A LITTLE HISTORY
Ornithomancy, or bird divination, is one of those practices thousands of years old. Cultures all over the world have practiced bird divination. It isn’t hard to see why. Many tend to think of God/Gods as Up There, and birds fly freely Up There, so by association, they’ve been seen as messengers of the Gods. Some cultures, such as the Greeks, Romans, Germans, and Celts, preferred to give greater weight to certain species of birds, and most of these were predators. The ancient Aztecs had been looking around for just the right location for their magnificent new capital city, when one day they spied an eagle, perched on a cactus, fighting a snake it held in its grip. Taking this as a clear omen from the Gods, the Aztecs built their city on that very spot. Mexico City now stands there, and this omen is on the Mexican Flag. The cultures who practiced this divinatory art did not take it lightly.
It was the ancient Romans who really raised the practice of bird divination to a high-art. The word auspice, which in the original sense of the term means ‘omen’ or ‘prognostication’, comes from the Latin word for ‘an observer of birds.’ Roman diviners followed a specific procedure for bird divination. The augur sat at the mouth of a tent on a hill. He wore a special robe and wielded a special augural staff for the ritual, with which he outlined the divining area in the sky and the terrain, from which he would draw omens. The augur then poured out a libation of wine (I’m not clear if this was straight onto the ground or into an offering-bowl) and prayed to the Roman sky god Jupiter to ‘grant that there be unerring signs within the boundaries that I have described.’ I don’t know how long the augur performed this divination, but given that drawing omens from the behavior of birds was the augur’s full-time job, he likely did this for hours each day. (He probably had a whole list of things he needed to get a yea, nay, or meh on). After the unspecified period of time elapsed, the augur would pronounce either ‘the birds approve’ or ‘the birds disapprove.’
By the nineteenth century in Italy, bird divination had been reduced to street fortunetellers with trained parakeets, who, for a small fee, chose at random a slip of paper with the inquirer’s fortune written on it, sort of like ornithological fortune cookies.
This is fascinating. Studying metaphysics has always been a hobby of mine. Great blog!!!
Thank you! I’m glad you find it interesting.