Everything was white. Kinda like the rolling stones song Paint it Black, but the opposite. White. And remove the emotion in the song, because nobody died on my way to school. I mean 6390 Americans die every hour, but I didn't know them, so I didn't care. I mean I say I do in social settings to not sound like a monster, but I don't really.
That's 107 Americans that die every minute of every day. The amount of humans that die around the world every second is probably around 3 or 4. The amount of life that ends per second is probably around 1,107 including bugs and whales and fish. I totally made that number up. You get the idea. Death happens all the time, every second of every day, but I don't pay any attention to it. I doubt you do either. Unless one of those 107 per minute is a friend or relative, then I am sorry for you loss.
This post is not about death. What follows actually happened.
Anyway, as I walked to my car through the winter wonderland, with crystal crusted pine needles and frosted tree trunks, there was a single raven in the scrub oak near my snow covered car.
Amidst all this white, that raven stood out as the antithesis of this monochromatic world. I stopped and looked directly at the raven. The raven looked directly at me. The wind stopped blowing, the trees stopped swaying, the snow stopped falling and for a brief moment all sound ceased. In that moment the raven cawed a piercing powerful caw that seemed to thunder throughout the silent world.
Maybe you heard it.
Maybe you didn't.
It froze me in my tracks. Bundled up with my books and bags I could only stare at the raven who held me with its gaze, its deep, dark onyx eyes looking not at me, but to me, into me.
As far as I could tell, the raven and I were the only two living things at this moment. Then the wind started up again, and the other noises resumed. The raven flew away.
I thought that this moment was significant at the time because it effected me for the rest of the day, and I write about it now.
After school I looked through my many books to see if I could find the reason this felt so familiar a situation. It felt like a Viking symbol for something, but the raven is a loaded symbol.
The raven is a powerful image. This could have been a crow, I can't tell the difference unless they are next to one another. (ravens are bigger, and smarter--but you can't tell by looking at them) Anyway, there is Edgar Allan Poe's Raven, there is the Sioux belief that the raven created the world and is a symbol of rebirth (the Sioux people saw ravens leap out of the corpses of fallen animals and didn't know they were eating and though they must sprouted out, similarly to the magical power of women who could spontaneously create life--man's input was not known to be needed for this.)
Odin/Woden/Wotan is the Scandinavian/German God referred to as the All-Father. He is a warrior/poet/sage. He is really interesting, take my word for it. He has an eight legged horse named Sleipnir (Slippy) who is black like the night sky with stars twinkling (literally). He has two wolves that follow him everywhere he goes named Geri (Greedy) and Freki (Ravenous). And he has two ravens that fly around the world at dawn named Huginn (Thought) and Muninn (Memory) and return to Woden's shoulders at dusk and whisper into his ear what they have seen.
(Here is a poem about it from Grímnismál:
Old Norse:
- Huginn ok Muninn fliúga hverian dag
- iörmungrund yfir;
- óomk ek of Huginn, at hann aptr ne komit,
- þó siámk meirr um Muninn.
English:
- The whole world wide, every day,
- fly Huginn and Muninn;
- I worry lest Huginn should fall in flight,
- yet more I fear for Muninn.
They also bring omens.
To see either of them is good tidings. To have one of them look directly at you and caw once in the absence of sound is something entirely different.
That is an omen.
And the moment of the caw is supposed to be Woden's agreement with what you are thinking, if you were thinking.
What was I thinking? Was I thinking?
I had something on my mind, a quandary. Two difficult choices, and one of them received Woden's personal pledge as the correct thing to do. I can't remember what it was. Figures.
If it were 1200 CE and I was German/Scandinavian I would know exactly what that meant. I would probably get promoted to high priest status, having been chosen by Odin. And get extra mead and Viking babes.
But in 2009, what am I supposed to do with that?
I should share it.
I know what you are thinking.
"D00d, it was just a bird that cawed at you. Crows/ravens do that. It just so happens that the wind stopped and all noise ceased at the exact same time to make the caw seem more resonant to you. It was just a bird. It was not Huginn or Muninn because there is no Odin. There never was an Odin. You were trippin.'"
Now that I typed that I see the parallels when I argue with people of faith. If I believed in anything, it would be in Odin. And if I did, your words would have no effect on me. I see now how silly it was of me to convince people their belief in an imaginary person is misplaced.
He is the only God that cares about me. He sent me a sign. He loves me and wants me to be happy. Isn't it obvious?
I just wish I could remember what it was he thought I should do.
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