Avian Energy &
Spirituality As Co-Dependent Entities For Encounters With God
A Research Paper by
Nick Charles, Candidate For Ministerial Ordination Through Fellowships of the
Spirit
Scattered all across nature are invitations to interact with different plants, elements and (of course) animals as we seek to understand our spiritual selves. A day at the botanical garden, natural history museum or local zoo can often represent not just a day of leisure and fun but also a spiritual pilgrimage if one is so inclined to be open to the idea.
It is the benchmark of healthy
spiritual curiosity to be willing to interact with different parts of creation because
everything we encounter (from a cluster of wildflowers to layers of rock in a
canyon!) can represent an opportunity to interact with different types of
energy meant to reveal to us facets of the personality of our shared Creator
& Source (i.e. “God”).
All of us regularly observe birds of some sort; the pigeon in the parking lot feasting on a stray french fry or the red breasted robin who shows up in the trees in our backyards to announce the arrival of spring. These are familiar sights to us… so much so that we forget to acknowledge them as being part of a larger grouping of animals capable of inspiring wonder and who collectively feature prominently in an array of spiritually charged narratives in multiple cultures and religions going back to the beginning of time!
My friend and frequent
conversational counterpoint, the Reverend John Heppner, was among the first to
offer me some documented evidence of that assertion when I shared with him that
I would be exploring this topic for this paper.
He pointed me to an oft consulted resource from within the Spiritualist
tradition - a tome entitled Animal Speak - that made a point to not only
identify hawks, kestrels, et al as reliable totems capable of carrying messages
of spiritual importance but also affirmed that “…falcons have an ancient
history and an aura of mystery” recognized by kings in the medieval age and
even as early as 2000 BC(!) among mystics and dignitaries living in China.
Even before the passages among the first in Genesis that record God prioritizing the creation of creatures of flight, Eugene Peterson’s “The Message” states in the very first two recorded verses in Scripture that as God created our world that His “…Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.”
Doing double duty and
speaking to God’s ability to present via a form more feminine in nature is the
oft quoted verse from Deuteronomy (32:11) which says God protected the Hebrew
patriarch, Jacob, (father of the 12 tribes of Israel!) “…as an eagle fluttering
over her young… bearing them on her wings.”
Another prophet, Elijah, is said to have received nourishment provided by ravens while on the lam and while hiding in the wild from an aggressive opponent (King Ahab) in the Old Testament book of 1 Kings.
And the pen-ultimate
prophet from Christianity, Jesus Christ Himself, was said to have been
enveloped by a spiritual energy descending from on high (immediately following His
baptism) that took the form of a dove.
We could author a
completely separate paper centering around the idea of these creatures being
commissioned to aid servants of a God Whose holiness code (as communicated by
Moses) identifies them elsewhere as being “unclean” or even “abominatory”! How fascinating to think that these
adjectives (thought by early adherents to these faiths to be reflective of
God’s opinion on these creatures) clearly do not disqualify them from being
conduits through which God performs documented miracles, etc. What might this mean for other creatures or
even other people groups who have had these same adjectives ascribed to
them by various scriptures? Perhaps the
Bible, often called the Word of God, does not actually reflect the opinions of
God in all matters!
Lest we start to believe that only Judaism and Christianity celebrate birds and bird like creatures acting as companions to their celebrated prophets, we can also find ample evidence of this same phenomena in other well known ancient ideologies.
For example, in Greek
mythology the deity considered to be the “God of the Sky”, Zeus, worked in
tandem with his female counterpoint, Dionna, to manifest prophetic messages via
a very intricate practice incorporating three doves. Dionna is said to have released three doves
at a time for three priestesses from among her human team of divination experts
to observe. These priestesses would
examine the flight patterns of these doves and intuit a prophetic message for
the people believed to carry Zeus’ endorsement.
In this succession of events, it was believed that Zeus was reliant on Dionna and her birds to communicate prophetic messages to mankind due to his own possible inability to hear! This interplay is outlined beautifully in a poem by Lord Byron (titled “Prometheus”) where the stanzas bestow the title “The Deaf Tyrant of Fate” upon Zeus.
It takes little to no effort to come to the realization that regardless of what culture or faith tradition you seek to understand, imagery involving and incorporating birds is abundant anywhere that humankind has ever sought to establish any sort of mythos for the purposes of educating future generations about encounters with the supernatural.
It certainly would appear that an aspiration to engage in the prophetic should carry with it the expectation of possibly interacting with a winged species of some sort, be it bird or be it angel.
For the purposes of this
paper, I would like to posit that it is entirely appropriate and, indeed,
vitally important to become accustomed to perceiving our interactions with the
avian world as essential when trying to establish a barometer for global
spiritual (& even physical!) health.
It was with the above thought in mind that I decided to curate an opportunity for myself and my classmates in Year 2 at Fellowships of the Spirit to interact with some birds one on one, in real life in order to let these creatures both expose themselves to our energy and vice versa. It was my hope that there would be a palpable, spiritual encounter that each participant would be able to experience and that we would collectively be able to learn shared lessons pertaining to our own spiritual health & the collective spiritual well being of our class! Perhaps even something supernatural or prophetic in nature would be apparent to us as we took in the majesty of these animals together (more on that below!).
I contacted a Master Falconer out of Ellicottville, NY named Jonathan. Jonathan, with his family, owns and operates American Hawkeye, a falconry based business that exists to encourage enthusiasm for raptors ( https://www.americanhawkeye.com/ ).
I explained to Jonathan
that I was a student at Fellowships trying to complete a homework project to
insure my candidacy for ministerial ordination and that I had chosen to explore
the spiritual energy specific to the avian species as a topic for a research
paper.
I’m relatively certain
that he was completely confused by the idea but he good-naturedly agreed to
find a time when I would be able to host him and some of his birds for a
viewing at the school in order for my classmates and myself to get some close
up observation time with them!
On Friday, November 1, 2024 Jonathan brought two Harris hawks, a barn owl and a Eurasian Eagle Owl to Fellowships and tethered them to display stands in the front courtyard for people in our class (and their invited guests) to come observe.
Each observer spent around thirty minutes engaging reflectively with the birds and asking Jonathan questions about their personalities, behaviors, etc. At the end of their time spent interacting with Jonathan’s animals, each participant was given a form I’d generated asking them to spiritually audit their encounter and record their reflections. While completing the evaluations, participants were encouraged to identify whether or not any of the birds on display spoke to them prophetically and in an emotionally significant way.
Once back in Kansas, I began to pore over the questionnaires that had been completed. I found that overwhelmingly the bird that most people connected to was the Eurasian Eagle Owl (“Ringo”). People ascribed comments to Ringo that were undeniably indicative of a spiritual interaction with him.
One person stated that they felt his energy was capable of deflecting chaos. I found this comment to be very intuitive and will do a call-back to this statement later in this paper.
Another wrote that they literally felt as though he served as a medium through which they were able to connect emotionally with their departed father and grandfather.
Nearly everyone who observed him made it a point to describe him as their “favorite” of all the birds on display.
A few days after I
finished digesting the content of the completed questionnaires, one very
enthusiastic participant -Duane Reif - emailed me a video clip he had taken of
Ringo. In it, Ringo is seated on his
perch and as the various participants are observing him an anomaly in the film
footage presents itself.
This, of course, was very exciting to see as it contributed immensely to the type of situation I had hoped would be available to all the participants who viewed the birds that day! Duane and I discussed the possibility of the anomaly in the film footage actually being documentation of spiritual energy being exchanged between the owl and the people viewing it. We both considered the possibilities that this was a trick of the light but ruled this out due to the time of day and the sun not being positioned in such a way to create the phenomena in question. We also considered the possibility that what we were viewing was the flight path of an insect but this also was dismissed as the weather was typically cold for an early November evening in NY and insects were not something either of us remembered or would have even expected to see given the time of year.
Whether or not you believe
Ringo was hosting a physical manifestation of spiritual energy present that day
or not, the coming days and weeks began to yield headlines in the national news
pertaining to a message from birds across the world. That message?
They were all getting very, very sick.
Between September 21st and December 6th, 657 H5N1 & H5N5 virus detections were reported in birds across 27 European countries. By December 11, 56 human cases of the latest mutation of avian flu had been reported spanning from North America to Vietnam!
Operating under the initial hypothetical statement that introduced this paper,
“…it is entirely appropriate and, indeed, vitally important to become accustomed to perceiving our interactions with the avian world as essential when trying to establish a barometer for global spiritual (& even physical!) health.”
…one should consider that the avian species who have so many times throughout the centuries served mankind both as the vehicle for prophetic messages (and also general well being) are now harboring within their biological selves a message meant to serve as a rallying cry for us to cease neglecting our spiritual health.
Perhaps mirrored by the reality that the biology of these animals is presently experiencing a hijack initiated by the presence of a virus is a challenge to us to look within to see if our spirituality has been hijacked by any agent of destruction capable not just of destroying us physically but emotionally. Perhaps both, simultaneously!
As they house these viral agents of destruction in their bodies, it would appear that the primary piece of prophetic counsel our bird friends are trying to deliver to us is one based around the rapid mutation of agents of chaos.
Viral mutations, much like
changes to the agents of chaos we encounter everyday, take place rapidly and
become destructive primarily because of the accelerated speed that they alter
their shape and transmissive properties.
Housed within the present avian flu epidemic is a prophetic reminder to us that sacrificing our vigilance to be observant results in death… be it physical, spiritual or emotional.
We are living in a world where our shared environment is being aggressively compromised by decay at the hands of men and women who represent first and foremost negative energy meant to deplete and rob us all of a world wherein we can coexist and spiritually thrive.
To ignore our responsibility to pay attention to this is criminal. It is when we are not paying attention that evil is able to advance and act as an aggressive agent of entropy!
The rate at which the destructiveness of perceived evil is capable of mutating is so accelerated that it would be accurate to describe it as unparalleled; faster and more destructive than at any other time in human history.
If we are to overcome the darker agendas being promoted by the spiritual forces of corruption with which we share our world, our commitment to developing ourselves at an accelerated pace must begin to match theirs… so much so that it becomes apparent in the animals, plants and other elements in nature that surround us.
Maybe as we renew our commitment to the individual, positive spiritual practices that we each adhere to we can become conscious of energetic changes taking place perceivable as we observe something as simple and commonplace as watching a bird glide through the sky.
Maybe as we embrace and take more seriously our calling to be agents of Light in a dark world, we’ll also channel Ringo and inspire others to believe that we too can “deflect chaos” (as that one observer noted him to seem to be capable of).
And anytime that we need
to be certain that the prophecies given to us are fleshing themselves out in a
way conducive to improving the quality of life for our fellowman, maybe we can
do so simply be taking the time to “consider the sparrows”.
