Angels use the birds to teach us soul lessons and to reveal the mysteries of the spirit to us. They tell us that there is a shining bond between humanity, bird life and themselves, and that the birds link us to divine consciousness and bring us angelic messages.
As you begin to see birds in their true light, so you will draw closer to the angels and more easily recognise their presence.
The Language of the Birds, sometimes called the Green Language, was the secret speech of the occultists, used to express esoteric knowledge in a way which concealed it from the ignorance of the masses. It is a language rich in symbolism, whose complexity and intricacy never override its innate poetic simplicity. This strange and beautiful language is of interest to those who love angels and seek their friendship, because its origins and inspiration belong to a more sublime language of the birds. The magical Milky Way, eternally associated with winged angels and home-going souls, is called in Finland 'the Birds' Way'.
The magic of birdsong
As late spring turns to early summer, sit out in your garden or walk in the woodlands just after dawn or in the peace of the evening. If you do not have a garden, you might like to visit a park. Listen to the sweet symphony of birdsong as the day opens or closes like a flower. Listen to it as a whole and then distinguish its individual notes, their sounds and spaces of silence, their vibrations low or high, blithe or purring.
Spiritual teachers, both earthly and ascended, tell us that birdsong is magical. There is a deep connection between angels and birds, and the language of the one reflects the language of the other. We might say that actual birdsong is a lower harmonic of the songs of the angels. Ancient inscriptions of the Magyar (a Mongoloid people predominant in Hungary) declare that 'the song is the bird's self: and the song and its inspiration are one'.
Angel language is not simply a means of communication; it is the means by which, via the divine inflow from the great Source of all, creation in its entirety is harmoniously sung or spoken into being. Mythologies and religious texts worldwide refer to this deeply mystical singing or 'Word' which breathes the universe into being. Although this power streams forth from the divine imagination of what we might call Goddess or God, the Great Spirit or simply Cosmic Intelligence, it is the angels themselves who minister to the manifestation of the divine imagination, creating evolving form and ensouling it with ever more beautiful and rarefied essence, as that material form progressively becomes a perfected receptacle for such essence.
Within each member of humankind, it is said, the whole of the cosmos is reflected in microcosm. Therefore, these vibrations which so mysteriously create and 'bring into being' are present in the depths of each human soul. The resonance of birdsong plays upon this magical harp of Apollo or Orpheus within us and draws forth vibrations which in turn respond to sacred influences from the heavenly worlds.
Our consciousness then becomes as the Holy Grail, a sanctified vessel which can be filled with divine life, with angelic emanations corresponding to the dancing ray from heaven in harmony with the particular notes of birdsong we are responding to. When we receive such a blessing, we can fulfil the purpose of the angels by giving unstintingly of this divine force within our consciousness. We also need to protect it from the ravages of those who, through ignorance, would destroy it.
Methods of attunement
To draw close in spirit to the bird kingdom, to listen with an open heart to their cascades of song and to attune the soul to their joyous outpourings, is such a beautiful way to embrace the angelic streams of life, alerting us to spiritual messages and teachings from our ethereal friends. Your most important learning tool, in this process of attunement, is your own soul-perception. However, you may also find it helpful to research the meanings of birds as they relate to your own culture, either through mythology, folk or fairy tale. Although no knowledge is ever set in stone, and such researches may not always be relevant to your personal bird encounters, it is as well to bear in mind the inheritance of meaning which has come down to us from ancient times, no doubt often bestowed by spirits and the angels themselves. Through their association with the angels, birds can teach us of the hidden beauties and mysteries secreted within the human soul. They bring us teachings about our own soul and the soul of all creation. They bear messages from the heavenly worlds, and through their flight, their songs and their presence, they open a doorway to the spheres of the spirit and lift us in our light bodies up into airy heights of invigorating sweetness.
One way that we can attune to these soul aspects, these special soul qualities which are like buried treasure within us, is to listen so closely to their calls that we can begin to imitate them. In my experience, birds are most responsive to our birdlike human calls in the early evening, before the approach of twilight. Single strains of birdsong are much easier to identify at this time, and take on a melodious richness and poignancy which delights and awakens the heart-intelligence. It is then that we can enter into antiphony with them; with practice, taking care to keep our communion heart-centred, we will find that the birds call back in answer to us.
Half an hour spent in enjoying such a pastime will have a truly magical effect on all the subtle vehicles within us. We will feel centred in peace, as if we can gaze into limitless worlds inside our soul which scintillate with an exquisite radiance. Our soul will unfold unearthly wings and teach us that no prison or chains – either mental or physical – can ever contain or bind us. We will know that we are free. We can take this freedom out into our everyday world with us and help others to feel it and express it, not by dumping our responsibilities – because true freedom does not lead us to disrupt the liberty and well-being of others, behaviour which would soon lead us into a merciless captivity – but by showing that the thousandfold fetters which arise and try to hold us in petty bondage each day are verily powerless to restrict, confine and stifle our singing soul and our dancing spirit. In our innermost soul, we are winged beings, and we should soar and glide each day of our lives. One day, we will lift the poor abused earth far above her suffering and into the supernal realms with us.
Transformation
In considering the birds and their songs in a spiritual light, we will no doubt, before long, come across the point of view which informs us that birds squabble, steal, abandon, bully, fight and kill with the best of the earthbound animal species, including the human race. This is true, of course; birds do belong to earthly communities which behave according to territorial and predatory instinct. For as long as birds evolve within the physical and psychic patterns which belong to the earth, this must be so. When it comes to their earthly survival, birds cannot rise above biological necessity.
But there is a secret within the heart of nature which we need to discover and understand. It is that humanity itself holds the key to transposing the life forces so that they do not bring about suffering and oppression. When we as a planetary society truly rise above the dictates of our lower nature – which is rooted in the concept of the ego, the little defensive earthly self – and assume the raiment of our spiritual reality, then the breath of transformation will course through nature and bring into harmony those aspects of it which can seem so distressing. This task is for us to fulfil, yet the angels and their earthly kinsfolk, the birds, will seek to help us undertake this challenge.
So when we touch upon the spiritual blessing the birds bring, we connect with that which is ethereal and symbolical in their nature, those qualities of being they express which transcend the pressures of earthly organization and biological necessity.
Nevertheless, in spite of biological necessity, we find that those very transcendent spiritual qualities swoop and hover over birds' earthly limitations. Stories abound concerning the depth of their love for their young, and mothers have been observed shielding their chicks in the nest from forest fires until both adult and nestlings have perished. Both parents will feign injury to tempt predators away from their fledglings, and their distress is palpable when their offspring are stolen or destroyed, even before they have hatched. Their notes and trills when sitting on their eggs or covering their young are infinitely tender and joyful, and many birds mate for life, expressing a constancy and loyalty that is rare among the human species.
Birds navigate by the stars and undertake voyages as a yearly pilgrimage which would unnerve all but the stoutest of human hearts. The young swift will not touch the ground for three years after it leaves the nest, beggaring our achievements in aerodynamics. Their physical shape and colour, even their habits, have spiritual significance, as well as their songs and their domain of air.
Birdsong as an opening to stillness
Another way to learn angelic wisdom through the medium of birds is to aim to go deep within the sound of birdsong and find the point of silence within its pulsations, the potent stillness between the notes. If, by an act of your spiritual will, you can exclude all other noise except these hallowed sounds and silences, you will begin to hear the symphony of life itself moving through your being, the songs of the angels themselves as they sustain creation in its forward motion, in its grand cycles and great sacred spiral. The birds can give you this gift of revelation. They can embody heavenly qualities with their songs and link you via the stairway of these sacred sounds directly to the heart of the Great Spirit.
How to read messages from birds
It is helpful to bear in mind that bird messengers and visitants are not restricted to those which may appear to you in their physical form - those you see in your garden, through your window or whilst you are out walking or driving, or which seem significant to you as they fly across the skies. Birds can bring messages and teachings to you in dreams, in pictorial form, or in the chance words of others. They can fly into your thoughts and linger long enough in that ever changing landscape to leave you the gift of their message. They can even appear in stories which suddenly present themselves to be read (Jonathan Livingstone Seagull and The Nightingale and the Rose, for example). They might even appear on a television advertisement or programme, or even in songs. When I was going through a difficult period in my life, the classical refrain 'Ah poor bird/Take thy flight/Up above the sorrows/Of this dark night' kept singing itself through my mind. I heeded the advice, and the bird became my rescuing angel.
The link between birds and angels
Spiritual teachers, and the angels themselves, tell us that when birds die, their spirits, so closely linked with the angels, pass into the heart of nature – that 'nature within nature', the dynamic paradise out of which all manifesting natural forms arise and are born on earth. There, their joyous spirits merge with the Hidden People, the folk of the secret fairy races who ensoul and make manifest the nature kingdom, to help and inspire them in their cosmic task. From there, the bird spirits sometimes evolve, through unimagined aeons of time, into great angelic beings whose ministrations involve planets other than earth.
Is it not said by those who see angels that their wings manifest sometimes as arcs of shining light, and sometimes actually as feathered pinions? These latter angels, it would seem, still hold close to their hearts the energy patterns of their original bird forms. And why should this not be so, when birds and angels exist in such spiritual harmony?
From Summoning Angels, copyright 2004 by Claire Nahmad, published by Watkins Publishing.
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