The Dark Night of the Soul of Robins and Rebirth
Robins
Robins are friendly to humans, they can be hand fed and also tamed.
Hugh Warwick, for example, trained a Robin in his back garden in the UK to eat from his hand
Male robins are territorial and fight other male robins,
but they do no harm to humans, or each other
So why is it that a superstition has lingered that Robins are associated with death
and are feared in some areas of the UK [and Europe]?
Rebirth
At one time the Robin was a symbol of Rebirth
Rebirth is associated with the symbolic Element ‘Fire’, which is red
And it is a stage in the Spiritual Path generally called Purgatory [because it is]
In some shamanic and indigenous societies the whole process was deliberately invoked
with the aim of making young boys into ‘men’ and putting them in touch with ancestral help,
which is why only male robins attract this symbolism
Methods used
The Australian aborigines, the Native American Indians , the Mayans, the Incas, the Aztecs,
the Tibetan Buddhists , the Druids and the Fakirs of India,
[seen here] all had methods designed to provoke a rebirth experience in men
They might be placed in pitch black caves for several days
with the skeletons of their dead relatives
or to become a dead relative for a new Initiate, if they failed, as this process was not safe
or placed in Barrows with their dead relatives
or placed in sepulchres and crypts in graveyards
or taken to the centre of pyramids and left for days
on end with only a small air shaft to keep them alive
or dumped in the desert for several days without food or water
or placed on the top of very high mountains, all alone
or left alone in the cold and the snow of an arctic landscape
or even left in the tunnels of old mines
these are the workings of Grimes Graves an old Flint mine
and from these artificial ‘caves’, they made artificial hills
The principle method used was sensory deprivation, but fasting was often added
And many Initiates died because the process was so brutal.
Some from terror, some from hypoxia. And when they died they left them there.
And that is why we find so many bones in all these places, many of whom were not very old.
Who killed Cock Robin
"Who killed Cock Robin?" "I," said the Sparrow,
"With my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin."
"Who'll toll the bell?" "I," said the bull,
"Because I can pull, I'll toll the bell."
All the birds of the air fell a-sighing and a-sobbing,
When they heard the bell toll for poor Cock Robin.
An example
An example from Lame Deer Seeker of Visions
by John Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes
I was all alone on the hilltop. I sat there in the vision pit, a hole dug into the hill,
my arms hugging my knees as I watched the medicine man who had brought me there,
disappear far down in the valley.
He was just a moving black dot among the pines and soon he was gone altogether.
... here I was, crouched in my vision pit, left alone by myself for the first time in my life.
I was sixteen then, still had my boy's name and let me tell you, I was scared.
I was shivering and not only from the cold.
The nearest human being was many miles away, and four days and nights is a long time.
Of course, when it was all over, I would no longer be a boy, but a man.
I would have had my vision. I would be given a man's name.
Sioux men are not afraid to endure hunger, thirst and loneliness,
and I was only 96 hours away from being a man.
The thought was comforting.
Comforting too was the warmth of the star blanket
which old man Chest had wrapped around me to cover my nakedness.
My grandmother had made it especially for this, my first hanblechia, my first vision seeking.
It was a beautifully designed quilt,
white with a large morning star made of many pieces of brightly coloured cloth.
That star was so big is covered most of the blanket.
If Wankan Tanka the Great Spirit would give me the vision and the power,
I would become a medicine man and perform many ceremonies wrapped in that quilt...
Sounds came to me through the darkness; the cries of the wind,
the whisper of the trees, the voices of nature, animal sounds, the hooting of an owl.
Suddenly I felt an overwhelming presence.
Down there with me in my cramped hole was a big bird.
The pit was only as wide as myself and I was a skinny boy,
but that huge bird was flying around me as if he had the white sky to himself.
I could hear his cries, sometimes near and sometimes far, far away.
I felt feathers or a wing touching my back and head.
This feeling was so overwhelming that it was just too much for me.
I trembled and my bones turned to ice.
I grasped the rattle with the forty pieces of my grandmother's flesh.
It also had many little stones in it, tiny fossils picked up from an ant heap.
Ants collect them. Nobody knows why.
These little stones are supposed to have a power in them.
I shook the rattle and it made a soothing sound, like rain falling on rock.
It was talking to me, but it did not calm my fears.
I heard a human voice too, strange and high pitched,
a voice which could not come from an ordinary, living being.
All at once I was way up there with the birds.
The hill with the vision pit was way above everything.
I could look down even on the stars, and the moon was close to my left side.
It seemed as though the earth and the stars were moving below me.
A voice said 'You are sacrificing yourself here to be a medicine man. In time you will be one.
You will teach other medicine men.
We are the fowl people, the winged ones, the eagles and the owls.
We are a nation and you shall be our brother. You will never kill or harm any one of us.
You are going to understand us whenever you come to seek a vision here on this hill.
You will learn about herbs and roots and you will heal people.
You will ask them for nothing in return. A man's life is short. Make yours a worthy one.'
I felt these voices were good, and slowly my fear left me. I had lost all sense of time.
I did not know whether it was day or night. I was asleep, yet wide awake.
Then I saw a shape before me.
It rose from the darkness and the swirling fog which penetrated my earth hole.
I saw this was my great grandfather, Tahca Ushte, Lame Deer, old man chief of the Minneconjou.
. I could see the blood dripping from my great grandfather's chest
where a white soldier had shot him.
I understood that my great grandfather wished me to take his name.
Rebirth and Christianity
Christianity initially accepted the rebirth process
St. Oran was a druid living on the Island of Iona in Scotland's Inner Hebrides.
He became a follower of St. Columba,
who brought Christianity to Iona from Ireland in 563 AD...
When St. Columba had repeated problems building the original Iona Abbey,
St. Oran offered himself as a medium between the spirit world and the Saint
and at his request was ‘buried alive.’
He was later dug up and found to be still alive,
and had clearly had many spiritual experiences.
He described the afterlife he had seen,
but rather embarrassingly for the churchmen of the time
he said it involved no heaven or hell.
So embarrassing were his visions that he was ordered to be covered up again.
The building of the Abbey went ahead,
and St. Oran's chapel marks the spot where the saint was buried - alive.”
So the process was removed from the Christian system
and the robin acquired a new symbolic meaning, he became a symbol of Jesus.
The robin’s little red breast now represented the bloody breast of Jesus
as he was pierced by the sword.
And the holly of Winter came to symbolise the Crown of Thorns.
With its red berries as drops of blood.
And by doing so, the new religion avoided all those embarrassing revelations
and not a few deaths of young men who were needed to fight crusades.
The irony is that of course Jesus too was buried in a tomb
and after three days was resurrected