I’ve been struggling with spirit animals….I don’t know which are mine. “Mine” sounds the wrong word – not like they belong to me….
I often hear people talk about their spirit animals and they are so sure….so connected….
As a child I had a very very strong draw to horses, like they were on my mind forever and I wanted a horse SO BADLY! I had a pony on loan when I was 13/14 and did in fact have my own horse by the time I was 15. I decided to pursue a career with horses and did work with horses until maybe my late 20’s. I have an HND in Equine Science. I was never really a talented rider I should say – I had to really work for my riding exams but I for sure had a connection with horses. It was most definitely more spiritual than practical. I was often drawn to troubled horses and shared a comfort with them. I could be close to the head, place my hand on their forehead and it felt like we would both drop into a different mental space. Almost a sleep state between us.
As I moved my work more into computers and away from horses I never lost the connection with them but over the years the opportunity to spend time with them has reduced to zero. And so….the beautiful creatures who were once such a massive part of my life….left my life – or moreso, I left them.
Fast forward to my 40’s and I was training to be a counsellor. My placement was with a charity supporting adult survivors of childhood trauma and part of my induction there was to attend the 4 session workshops with the clients (as a participant). One of the exercises we did was a dominant/non-dominant hand exercise. The idea is that when we write with our dominant hand we do not need to think of how to write and our brain is busy chattering and interfering with our thoughts – our conciousness impedes our truth. When writing with the non-dominant hand our brain is kept busy figuring out how to hold the pen and form letters and so this frees space for the sub-conscious mind to come through. The exercise asked us to write on a piece of paper with our dominant hand “If I was an animal, what would I be?”
“Easy” I thought, “A horse”.
We then were asked to turn over the page and without thinking too much, place the pen into our non-dominant hand and write again “If I were an animal, what would I be?”
“Frog”
What? Where did that come from? Frog!!! I’ve never particularly connected with frogs before so this was a definite surprise. Apparently it’s very common in this exercise for a person to choose a strong and noble creature when using the dominant hand and the creature that comes for the sub-conscious to be smaller. Interesting.
A week or so later we were at the Christmas lunch for the Charity and my Christmas cracker gave me a ….frog. Not only that but everyone sat next to me and across the table from me…..had a frog!!!! Knowing my frog surprise in the earlier exercise, they all thought is was very funny and gave me their frogs. I was pretty shocked. Clearly there was a froggy message in there somewhere for me. So for a few years I’ve pondered the frog being significant in my life but it hasn’t arisen much more and when we moved to France, being surrounded by water I thought “surely…now…the frogs will arrive”……. nope…not one. The closest I came to one was a toadpol in a bucket!
We have a lot of dragonflies though and I do wonder what significcance they have for me. I found two dragonfly (damselflies actually) wings on the floor in the garden and placed them on my altar. Once or twice a dragonfly has flown right up to me but both times I jumped away, then cross with myself for doing so.
I even tried using AI to discover my spirit animal….*sighs*
Where was my spirit animal(s) and why were they not showing themselves to me? It has been said that some spirit animals may only visit for a shorter period where others may be present throughout one’s life.
Today I was scrolling through Facebook and a post came by that said “The meaning of the Blue Jay”. “oh!” I thought….the Jays! They’ve been squawking and dropping feathers around me for months!!!! I’m a fool! Now, the Blue Jay is not the Jay that we have here so I decided to look up the spiritual meaning of the Eurasian Jay and well…..it rang quite a few bells!
“The Eurasian Jay is associated with mind magick……The association with the mind is often attributed in neopagan circles to the element Air, hence why I corvids can pretty much be considered the pure embodiment of Air itself, though other traditions link the Air with the soul instead, and the mind is thus given dominion of to Water or even Light. Indeed, given that many light related deities are associated with mind magick (the Light Chakra, after all, is the Ajna, the Eye of the Mind), if corvids help in any elemental works, light magick would probably be that.
That said, the Eurasian Jay is unique among corvids in that it is mostly associated with Ancestral Wisdom. While most corvids are concerned with the mind as a whole, the Eurasian Jay is more concerned about information gathering via spiritual working. If Air is associated with the soul rather than the mind, then the Eurasian Jay bridges the mind to the soul, Light with Air. In it’s connection to the forest, the jay has an at least vague comprehension of the bigger picture, something other corvids lack, and as such instead of just searching for information, it opens itself to higher calls, apreciating the patterns in it’s ecosystem. A crow looks at an acorn and sees edible food; a jay looks at an acorn and sees edible food and a seed that will produce more food if conveniently “forgotten”. Ravens see seasons as potential torrents of opportunities or times of hardship; the jay sees that, but also apreciates the cycle, seeing life blooming and decaying as the year progresses. As such, the Eurasian Jay has a sense of spirituality only rivalled by primates.
In practise, this means that, by understanding the forest, both on an operational and spiritual level, the Eurasian Jay is symbolic of illumination/enlightement, and as such it represents the theurgical side of working with the mind. It can obtain information on both the physical and otherwordly realms, and most importantly, it can apreciate it on a symbolic level.
The Eurasian Jay is different from other corvids in it’s close connection to the forest. Some other corvids also called jays also have close connections to their habitat, but to most corvids, the land is just a place of habittation, not a home. As such, because of this connection to the forest, the Eurasian Jay is open to the spiritual side mentioned previously, and can even manipulate it’s habitat. It is the gardening bird, planting acorns and other seeds either by accident or purpose, and harnessing the living energies of the forest to allow faster plant growth. In combination with it’s connection to enlightement, it represents a growing resolve: spells become faster and more potent, and the very mind becomes a plant, blossoming thoughts.
The Eurasian Jay, like many jays, has strong family bonds. Sibilings often stay for an year or so to help raise their younger brothers and sisters. This can be seen as an appeal to tradition, but rather it is symbolic of unorthodoxy in regards to family units. To the Eurasian Jay and it’s relatives, it doesn’t matter if it’s a mated male/female pair, a bunch of siblings, homosexual pairings, a single parent, or any combination of those. To the jay, so long as it’s a loving family, it’s a family; there’s no need for nuclear families. As lovers of the dense forests, jays don’t like nuclear things anyways. Except the Sun.
The Eurasian Jay is a solar bird. Corvids within the Corvus genus have been associated with the Sun in Europe and Asia, generally due to the connection of the mind with light. More so than their relatives, Eurasian Jays are closely connected to plant life, and display a more fiery brown and white plumage. Their unique relationship to the oak tree – sacred to many sky deities – is also worth noting. In particular, the Eurasian Jay is connected to the life giving essence of sunlight, and as such to sun gods more associated with fertility, the wild, and healing magick. Worshipping solar deities with an Eurasian Jay as a familiar, or sacrificing feathers and maybe blood (if extracted painlessly) to the Sun greatly increases theurgical work.” Source
The Jay was buried with hunter-gatherers in Neolithic times suggesting a significant symbolic relevance even in the oldest of times.
“[Eurasian Jay] parts could even be seen as representing a shamanic metamorphosis – with the help of a supernatural bird, a shaman could attain another state of being in life and death.” Source
So maybe….
I certainly feel that perhaps the Jays have been trying to get my attention for months and I’ve been blind to them. I shall now be more open and will see if there is something they wish me to know. I will for sure feedback in another post if anything develops! I have a good feeling about it but it could be wishful thinking 🙂