Advent Of The Black Crow & The Exodus

י"ב בשבט תשס"ח
Imbolgen 12

I began reading my new book, Underworld Initiation by R. J. Stewart a few days ago. Nearly three weeks ago, I posted my dream, Cleave Land, writing in that post of red birds and of the advent of one black bird:

Off to the side of the road there was a huge field completely full of singing red birds. There were so many singing red birds that the songs and the birds themselves blurred into one sound and sight of indistinct red chaos, yet I concentrated (almost as if pulling myself inward together) to listen for a distinct message to come out from among them.

I focused. Many of the red birds suddenly just disappeared as if lifted off the page of the "place" I was seeing. No longer was there a blur of song and redness. Though the field was still full of birds, now I could see individual birds, whereas before they had all blurred together. Most were still red birds, but I could now see that there were birds of other colors scattered among them as well. Now, there was even a particular black bird whose voice emerged from the group and pulled my attention toward it. The black bird's song rose up as an individual song directly into my ear distinctly, out from the field of many birds.

In Underworld Initiation, R. J. Stewart writes:

This sphere is in fact, Feminine ... acting as a bridge of pure catabolic power between the Dark Mother and the Light or Instructing Mother. In Celtic lore, She is the Morrígan, the Red Bird of Battles, the active power of Death and Breakdown.

Mr. Stewart additionally writes of the Morrígan, whose totem is also a Black Crow, as the Archetype of Female Power as it pertains to further esoteric transformation of consciousness:

The Universal Tree may only be experienced direct, so words are of little value other than as loose instructions upon the way. Let us, like alchemists of old, seek the advent of the Black Crow.

The advent of the Black Crow in alchemy is a further development of the carrion crow who haunted the battlefields of ancient wars. The Crow is the Totem Beast of the Goddess of Death, breaking down the body that the spirit may be released. In our alchemical context, it is often described or shown in pictoral form as one of the stages of Transmutation.

Significantly, emergence of the Black Crow of liberation brings forth from the battlefield a particular path from among the various open paths which will lead one to the castle of the Kingdom.

The Red Sea of Birds of my dream symbolized wrestling with Judgment and the limitations of physicality (the Massa Confusa of Red Birds which lifted). The Red Birds which remained (Pelican stage of alchemical transmutation) in the (green) field of my dream acted as an anchor to physical incarnation. The "greenfield" of the dream correlates to my Jewish ancestral name Grunwald (meaning Greenfield) and to the alchemical stage of the Green Lion. The Birds of Many Colors in my dream refer to the Peacock's Tail stage, "the turning point" and signify that I am on the right path for my particularity. The Black Crow symbolizes liberation of consciousness from the pressing restrictions of the physical and psychic bodies, and an exodus from the dire straits of Mitzrayim. It's flight (as described in Cleave Land) symbolizes the rising of the Phoenix from The Flame:

The difference between my dream symbolism and that of typical alchemical transmutative processes is the absence of the "whitening" and "White Stone" stages. My particular chotimah is not only white, it is both a whitish (white flame and aura) and blackish (dark flame and coal) Flame of the Future World.

The cosmological Morrígan - an archetypal vehicle of deciding who will live and who will die.

Celtic Morrígan and Hebrew Lilith.

Morrígan as the guardian of Sovereignty.