The Witch & the Raven: Ornithomancy & April’s Full Moon
“Why is a raven like a writing-desk? Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
“No, I give it up,” Alice replied: “What’s the answer?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter.””
Once upon a dark moon, a child was born. This was back when time was marked by stories and laughter instead of numbers and order. While her mother rested, the night gods cooed over the raven-haired girl and tucked blessings into her tiny fist. Any child born beneath a dark moon was also a child of the night gods. Nested by the sea, the girl lived a happy life. Yet, perhaps because she was the youngest of three sisters, all of whom inherited their mother's inky mane and sharp, watchful eyes, the girl born beneath the dark moon was curious and restless with wonder.
She had yet to learn that even without numbers and order, time reveals many things. Time highlights our successes and struggles, our secrets, and the what-ifs that bloom and die back in the garden of life. No matter the path we choose, life is full of yearnings, and sometimes, we wonder, what if?
One evening, the girl born beneath the dark moon overheard her mother's conversation with the night gods. The woman recounted a dream where she sprouted wings and flew away from her familiar tides and toward the mountains. She soared across deserts and hunted in great forests, and when she grew weary, she made a nest atop the moon. In the dream, her raven-haired mother was not a woman but a bird.
From the safety of her bed, the girl born beneath the dark moon danced with her mother's dream and eventually fell into one of her own. Her eyes closed, and her breath slowed, but a lingering question on her lips: No longer tethered to the earth, what waits for me in the land of birds?
The gods are always listening, don't you know? And the ones who roam at night rarely deny our wants. The shadows captured the girl's query as it tumbled toward the sea. They put it in a golden vase, added some seawater and sand, and shook the potion until a familiar prayer materialized in the storm – what if?
“Birds are more often messengers than magicians,” Little Witch observed from her editor's nook, a fort built from blankets quilts, and held together with heavy books and a few yards of string.
Madam Spider waved away the interruption. “Says the witch who has no feathers or beak or talons OR –” An explosion of pillows flung the spider into the air, her second interruption in under a minute. A furry face materialized amidst the wreckage. Little Witch smothered a giggle, and her familiar purred an apology.
Last week, when Little Witch was designing her editor's nook, Mother donated some of her old curtain tassels. Little Witch strung the red tassels in the nook's doorway and black tassels across the roof. She fitted white tassels with golden flecks to an armful of string and strung it across the interior of the fort, making sure it crissed and crossed as many times as possible. When Little Witch lay down in her nest of pillows and looked up, a homemade night sky looked back at her. The stars in her editor's nook didn't shimmer exactly like the stars in the backyard, but Little Witch thought they were equally inspiring.
“Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly,” said Madam Spider the first evening they stargazed in the nook.
Little Witch glanced at her grimoire, which was already writing down Madam Spider's latest poetic morsel. She complimented her mentor.
“No need to flatter me, that was Langston Hughes,” she said. “Do you know why birds can fly and we can't?”
The girl shook her head, knowing that any mention of hollow bones and wings would not impress the spider.
“Because they have perfect faith! And to have faith is to have wings!” Madam Spidam Spider pointed her scepter at one of the fairies. The fairy blushed, flattered. “J.M. Barrie,” she responded before Little Witch could ask for the author.
Like Little Witch and the rest of her coven, Persephone loved the tassel fort, perhaps too much, because this wasn't the first time she'd launched a storyteller while trying to capture a dancing star.
Madam Spider floated down from her latest unexpected flight and landed atop Persephone's head. She whispered something into a fuzzy ear. A few licks of her paw later, she yawned, then mewed a response.
“Indeed! She DOES sing!” Madam Spider cackled and skated across Persephone's head and onto a silken thread. She glided over to a new pillow perch and gave Persephone a look that said, behave. She reopened her notebook, cleared her throat, and turned back to Little Witch, “The furry one reminded me that although you have no feathers, no beak, and no talons,” she put extra emphasis on each 'no.' “Yet you are blessed with the gift of song,” Madam Spider scanned the page, looking for where she'd left off in her story. “Perhaps you do know a thing or two about the gifts of birds.”
To be continued…
The Witch & the Raven: A Little Witch Tale – coming soon!
Come April's full moon, the wildflowers are whispering. Our seasonal harbinger, the hare, trades its den for a shelter made of sun, and birdsong blossoms as temperatures warm. You remind yourself that in animistic communities, bird-watching is a form of divination. People from the ancient Greek world called it ornithomancy.
From the Greek ornis "bird" and manteia "divination," practitioners of ornithomancy (the Romans called it augury) noted a bird's arrival, appearance, demeanor, flight pattern, and even their conversations – the language of the birds.
Collectively, birds chariot the arrival of spring. Even the raven, a famously misunderstood messenger, is more lively in spring. Not only are ravens busy nesting right now, but as carrion birds, they're clearing away the remains of winter. A group of ravens is called an unkindness, and if you overhear these creatures 'arguing' over food or territory this month, consider their conversations through the lens of an augur. Ravens are symbolic of mystery, and like fellow springtime messenger, Hecate, ravens allude to unexpected insight and victory, obstacles as opportunities for transformation.
With mythical ties to deities like the Celtic Morrigan, the Norse god Odin, the Valkyries, the harvest god Lugh, and Greek war goddess Athena, a raven (or its corvid cousin, the crow) was a symbolic promise of death. The raven is one of the three beasts of battle in Old English poetry. Alongside the wolf and the vulture (or eagle), they create a triad of woodland scavengers. These creatures are opportunistic, drawn to Death's fields, hunting for sustenance amidst endings and entrails.
But did you know - the raven was also Apollo's attendant. A god of the sun and prophecy, Apollo was responsible for the raven's descent into darkness. As the story goes, once upon a time, ravens were white as snow. Each morning, while Apollo rode his golden chariot across the day, his winged attendant searched the shadowy places where the god's light couldn't reach. It was during one of the raven's nighttime journeys that the bird spotted Coronis entangled with a visiting prince. Coronis was Apollo's lover, a mortal princess who was pregnant with their child. The raven alerted the heartsick god of the betrayel, and Apollo became so enraged that he scorched the bird's feathers. No longer a herald of good tidings, Apollo cursed the raven to be the messenger of unwelcome omens.
In one of March's Moon Letters, Step into the Night Garden, we mentioned Apollo's Temple at Delphi was built atop the ruins of an older deity—a goddess. It was likely Gaia's temple or that of another ancient Mother goddess, so how interesting that at one time, Apollo's closest ally was a white raven. Birds with white plumage have been linked to the Goddess for thousands of years. A relic from the 6th century BCE shows Aphrodite sitting on her throne, flanked by swans. Artwork, tiles, and statues (some dating back to the 3rd century BC), show doves fluttering within reach of the goddess. Like the Goddess's temples, destroyed by the solar gods, name obscured by shadow, the raven was cast out from society.
Statuette of Aphrodite with Dove and Ivy Wreath. Taranto, allegedly from Canosa (Puglia), 3rd cent. BC.
From the Museum All Saints Schaffhausen
Aphrodite riding a goose or swan. Rhodes, 470-460 BCE. From Lady of the Beasts, Buffie Johnson
In tarot, the Rider Coleman Smith deck features birds of all kinds throughout the suit of wands for these creatures' association with Air. But like the phoenix, the raven was reborn from the ashes of its destruction, additionally linking this creature to the element of Fire. Spotting a white raven (similar to spotting a black swam) forewarns of something unexpected.
In our latest Little Witch Tale, The Witch & the Raven you'll find whispers of the Brothers Grimm story The Raven, but these magickal birds are also perched throughout the pages of Snow White, The Seven Ravens, The Fox and the Crow (Aesop), and modern tales like The Raven & the Reindeer.
“Do you have a name?” asked Gerta.
“I do,” said the raven. Gerta waited. The raven fluffed its beard. “I am the Sound of Mouse Bones Crunching Under the Hooves of God.”
Sometimes, the raven is the archetypal trickster, and in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, the raven appears in an impossible riddle.
As the Mad Hatter sips tea with Alice and the March Hare, he ensures that their conversation is nonsensical. At one point, he asks:
“Why is the raven like a writing desk?”
Carroll says the riddle was created with no answer in mind, yet in an 1897 revision of Alice's Adventures, he offered, "Because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is never put with the wrong end in front!"
Over the years, readers have offered explanations:
“Both the raven and a writing desk have quills dipped in ink.”
“One has flapping fits and other fitting flaps.”
"Because one is good for writing books and the other better for biting rooks."
“A writing desk is a rest for pens and a raven is a pest for wrens."
“With some skill it will emerge from the wood."
We'd also like to weave in our thoughts, that the raven, like the writing desk, is symbolic of alchemy, a magical practice that, at times, was feared.
The raven and the writing desk are also messengers, friends to witches. The raven is our familiar, and the desk, a sentient altar, a nest for our dreams.
The raven and the writing desk are scavengers, picking through entrails and abandoned pages, eternally composting and creating, composting and creating.
Both the raven and the writing desk are teachers, they speak in forgotten tongues. The raven shares its secret in the language of the birds, while the writing desk pens the language of the soul.
It's no surprise that the raven is in love with magick, riddles, and the moon. After all, a raven might be a witch in disguise. The Cailleach, our hammer-wielding giantess that delivers winter storms, dresses typically as an old woman or a deer, but she also appears as a raven. And on Walpurgisnacht (April 30th), keep your eyes peeled for other witches wearing the skins of their familiars. Legend says that on the eve of Beltane, witches fly to the Brocken, the highest peak in the Harz Mountains - with help from the raven's inky cloak.
If the raven calls to you beneath April's full moon, the Pink Moon, perhaps spend some time in the company of the birds. Practice ornithomancy. April's Moon is also known as the Growing Moon and, sometimes, the Seed Moon, so plant your what-ifs in the garden and see which ones root. Do the blooms look like how you imagined? Consider what it would be like to have wings. Without feathers, a beak, or blessings from the night gods – how might you learn the language of the birds?
Telling the Bees is now available for pre-order in the Little Witch Books shop! Order yours today!