The Wisdom of the Crows

Reflections on the Challenge

When you see or hear a bird, does it touch your feelings? What aspect of yourself might the bird express? Let your hands lift like wings.

• Experiences

  T had noticed the challenge several times during the month and recorded brief notes near the end. While walking through quiet gardens at sunset, she had heard birds singing from an unseen perch above her. Remembering the challenge, she had gently lifted and moved her hands at the wrists, which brought a feeling of enjoyment, gladness, and connectedness through listening. She had felt a wish to share the experience, though she had been alone. On another occasion, at a leafy overground station, she had heard intense twittering from hedges and trees without seeing the birds. She had again moved her hands by her sides and sensed the wrists as if they were the pinions of wings. This had brought an awareness of the contrast between the impossibility of flight for her and the natural reality of flight for birds. She had become aware of different birds through their distinct sounds – robins, parakeets, crows, magpies, gulls – and later seen a robin hopping among foliage and feeding. Moving her hands had felt like an imitation of flight, linking her wrists and fingers to the beating of wings and feathers.

  L had found that it took about a week after the meeting before the challenge began to register. On first hearing a repetitive bird song whose source he could not identify, he had raised his hands and noticed a feeling of slight self-consciousness. Later, hearing seagulls calling in the evening, he had felt their sounds echo his own thoughts about finishing the day and returning home. On another occasion at sunset, he had seen a dark bird flying in a straight, purposeful line, which had evoked for him a sense of purposeful freedom. A further repetitive bird call at sunset had brought an association with uncertainty. A few days later, seeing dozens of birds together had stirred a feeling of determined mobilisation. Throughout these moments, he had observed how each encounter evoked a distinct emotional quality in himself, linking the bird’s presence with his own inner state.

  N had come to the challenge later in the month and noticed that encounters with birds immediately evoked personal associations. During a long walk in the park, he had seen many magpies and recognised in them a quality he also saw in himself – a tendency to gather and store things, particularly information, for its own sake. Seeing the magpies together had brought this aspect of himself into clearer awareness. He had reflected on how different birds seemed to mirror different inner qualities, and how noticing them in daily life deepened his sense of connection and enjoyment. These moments had drawn his attention to the way encounters with birds could illuminate patterns within himself rather than remaining abstract ideas.

• Responses

  Responding to N, L noted the long human tradition of associating birds with wisdom and meaning, suggesting that N’s instinctive associations were not idiosyncratic but echoed something ancient. He pointed out that birds had long been taken as carriers of knowledge, reinforcing N’s experience of recognising qualities in himself through the birds he encountered.

  N followed up T's question, “Where is your song?”, and suggested that many people’s voices become constrained through upbringing and education. He felt that this suppression could distance a person from their authentic expression, making T’s experience of loss and longing for voice particularly significant. L appreciated the poetic quality of her description, and linked her experience to the broader question of creative expression. He suggested that just as birds sing according to their nature, the question for a human being becomes where their own genuine creative expression lies.

Beelzebub’s Tales, Chapter 33

• Passage

  “And it is thanks to this lack of foresight in these German beings that the scandalous misfortune for the poor Russians came about—that is to say, it is owing to the fact that the feathers of the crows are dyed by nature ... a genuine black, which, even with these aniline dyes invented by themselves, cannot possibly be dyed any other color owing to the said vile imperfection of these dyes—that these poor Russian ‘crows’ cannot therefore possibly become peacocks. And what is worst of all, having ceased to be crows and not yet having become peacocks, they willy-nilly turn into the bird turkey, which expresses ideally, as has been formulated by our dear teacher, ‘Half-with-a-quarter-plus-three-quarters.’

• Discussion

  L took the passage as a warning against trying to become something other than what one is, by taking the image of the crow as pointing to the necessity of remaining true to one’s own nature, rather than imitating an idealised form from elsewhere.

  N responded to the description of the turkey by noting the recognisable physicality of the “strut”. He remarked that this exaggerated, lifted gait could still be seen in military marching, and that it appeared oddly laughable — an outward display that did not correspond to inner reality.