I. Ornithomancy
Languages of the Other World
[English rendering from French original]
Ancients watched bird-flight to know the gods’ will. They watched crows before every important decision. Augurs read in their cries the intentions moving between worlds.
All sought to read in bird-flight the messages of the invisible.
We keep this practice alive as initiatory art—each observation becomes gnosis, not picturesque folklore. Recognizing what the order desperately hides. Deep contemplation of beings who naturally inhabit thresholds. The ornithomancy we propose works as pragmatic divination and devotional practice both.
This article presents the fundamentals. They adapt to any approach to the sacred, from reconstructionists to margin-explorers, but make no mistake—to observe birds is to learn to see the Acosmos.
The Messengers Between Worlds
Ornithomancy rests on brutal truth.
Birds inhabit space we can never reach. They fly between sky and earth, crossing boundaries we draw. They migrate to rhythms older than our calendars, tracing flight-lines we’ve always read as signs.
Birds refuse our boundaries. Their flight is resistance itself.
They impose trajectories on space that would constrain them. Each wingbeat silently negates this cosmic geometry.
Celtic cosmology recognizes three places where the Other World manifests. Underground, where ferrets slink. Beneath waters, fish swimming sacred lake-depths. In celestial spheres, domains of birds gliding among clouds. Only these last can access all three at once—terrestrial when they land, aquatic when they dive, celestial when they rise.
Philo of Alexandria wrote: “bird-flight resembles star-movement, their song the music of spheres.” They are kin to stars by nature.
The Other World is not elsewhere. It is adjacent, encircling, separated only by a veil certain places thin. Springs where water surges from earth’s bowels, dense forests where light struggles to penetrate. Twilight, when day dies and night hesitates to be born.
Certain beings cross this veil naturally. Birds are among them.
Through flight, they see what our eyes cannot—an overview. Their migrations carry them to territories we’ll never tread. When we practice ornithomancy, we observe threshold-beings and attend to moments when their presence resonates with our questions.
Synchronicity is not coincidence. It is recognizing what already weaves in the depths, meaningful encounter between their presence and our attention.
The bird tells you nothing. It confirms what you already knew but refused to admit. Reveals what whispered in you while you convinced yourself to listen to reason.
There are no orders to obey. This encounter confirms what was already moving.
Historical Druidic Practice
Celts practiced ornithomancy systematically.
Diviners, whom Greeks called μάντεις (mántes), were part of the Druidic priestly class. Diodorus Siculus describes them watching bird-flight and cries to predict the future. Cicero personally knew Divitiacus, a Gaulish druid who divined through animals.
The gift of prophecy attributed to druids flows directly from this reading of the living.
Celts recognized a class of mantic birds—culturally established, attested in literature. Greeks held a similar concept. The term οἰωνός (oiônós) named both great birds of prey and divinatory birds. The word came to mean “omen” itself, as if bird and message had become one.
This practice exceeds simple naturalistic observation. Druids used it to legitimize their function. Others, to see what druids refused to name.
Whether this reading served to maintain order or defy it depended on who read, and why.
Scholars, Bards and Birds
Scholars and poets held particular bonds with birds.
These knowledge-keepers wore feather cloaks for divination. Some researchers recognize shamanoid traces. A phenomenon close to Siberian shamanism without deriving directly from it. The feather cloak brought them closer to what birds touch naturally—recognizing human form as prison. To truly hear what birds transmit, one must accept temporarily dissolving identity’s rigid contours.
The underlying belief is simple. Through repeated contact with the Other World, birds know a language before words. Like serpents crawling in earth’s bowels, they understand what whispers beyond the veil.
This language precedes reason. Precedes thought itself.
Some still hear the whisper of the Primordial Ocean in the crow’s dawn cry. The blackbird’s song carries echoes of the Other World. The Black Tear flows in the world’s veins, recognized only by those who’ve consented to dissolution.
Irish texts describe three supernatural musics:
Suantraige caused sleep. None could hear it without sinking into deep slumber, door opened to prophetic dreams.
Goltraige tore tears. All who heard it wept, overwhelmed by sadness from elsewhere.
Geantraige forced laughter. Unstoppable joy seized listeners.
The Homeric Hymn to Hermes mentions the cithara provides three pleasures: joy, love, sleep. Simple convergence or common Indo-European root? The question remains open. What matters is that in both traditions, song wields power exceeding purely aesthetic pleasure.
Bird-song is no ornament. It is transmission.
Bards kept memory of past events. Druids held knowledge of things’ deep nature. Both recognized in birds initiates to the same mysteries, beings capable of carrying what words cannot transmit.
Birds and Gods
Birds can be divine messengers.
Twelve Gaulish figures show deities with birds perched on their shoulders, beaks near ears as if whispering what they could not hear alone. The iconography recalls Odin and his two ravens, Huginn (thought) and Muninn (memory), who fly over worlds reporting what escapes the god’s gaze. It evokes the Irish god Eochaidh Ollathair, father-god who holds omniscience not by nature but through what birds transmit.
Even gods need crow-whispers.
This dependence reveals truth: gods are not omniscient. They don’t see everything. They need intermediaries for spaces they themselves cannot reach—forests too dense, aquatic depths, interstices between worlds where primordial ambiguity still reigns.
Gods need birds. Birds need no gods.
A crow can manifest the mother-goddess. Like the Morigan, avatar taking avian form to cross battlefields. Or simply a crow.
A swan can be divine metamorphosis, an entity from the Other World wearing white plumage to move between waters. Or simply a swan on the lake.
How to distinguish?
Synchronicity’s quality is crucial.
A crow passing by chance remains a crow. A crow appearing precisely when you meditate on transformation, behaving unusually, staring at you in a way you cannot ignore—there, something vaster may manifest.
Only the coincidence’s precision reveals the encounter’s nature. The intensity of what you feel when your gazes cross. Behavior out of the ordinary, breaking species’ habits.
Even without explicit divine presence, the bird carries its own meaning. Each species has developed over centuries its own resonance. These resonances live. They pulse in certain contexts, with certain people, at certain moments.
The border remains porous. The bird will always be itself, but sometimes it is also a door through which something vaster manifests. In this ambiguous space, this dual nature never totally resolved, its divinatory power resides.
Whether the bird serves light-gods or depth-gods, whether it carries order’s messages or resistance’s whispers—this depends on its nature, the moment, who observes.
The bird alone chooses. Or perhaps it chooses nothing. Perhaps it simply flies, indifferent to divine quarrels, carrying what it carries without care for who will hear.
A Note of Humility
Ornithological studies know limits.
We cannot always distinguish species in ancient iconography or medieval texts. The same bird can be called eagle in one passage, vulture in another, crow in a third.
The Irish word badb names crow, raven, vulture—all scavengers at once.
This blurring comes not from ignorance but pragmatic wisdom.
Celts did not classify birds by our taxonomy. They grouped them by symbolic and spiritual function. A set of “corvids/black birds” included raven, crow, vulture, perhaps blackbird and jay. United by common appearance, battlefield presence, their role as mediators between the living and what remains in the Other World.
The modern obsession with forcing species into rigid categories to impose order that doesn’t exist naturally matters less than perceiving behavior, reading appearance’s context, attending to what the instant reveals.
This uncertainty must keep us humble.
The ornithomancy we practice belongs to this lineage. With respect for the practice’s historical depth. With awareness we work in our own era, weaving contemporary approach from ancient threads.
Without pretending perfect reconstruction. Sources are incomplete, interpretations multiple.
We propose a workable path rather than absolute truth.
And perhaps this is true initiation’s path. Accepting that gnosis is not transmitted through rigid certainties but through fragmentary intuitions, revelations that fade when we try freezing them into dogma.
Birds teach us this too. They never stay still. As soon as we believe we’ve understood them, they fly away.
The Three Levels of Reading
The Species
Each species carries particular resonance, forged by centuries of observation and interaction. These resonances are not fixed symbols but living patterns activating in precise contexts.
Here are the species culturally established and attested in Celtic literature.
CORVIDS AND SCAVENGERS
The Raven
Threshold-guardian, transformation-witness.
Present at passages: birth, death, conflict, radical change. Its hoarse cry marks transitions. When it appears in unusual numbers or significant context, something changes form.
In Celtic tradition, the raven holds primordial place. Its symbolism runs deeply positive. A celestial bird, psychopomp, messenger between worlds. Celts considered it sacred, like the eagle.
Irish goddesses Mórrígan, Badb, Macha—masks of the Mother-Goddess—take raven-form to fly over battlefields. These entities preside over transformations, moments when the veil between worlds thins.
The raven holds ancient wisdom. In certain tales, it consumes the Salmon of Wisdom and gains omniscience. Its legendary longevity makes it holder of ancestral memory preceding human chronicles.
Twelve Gaulish figures show deities with ravens perched on their shoulders, beaks near ears. Even gods need what ravens whisper.
The winter raven, present even when other birds migrate, links to the world’s dark and cold aspect. This persistence through the year’s death makes it undeniable transition-animal.
The Crow
Raven’s companion, often undifferentiated from it.
The Irish badb names crow, raven, vulture—all scavengers. Not confusion but recognizing common function.
In the tale Brisleach mhór Maighe Muirtheimhne, the Badb departs “in raven-form, that is to say crow-form” to verify if Cú Chulainn is dead. Both forms are interchangeable for the goddess.
In Greece, the crow belonged to Athena while the raven to Apollo—we might see parallel with Mother-Goddess and her Lunar Heir. Both species share the same mediator-role.
Some traditions consider it the raven’s female companion, extension of the same force under slightly different form.
The Vulture
Purifier, glorious scavenger.
The vulture shares scavenger-symbolism with raven and crow. It glides, waits for death to accomplish its work, then cleans what remains.
In the East, the vulture is beneficial purifier. Greek and Roman naturalists presented it as serpent-enemy, even of the most formidable. This serpent/vulture opposition echoes in Celtic cosmology. The serpent crawls underground depths, the vulture glides celestial heights, yet both are psychopomps.
The Irish badb also names it.
In the tale Aided Chlainne Lir, Aífe, transformed into vulture as punishment, embodies avian metamorphosis’s dark aspect. Vulture as punishment reveals its ambivalence.
The Vita Merlini mentions the vulture “can live a hundred years”—longevity bringing it close to primordial animals. It flies “in eagle-manner”; the two species are largely interchangeable in symbolism.
DIURNAL RAPTORS
The Eagle
Heights-messenger.
It sees what our eyes cannot: overview, global movement. But it’s also implacable predator. Its appearance signals both opportunity and danger.
The eagle is among the Primordial Animals: “the eagle of Gwernabwy, the stag of Rhedynfre, the owl of Cwm Cowlwyd, the salmon of Llyn Llyw and the blackbird of Cilgwri.”
In iconography, it’s often mounted on warriors’ helmets. Its ability to stare at the sun without burning eyes symbolizes enlightened vision—seeing truth without looking away.
The eagle occupies paradoxical place in insular texts, less present than expected, as if its importance had declined over time. Perhaps the raven replaced it in certain functions.
Geoffrey of Monmouth relates that at Loch Lomond, sixty eagles gathered yearly to predict events in Great Britain through strident cries emitted in concert. Collective oracle, voice of ineffable heights.
Protean and primordial heroes take its form: Fintan mac Bóchra, Tuan mac Cairill (though there, rather a hawk confused with eagle), Taliesin. This transformation often precedes that into salmon—from air to aquatic depths.
The Falcon
Heights-raptor, often confused with eagle.
In Irish texts, eagle and falcon are nearly synonymous. Tuan Mac Cairill, primordial being who traverses ages through successive metamorphoses, takes falcon-form.
In Kulhwch, Olwen’s gaze-beauty is compared to a falcon’s: “Neither the gaze of a falcon after molt, nor that of a tiercel after three molts were as beautiful as hers.”
The brilliant gaze that pierces, that sees beyond appearances.
The Sparrowhawk
Discreet raptor, agile hunter.
The female is more skilled and stronger than the male. This particularity makes it an ambiguous bird, defying expected categories.
Like the eagle, it’s found mounted on warriors’ helmets. Martial symbolism, but also association with water and rejuvenation, bringing it close to the lunar Dioscuri.
PASSERINES
The Blackbird
Guardian of timeless songs.
Its song marks liminal moments—dawn and dusk, when the border with the Other World becomes porous. Its complex repertoire, its ability to improvise and memorize melodies links it to oral tradition, to memory preceding writing.
The blackbird is among Primordial Animals. In Kulhwch ac Olwen and Echtra Léithin, it’s consulted for ancient wisdom. The blackbird Dubgoire, whose name means “black blackbird,” holds knowledge of ages.
Its song was particularly prized by the Irish. The term loid, laoid(h) “blackbird song” could be origin of the word “lay.” This connection reveals its role as guardian of speech’s sacred arts.
In Buile Suibhne, Suibhne considers the blackbird’s warbling as beautiful as the stag’s bellow—rare praise since the stag is eminence of forests.
When the blackbird sings at dawn or dusk, it weaves something: a thread between what ends and what begins.
The Lark
Sacred continental bird.
Gauls gave it the name alauda, from which French alouette derives. Suetonius attests it. Sacred animal on the continent, whose importance seems lesser in the islands.
Its ability to rise very quickly in the sky makes it ascension-symbol. In certain Greek legends, the lark was the first being created on earth.
Folklore considers its joyful song divine song. Breton tradition claims the soul would rise to heaven in lark-form.
It links to the “Spirit of Wheat” in certain northern mythologies, connecting its symbolism to food plants.
The Starling
Discreet messenger.
In the second Branch of the Mabinogion, Branwen possesses a starling. She “taught it to speak.”
The starling has harbinger and messenger functions. Branwen, mistreated in Ireland, sends it to carry a message to her brother in Wales.
Starling-flocks in the sky embody fluid collective intelligence, where each individual responds to its neighbors’ movement without central command.
The Wren
The true king of birds.
Very small but singing louder than others. Laughing and joyful according to traditions. The wren’s name in Old Breton means “joyful.”
According to Irish popular etymology, its name means “druid of birds.” In Brittonic, its name is the linguistic equivalent of “druid” in Gaelic. Bird of knowledge therefore, not of war.
Welsh folklore considers it king of birds. Royalty not by force but by wisdom and especially cunning.
In legend, all birds decide the one who flies highest will be their king. The eagle rises above all. But the wren, hidden in its feathers, waits for the last moment to fly even higher.
The wren doesn’t fight the eagle frontally—it uses its adversary’s strength to rise beyond.
The wren laughs, because it knows.
NOCTURNAL RAPTORS
Nocturnal raptors inhabit particular space. Unlike diurnal solar and celestial raptors, they are lunar, linked to darkness that reveals rather than hides.
When the sun abdicates and night extends, they wake in darkness day refuses to recognize.
The Horned Owl
Darkness-watcher, nocturnal hunter.
Its large eyes and nocturnal life give it dark aspect. In the Middle Ages, it sometimes becomes witches’ companion, emblem of ignorance and avarice, even of Satan.
But this demonization precisely reveals its power.
Celts often attributed it wisdom and longevity. Its ability to see in darkness makes it guardian of knowledge daylight cannot hold.
The horned owl sees what the Sun hides by blinding with its light.
In Greece and Rome, its cries are sinister omens. Pliny mentions it. Yet this sinister reputation hides deeper truth: the horned owl announces not death but transformation requiring darkness to accomplish.
The Owl
Guardian of lunar wisdom.
The owl belongs to the triad “the Oldest of the world: the owl of Cwm Cowlwyd, the eagle of Gwernabwy and the blackbird of Celligadarn.” Also among the five Primordial Animals.
It represents wisdom linked to lunar light—rational, reflexive knowledge, in opposition to the solar eagle embodying intuitive, immediate knowledge.
This duality structures cosmology: sun/moon, intuition/reason, day/night.
In Greece, the owl (glaukos) was Athena’s favorite bird. Its luminous gaze evokes intelligence. That it stays awake all night connects it to spirit that never sleeps, to eternal vigilance.
In Mycenaean era, Athena was represented with human body and owl-face. The woman “with owl-head”—ancient motif, positive, linked to nocturnal wisdom.
In Welsh tale Math, Blodeuwedd is transformed into owl as punishment. Gwydion ensures she “will never again dare show her face in daylight, for fear of other birds.”
She becomes margin-dweller, rejected from the diurnal world.
This transformation is punishment in the Christianized tale. But the pre-Christian owl was not cursed—it was simply nocturnal by nature, guardian of what daylight cannot reveal.
Blodeuwedd’s exile is liberation. She no longer must comply with diurnal-world demands. She can fully inhabit her nocturnal space, where day’s rules don’t apply.
Her diurnal appearance is particularly significant.
Something that should stay hidden manifests in broad daylight. Sign of upheaval, necessary transgression. The repressed rising, no longer containable.
Both horned owl and owl share deep bond with the Mother-Goddess—she who reigns over mysteries, dreams, transformations requiring darkness.
GALLINACEANS
The Rooster
Auroral bird, day’s herald.
Its song announces sunrise. Universally, a solar emblem, symbol of nascent light.
In Greece, the rooster is simultaneously attribute of solar gods (Zeus, Apollo) and lunar goddesses (Leto, Artemis). This sun/moon ambivalence makes it a transition-bird, passage between darkness and light.
Among Germans and Greeks, it is psychopomp and divinatory. In Nordic mythology, perched on Yggdrasil ash-branches, it warns gods when giants prepare to attack.
Among Celts, the rooster is sacred. Julius Caesar states Britons didn’t eat chicken: “Leporem et gallinam et anserem gustare fas non putant; haec tamen alunt animi voluptatisque causa.” They raised them for pleasure, not consumption.
The rooster often accompanies the mother-goddess in Gaul. It symbolizes fertility, love life, but also war. On coins and helmets, it embodies vigilance.
Latin homonymy gallus (Gaul/rooster) created the emblem of the French rooster, but it’s linguistic accident. The rooster’s true importance among Celts precedes and exceeds this accident.
The rooster marks day’s return. Its song can announce awakening or remind that protective night ends and the diurnal world resumes tyrannical rights.
AQUATIC BIRDS
Aquatic birds occupy fundamental place. Linked to air by flight and water by habitat, they are doubly connected to the Other World.
Aquatic birds, navigating between these domains, are privileged messengers. Their ability to dive underwater, between air and depths, makes them doubly liminal beings.
They hold particular bond with lunar and aquatic forces. Water has ambiguous relationship with light. It reflects it, but undulates, distorts, fragments its image. Water refuses clarity—it prefers ambiguity, the imperfect trembling reflection.
Long-necked aquatic birds (crane, swan, heron, egret) are reputed mantic birds through mere appearance or song.
The Swan
Transformation-bird, messenger of the Other World.
In Irish mythology, swans are almost always metamorphosed beings—gods or enchanted humans. Their immaculate whiteness symbolizes purity, but also passage between states.
Mythological swans wear chains of gold or silver, symbol of their supernatural origin. These chains are not shackles but possible sign of belonging to the Other World.
In Aislinge Oenguso (Dream of Aengus), Caer Ibormeith and 150 companions become swans each Samhain. Cyclical transformation, linked to moments when the veil thins. Aengus himself must take swan-form to join her—the human cannot touch the Other World-being without transforming.
In Oidheadh Chlainne Lir, Lir’s children are transformed into swans for 900 years, retaining voice and memory. Cruel punishment becoming initiation—they traverse centuries, witnesses to transformations no human could see.
The swan sings the Other World’s music, Suantraige, which causes deep sleep, opening dream-doors. In the Middle Ages, they told that wild swans came of their own accord to musicians who played the harp well.
In Tochmarc Étaíne, Midir disappears with Étaín in swan-form. The two circle the hill of Tara before going to Brí Léith.
In Serglige Con Culainn, Cú Chulainn tries to capture two swans harnessed by gold chain for his wife. He wounds one, which reveals itself to be Fann, woman of the Other World. Punishment follows—one doesn’t wound Other World-beings with impunity.
Urnfield and Hallstatt iconography shows sacred swans harnessed, often in pairs, sometimes attached to the solar circle. Ancient cult where swans represent the Dioscuri transporting the sun. But in insular texts, the swan detached from the sun to become creature of waters and night.
The Crane
Guardian of winding paths, labyrinth-bird.
Known for longevity, fidelity, white feather-beauty. Its legendary song would be capable of “inflecting the path”—transformation-power through sound.
It links to water-cult like all aquatic birds. But also to labyrinth, to meander, to initiatory journey.
In pre-Indo-European cults, a Greek dance called Geranos (”crane”) imitated a labyrinth’s intertwined movements.
The crane can manifest aquatic divinity appearing in bird-form. The labyrinth is its domain—paths that turn, that return, that seem to lead astray.
Manannán’s corrbolg (”crane-bag”) contains treasures and possibly ogham letters. Crane-skin becomes container of sacred knowledge.
The Gaelic harp’s soundboard is called corr, which also means “crane.” The bird’s neck-shape evokes the instrument’s shape. Crane-couples have unison cry, phenomenon echoing in the cláirseach‘s masculine and feminine voice.
The crane links to the willow, tree growing in marshes. Trier and Paris altars show the Tarvos Trigaranus, “bull with three cranes,” associated with willows and a divine woodcutter, probably Esus.
But the crane also has fierce aspect.
Midir’s “three cranes of inhospitality” cry: “Don’t come!”, “Go away!”, “Pass your way!” Implacable guardian who repels and refuses access. Irish sorcerers were called corrguine, “crane-killers.” Killing the crane means breaking protection, crossing forbidden border.
The crane’s sacred character expresses itself in the prohibition to eat it in medieval Ireland. One of Ireland’s wonders is the “Solitary Crane” of Iniskea island, who will live there until time’s end—timeless guardian.
The crane disappeared from Irish biotope at the 14th century’s end. The swan inherited part of its symbolism, but crane-memory persists in texts.
The Goose
Bird-guardian, vigilant warner.
Sacred animal among Celts and forbidden for consumption.
It combines natural vigilance and protective aggressiveness. Its alarm-role is famous: during Rome’s capture by Gauls in 390 BC, Juno’s temple’s sacred geese gave the alert.
Irony that Roman geese alerted against Gauls.
Possible Roman reinterpretation of Celtic symbolism, or recognition that birds don’t choose sides by our political criteria. The goose alerts because it’s its nature, not because it serves Rome or Gaul.
The goose often accompanies war-gods and appears in funerary tombs. It is psychopomp in certain traditions, guiding souls to the Other World.
In Altaic shamanic traditions, the goose serves as mount for shamans pursuing the horse’s soul. Bird that can navigate between worlds, carrying the shaman in his journeys.
In Buile Suibhne, Suibhne suffers hallucinations where he’s pursued by hordes of severed heads, some anthropomorphic, others goose and dog heads.
The goose as manifestation of nocturnal terror, of pursuit by the dead.
According to Welsh tradition, geese’s nocturnal appearance is bad omen. The diurnal goose is beneficial guardian, but the nocturnal goose brings misfortune.
The Duck
Swan’s poor relation, often symbolically confused with it.
La Tène art shows duck representations. The goddess Sequana appears standing in a boat whose prow is duck-form—aquatic bird as vehicle to the Other World.
A figurine from Rotherly Down in England shows a duck with human head on its back. Metamorphosis into duck, like for swan, though less prestigious.
The duck crosses the same waters as the swan, dives the same depths. But nobody composes songs about its beauty. Nobody transforms heroes into ducks in epic tales.
This prestige-absence reveals something important: transformation is not always glorious, doesn’t happen in dazzling visions. It transcends itself in banal, prosaic realizations devoid of all poetry.
The duck seems almost absent from medieval texts. Its importance was perhaps greater in La Tène era, before declining in favor of the swan.
The Cormorant
“Horned” aquatic bird, mysterious.
We find Celtic representation of horned cormorant wearing chains, like harnessed swan representations. Hybrid animal, bird with horns (crest), attribute generally reserved for deer and bulls.
The cormorant probably shared symbolism-aspects with the swan. Diving bird, capable of descending deep underwater then rising to surface—traveler between depths and air, messenger who knows what hides beneath waves.
Little present in texts, but its sculpted image suggests cultic importance in La Tène era.
SPRING AND SUMMER BIRDS
The Swallow
Spring-messenger, renewal-herald.
Universally, the swallow gathers sympathy. As spring-messenger, it symbolizes renewal, fertility, seasons’ alternation. It represents resurrection, pagan first, then Christian. But also vitality’s return—that which one draws to advance on the other Path.
In the Odyssey, Athena transforms into swallow. Divine bird-metamorphosis to move quickly or attend scenes without being spotted.
In the TBC, Cú Chulainn’s war-chariot is compared to wind, to swallow and to deer: “speedy as the wind or as a swallow or a deer darting over the level plain.” Speed, lightness, agility.
The theonym Fand means “Swallow.” Wife of Manannán mac Lir, sovereign of the Other World, she falls in love with Cú Chulainn and takes him to the Other World.
Her bird-name expresses her “supernatural” beauty, but also her ability to traverse worlds.
Fannall, son of Nechtan Scéne, was killed by Cú Chulainn. He was extremely light, capable of fighting above water. His name “Swallow” derives from this capacity, or it’s reverse—because he is a swallow, he can fight on waves.
The swallow symbolizes fecundity, alternation, renewal. But also beauty, lightness, grace. Positive, beneficial bird, appearing only late in Celtic literature alongside other “singing” birds like gull and peacock.
The Dove
Purity-bird, peace-messenger.
Thanks to immaculate whiteness and cooing’s softness, it has very positive symbolism.
In Genesis, the white dove announces divine peace after the flood, olive branch in mouth. Messenger confirming punishment’s end, order’s return. It carries capitulation.
Among Romans, it accompanied Venus. It symbolized peace, harmony, but also “the amorous fulfillment the lover offers to the object of his desire.”
Celts attributed healing properties to it. It also fulfilled oracle-bird function, like many white birds.
But the dove only appears significantly after Christianization.
In the tale Brislech mór Maige Muirthemne, there’s mention of a “valley of doves” (Glenn na m-bodar) in which one would hear nothing of battle-din. Peace and harmony symbolism.
Columba (Colum Cille, “Dove of the Church”), one of Ireland’s three patron saints, bears this name. By its ancient theme, certain Other World-people are associated with birds, and after Christianization, this theme was transposed for saints.
The dove replaces pagan birds (raven, eagle, swan) as the bird par excellence in Christian tradition.
New bird, which erases ancient ones, or attempts to erase them.
Peace emerges from mutual recognition, from respect of forces present. Capitulation disguised as peace asks you to renounce what you are to obtain temporary comfort.
The Flight
Roman augurs read divine intentions in aerial trajectories. Diodorus Siculus testifies Celtic diviners observed “bird-flight and cries” for their predictions.
But texts don’t tell us precisely how they interpreted these flights.
What we know is that flight traces patterns in air—ephemeral geometries ancient observers considered meaningful.
Birds inhabit space we can never reach, naturally navigating between worlds. Their trajectories are therefore doubly significant: physical movement in our reality, and symbolic trace of what they touch beyond the veil.
But understand something fundamental: flight is not symbol. Flight IS.
The bird doesn’t represent freedom—it is free.
Rectilinear, sustained flight
Migratory birds fly in straight lines over impossible distances. Cranes migrate without deviation. This clear trajectory, this hesitation-absence—augurs saw in it affirmation, an open path.
The straight-flying bird knows no doubt.
It holds that instinctive knowledge we mentioned—that which comes from their repeated contact with the Other World. In contemporary practice, observing this flight at your question’s moment resonates with affirmed intention.
Not an order to follow blindly. Birds owe us nothing. But confirmation that the envisioned path is walkable.
Circular, spiraling flight
Raptors that spiral seek thermal currents to rise without effort. Natural behavior, energy economy. But as with the eagle, what sees from heights perceives what our eyes cannot.
The ascending spiral evokes this elevation, this distancing allowing overview.
Loch Lomond’s sixty eagles, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, gathered to predict events in Great Britain. Perhaps they spiraled together before crying their prophecies, rising to that point where present and future touch.
The descending spiral suggests dive toward what is hidden, investigation, descent to depths. Birds can access the three domains of the Other World. The raptor descending in spiral traces the path between these levels. It evaluates, waits for the exact moment to seize what must be revealed.
Erratic, broken flight
Abrupt direction-changes, hesitations, constant corrections. The bird itself seems troubled, disturbed by something in air we don’t perceive.
Roman augural traditions considered these flights unfavorable. Sign of confusion, invisible obstacles. We find here the idea that the bird perceives what escapes our senses—if it hesitates, something in the invisible resists.
Formation flight
Geese fly in V, optimizing collective effort. Starlings draw impossible forms, moving clouds where each individual responds to neighbors’ movement without central command.
This distributed intelligence manifests here spectacularly.
These formations have always struck observers. In Altaic shamanic traditions, migrating geese served as shamans’ mounts for journeys between worlds.
Celtic texts don’t precisely describe these collective flights, but iconography often shows birds harnessed, coordinated. Recall mythological swans wearing gold chains, or the horned cormorant with its shackles.
In contemporary practice, these formations resonate with collective forces at work.
Something greater than the individual manifests.
Sudden fall, dive
The falcon falling from sky reaches vertiginous speeds. Absolute precision, divine violence. What was potential becomes act. The bird seizes its prey brutally and irreversibly.
The dive embodies the moment potentiality materializes.
Irish texts compare heroes to diving falcon. In the TBC, Cú Chulainn’s chariot is “fast as wind, as swallow, as deer.” Speed, fall, sudden seizure embody the moment potentiality materializes.
In our observation, the dive evokes passage from possible to real.
The Cry
Feel bird-song as vibration. Through repeated contact with the Other World, birds know a language before words.
Not a language to translate.
Irish texts describe three supernatural musics we’ve already mentioned. Return to them here in practical observation’s context:
Suantraige causes deep sleep. It opens dream-doors. Enchanted swans of the Other World sing this melody. When bird-song soothes you to torpor, when it slows your rhythm until that moment when conscious and unconscious touch—this is an echo of this power.
Goltraige tears tears. Sadness that doesn’t belong to you but overwhelms you. Connection to this melancholy without precise object is a fragment of this music from the Other World.
Geantraige forces laughter. The lark’s joyful song, which Breton folklore considers divine song, carries the resonance of this unstoppable joy.
These three musics structure our listening but there is multitude to grasp.
You will know these cries when you hear them. They won’t console you, won’t make you sleep peacefully. There will be neither laughter nor joy. They will break you, revealing knowledge in your being’s shards.
Single, isolated cry
The raven that caws once then falls silent marks an instant. Punctuation in time’s flow testifying that a passage opens or closes.
Augural traditions saw in it an alert.
In contemporary practice, this single cry resonates as invitation to attend.
The cry doesn’t say what. It says when.
It’s this cry’s temporal precision that reveals divine synchronicity. At the exact moment the crucial thought crosses your mind and crystallizes in your consciousness.
Prolonged, repetitive song
The nightingale singing in spring claims its territory aggressively. “This is mine. Don’t approach.” Each note is a stone placed in air, ephemeral edifice collapsing once silence returns.
Repeated song engraves in duration.
What the blackbird does with its complex repertoire, memorizing and improvising melodies carrying oral tradition.
If you’re in observation and a bird sings at length, insistently, tradition suggests the message repeats because it’s important, because it must be heard until it penetrates.
Or it’s simply a bird defending territory.
As we said, the border remains porous. You create the space where song becomes message.
Sudden silence
When all birds fall silent simultaneously, something passes and imposes silence.
Predators provoke these silences.
The falcon flying over or the fox approaching. But not only. Certain moments, certain places thin the veil. They carry their own gravity, their own silence-requirement.
If you’re in observation and silence falls brutally, it’s a sign something moves in space.
The answer arrives, or you must leave.
Listen to your body more than your head. This is the active reception we discussed, present and attentive rather than passive.
In silence, you must feel if it’s waiting preceding revelation or warning preceding danger. No one can tell you how to make this distinction. It’s bodily gnosis learned through experience, through error, through repeated confrontation with what cannot be conceptualized.
Bird-silence is perhaps the most powerful message.
Because it gives you nothing. It forces you to confront confirmation’s absence, easy answer’s refusal. And in this void, if you dare stay there, something else can emerge.
Multiple cries, cacophony
Ravens in number cawing together communicate complex information. They coordinate movements and transmit what their flight revealed.
Gods need crow-whispers. Raven-din is divine conversation, transmission of what cannot be said otherwise.
The blackbird, which we mentioned as “guardian of timeless songs,” holds ability to improvise and memorize. When several blackbirds sing together, the polyphony contains underlying meaning only intuition can grasp.
No use trying to unravel everything intellectually. The whole becomes global impression. Cacophony can be sound-offering as much as message to decipher, submersion to lose footing.
Abandon the illusion you understand what’s happening. Accept being engulfed by complexity exceeding your rational capacities.
Texts don’t tell us how Celtic diviners precisely interpreted these flights and cries. We work therefore from historical fragments, naturalistic observations, and especially from what repeated practice reveals.
A contemporary path woven from ancient threads of lost practice.
Recall fundamental truth: birds sing their life.
Perhaps birds carry no message. Perhaps they’re simply free in a way we’re not. This freedom itself is the message.
The bird doesn’t console us. It cruelly reminds us what we’ll never be, locked in our flesh. And in this cruelty resides true ornithomantic gnosis.
The Practice: How to Observe
Preparation
The Moment
Dawn and dusk are transition-moments when the veil between worlds naturally thins. But ornithomancy can be practiced anytime.
What matters is attention’s state, not the hour.
The Place
Ideally, in natural spaces, as far as possible from human presence.
Failing that, in liminal places where nature still resists.
Forest edges. Urban parks where birds persist despite everything. Wild gardens. River banks. Areas where concrete cracks and lets vengeful roots through. Everywhere order capitulates.
The Inner State
Not passive meditation. A state of active reception, present and attentive.
Formulate your question clearly, not only mentally. Formulating concretizes intention.
Specify what you seek. Practical answer or divine communion?
Direct questioning opens divinatory space of confirmation or denial. While in devotional contact, anything can happen.
Let the question rest like seed in earth. Pose it and wait. Waiting itself is part of practice.
The Simple Protocol
Don’t seek birds. Let them come to you.
This matters. Frantically scanning the sky, hoping for birds—this creates tension closing space. You become again the hunter, the one who wants to seize, possess, control.
The first bird strongly attracting attention carries the answer.
The first whose presence resonates differently. The one that makes you stop breathing. The one that stares at you when it shouldn’t.
What species? Where does it come from? What is it doing?
What do you feel seeing it?
Don’t rush to decode the message. Let it settle.
Meaning will emerge by itself.
Recognizing Divine Synchronicity
The bird always carries natural symbolism. But sometimes it becomes vehicle of vaster, divine presence.
Certain elements are precious indicators to observe.
Impossible temporal precision: when a bird appears at the exact moment of evoking a particular god.
Atypical behaviors: unusual manners for its species. Fixation, unusual location, spontaneous hunting-stop... Everything out of the ordinary.
Significant recurrence: The same bird-type appears several times in contexts linked to the same theme, the same questions.
Cultural and mythological context: The bird is historically linked to the god concerned and context corresponds to this god’s domain.
Strong inner resonance: immediate, undeniable sensation.
The more synchronicity is precise, unusual and repeated, the higher the probability of divine message.
But keep humility—you can be wrong. Your desire for divine contact can project meaning where there’s only a bird going about its business.
You cannot be sure. Not objectively. Not scientifically.
You can only cultivate honesty toward yourself. Compare this experience with others, see if it carries the same quality. Wait and observe if tangible consequences emerge from this encounter.
But sometimes you will know.
Certain encounters leave no doubt. They break you with such precision no explanation holds. They transform you so radically you can no longer pretend it was just coincidence.
These moments are rare. Precious and terrifying.
When they arrive, keep them deep within you.
What Ornithomancy Is Not
Not a correspondence system.
Birds are alive, their messages contextual. Two ravens in two different situations carry two radically different messages.
Every attempt to freeze ornithomancy into system betrays its nature.
Refuse passive superstition.
You don’t wait passively for destiny’s signs. You create attention-space where Other World-forces can manifest through these beings who naturally navigate between worlds.
An active practice of conscious reception.
No practice is infallible.
Sometimes there’s error in reading. Sometimes our desire projects meaning where there’s none. This is normal. Divination is art, not science. It refines with practice, honesty toward oneself, and accepting error.
Divination is not separate from life.
Ornithomancy is not practiced only during formal rituals where you solemnly sit to observe birds.
It integrates naturally into your relationship with the world.
Spontaneous moments are often more powerful than ritualized observations. Because they surge in your daily life, revealing the Other World is not elsewhere but constantly adjacent.
Ornithomancy then becomes attention to the living.
Final Note
Birds owe us nothing.
Not our servants. Not our tamed oracles. They live their life, traverse their territories, hunt their food, raise their offspring.
If we see sign in their flight, it’s because we’ve created inner space to receive it.
An encounter between our attention and their presence, between our intention and their movement, between our world and theirs.
Respect this.
Ornithomancy requires patience, humility, and accepting that sometimes, there’s no message—just a bird living its life.
And that is already enough.
Because in this observation without requirement, in this attention without expectation, in this respect for the bird’s radical otherness—there, precisely, true messages can emerge.
When you stop seeking, signs come.
When you abandon understanding’s need, knowledge settles.