Learning To Deal With Raven’s Bother

Right now, I am pretty angry at the ravens, for one, in my area.  They ate the songbird’s chicks in their nest, next to the house.  I realize it is the law of nature that each must eat and die for higher purposes.  So, I forgive the sight and remember that, sometimes, a symbol will show up for a reason and I seek answers and meanings.  What lesson do you have for me, Raven?

Sometimes things trip me up; that sudden need for Raven’s gifts of change, of courage, of knowing, of secrets of magic and healing.  Just when I think I have it all together, my ‘all together’ is called to attention.  Time and time again, the Raven appears in my life and I am forced to know and adapt.

In past ages Ravens could be fearful, just like, in my own past, something fearful ahs happened and I am thrown into changes I did not want nor ask for.  Ravens were known as fearful because ravens were seen on battlefields, feeding on the dead and dying.  Because of their predatory habits they were given negative symbolisms.  Mystics and wizards and those involved in the dark arts have kept the negative symbolisms alive and well.  We continue to feed into this and the changes that Raven brings (sometimes forces).  I, like most, resist changes and changing.

Ravens are often the dark matters of the heart.  I associate Ravens with fall’s drabness and chill of fall.  Their voices grate the sky with noisy interference within the bare limbs of fall’s strip-down environment.  It is a lonely and raucous sound.  It is the harbinger of cold winter.  Raven, being linked to death and dying, causes angst.  There are times like these in my life, in your life, in all of life.

When raven comes into your environment, your dreams, your thoughts, your reality, it calls for us to be prepared for deep, spiritual, change in the darkness of some corners of our soul.  It means we are to grapple with change that we fear and yet must go through in order to get through a hard time and recover with adaptations.  There is mystery abound.  We are asked to seek out truths within the crucifying.  We are asked to let go of what we thought was peace and happiness and be called to adapt to a new way of being.  It means that your soul is ready and willing to change even though the Ego/Evil Inner witch resists…out of fear.  

At times, we meet the dark night of the soul.  It is there that the magic of transformation is potent.  All we have learned about resiliency is called to bear.  I am not weak; I am being tried.  Each of us have our own battlefields to contend with.  Each of us chill at the raven’s call.  If raven appears, it is your opportunity to dig deep and find our own truths and ways of rising back to the light of knowing.  I pray we enter it with grace and dignity not a sense of ‘bother’.

©Carol Desjarlais 6.27.20

Hush, There are Crows About

crick of crickets  harrumph beneath peonies
blossoms swooning from heat
petals parachuting in wildest winds
i take my love there

so speak wren chicks     carefully      hidden in lace
between shadows and moonstreams
under heavy humid sky

hush    i whisper
there are crows about

Juno delivered mighty blows
riding in on her dark horse
slither of snake in its greens and golds
dark stripe of hiss and curl

Litha tosses colors to four corners
prisms fractured by moonlight
crystallized dew weeps
rock hard diamonds delivered

sage is stirred in air
by lift and loft of ether
to heighten hierarchy of moontime beings
a bumblebee moth makes spirals
in hopes of one last sip of nightime nectar

i rise and come here
hem of white gown stroked
by reflected Luna's luminescent lines
smocked with shades of another full moon
after moon after moon after moon

no bitter sip from sorrow's chalice
a seamed serenity around such wounds
as once felt ominous and growling urge
made silent by years of yearning still

i take my love here and there
where sings night serenades in choirs
when crows have nestled too high
to hear our veritable vulnerability

hush    there are crows about

©Carol Desjarlais 6.19.19