The Shadow & the Raven
A raven visited me this morning. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen him.
Most mornings, he’s there above my bed, perched on the chimney. He caws and claws from side to side.
Every now and then, he hooks his head ever-so-slightly, one eye bent in my direction.
I wonder if he’s been looking in at me through the skylight when I lie here and peer back at him.
“What is this bird’s story?” I say.
I’ve named him Jack Dawn.
Maybe the raven is my totem animal. In Native American mythology, if an animal visits, in life or in dreams, it’s a sign. Maybe Jack Dawn—my spirit animal—is finally making himself known.
After all, ravens have been haunting me now for some time.
A few years back, an artist friend of mine gave me a handmade shirt with a crow he’d sketched on it. The bird’s body perched from backside to front with its head pointing at my left breast. A year later with that raven shirt on my back, I traveled to The Queen Charlotte Islands, home to Haida a tribe who honor the raven as a mythological trickster and bringer of light to the world.
Fascinated by this bird, I’ve been following the raven as symbol in myths and legends from Norse to Celtic and back again to the Canadian Northwest.
And now a black bird, Jack Dawn, visits me every morning.
Maybe all this time, the bird, in his multiple visitations in the form of drawings on t-shirts and carvings in native masks, has been bearing an omen of that cancer growing unnoticed in my left breast.
“Caw! Caw! Caw! Ca-ncer!” Jack might have been saying all this time.
But, maybe there’s another side to the raven’s cawing.
In some cultures, the raven has been called upon for healing. He’s a keeper of secrets—he points us to areas of our lives we are unwilling to face. For Carl Jung, the raven points to the dark side of the psyche, the shadow that needs be integrated, the parts of ourselves we must make peace with to accept ourselves as whole.
The name crow itself may originate from Rhea Kronia, the Greek goddess who like the Indian goddess Kali, represents a kind of regenerative darkness.
If the raven represents conflict, death and ill omens, it may also symbolize metamorphosis—the necessary death that comes for change to occur.
Is the raven calling out at the changes in my life that need to happen for me to be whole?
Maybe each morning, perched on the chimney above me, Jack is cawing so that I might communicate with both sides of myself, darkness with light, at the bridge of night and day. Transition moments are said to be the most auspicious hours to hear omens from the otherworld.
So here I am, on the other side of day, falling into night.
I think about my own wholeness and the changes that need to happen for my body, psyche and spirit to return to balance. What does this other messenger have to say, this cancer of the breast? How do I seek to integrate her? How do I learn from her presence?
She calls out to my fears of loss and of dying. I fear losing my wholeness of my body.
At other times, cancer calls out to my greatest courage.
My raven, cawing quietly around me in my days, teaches me to cross the grass slowly and barefoot; to lie down in the sun; to take care of myself with reiki and hot baths and nourishing food.
The raven sits above my heart, calling out for me to hear her. Dear raven, I have slowed down enough to hear you.
Caw to me.
I am listening.
Most mornings, he’s there above my bed, perched on the chimney. He caws and claws from side to side.
Every now and then, he hooks his head ever-so-slightly, one eye bent in my direction.
I wonder if he’s been looking in at me through the skylight when I lie here and peer back at him.
“What is this bird’s story?” I say.
I’ve named him Jack Dawn.
Maybe the raven is my totem animal. In Native American mythology, if an animal visits, in life or in dreams, it’s a sign. Maybe Jack Dawn—my spirit animal—is finally making himself known.
After all, ravens have been haunting me now for some time.
A few years back, an artist friend of mine gave me a handmade shirt with a crow he’d sketched on it. The bird’s body perched from backside to front with its head pointing at my left breast. A year later with that raven shirt on my back, I traveled to The Queen Charlotte Islands, home to Haida a tribe who honor the raven as a mythological trickster and bringer of light to the world.
Fascinated by this bird, I’ve been following the raven as symbol in myths and legends from Norse to Celtic and back again to the Canadian Northwest.
And now a black bird, Jack Dawn, visits me every morning.
Maybe all this time, the bird, in his multiple visitations in the form of drawings on t-shirts and carvings in native masks, has been bearing an omen of that cancer growing unnoticed in my left breast.
“Caw! Caw! Caw! Ca-ncer!” Jack might have been saying all this time.
But, maybe there’s another side to the raven’s cawing.
In some cultures, the raven has been called upon for healing. He’s a keeper of secrets—he points us to areas of our lives we are unwilling to face. For Carl Jung, the raven points to the dark side of the psyche, the shadow that needs be integrated, the parts of ourselves we must make peace with to accept ourselves as whole.
The name crow itself may originate from Rhea Kronia, the Greek goddess who like the Indian goddess Kali, represents a kind of regenerative darkness.
If the raven represents conflict, death and ill omens, it may also symbolize metamorphosis—the necessary death that comes for change to occur.
Is the raven calling out at the changes in my life that need to happen for me to be whole?
Maybe each morning, perched on the chimney above me, Jack is cawing so that I might communicate with both sides of myself, darkness with light, at the bridge of night and day. Transition moments are said to be the most auspicious hours to hear omens from the otherworld.
So here I am, on the other side of day, falling into night.
I think about my own wholeness and the changes that need to happen for my body, psyche and spirit to return to balance. What does this other messenger have to say, this cancer of the breast? How do I seek to integrate her? How do I learn from her presence?
She calls out to my fears of loss and of dying. I fear losing my wholeness of my body.
At other times, cancer calls out to my greatest courage.
My raven, cawing quietly around me in my days, teaches me to cross the grass slowly and barefoot; to lie down in the sun; to take care of myself with reiki and hot baths and nourishing food.
The raven sits above my heart, calling out for me to hear her. Dear raven, I have slowed down enough to hear you.
Caw to me.
I am listening.
