This morning, sitting on the poolside, I sighted a blue bird landing to drink from the water. Then it was joined by another. The Blue Bird is called כחל in Hebrew and has no significance at all in Judaism or in our folklore (we are more inclined to visit Saints's tombs to ask for their intercession), but somehow I half feel that this rara avis has personal significance for me. And it has been years that I sighted a blue bird. Since a small kid I am interested in birds and in the long שמירות watches (while doing military reserve duty) in the Negev desert, I entertained myself watching the birds. I dont feel it is sick, in fact, it is a very ancient and forgotten art. The Wiki says that
An auspice (Latin: auspicium) comes from auspex, is literally "one who looks at birds", a diviner who reads omens from the observed flight of birds. This type of omen reading was already a millennium old in Classical Greece: in the Tel Amarna fourteenth-century BCE diplomatic correspondence, the King of Cyprus requests an 'eagle diviner' to be sent from Egypt. In the Illiad, Calchas was Agamemnon's bird diviner, and the army took no action without consulting him first.Auspicium ratum means good omen.
Post Scriptum: I have learned in the internet that ornithomancy (a new word for me) is specifically mentioned in the Bible, and forbidden. What shall I do? Keep my sinful superstition for myself.
4 comments:
Even the visiting of saint's tombs is folk religion that is not Biblical. The priests took their monopoly seriously and insisted that all prayer be directly to God, with the priests as the sole intermediary. All other forms of magic, fortune telling, etc. were looked down upon as trickery that did not have the power of God behind them and were practiced only by charlatans (which has the advantage of being true). Just as the cult of the Virgin Mary has little to do with true Christianity and was a popular adaptation of folk worship of Mother Earth , the attribution of magical powers of intercession and healing to Rebbes (living or dead) is really not very Jewish in the true sense.
Augury was very complicated and not just a matter of spotting an unusual bird but the "experts" had to watch which way the birds (only certain species had predictive value) were flying, in what sector of the sky, the altitude, where they landed, what noise they made, etc. So what you were doing is not really augury.
K
My bird watching cannot be construed as ornithomancia, but the Blue Bird certainly has brightened my mood. The augurs were consacrated priest of the Roman National Religion, and vaticining (from the Vatican) was allowed only to members of the College of Augurs. I am only an old Jew lazying poolside, ogling young mothers playing with their kids in the water, and the passing autumn clouds and birds in the high.
You should do a post on the lack of Nature and wildlife folklore in the Jewish tradition.
Being such urban people throughout history, Jews seem to have little connection to Nature, wildlife, etc.
Yiddish was amazingly lacking in vocabulary for different species of bird, tree,animal , etc. Usually the local language (Hungarian, Polish, Russian, etc.) names were used or they would use very general categorical terms.
K
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