The Arbitrary Magic of Omens
One for sorrow,
Two for mirth,
Three for a funeral
And four for birth.
Finding Meaning and Magic in the Mundane
Have you heard this old rhyme about the meaning of magpies when you see them out and about? Perhaps you’ve heard the more modern version (One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a boy, and so on). Or maybe you’ve heard that it’s for when you see ravens or crows or some other kind of bird.
The details are not important. What is important is that it’s an example of the interpretation of random events in everyday life as meaningful. As messages about the future or insight into some otherwise unknowable knowledge, they can be understood as everyday omens.
What’s significant about omens, these signals of meaning in the everyday, is that they are often quite unexceptional.
Consider the completely banal example of seeing a cluster of birds. If you live somewhere with magpies or crows or grackles or whatever, it’s not unusual to see one, two, three, four, or more regularly throughout the day. But that can’t possibly be a sign that there are so many funerals or births, at least not that have any connection or relevance to you personally.
If magpies feel too distant or unsophisticated to you, consider angel numbers, those collections of repeated numbers that offer support or guidance from angels and other spirit guides. There’s nothing unusual about seeing 11:11 or 2:22 on your digital clock readout, receipts, or building addresses. Many people will see it twice a day if they check the time regularly. And yet it offers comfort and empowerment from the divine for a lot of people. (I’ll admit that I also love when I catch those numbers.)
The point is that there is nothing strange about these signs, and that’s important to keep in mind as you incorporate them into your life. It’s not their unusualness that’s magical. It’s the fact that you noticed the sign and thought of it as important that is really the clue that there is some spiritual genius at work. You can see the power of omens and signs as, in reality, the power of your intuition (or guides or whoever) guiding you to find magic in the mundane.
Guidance and Boundaries
It’s fitting that the Magpie is the card of duality in the Winterseer Animal Oracle by Siolo Thompson (published by Llewellyn Books—all rights reserved) given that it’s my first example of a completely mundane yet divinely significant message.
When you start to find meaning in the world around you, you are more likely to be present and to be listening to your intuition, and that’s incredibly powerful if the messages are empowering and help you live your life. You’ll start to notice them more regularly and understand how they might have meaning for your life ahead.
But you may also start to search them out or be desperate to find them. And that’s not how your intuition or omens work. They are special because they are found in the things that you don’t regularly notice.
If you see the golden light of sunset illuminating the building window across the street from you in a way that seems to show you the golden clouds of Heaven in an otherwise dark-glass building one evening, it might fill you with hope and you might feel as if you are in a moment of grace. You may believe that whatever you had been thinking about when you noticed that heavenly moment is blessed and in alignment, and that’s beautiful. But if you stand at the window every evening at sunset to glimpse that same image, it does not have the same power or meaning.
If you check your watch and see that it is 1:10 and you compulsively check again and again until it is 1:11, then you are not being gifted with a divine message of empowerment through angel numbers. You are engaging in a desperate form of validation. Maybe you want that, but you probably don’t need that. In fact, it’s probably disempowering in the long run because you’re relying on an external source for permission. That desire to find validation or permissions is very much based in your ego. And in my experience, the universe conspires to make sure that you can’t keep doing that. The uncertainty or fear that follows can be a useful wake-up call to help you acknowledge your desperation.
What Counts as a Sign or Omen?
Some cultures and traditions have specific omens that are meaningful and less common, such as an eclipse, which only happens a few times per year and is not always visible when it’s happening. Others are less common events with familiar warnings rather than anything especially meaningful, such as superstitions about a black cat crossing your path or breaking a mirror. But you will also find your own personal lexicon of omens, some of which will repeat in particular patterns and others that are one-off but feel important because you are in tune with your intuition.
As you explore your world and its millions of stimuli, consider the things that are so common that you don’t even notice them until you do.
For me, I’m very much a city witch when it comes to signs. I love spotting birds on a line or feathers on the ground, but there’s something about the city that speaks to the wannabe-technomage in me. When a street light suddenly goes out? Or the gas in a neon sign bubbles and stutters? A broken window or a sticker-plastered sign pole? The city is rich with signs. Ignoring all the signs that aren’t meant for me is much harder than finding something to imbue with meaning.
There are municipal markings for electrical, gas, and water lines spray-painted all over my city’s roads and sidewalks. They are so ever present that, even though they are bright fluorescent on dully grey, they become nothing more than visual background noise. But every now and again, I notice one and see a glyph in it or an alphanumeric sequence or a rune. And when I actually do notice the strangeness of this totally un-strange thing, I know that my intuition is trying to get me to pay attention to it.
Randomness and Spirit Guidance
As with the cards in cartomancy, the random and arbitrary nature of omens is part of their power. It takes practice and skill and a receptive mind/heart/spirit to find the intention in randomness. For the 31-day Tarot Overload challenge I’m hosting, I ask participants to draw two cards for each prompt of the first week: one determined randomly and one guided by some intuitive or divinely imbued force. But there’s no saying that what we’re called to choose as “random” can’t also be guided.
For the second day of the challenge, I was drawn to find the number 23, the alphanumeric 2H, and a þurisaz-like symbol in municipal markings on the ground around my building, and on the third day, I was inspired to choose the number 35 from the many 35-mph signs around my neighborhood. They were random and arbitrary, which leaves them open to my intuition to access. They’re events that are unremarkable, and yet my intuition can trigger my awareness of them.
Environmental Triggers and Activating Sensory Cues
I mentioned earlier that you will start to find (or may have unwittingly discovered) your own omens over time, which may not mean the same thing to you as they do to others who also view them as significant random events in the everyday. These are developed by being open to receiving these messages.
But you can also activate unique omen-like experiences of your own.
One of my favorite exercises is to journey into the cards (path working) to find “sensory cues” that can exist in my environment and that I invite my intuition to use as a trigger to pay attention to something. When I ask tarot challenge participants to pull cards for sensory cues, there is usually a predetermined purpose for that cue, such as a sign that now is the time to work on a specific goal or to disengage with a deep spiritual connection that needs a little time off.
With these sensory cues, the meaning of the sign is is predetermined, and it’s often a one-time-use kind of code. It can be incredibly powerful for those who are getting used to being open to signs or are having trouble figuring out what to do with the intuitive pings they receive. I highly recommend trying it, either as part of one of my challenges or just for your own purposes.