Earth, and that his fate is our fate, and the fate of the world.

Pic found here