From an Urban Hermitage

I have a post I've been working on in my head about the past few weeks. In very short form, the problems I've been having in my spiritual life came to another head, but this time instead of the event cycling through a depression followed by a renewed determination to not give up, it just kind of... broke, in a more permanent sense. This is not necessarily a bad thing (though I'm not saying it's a wholly good thing either, I'm not sure right now), that previous cycle is one I've gone through a hundred times by now and it never does anything but repeat itself. I have dropped all practices for the last three weeks, spiritual, magical, everything. I have been reevaluating where I am, what I'm doing, why I'm doing it and where I ought to go from here.

I have something to say about all that. But that's not this post. This post is about something weird that happened yesterday.

As a prologue to this, let me bring up a minor incident from the summer, I can't remember exactly when. I happened to be looking out the living room window when I saw a woodpecker land for a few minutes on the small, sad tree growing at a sharp angle along the sidewalk across the street from me. Moving to this city has brought me into contact with a lot more nature than I might've expected, I've seen animals around here I haven't come across before, and that includes woodpeckers that I've encountered two other times, though both of those times were in more forested areas. The area my apartment is in is pretty much the opposite of that, and I was surprised to see him. He hung out on the tree trunk, very clearly visible, for a few minutes before taking off.

I was still thinking about it days later, and started poking around online, out of a curiosity, to see if there was any symbolism or mythological connections. I didn't find much, except that the Romans considered the woodpecker to be Mars's bird. An interesting thought, Mars has come up indirectly more than once in the ever rotating list of names my brain is spitting out at me (but indirectly - Celtic Mars, or Mars as he was worshipped in Gaul and Britain, crossed with Celtic deities - there is another story here, too, but I'm skipping it for now). But the list of names is ever shifting and it is easy enough to say and why would Mars contact you? Yeah, thought so. So I didn't go any further than the quick internet search, moved on to other unproductive paths, remembered the woodpecker as an unusual sighting and thought little else of it.

Now, yesterday.

The room mate and I were going to spend the day at the beach, as I like doing as often as I can in the spring and fall (I loathe the heat and crowds, so I avoid it in the summer). She went off in one direction to pick up some food, I wandered down another to get closer to transportation. And as I'm walking, in my path I see a bird lying in the middle of the sidewalk. Looked like a corpse, wouldn't be the first time, and I had to cross the street anyway so I started angling away from it. But I could see it wasn't a pigeon, or one of the other garden variety birds one sees all over the place, so I decided I was curious enough to know what it was and walked closer instead.

It was a woodpecker, as I'm sure you guessed. Coming closer also revealed the bird was alive, I could see it breathing.

I ended up squatting down on the sidewalk next to the bird, I got close enough I could watch him blinking. That's all he was doing, lying there on his stomach, with his head turned to the side, breathing and blinking. Some time passed, he didn't move or react much to my presence. I wasn't sure if he was hurt and I didn't want to just leave him there. I contacted the room mate to let her know what was going on, and she's looking to see who we could call.

This is over the course of ten minutes. I'm looking at the bird, and my vision starts suddenly blurring; I can still see him just fine, but the sidewalk around him is shifting. It was like what used to happen sometimes when I was doing the Sphere of Protection, being able to actually see the energy around you. Looked like a lot of it right there, more than I was used to seeing.

Then the bird suddenly snaps up, he's up on his feet, hunched forward and looking upward. Another minute, and he flies away.

Okay then. I continue on my way.

I keep thinking about it though. As far as signs, as omens go, it's a more powerful one than the first. I don't expect to see a woodpecker outside my window in an inner city neighborhood, but i can happen; this is a bird I wouldn't have expected to see, lying in my path (a relatively private path, too, this is not a heavily trafficked area I was walking through, I might see one car going by, one other person, often not even that - the bird and I had all the privacy in the world there) and behaving unusually.

Once upon a time, I probably would've acted on it without much second thought. But at this particular point in time, after everything that has been going through my head the last three weeks. Stopping the quest to fix things was only hard the first few days, it was, overall, a mental relief. Coming to better understand what was really motivating that quest. Coming to peace with the fact that the old patron relationship I once had is indeed gone, and furthermore that I might not be able to have a spiritual life right now, maybe not for a long time to come; that maybe that will be okay, maybe I need to focus on something else right now.

So I'm taking it seriously. But at the same time, I do not want to start that old cycle again. I don't want to see something, assume something, start chasing after something, that isn't there, because I want it to be there, want something to be there.

I'm standing alone on the beach, and I offer up a quick prayer. As odd as that encounter was, I can't accept it as an omen by itself. For all these very sane reasons. If this really was an omen, if this meant something, someone trying to get my attention, then I need a second omen to back it up.

What sort of omen? I wonder to myself, what would count, what could I not dismiss? Probably too much to ask that Mars drops a second woodpecker on my head in one day. Number symbolism? Didn't know any off the top of my head. Planetary sign? I did know it of course, but no. A image of a Roman solider? Might work, but how likely might that be? Or how about this, how about I just see the word Mars somewhere before I get home today. That didn't seem likely either, but what else could I use.

I keep an eye out for a while, but there is little else to see on the beach, too few other people to introduce any random events. The day goes by, at the end of it I've walked ten miles and even my eyebrows hurts, and I still got to walk home. I get back to the city, sleepwalking just about, trying to move as quick as I'm able to. Pass the more populated areas and I'm about to go into the same relatively people free zone I was in that morning; passing the street light where I see someone has tacked up some notice, a piece of paper in a plastic envelope, facing out toward the busier street. I'm not paying much attention to it or anything else, but I must've scanned just enough of it to make me stop.

Project M.A.R.S.

I think it was about a research study, something about drugs and alcohol. It didn't really sink in, it was beside the point.

I got my second omen. Exactly the one I'd asked for, in exactly the time frame I specified.

It's certainly a lot clearer than anything else has been in a number of years. There have been a couple odd random events that might have meant something (something I'm possibly not interpreting correctly), but an odd random event couple with a specifically asked for one?

Room mate threw some tarot cards down for me this morning, just to clarify. They were mostly wands. It seemed to be further confirmation.

I said if I got the second omen I'd do something about it. So I suppose I now have to do something about it. And not go completely off the rails with it either. I've started thinking clearly again, don't want to lose that.

The other post will come, it just might take a little longer with this new development.

What would a god like Mars (Celtic Mars? some form of Mars?) want to do with me? Still a good question, I suppose it's one I'll have to ask.