Signs Omens and Portents

One of our readers Tina, commented on this post about signs and coincidences, I thought it deserved a post because of how related to out work guides and totems are. Here is Tina’s comment:

“Fox is one of my guides, and that began with some amazing experiences of meeting real ones too. I once had to stop for one that crouched in the middle of road and did not get off as I approached in my car. I put my high beam on, and in the brighter light, I could see, in the darkness behind him or her, another fox was crossing with their babies trotting behind. The front fox was risking being run over (obviously I never would but some people here in Oz would have) in order to protect its family.

To me they represent otherworldliness, but tempered with practicality, and they don’t lose their sense of fun either (I was lucky enough to see one playing/dancing in a paddock once) and they are able to adapt to so many conditions. They are true survivors and fantastic guides.”

The first point to make is that what I am about to say is description of my current beliefs, it is what I am holding to be true for me at this moment in time. It doesn’t invalidate what you believe nor does your belief impinge on its validity.

1) My first rule regarding signs, omens, portents or any other word one cares to use is this, that they are deeply personal. A sign is for you. Indeed if you don’t think of an event as a sign, then by definition it isn’t. This is  an important distinction to make as it brings to the fore that another person can’t persuade you that an event is (or isn’t a sign).

2) The second point leads from the first really, an event doesn’t have to be uniquely pointed at you to represent itself as a sign. For example, for me, the Sun coming out of heavy clouds to shine on me whilst I am engaged in work is a sign. Now obviously the sun came out for many other people to, but because I gave it meaning, it becomes a sign.

3) Multiple people can claim an event as a sign, taking the sun as an example again, Gwas and I often claim this as sign. Each for our own reasons. Thus it is difficult to see how one can lay claim to a sign.

4) A psychological argument is that because we expect a sign, we get one, after all dog barking or a cat mewing can be taken for a sign. Indeed one could find signs everywhere if one is loose enough with their interpretation. I agree. There is no place to go with this counter position.

Examples of signs

Some signs that Gwas and I have experienced and that we regularly encounter is the Sun (less so, the Moon and even less so the Stars) as portents of work that has been well received. Almost unbelievably often, even in the depths of winter and cloud filled skies, work that we have done at sacred sites has resulted in a bathing of sunlight. Specifically this work has to be within the realms of healing the site in some way.

Other signs come from our totems, for instance I adopted the Crow as my totem some years ago (or so it feels, in actuality it may only be two!) and since that time it has been a harbinger of direction. A kind-of: don’t go left, go right or “well done”. We will look at interpretations in a moment.

I distinguish guides/spirits and other sources of information (for instance for me, Ancient Yew Trees) from signs and portents because I feel the former are much less cryptic that the latter. Signs to me are Koans to ache the brain. Whereas communing with beings is much more formative, at least the message is a lot longer than just a bird flying in a particular direction!

Good and bad

I don’t believe that signs are good or bad, they are signs. An omen that tells you that there is something bad ahead gives you the chance to avoid it. I think that this misrepresentation of signs comes from people who aren’t good at reading signs (myself included) and thus:

1. they see an omen
2. cant figure out what it means
3. blunder into that which it was warning about
4. associate the omen with the bad event

Sounds like a fair assumption to make.

Reading omens

This is a tough one, considering that i’m not too brilliant at it myself. Is there a way to get good at it? Yes, I believe so. The key, I feel to omens is intuition. Omens speak to us through our intuition and it is here were work needs to be done to get  better handle on portents.

One of the major difficulties is that we are so mired in reason that if we can’t find a reason for something then we wont follow that path. Reason is a pretty useful characteristic but it needs to take a seat when information comes in through intuition.

The argument that following my intuition leads me into a mess. doesn’t hold very well for the simple “reason” that following your reason can lead you into a mess too. So where does that leave us?

Exercising your intuition isn’t about using it, but about following it. In my humble opinion it has to start with a little faith. This faith of course is in yourself, your trust in your intuition. Recent (the last 6 months frankly) have seen me follow my intuition and it has been an absolute blast. But that’s me!

Prediction

There is a certain element of prediction that goes in with signs and omens. I am in two minds, I have had experiences that have clearly broken temporal law (not only that but have had personal conversations with many others). I have also had ones where I think a confluence of events have precipitated a knowledge of where things seem to be going. As some wise-acre said, if we could figure out the position and trajectory of every atom in the universe we could predict the future.

Our intuition might simply be able to:

1. see a lot more of what’s going on
2. recall a lot more than we can consciously remember
3. add all of this up and come up with a miraculous number
4. present this number to us in an out of the ordinary way

The above scenario is one that I like for most of my intuitive leaps, especially if you throw into the mix that intuition has access to what’s going on in the energetic domain.

It is also quite possible that other beings have access to more info or non temporal information and are passing it on to us. But again I don’t count this as signage.

If you push me for an answer I would say:

1. that energy has a non temporal component
2. this can echo backwards in time
3. because our reason is so stupid it gets in the way of reading this information
4. we thus feel it as an intuitive kick or perceive it as a sign.

Here again we are seeing that it is we that decide on what a sign is and thus we that choose our totems if you will.

A totem isn’t a totem unless you think it is!

Well, I hope that’s provided some points to muse over.

Kal Malik – following signs