B is for - Blue Crow

What I'm about to share with you now is very personal. It is about my spiritual path and how I was given the name Blue Crow. I'm a bit wary expressing it as it goes but I think it's time.

Back in the day of forums, we had to invent a user name. Remember those? Lots of well known goddesses and the such were used.  I used to be IckleSlaine after my tattoo of an ickle Slaine McRoth (2000ad geek n proud). This was circa 2002. I then shortened it to Slaine, which I used for a few years.

Ickle Slaine

I went to work for the MOD in 2004 at RAF Henlow and outside my window was the Hunter gate guardian and some chestnut trees that these two crows used to sit in. I always did stare out of windows as a kid and not much has really changed.  I'd just started discovering my spiritual path. I had been down the spiritualist route and was the Secretary of the SNU church in Letchworth GC.  By 2004, I had discovered that what I was had a name and that was 'pagan'.  Everyone had their paths and discussed these at length and of course, people had their 'spirit' names. Usually these had some mystical creature in them and they often assumed a whole new personality (online) to match their character name. Yes, I went there, character name.  It is too easy to get caught up in playgan roleplaying... yes I went there too! Aren't I naughty lol ! I think what I'm saying is that a fair few of these people were full of shit really.  They did it because it was fashionable and because the big kids on the forum did it too and looked cool and knowledgeable. Fair enough, it's easy to get caught up in it all.

The point is, at the time, I didn't really know what path I was on. I had been told by three shamans (proper ones, not like the latest fad of wannabes DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THAT FFS) that I was a shaman. I had no idea what that was, other than the American Indian sort.  I did some research and found an excellent book called Shamans through time - 500 years. It was a big fat book of written accounts by anthropologists, missionaries and that ilk who'd gone into the world to study/explore/convert and had found shamans in near enough every culture. Their accounts vary from Christian bias to those who went to live with the tribe for a month and learn how the shaman works in their community healing the sick etc.  The original term of shaman was used for a tribe in Siberia but it has since become a generic term throughout the world. Not that the know-it-alls on the forum cared, if you weren't from that tribe in Siberia you weren't a shaman and you were a fake. 20 posts per page, 15 pages later... I'm still being flayed for daring to 'come out' as someone who'd been told I was a shaman but didn't know what that meant.  Oh My Gods, it was horrendous.  Nearly a decade has gone by and it still haunts me... and that's why I get wary sharing! Nice way to help someone on their path isn't it? So much for peace and love! Don't get me started....

View outside my office window on a foggy day

Anyway, I digress!
One of the many lunchtimes gazing out the window, I was daydreaming (also normal) and I wondered what my spirit name was. The crows were out front, playing about, looking for food, chasing off the magpie (usual stuff for them) and I got the name 'Blue Crow'.  It was just there, in my head. I asked why and what it meant and I received no reply.  It was about two years later that I was told what it meant.

I was writing a lot of poetry at this time and here is one I penned about my friends the crows at work. My friend Cliff Carr turned it into a song and has performed it at Avebury, which is a bit surreal hearing your words being turned into music.

Crow he calls

Oh how he calls to me

‘Pick up your ears and listen

For I have much to say!’

Can you not hear the call?

Can you not understand?

You can see crow everywhere

You can hear his calls

Loudly he cries his message

Over and over again

I pick up my ears and listen

To what he’s trying to say

‘Come follow me!

Go deep within yourself

Close your eyes and slow your breath

Spread your wings and fly’

‘Fly above it all and survey the land

Call out what you see

Feel the earth and skies unite

Ride the updraft of the breath of life’

This is the path of Sacred Law

This is the call of crow

These are the words that reach my ears

Crows call penetrates my soul

December 2004

Time flies and roll on December 2007 and I had that 'aha!' moment and then it made sense.. for a short time because you're not supposed to make sense of your life, only the lessons passing through it at that time.

Blue is the sky

That envelopes us all

Blue is the healing rays

Blue is the deepest seas & skies

Crow is the Keeper of Sacred Law

Truth of Time kept

Blue Crow is the Keeper of what covers us all

The whole world

All times

I hold it all

I cannot unlock these secrets I keep

Only Time will reveal them 

when they need to be

So there you have it. How I got my name and what I was told it means. It's hard to believe it's been six years since all that happened.  I will probably write more about it when I get to the letter S on the blog project. Blimey, just thought, that will be nearly at the end of this year... who knows what will happen til then. 

That last paragraph of the last poem may need some explaining. All I can say for now is - it's a past life thing.