Druid Animal Oracle Study Group-Hawk

2dogs

Following the example in our monthly oracles study group I asked ....what animal do I need to learn from, to allow to guide me in 2015.....

I get very worried when asking this sort of thing that it's going to give me a totally inappropriate card and I haven't really used this deck, but Hawk feels OK at first sight. I haven't been getting much from the mythology and folk stories the books for the Druid / Celtic decks go into so am going to start by seeing what the card might suggest to me. The image is of a hawk with grey and brown plumage sitting on top of an old and broken, but still growing tree, perhaps a pine, gripping it with powerful claws and staring straight out of the card with a serious and intent expression. A couple of dandelions with yellow flowers and buds grow in the extreme foreground. Behind the tree are rocky cliffs covered with long, soft green grass. One of them has a stone with what looks like a carving of a flying hawk, which could be a rune symbol, and the other has a stone with a carving of a cauldron. The hawk is overlooking a gap between these cliffs that leads down over some pebbles to a sandy beach on which stand two burning bonfires with the sea beyond. There are no people. In the air above the beach a second hawk is flying, this one is entirely brown and appears much smaller due to being further away. The sky is cloudy with dark clouds at the top of the card looking like rain. The smoke from the bonfires rises up to them, at only a slight angle so there is little wind.

What jumps out at me most are the eyes of the hawk, suggesting its most obvious power is that of perception, observing, seeing things clearly, small details and distant objects. The owl is a similar hunting bird that is active at night rather than in the daytime, giving me the idea that these two birds could correspond to the sun and moon. The bonfires and bright yellow dandelions with the ray like petals seem to reinforce this, as does the pine tree seeing that I have a pine cone on my altar to represent fire through the ideas of growth, life and energy. The owl has long been associated with wisdom and learning, thus memory, so in contrast I would link the hawk more with direct perception of the world around it, due to its rapid dives possibly immediate insight, and with its strong claws grasping of what it has seen. The grey and brown of its feathers suggest to me logic and grounding.

The main hawk seems to be guarding the path down to the beach and the paired cliffs, stones, flowers and bonfires give the impression of boundary markers. I remember one of the books describing beaches as the boundary between land and sea, and therefore sacred places. The sea would be the great beyond and mystery to ancient cultures, particularly hunter gatherers, and the dark grey sky may also signify this. The carving of the cauldron could represent magic potions, the womb or perhaps ceremonies which would probably have included bonfires as with the festivals marking the boundaries between seasons - maybe it marks the beach as being a sacred site or it could imply transformation as with the bonfires changing the wood (earth) into smoke (air) - the card shows one bird on the earth and one in the air.

There is quite a good blend of earth, air, fire and water on this card and the hawk is able to soar through the sky, above the rain clouds where the sun is and look down on it all with its awareness and intelligence. Perhaps the bird could represent spirit as the living consciousness that is able to observe and appreciate the world of nature and the four elements. The cauldron could then correspond with this physical world where the elements are mixed and cooked to distil spirit, and the carving of the hawk would be another sign of a spiritual site.

Well, surprisingly I seem to have got plenty from merely looking at the card and what it’s saying to me is that this is actually what I should be doing - so maybe I’ll just leave those books in the bookcase. ;)
 

2dogs

I didn’t want to open the book but wondered whether I could find out any more about the Hawk, so thought I’d try asking my other decks as with the Air Dragon, but the other way round. I asked ”what more information can you give me about the Hawk card?”.

Well this was certainly an eye-opener. :bugeyed: The first card (from a deck of 158) was Sun - I was expecting something a bit more cryptic, but no, it’s a very straightforward correspondence. The image even looks similar to the eye of the Hawk.

The next card, Ruthenium again has an immediate visual similarity to both the eye and the Sun card, the all seeing eye of the Sun either reflected in the objects of the world, or perhaps present in them? The text on the back explains that this sample was made using an intensely hot, bright arc furnace.

Rainbow shows the sea in the background of the Hawk card, but the light of the Sun has now produced a rainbow in that cloudy sky. The phrase on the card Connect to Spirit in Nature suggests the rainbow is of a different nature to the four elements and represents the spirit or consciousness within the world. This is card 1 in the deck so also suggests a beginning, original state, potential or unity - the white light before it was split into colours.

Redwood Tree could be repeating the image of the pine tree in the Hawk card as the small sapling in the foreground, overshadowed by the infinitely greater redwood trees that have grown in the light of the Sun. The keyword Apotheosis meaning “raising to godlike stature” gives the idea that the concept represented by the Hawk card may be much grander and more significant than immediately suggested by the image of the bird.

The final card was the Ace of Wands, again a number 1 and a fire or tree card. The keyword Illumination suggests both the light of the Sun as shown in rainbow coloured rays incorporating images of the Sun, stars, galaxies, growing plants, the phases caused by its reflection from the Moon - and also clarity and piercing insight as shown by the multi coloured X Ray image of a hand (the Sun also emits X Rays).

Uh oh, the radio is playing The Bird Has Flown by Deep Purple and I know the guitarist Ritchie Blackmore went on to form Rainbow - it must be time to take a break. :eek:
 

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DragonFae

Wow...just wow....that is so interesting I might have to ask some of my other decks about my card: Mountain Lion.
 

GoldenWolf

What jumps out at me most are the eyes of the hawk, suggesting its most obvious power is that of perception, observing, seeing things clearly, small details and distant objects. The owl is a similar hunting bird that is active at night rather than in the daytime, giving me the idea that these two birds could correspond to the sun and moon.

2dogs, you did an amazing job in just working with this symbol intuitively. As I recall, Ted Andrews indicated that owl and hawk are two sides of the same coin with owl being the lunar aspect and hawk the solar aspect.