The Crow

The beautiful creature that helped me move on

I sit to write under a supermoon. The veil between worlds is a little thinner tonight and it seems a fitting time to remember my encounter with the crow.

Last December, I again called upon my friend and guide Lina. We had worked together a year previously with the help of MDMA. The journey had been revolutionary in helping me to connect with my innermost being. In that state, I was able to unburden myself of deep layers of shame and unleash the grief I had held within. However, despite changing so much about my life, I was still heavy with the weight of fatigue and ill-health and felt unable to move forward. I needed help. She came, across oceans, with her wisdom, her care and her medicine – this time in mushroom form. I showed her to the small room I had prepared simply with blankets, refreshments and candles. I didn’t know what to expect and was both nervous and excited. I trusted her to help me through. She asked me about my intentions but I didn’t have a precise direction. On some level, I must have known there were mysteries within and something in me wouldn’t rest until they had been unearthed. Life certainly would have been simpler if I could have brushed it all under the carpet, but my body had wisdom I could not consciously comprehend and it was pushing me along the path of discovery.

We began at midday and I settled into my shelter. Eyes covered, I went inward. I focused on my breath and tried to relax. I knew it might take a while to feel any effect and I watched the blackness behind my eyes, waiting for colours or shapes… something like I had heard others describe.

About an hour in, I was getting a little bored. I wondered why I hadn’t felt a shift or seen anything otherworldly. And then, I heard a “quack” and it sounded close. Hmm, strange, I thought. I don’t feel high, but I suppose I must be imagining it. Silence for a few minutes and then I heard it again, louder and more agitated this time. I heard Lina open the door, walk in the next room and then come back again moments later a little flustered.
“Lina… is there a duck in the house?” I said, laughing to myself at the ridiculous notion.
“Yes she said, I think so”.

She sounded uncertain. I knew the room in question was full to the brim with boxes and stacked furniture from our move a few months prior. She could hear the bird but could not get to it beyond the clutter. “Let’s just leave it for now” she said.

But the bird did not agree. I could hear the sound of wings beating furiously and the intensity of screeches rising. Lina decided she must indeed face the bird. Using the skills of gymnasts (she described it to me later), she fought her way over side tables and lamps towards the window. Once there she met a big, black, shining bird, glaring and fluttering. It was the crow. It hopped from one leg to the other impatiently, desperate to get outside. The window was of course jammed and I could hear her hammering at the old wooden frame with her fist.

When she came back into the room a few minutes later, I told her that I didn’t want the crow to leave, in fact, I wanted to meet the bird and that perhaps it wanted to stay with me.
“No” she said, “The bird wanted to be free, it couldn’t wait to get outside, it flew out like a jet as soon as the window opened”.

I’ll never know what it all means for sure, But Lina told me that she believed the crow was my lost child, the baby who hadn’t made it full term. Indy. I had held him close, in my grief, not wanting to be parted from him. In my altered state, I had finally let him be free.

The crow was just the beginning of my journey, the door that opened, to let out the shadows. It is all a little hazy to me now. What was so vivid then in its truth, is now questionable and muted. I tell you, in good faith, what I learnt, knowing that it sounds unreal. I never did see any visions. No other worlds or sounds in technicolour. Instead, I felt. My body took over and I spent the next eight hours doing what I would describe as extreme yoga. I bent and twisted myself in ways I had never imagined. The darkness had been trapped in the very tissues of my muscles, bones and fascia and in order to release it, I had to reach it through stretching.

I began to talk of what I had carried within me, that there was a hatred of women within my family and that I had been given this hatred many times by the men in my life. Father, brother, lover. This was a black and evil lineage that I saw as a dark, creeping mass within my abdomen and womb. It was this I was trying to shift with the involuntary movements.

I had to re-form with new boundaries. This is my house, I declared. Get the fuck out of my house, I repeated over and over as I pictured brick walls being built as a fortress around my torso. I developed a friendship with my body that day, and we were on a mission to reclaim my autonomy.

As the medicine faded, I curled up, exhausted.
“It’s not gone,” I said with dread. All that effort and I could still feel it within me. “This is just the beginning,” she said quietly in reply.

The next few months were very difficult. The movements did not stop. I would wake in the middle of the night, contorted and know that I needed to arch my back and grit my teeth and let my body move. The work was not done. It was during these late-night sessions that I experienced a succession of flashbacks that let me know I had been sexually abused as a small child in my family home. It was all completely terrifying and unsettling. But also, it was a relief. The worst thing of all is not understanding oneself. I had always felt lost and confused, with a total blankness where childhood memories should have been. This made sense. And from this place, I could move forward. I could be wrathful. I could understand myself in relation to my family and to men. I could stop pretending that I should have been grateful for my upbringing when all I wanted to feel was bereft. Suffice it to say, it was a long and complicated journey to integrate what I learned into my life and to use it to make me strong. I may never complete this process and certainly I cannot erase the scars. It is not and may never be gone from my body but I know it has shifted in the direction of freedom. I accept where I am. What I am.

There are such huge themes to explore here – patriarchy, suppression of women, abuse, self-empowerment – I get overwhelmed thinking about how to address them. And so I won’t. I simply tell you my story thus far.

And so, back to the dear crow. The beast that flew down a chimney to help me in my hour of need. How incredible. I tell you, no bird of any kind has entered my house before or since. It cannot be coincidence. And if I ever feel bogged down by the greyness this world can sometime be, I just remember the crow and I know what magic there is if we are only open to it.

…………………………………..

NB. I heard from my sister that the bird in question is more likely a rook. The cry of a rook can be similar to that of a duck. I assumed wrongly that crows were more common. Rooks, Crows and Ravens are similar birds who all belong to the corvid (Corvidae) family. All three have strong associations with mythology and death, as messengers and guides. I don’t think this rook will mind if I name him crow, no doubt he has no use of labels.