A robin's true Tarot tale

Tarot for animal whispering....

Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash

 

There are many depictions of animals and birds in the Tarot.  Quite right too. They form a great part of the human landscape physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, and symbolically. If there’s a heaven, what would it be without them?

I wouldn’t mind, personally if mosquitoes, maggots, deadly snakes and komodo dragons didn’t make it. Spiders would be all right, as long as they were non-venomous and less than two inches in diameter. However, it’s not me in charge.

But I digress.

The  songbird traditionally most associated with Christmas, or to give the winter festival its older name,  Yuletide – is the robin redbreast. The cheeky, dumpy little European robin, Erithacus rubecula is a member of the flycatcher family. The British robin is the same European bird species, but this is a different family to the American robin.

Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash

Its preferred habitats are woodlands, hedgerows, parks and garden. Its staple diet is worms, seeds, fruits and insects. It will fight over sunflower seeds and it adores mealworms. You can buy these in dried form in lots of outlets including many supermarkets. They look revolting though people used to baiting fish hooks won’t mind them. Robins have been known to take mealworms by hand, so irresistibly delicious are they to robin-kind.

Male and female European robins are identical to look at, adults of both sexes having the red breast. But -not so many people know this- juvenile robins don’t have the red breast. The breast of the young robin is a speckled golden-brown colour, and this lack of red colouring marks them as juveniles and defends them from territorial attack by adults. The robin lives a little over one year on average in the wild. If it lives beyond 1.1 years it may live twelve years. The robin has even been known to reach the age of twenty, but such a long life is rare.

The robin’s endearing appearance belies its feistiness. The robin redbreast will fight to the death for its territory. One in ten robins die in combat, and males and females will duel one another to the death. They have been seen to chase off pigeons much bigger than they are. The one in my garden right now however, is rather timid and will scurry into the rosemary when a pigeon appears. Well, I suppose they are individuals just as we are.

Robin redbreast builds a cup-shaped nest in a hole or hidden in ground cover, and will sing all year round. Click here to hear its song and for other general information from the RSPB:-

The robin received the human pet name of ‘Robin’ in the fifteenth century. In some traditions, the robin is regarded as a bird of ill omen, a harbinger of death. It is considered unlucky for a robin to fly into a house. Death is expected to follow. For this reason, a Christmas card with a picture of a robin on it is not always welcome with people who are aware of this tradition.

But compassion and care for the dead is also attributed to the robin. One legend says that it tried to help Christ, pulling off a thorn from the crown Jesus had been made to wear, injuring itself in the process – hence its red breast.

If your robin seems shy, it may be a winter visitor from Europe. Native British robins haunt our gardens, more so than our European winter visitors which tend to favour woodlands in their native lands. (I live in coastal NW England, UK.)

All right, there, you cheeky robin, staring in at the window. First things first. I’m on my way out with  sugared bread (for energy it’s better to give them cake or sugared bread than plain bread.) Here are some mealworms, and let’s hang up a half coconut of fat and nuts. But note this, my fine robin friend; this is not just for you. You’re sharing it with the blue-tits and coal-tits, the blackbirds,  sparrows and the finches.

The North Wind Doth blow

And we shall have snow

And what will the robin do then, poor thing?

He’ll hide in a barn

To keep himself warm

And hide his head under his wing, poor thing.

Tarot Interview with the robin

Photo by nateprat on Unsplash

Let’s find out what the robin- currently peering out from the safety of the big rosemary bush- will tell us via the Tarot.

Are you a cock or hen robin?

Answer card: The High Priestess. Hen robin. Just to make sure, I pull another card and get the Moon Reversed. Meanings: I am a hen bird. I am solitary right now, I want no mate. This is not the time.

What are you thinking right now?

Answer card: The Empress. Meaning? What have we here? Food! I have discovered a new harvest!  Being provided for, I must eat my fill while I can.

I pull another card, just as the robin flies off again…and, strangely enough, the card is The Chariot.  The robin has flitted just a short distance to sit on top of the seed feeder hung in the bare branches of the laburnum tree.

Why have you gone to sit there?

Answer card: The Seven of Wands Reversed.  Meaning: I am tired and I must be careful. This is a good vantage point from which to spy out enemies and not be taken unawares.

What’s your favourite time of year?  

Answer card: The Empress Reversed.  Meaning: A time when there are plenty of fruits and seeds, but there are still sheltering leaves on the trees. A time when there are still long hours of light to feed by, and sometimes there’s still warmth…the night is not so bitter, the air does not bite so hard. My legs creak like sticks at first light, but now I must move or die. I need the Empress (food, shelter, warmth, protection)

OK, verification may not be an option, I have done animal readings before, sometimes of behalf of human carers, cats, dogs, horses, often enough to receive validation from the human commissioning the investigation, to know that tarot can definitely work inter-species.

Probably it wouldn’t work so well with all species. I might have real trouble tuning in to, say, a snail or a jellyfish. A central nervous system possibly too alien to my own. At any rate, how would I validate the findings?

Photo by Sean Kiley on Unsplash

But since the point of the tarot is that it affords a means of extending perception beyond the boundaries of self, and living things share common drives and goals, why should we not expect to be able to use our cards for reading animal and bird behaviours? Sentient beings, whether bare or feathered, scaled or furry, we share common drives, though obviously we need to be aware of the risk of over-anthropomorphising our impressions.

The Ace of Pentacles in a tarot deck is the Ace of the Element of Earth. Of Nature.

Below: The Ace of Pentacles from The Legacy of the Divine Tarot.

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

―Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

We are “Exalted in the Earth.”

Until next time :)