The Raven's Memories

Courage and tenderness in someone's eyes give you the strenght to move on. One step forward and it changes everything.

Distance only makes the journey more incredible, but I heard that hearts joined together for once, will share a bond for always. So, even when we see each other splited by lands and seas, we can trust our feelings of unity. Maybe this is the sand that moves the gear. Maybe it is the power that turns the wheel of fortune and allows us to gather the memories lost along the way. 

No one can explain the connection. The answer comes from ancient wisdom and beliefs that transcend our vil understanding.

Pagan legends talk about Raven's as messengers of existence.  They are there at birth, they are there at war, they are there at death; they are there to keep memories and be the reasonable guardians of thoughts. 

Odin, father of the Aesir, was constantly represented in companion of his crows Hugin and Munin (Thought and Memory, respectively). As the main God from Nordic mythology, Odin represented weighing and strength, and his words were taken by other gods as absolute. A poem illustrates the importance of Hugin and Munin to comprehension of psychological theory that circles the legends.

"Hugin and Munin fly each day over the spacious earth.

I fear for Hugin, that he come not back,

yet more anxious am I for Munin."

It is obviously an inner reflection about ourselves. Just as Odin, the ancients enjoyed to disguise their messages, so they would be well received as if they came from the gods themselves. And who can say they weren’t sacred anyway? Well, after all, Hugin and Munin represent the past and the present. Memories keep alive everything we were and everyone who crossed our paths, as thoughts heal our wounds and allow us to make a better history.   

But we constantly look after memories. We prefer to go for them, than keep going with our own ideas. Is this so bad? I don’t think so.

Morrigan, the celtic goddess of war and birth, was also represented as or in companion of ravens. Sometimes, she assumed a raven form to send messages to warriors or to sign a new birth. What this suppose to mean?

Raven brings life, and new life is born with ancient spirit. So, the raven carries the memories from another time, but also the possibility of building a whole new story through thoughts.  

Even so, one cannot exist without other. And again, memories will reunite old fellows in order to face ancient challenges by the new point of view created by our present thoughts. Our ability to think is what makes possible the reunion of souls, it’s their reason to be.

Uther Pendragon, in the masterpiece of literature “The Mists of Avalon” (Marion Zimmer Bradley, 1979), tells Igraine about his deep feelings, that can only be explained by rescuing old memories:

"I cannot regret it. They tell us in the temple that true joy is found only in freedom from the Wheel that is death and rebirth, that we must come to despise earthly joy and suffering, and long only for the peace of the presence of the eternal. Yet I love this life on Earth, Morgan*, and I love you with a love that is stronger than death, and if sin is the price of binding us together, life after life across the ages, then I will sin joyfully and without regret, so that it brings me back to you, my beloved!"

So, if death is only a start over, the ones who shared bonds in the beginning will be connected until the very end. And there’s no reason to fight against that beautiful reunion of spirits, even if it means changing our entire plans. Because when the time comes, we will see there’s no greater gift than feeling whole again and be the most important event in someone else's life.

*Morgan was Igraine’s name in another life.