View Language of the Birds
Summary
The Language of the Birds is said to be a language that perfectly expresses the nature of things, and was spoken in the Garden of Eden, but lost. It is said to have been recovered by King Solomon, who used it to gain immense wisdom and wealth. The tongue of Secret Wisdom, the Language of the Birds embraces Cabala, Astrology, Alchemy, Tarot, Sufism, Christianity, Aquaudism, and has been spoken by only few throughout the centuries, including, but not limited to Mozart, Jules Verne, Jesus, Buddha (but poorly, it is thought), Qaneh the Hermit, and Francis of Assisi.
The Language of the Birds is sometimes referred to as The Green Language, particularly by the Alchemists.
The Language of Sacred Writings
The concept of writing as a sacred act, while diminishing, was at one time such a highly held ritual that the language of writing itself was hidden deep inside the Language of Birds. Alphabets were not just collections of letters, but calendars, calculators, compendiums of facets of nature and concepts of divinity, and initiates had to be familiar with one hundred and fifty Ogham alphabets. The alphabetic calendar itself was divided into thirteen months of twenty-eight days, each represented by a consonant, with one day left over. The vowels were allocated to the five stations of the Great Goddess - birth, initiation, coronation/marriage; repose, death/rebirth.
Probably the best known of the Oghams is the Celtic Tree alphabet (Beth-Luis-Nion: birch, rowan, ash), but there were others - numbers, colours, jewels, stars, god-names. The Book of Ballymote lists a bird Ogham. According to the Fables of Caius Juliius Hyginus, Mercury invented the alphabet by watching cranes, because “cranes make letters as they fly”. The secrets of the Beth-Lius-Nion alphabet were kept in a crane-skin bag.
The Alphabetic Calendar
Bird Imagery Throughout History, Myth, Folklore & Literature
Birds were commonly used for divination, auguries being read from their patterns of flight or through the entrails of sacrificial victims, and/or were sacred to specific gods or goddesses: among them dove, swallow, robin, quail, raven, falcon, ibis, nightingale, goose. The Koran says that the lapwing was the repository of Solomon’s mysteries, and the book of Leviticus lists it among the royal birds, which also include eagle, griffon, cuckoo, swan, kite, raven, heron and the pious pelican. The poetic meaning of the lapwing is “disguise the secret” because she hides her nest so successfully. Some say that Solomon invented the language of the birds, and the lapwing was the first to use it. The cuckoo perpehually calls “Where? Where? Where is my love?”
Zeus incarnated as swan and eagle, Horus was hawk-headed, and Thoth, the Egyptian god of magic,wears an ibis mask. In early Arthurian sagas, Gawain the Green Knight is called Hawk of May. The owl was the symbol of wisdom, sacred to the goddess Athene, Pasiphae and Bloduwedd, the bride of Gwydion, who was turned into an owl. As Circe. the witch, her bird is the falcon. She is also the long-legged crane, fishing the shallows for the divine child who floats on water in his ark of rushes. The Holy Spirit that descended at Pentecost, pictured in Christian iconology as a dove, bestowed on initiates the gift of tongues.
The dove was sacred to both male and female deities: to Hercules as shepherd and to Zeus as herdsman. The Great Goddess was worshipped with doves at Heiropolis, Crete and Cyprus, and in western Arcadia her stable holds a black dove. It was said that her black doves flew from Egyptian Thebes to Dodona in Epirus, where the temple was dedicated to Zeus and the moon-goddess Dione or Diana, and nested in the oracular oak trees of the sacred grove. The black-dove priestesses, chewing on hallucinogenic acorns, translated the oracles, so both literally and poetically the priestesses spoke the language of the birds.
According to Apollonius Rhodias, Jason’s ship The Argo, was built of oak from the sacred oak grove at Dodona. The figurehead could speak, and guided the Argonauts on their quest for the Golden Fleece, so naturally she also spoke the language of the birds. Argo is a gloss on the word argot meaning slang or dialect, and jargon is the specialised speech peculiar to specific sects or subjects.
In the Oxford English Dictionary jargon is also listed as the name of a “smoky kind of zircon”. There is a legend that when Lucifer fell, a jewel tumbled to earth from his crown and became the Holy Grail. Was this gem a “smoky zircon” or jargon, representing the language of angels and the birds, and that the quest, whether for Holy Grail or Golden Fleece, was in fact a search for the Secret Wisdom?
According to the Zohar, the earthly Paradise was called “The Bird’s Nest”. The Messiah would reveal himself in Galilee. A star of all colours would appear in the East, the power of the Messiah would be made manifest, and the Messiah would enter his place, The Bird’s Nest, where angels would offer him gifts. The Bird’s Nest occupies the central Sephira, Tiphareth, on the branches of the Tree of Life, where the phoenix’s egg will hatch.
Anomalies Of Nature
There have been, throughout the course of time, anomalies of nature that have resulted for one reason or another in the Language of the Birds being misused, both by birds and humans. Perhaps one of the most well-known cases is that of Philip Rude Duck, a Australian Shelduck, or mountain duck (although some believe Philip “Rude” Duck to be a Pacific Black, given the Pacific Black’s versatility), who was able to get himself appointed Australian’s Attorney General by impersonated a human and living more than forty years under the alias Philip Ruddock.
Russian Folk Tale
SOMEWHERE in a town in holy Russia, there lived a rich merchant with his wife. He had an only son, a dear, bright, and brave boy called Ivan. One lovely day Ivan sat at the dinner table with his parents. Near the window in the same room hung a cage, and a nightingale, a sweet-voiced, gray bird, was imprisoned within. The sweet nightingale began to sing its wonderful song with trills and high silvery tones. The merchant listened and listened to the song and said:
“How I wish I could understand the meaning of the different songs of all the birds! I would give half my wealth to the man, if only there were such a man, who could make plain to me all the different songs of the different birds.”
Ivan took notice of these words and no matter where he went, no matter where he was, no matter what he did, he always thought of how he could learn the language of the birds.
Some time after this the merchant’s son happened to be hunting in a forest. The winds rose, the sky became clouded, the lightning flashed, the thunder roared loudly, and the rain fell in torrents. Ivan soon came near a large tree and saw a big nest in the branches. Four small birds were in the nest; they were quite alone, and neither father nor mother was there to protect them from the cold and wet. The good Ivan pitied them, climbed the tree and covered the little ones with his “kaftan,” a long-skirted coat which the Russian peasants and merchants usually wear. The thunderstorm passed by and a big bird came flying and sat down on a branch near the nest and spoke very kindly to Ivan.
“Ivan, I thank thee; thou hast protected my little children from the cold and rain and I wish to do something for thee. Tell me what thou dost wish.”
Ivan answered; “I am not in need; I have everything for my comfort. But teach me the birds’ language.”
“Stay with me three days and thou shalt know all about it.”
Ivan remained in the forest three days. He understood well the teaching of the big bird and returned home more clever than before. One beautiful day soon after this Ivan sat with his parents when the nightingale was singing in his cage. His song was so sad, however, so very sad, that the merchant and his wife also became sad, and their son, their good Ivan, who listened very attentively, was even more affected, and the tears came running down his cheeks.
“What is the matter?” asked his parents; “what art thou weeping about, dear son?”
“Dear parents,” answered the son, “it is because I understand the meaning of the nightingale’s song, and because this meaning is so sad for all of us.”
“What then is the meaning? Tell us the whole truth; do not hide it from us,” said the father and mother.
“Oh, how sad it sounds!” replied the son. “How much better would it be never to have been born!”
“Do not frighten us,” said the parents, alarmed. “If thou dost really understand the meaning of the song, tell us at once.”
“Do you not hear for yourselves? The nightingale says: ‘The time will come when Ivan, the merchant’s son, shall become Ivan, the king’s son, and his own father shall serve him as a simple servant.’”
The merchant and his wife felt troubled and began to distrust their son, their good Ivan. So one night they gave him a drowsy drink, and when he had fallen asleep they took him to a boat on the wide sea, spread the white sails, and pushed the boat from the shore.
For a long time the boat danced on the waves and finally it came near a large merchant vessel, which struck against it with such a shock that Ivan awoke. The crew on the large vessel saw Ivan and pitied him. So they decided to take him along with them and did so. High, very high, above in the sky they perceived cranes. Ivan said to the sailors: “Be careful; I hear the birds predicting a storm. Let us enter a harbor or we shall suffer great danger and damage. All the sails will be torn and all the masts will be broken.”
But no one paid any attention and they went farther on. In a short time the storm arose, the wind tore the vessel almost to pieces, and they had a very hard time to repair all the damage. When they were through with their work they heard many wild swans flying above them and talking very loud among themselves.
“What are they talking about?” inquired the men, this time with interest.
“Be careful,” advised Ivan. “I hear and distinctly understand them to say that the pirates, the terrible sea robbers, are near. If we do not enter a harbor at once they will imprison and kill us.”
The crew quickly obeyed this advice and as soon as the vessel entered the harbor the pirate boats passed by and the merchants saw them capture several unprepared vessels. When the danger was over, the sailors with Ivan went farther, still farther. Finally the vessel anchored near a town, large and unknown to the merchants. A king ruled in that town who was very much annoyed by three black crows. These three crows were all the time perching near the window of the king’s chamber. No one knew how to get rid of them and no one could kill them. The king ordered notices to be placed at all crossings and on all prominent buildings, saying that whoever was able to relieve the king from the noisy birds would be rewarded by obtaining the youngest korolevna, the king’s daughter, for a wife; but the one who should have the daring to undertake but not succeed in delivering the palace from the crows would have his head cut off. Ivan attentively read the announcement, once, twice, and once more. Finally he made the sign of the cross and went to the palace. He said to the servants:
“Open the window and let me listen to the birds.”
The servants obeyed and Ivan listened for a while. Then he said:
“Show me to your sovereign king.”
When he reached the room where the king sat on a high, rich chair, he bowed and said:
“There are three crows, a father crow, a mother crow, and a son crow. The trouble is that they desire to obtain thy royal decision as to whether the son crow must follow his father crow or his mother crow.”
The king answered: “The son crow must follow the father crow.”
As soon as the king announced his royal decision the crow father with the crow son went one way and the crow mother disappeared the other way, and no one has heard the noisy birds since. The king gave one-half of his kingdom and his youngest korolevna to Ivan, and a happy life began for him.
In the meantime his father, the rich merchant, lost his wife and by and by his fortune also. There was no one left to take care of him, and the old man went begging under the windows of charitable people. He went from one window to another, from one village to another, from one town to another, and one bright day he came to the palace where Ivan lived, begging humbly for charity. Ivan saw him and recognized him, ordered him to come inside, and gave him food to eat and also supplied him with good clothes, asking questions:
“Dear old man, what can I do for thee?” he said.
“If thou art so very good,” answered the poor father, without knowing that he was speaking to his own son, “let me remain here and serve thee among thy faithful servants.”
“Dear, dear father!” exclaimed Ivan, “thou didst doubt the true song of the nightingale, and now thou seest that our fate was to meet according to the predictions of long ago.”
The old man was frightened and knelt before his son, but his Ivan remained the same good son as before, took his father lovingly into his arms, and together they wept over their sorrow.
Several days passed by and the old father felt courage to ask his son, the korolevitch:
“Tell me, my son, how was it that thou didst not perish in the boat?”
Ivan Korolevitch laughed gayly.
“I presume,” he answered, “that it was not my fate to perish at the bottom of the wide sea, but my fate was to marry the korolevna, my beautiful wife, and to sweeten the old age of my dear father.”
Category:Myth & Legend
Category:Religion