Ornithomancy anyone?

[maureenmac1]

I used to practise the fortelling of the future by looking at bird patterns in flight and their behaviour on the ground.
I would have been in my early teens at the time and I never thought anything of it, that is I thought it quite natural. I was quite often correct in my predictions, nothing dramatic but big enough to be commented on at the time.
The maternal side of my family have had a long tradition of reading tea leaves and using tarot cards. Although my aunt would just use normal playing cards rather than a specific set of Tarot.

Has anyone else practised Ornithomancy? I would be interested to know.
It's only a few years ago I realised it had a name. ( A wee bit slow on the uptake sometimes, me)

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

...

Has anyone else practised Ornithomancy? I would be interested to know.
It's only a few years ago I realised it had a name. ( A wee bit slow on the uptake sometimes, me)

A traditional skill of the druids, according to Robert Graves in The White Goddess (1948 rev.1966).

 

[maureenmac1]

I did a wee bit of research on it this evening and it seems that the Greeks and Romans put great importance on it also.
I was wondering more if anyone on the board had ever practised it?

 

[GNC]

Sounds interesting. How do you go about it?

 

[maureenmac1]

I can only explain it in terms of the way in which I carried it out.
To me it felt quite natural. to start with I would stare at the sky and watch the birds in flight, and concentrate on what was happening. The interaction between birds etc.
The more I concentrated, it led me to assign each bird a personality, which applied to a person (maybe a relative or friends and sometimes people I didn't know, but would have a feeling about, eg a description or their job).
By judging the way in which the birds behaved I would apply this to the person whichever bird symbolised them.
I'm finding it quite difficult to explain how this process worked, as it was personal to me and as I said I found it quite natural and didn't think it an unusual thing to do.
Also this was over 20 years ago, and I was quite young and I suppose the ability came easily because at that age you are quite open.
I later assumed that the act of concentrating put me into a meditative or trance-like state in which I was able to forsee events.
I hope this made some sort of sense to you gncxx. Maybe try it yourself and see what impressions you get.

 

[GNC]

Yeah, that does make a kind of sense. Maybe I should give it a go next time I see a flock.

 

[rynner2]

we get quite a few birds in the garden here.

today i saw one i didn't recognize (not being a twitcher).
a (probably) simplistic interpretation of that might be that an unexpected change is coming....


..or something!


(mind you, it wasn't flying, but mostly hopping about a bush.)

 

[maureenmac1]

You never know, Rynner! Stranger things have happened.

 

[rynner2]

a (probably) simplistic interpretation of that might be that an unexpected change is coming....

Yeah, the FTMB just got even crappier!

(see 'ARGH!...' in website issues.)

 

[maureenmac1]

a (probably) simplistic interpretation of that might be that an unexpected change is coming....

Yeah, the FTMB just got even crappier!

(see 'ARGH!...' in website issues.)

But you said maybe an unexpected change, so I don't think that counts as a true prediction :lol: