I'll preface this with saying that I am in the middle of book 3. I've scrolled through all the posts on here trying to get a handle on everything and everyone is right, it's necessary to read the books. I'm being pulled in and after years of studying other magical systems, I am enthralled with this.
I've lived with my own knowledge of synchronicity for quite some time now so I recognize signs from the world around me. I had just finished the early chapters in book 3 last night, and I woke up this morning to the sound of the crows. Then on my drive to work, I had seen a hawk that had been hit on the side of the road. I was contemplating on how to retrieve it and at that moment, a Crow came flying straight at me from the west, (I was headed East) and passed over my left shoulder. I was so stunned that I pulled out my phone to dictate to my journal. As I was pulling up to work, I had asked myself an important question about finding a guide and when I turned the corner there were SIX crows right in front of me on a garbage can! I sat there in shock as it was so in my face.
I had to run inside and grab something and came back out to my car. I pulled up about 100 feet away from the crows to silence myself and just watch. After about 10 minutes of observing them, I spotted a hawk flying straight at us. This time I was facing west, the hawk flying towards me facing east. It came closer and close until it circled down fast to scatter and mess with the crows. A couple of crows chased it away and it hopped up to a tree nearby. I was screaming with delight. It was such a fun sight to see the hawk just messing with the crows!
By this time a seventh crow joined the rest of the crew by flying from behind my left shoulder, heading west to join them in front of me. All of these actions felt so deliberate!
So then on my lunch break, I parked my car behind a big athletic store where there is a lovely field with huge trees. Right when I pulled up, I was facing north this time, a hawk in the tree right in front flapped its wings and shifted to a different branch. I sat there watching and taking in the sounds. I heard a crow calling over and over again, and while I was staring at the hawk, another hawk came in from the north (my right) and circle around it in the tree and flew back to the north! As I turned on my car to leave, I spotted yet ANOTHER HAWK up in the same tree I hadn't noticed before. I started to pull my car away and I noticed that the crow that had been calling the WHOLE time had been behind me, to the south. As soon as I saw it it stopped cawing.
So my whole day has been consumed with thoughts of each bird, and as I leave to drive home, ANOTHER HAWK swoops up in front of my car from the ground on my right to a tree on my left.
How do I interpret these omens? I have yet to do any exercises or black room work, as I've been making my way through the books so I have a clear understanding of what's going on. I'd love to hear your opinions on my feathery day.
14 Comments
They could be welcoming you.
Head on over to the wiki, if you haven’t done so.
That's a delightful way to look at it. Thank you! I've been getting through the Wiki bit by bit. There's so much to learn!
Hey, there’s so much content to read, alright. There’s much more to do to claim that knowledge and verify that knowledge.
I live across from a park and I get to watch the crows and the hawks "play" almost every morning now for a while. It can be rather spectacular.
Interesting to see your post.
I love that! It must be wonderful to have that show every day.
Sounds like birds doing what birds do. Don't read too much into it.
Get in the Darkroom!
It looks like I need to do darkroom practice earlier than I thought I would need to!
That is most certainly the case! There is no reason to wait to start practicing. Why postpone getting to experience real magic!
The wiki is full of helpful tips to help you get started. Keep on reading while you begin practice.
Idk what your daily life looks like, mine is extremely busy and I would have to choose between reading or practicing, so I listen to the books while I'm doing my chores!
I'm on The Fire From Within and so far all of them have been on YT!
I think the wiki has links to the audio books as well.
Best of luck!
Read about "Silent Knowledge".
That's the basis of "omens".
It's not obvious in the books, but the connection to "seeing' is pretty clear.
And SK is merely a new name for seeing that Carlos gave us. Because we screwed up and ignored the need to get silent. People were pretending to "see" all over the place. Every Tai Chi instructor who liked the books of Carlos would make that claim as an excuse not to actually do any work to learn from them.
Now, eventually if you "play" with reality and help reduce that internal dialogue, the world will indeed "taunt" you with displays of power.
Even the wind will play with you!
But you have to get that silence going first or whatever gifts you get from "the spirit", will go unnoticed.
It's in that "Eagle's Gift" story. How the spirit crossed the path of someone it decided to teach, and they ignored it.
But you have to be careful not to go off the deep end with "omens".
The european members of private classes were like that.
If a crow flew by they'd have to comment, "Omen!"
Most of the time, it's just a darned crow.
Not welcome in many places. Seeing as how a flock of crows is called a "murder" for good reason.
In Japan, the crows sound like crying babies.
You can hear them echoing from the skyscrapers of Shibuya if you get up very early in the morning. They seem to like that huge cross street where the intersection can contain 500 people at times.
Those people are always being circled by crows overhead.
Thank you for answering me. I did receive the answer I was looking for. I had wanted to go get the hawk for its feathers when the crow flew straight towards me. I knew it was a no immediately, but was looking for someone else to validate it. The answer came crashing down on me.
So yesterday we had to do some errands and my partner offered to help me go get the hawk. (He's very supportive of all my witchy ways.) It's on a very precarious of highway right in the middle of a freeway interchange and it would have been hard by myself. So we get bundled up and head out the door, hit our first errand stop not even 5 minutes away from the house and I am overcome with nausea. I have to get out of the car into the cold because I felt so ill. My nausea turned into full vertigo and I tried to walk it off in the cold so I sent my partner on the rest of his errands while I cooled down. I was dragging myself to some trees in a field behind the road we were on and on my path in front of me was a mug that said "circle of life" on it. I started chuckling as I was justifying my actions of getting this bird off the freeway by saying that I would return it to a more natural spot away from the road into trees with other animals. I cannot mess with the circle of life.
Well there were other plans for me. We had to go home as I was throwing up and became violently ill. It was miserable. As I was calming down, I laid in bed and put on Carlos' book I've been listening to. I was almost asleep and it came to this part where Don Juan was taking Carlos up to spend the night on a hill. When he told him his intention, a Crow flew overhead and he immediately changed his mind. That snapped me out of my stupor very fast. I spent the rest of the evening doing dark room practice and it was great. I do feel I've learned my lessons on my connections with the crows.
However, This is something I need to ask but don't want to make a full post on..
As I was scanning, I was going back into some of my happy memories and it pulled me into the memory of this fellow who called himself a "Shaman" but had nefarious purposes with me. I didn't have a good experience with him. As I was pondering on him, I heard a voice say "he is a Dark Initiator." I've never heard that term before, but I'm pretty confident I know what it is. Have you had any experiences with that or any knowledge? My 2 minute Google search was a bit scary and not necessarily the path I'm comfortable to go on.
Just another bad man pretending to have magic he's never seen before in his life.
It's sad...
But if you stick around in this subreddit and read, you'll realize that men only have a few reactions to Castaneda.
#1 is that they'll write their own book, and become famous and wealthy.
#2 is that they'll dress up like a shaman, and teach classes to bored middle aged women, mixed with a few reluctant husbands.
#3 is That it's a philosophical thing, so they become an "expert" on it, and think that's the goal. And naturally they're attention seekers or they wouldn't be so confused, and so they seek out attention with others, can't find any sane people in the Castaneda community (all mostly stuck on #1 and #2), and so they make friends with "like minded spiritual people", and that causes them to send me annoying pictures of the worst fraud in the Daoist world, Mantak Chia.
The guy who has a book on any "spiritual" topic you can name, including the Dao of Sex.
By the way, "The Tao" is a big lie from a con artist. Lao Tsu.
It's not at all how reality is. Comes from a very old opium poppy wine cult in the middle east. They still grow opium poppies to this day.
Men naturally need to be approach #4 if they want to succeed.
#4 is people who actually want to do the magic mentioned in the books. Themselves.
Women can try all of those approaches, but ought to stay away from #1.
There's a few women who got trapped by #1.
It created a new "lifestyle" for them, and despite not having any real magic, they just couldn't give it up.
Otherwise, women can make #2, #3, and #4 work to produce real magic, but they'll be less confused if they go for #4.
He wasn't a Castaneda guy, he was just a guy that grew mushrooms and considered himself a Shaman because he "woke people up."
Definitely a number 3 on that list. His intention by taking me on a trip was to "wake me up" and have me be his little sidekick. It woke me up for sure, but during my trip I could see his intention. That was almost 4 years ago and it's what set me on this path.
Revenge is always possible, as Cholita can tell you...
At least for witches.
They can get revenge and leave no evidence.
The men? I doubt it.
I'm only just now starting to figure out the times I saw Cholita take revenge on some poor creature inhabiting our neighborhood, who annoyed her too often.