Symbols - What does heaven look like
Bird
Although the video provides an introduction to Bird symbolism, we also have videos for a number of birds in the list below.
Birds are symbolic of spiritual travellers and usually those who have gone out of body [see Types of Spiritual Experience] and are thus free to roam the Egg and the Matrix. They are in the ascent – on the spiritual path and travelling closer to the centre and thus the Aether level.
Birds are capable of surviving on the Earth layer [see Levels and layers], on the Water level, though they are most at home in the medium of the Air.
They also have the capability to sing – see Songlines.
They build nests as such they are co-creators and their nests are symbolic of life’s spiritual journey – like a maze or a crown of thorns.
They can achieve spiritual experience during the day and by night [sleeping and dreaming].
They are also associated with trees and there is whole world of symbolism attached to trees, including the tree of life.
Thus they are symbolically related to much else that is symbolic. Furthermore, the character of birds differs, which makes them ideal symbolically, as they can represent aspects of personality.
The bird shares some of the symbolism of a Butterfly, but whereas few people ever see themselves as butterflies, a considerable number of people in visions and dreams become birds or fly as birds. Birds can thus be genuinely classified as ‘means of transport’.
There appears to be a general belief amongst eastern cultures that birds are the final stages of incarnation of a Higher spirit. Man and the animals being of the earth are neither free nor far seeing, a bird can roam anywhere and is completely free - as free as a bird!
This freedom and their higher status spiritually has led them to take on the role of helpers and messengers, both actually [physically] and in spiritual experiences - dreams etc. More information about this role, along with some interesting examples, is provided in the page on Messengers.
The chart below provides a cross reference to the symbolism of some birds. If the bird you saw or became is not in the list, it may still be on the site, please go to the symbol section.
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Observations
For iPad/iPhone users: tap letter twice to get list of items.
- A bird flying round the room and a wasp trying to sting her
- A dead father makes noises in the bed curtains - 'Papa, if that's you, speak or appear to us.' The noise ceased at once.
- A P Elkin - Aboriginal men of high degree - Yualai (Euahlayi) initiation
- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 03 - A Caucus race and a long tail
- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 05 - 2 Serpent
- Ancient Egyptian - The Paradise gardens and their symbolism
- Ancient Egyptian - The symbolism of the ankh
- Art F from Greenville, South Carolina
- Attar, Fariduddin - In the Dead of Night
- Attar, Fariduddin - The Hawk
- Aurora Consurgens - 03 An allegory of disorder
- Barbara Meyerhoff - Tries Peyote cactus
- Beddoes, Thomas Lovell - A Clock striking Midnight
- Bird shamans and celestial messages
- Black bars hovering over her like a cage
- Black Elk - Native American Indians - Circles within circles
- Blithe spirit - A warning from long tail tits
- Blithe spirit - OMENS!!
- Blithe spirit - The exit of the giants August 2015
- Blithe spirit - The Raven and the Dove
- Bonnard, Pierre - Femme au perroquet 1910
- Braveheart - Enters a castle
- Braveheart - An island hut and pencil case
- Braveheart - Crossing the bridge
- Braveheart - Forest of bright birds
- Braveheart - Guardians and keys
- Braveheart - Islands, bridges and pencil cases
- Braveheart - Lifting tree trunks
- Braveheart - Rivers, locks and nymphs
- Brunton, Dr Paul - A Search in Secret Egypt - A night inside the Great Pyramid 3
- Burton, Sir Richard - THE KASÎDAH 03 1
- Cadmus
- Cannabis and morning glory seeds - by Waking dream
- Chagall - birds
- Chagall - danse
- Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz - The Second Day
- Cirlot on bird size symbolism
- Cirlot on flocks of birds
- Cirlot on wings and birds
- Cohen, Dr Sidney - A woman patient's experience
- Cohen, Leonard - Ballad of the Absent Mare
- Cohen, Leonard - Bird on a wire
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor - The Day-Dream
- Crowley - 03 The Empress
- Crowley - 13 Death
- Dadd, Richard - Falling Bough
- Dante - Paradiso - The Ladder of Paradise
- David Lewis-Williams - Native American Indians - Flying
- Desnos, Robert - Identity Of Images (Identite des Images)
- Desnos, Robert - Ring of stars
- Dickinson, Emily - Because the bee may blameless hum For Thee a bee do I become
- Dickinson, Emily - Of being is a bird The likest to the down
- Dickinson, Emily - The lonesome for they know not what
- Dickinson, Emily - The Wind took up the Northern Things And piled them in the south
- Dickinson, Emily - When winds go round and round in Bands
- Dickinson, Emily - ‘Tis not that dying hurts us so ‘Tis living hurts us more
- Dr M Morse - From Closer to the Light - Egyptian rebirth reconstruction
- Dr. J. Garth Wilkinson - Evenings with Mr. Home and the Spirits 01
- Egyptian Book of the Dead - Spell 098
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Over-soul - Ascension
- Emily Jane Pfeiffer - The winged soul
- Engel, C - Musical Myths and Facts - Birdsong
- Engel, C - Siberian shamanism - Kamtschatka shamans
- Eno, Brian - Passengers – Full album
- Escher - birds
- Escher - The Four Elements
- Eusevgny Faygdish – Mystic Cosmos - Bird symbolism
- Flamel, Nicolas - Chymische Wercke - Hamburg edition 1681
- Fleetwood Mac - Rhiannon
- Frost, Robert - A bird half wakened in the lunar noon
- Frost, Robert - That far off day the leaves in flight
- Frost, Robert - The house had gone to bring again
- Gaudi - Professional work - 04 The Sagrada Família
- Genesis - Mad mad Moon
- Genesis 08 - the Flood
- Gentling the Bull – 00 Foreward by Chi-yuan to Master Kakuans Ten Bull pictures
- Gentling the Bull – 08 Both Bull and Man forgotten
- Goryeo kayo - Song of the Pigeon
- Grant Gronewald - HTML flowers - Bright threadz
- Grimble, Sir Arthur - And the Island of Whistling Spirits
- Gurney, Ivor and Edward Thomas - Snow
- Hafez of Shiraz - Thirty Poems - O royal keen eyed falcon
- Hafez of Shiraz - Thirty Poems - Where is the news
- Hammond, Bill - Jingle Jangle Morning
- Hammond, Bill - Ancient Pitch
- Hammond, Bill - Head
- Hammond, Bill - Signal Box
- Hammond, Bill - The Green Room
- Hammond, Bill - The Green Room II
- Hammond, Bill - Unknown European Artist
- Hammond, Bill - Whistler’s mothers sticks and stones
- Han Yu - A Girl from Splendour Bloom Mountain
- Hans Peter Duerr - Native American Indians - The Thorn Apple Witch
- Hans Peter Duerr - Tungus shaman
- Hawker, Robert Stephen - Modryb Marya - Now of all the trees by the King's highway
- Hawker, Robert Stephen - We stood beside an open grave By fair Morwenna's walls of grey
- Healer H - The lights upon them is what keeps them connected
- Hearing birdsong was like sleeping in an aviary
- Heine, Heinrich - A dream of fearful mystery
- Hennell, Thomas - A landscape of grass meadows
- Her husband came back as a bird
- Hiroshige - Rough sea at the whirlpools of Awa
- Hiroshige - shunga
- Hockney, David - Li Shangyin - Untitled poem
- Hodgson, Roger – Open the Door - Death and a Zoo
- Hokusai - Cocks
- Hokusai - Cranes
- Holmes, Oliver Wendell - A Parody on “A Psalm of Life”
- Homer - The Odyssey - The Sirens
- Hood, Thomas - I remember, I remember The house where I was born
- How sweet the heavens are
- Hughes, Ted - Crow - Crow decided to try words
- Hughes, Ted - Crow - To hatch a crow, a black rainbow
- Hughes, Ted - Crow - When the eagle soared clear
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - Fields and meadows
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - Tree of life
- I became a fox in a meadow
- I have never left a room without opening the window to allow the spirit to go free
- Isole Madre
- James, Henry - Autobiography - The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life
- Jami - Lucky is the one who realises the secret of being nobody
- Jason, medea and the teeth of the Dragon
- Jesus - Matthew 13 - Grain of mustard seed
- Joan Baez - Dream Song
- Joan Halifax - On shamanism
- Kabir - A certain bird sits in the tree
- Kabir - I know of a strange tree
- Kahuna - The witches of Normanby island
- Khan, Hazrat Inayat - The Art of Being and Becoming - On the stages of the mystic
- Khnopff, Fernand - Sleeping Medusa
- Khunrath, Heinrich - Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeterna 1602
- Khusrau, Amir - Ghazal 490 [extract]
- Lame Deer - Native American Indians - The Vision pit
- Leighton, Frederick Lord - A Girl feeding Peacocks
- Leighton, Frederick Lord - Venus disrobing for the bath
- Leonard Crow Dog - Native American Indians - The Vision pit
- Lethbridge, T C - Ghost and Ghoul - The robin and the 'sending'
- Lewis, C S - Prince Caspian - Sailing into the Light
- Li Po - Abandon
- M A Czaplicka - Siberian magic
- M A Czaplicka - Siberian shamanism
- M A Czaplicka - Siberian shaman’s dress
- Madame d’Esperance - Shadow Land - 29 The mole and the bird
- Magritte, Rene - La Therapie
- Magritte, Rene - L’entrée en scene
- Maisie Yarrcali Barlow - Jirrbal - a rainforest dreamtime story
- Mallarme, Stephane - Small air
- Manley Hopkins, Gerald - The Caged Skylark
- Marryat, Florence - The Spirit World – A person only attracts such spirits as stand on the same plane as itself
- Mascaro, Juan - The Bird in the Cage
- Masefield, John - Sonnets and Poems XXXII
- Matisse - Parrot and Siren
- Mayan - Kirchoff - 'Arrow sacrifice'
- Mesopotamian - Means of achieving spiritual experience - The prevalence of spiritual experience
- Michael Harner - Australian Aborigine - The Arunta
- Mircea Eliade - Australian Aboriginal Initiation rites
- Mircea Eliade - Bird as symbol of the spiritual person
- Mircea Eliade - Egyptian bird symbolism
- Mircea Eliade - Inuit - Some shamans have visited the moon
- Mircea Eliade - Kahuna symbolic Boat
- Mircea Eliade - On 'magical flight'
- Mircea Eliade - On animals and birds
- Mircea Eliade - On Bird song as spell
- Mircea Eliade - On Hindu flight
- Mircea Eliade - On Ostyak shamans
- Mircea Eliade - On prehistoric shamanic flight
- Mircea Eliade - The flying Emperor and other cases of 'magical flight'
- Mircea Eliade - The Yakut and the Tree of life
- Mircea Eliade - Those who know have wings
- Mircea Eliade - Yakut beliefs on death
- Mircea Eliade on Sufi flight
- Miro - A Dew Drop Falling from a Bird's Wing Wakes Rosalie, who Has Been Asleep in the Shadow of a Spider's Web
- Miro - Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird
- Miro - Women and Birds at Sunrise
- Moreau - Jason 1865
- Moreau - The voices 1867
- Moreau - The young man and death 1865
- Morphing on DPT
- Morrells, Luce and an apocalyptic dream
- Morrells, Luce and Pied crows, mum and aunty
- Morrells, Luce and Shot!
- Morrells, Luce and the dead duck
- Muldoon, Sylvan - Flying and swimming
- Mutwa, Vusamazulu Credo - Birds as creators
- Nietzsche - Daybreak - We aeronauts of the spirit
- Nietzsche - Thus spake Zarathustra - He who wisheth one day to fly
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from Describing the night and cognising the heart 02
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from Discourse on the excellence of song
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from On the Ascension
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from Poets and Poetry 01
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from Poets and Poetry 04
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from The First Discourse 01
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from The Second Discourse 01
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from The Second Seclusion 01
- Norse - Jelling
- Norse - Tanum
- Omar Khayyam - The Rubaiyat - The Bird of Time
- Organisation of Pictish society – Roles - The Hermit
- Palenque - Mayan - Wall panels and inscriptions
- Paul McCartney - Blackbird
- Philo - On the dove
- Picts – Basic truths - Shape shifting
- Plutarch - Moralia - The Immortal soul
- Poetic Edda - The Ballad of Fafnir [extract]
- Poetic Edda - The Song of Rig [extract]
- Potanin - Kam out of body
- Poussin - The Triumph of Neptune and birth of Venus
- Ravidas – from the Adi Granth 19
- Reichel-Dolmatoff - South American shaman initiation
- Rene Magritte and J H M Whiteman
- Rene Magritte and J H M Whiteman
- Rider-Waite - 17 The Star
- Rig veda - Boats, Birds and Chariots
- Rig Veda - Two Birds
- Rilke, Rainer Maria - 01 First elegy
- Rilke, Rainer Maria - 17 Fourth Elegy
- Rilke, Rainer Maria - 36 Eighth Elegy
- Rimbaud, Arthur - Reality - always too troublesome for my exalted character
- Ritsos, Yiannis – Selected Poems - Almost a Conjurer
- Rolle, Richard - Incendium Amoris - About enlightenment
- Rolling Stones - Gomper
- Romance of the Rose - The Garden of Pleasure
- Rosary of the Philosophers - 02 The Bird and Branch
- Rosary of the Philosophers - 03 King and Queen
- Rosary of the Philosophers - 04 The Bath
- Rosary of the Philosophers - 09 The Rejoicing
- Rossetti, Dante Gabriel - Marie Spartali
- Rudd, Xavier - Spirit bird
- Rumi - Divani Shamsi Tabriz - O heart What a wondrous bird art thou
- Rumi - Rubaiyat - The birds have flown to freedom
- Rumi - The Book of Love - Don’t put blankets over the drum
- Rumi - The Book of Love - Your deepest presence is in every small
- Saadi - The Gulistan of Sa‘di – 21 from The Morals of Dervishes
- Saint Brendan - 05 The Voyage of Saint Brendan
- Saint Brendan - 08 The Voyage of Saint Brendan
- Saint Brendan - A summary of his 'voyage'
- Samavedas – 01 Book 04 Chapter 01, DECADE III [extract verses 7-8]
- Samavedas – Book 09 Chapter 02, XIII Vena
- Sassoon, Siegfried - Everyone sang
- Schopenhauer, Arthur - The World as Will and Idea - Power, nature and contemplation
- Scottish fasting
- Segantini - Mermaid
- Shaikh Muhammad Karim Khan Kirmani - Irshad al-‘awamm - Landscapes of the mind
- Siren of Cannossa
- Spencer, Stanley - Symbolism 18 - Eggs, nest and birds
- Spender, Richard - Laughing Blood - Release in death
- Spender, Stephen - Passing, men are sorry for the birds in cages
- Spender, Stephen - Spiritual Exercises
- Sri Aurobindo - Blue Bird
- Sri Aurobindo - Musa Spiritus
- Sterry, Peter - Imagine this Life as an Island, surrounded by a Sea of Darkness
- Stobart, Henry - A view from the Bolivian Andes – The Animu and soul loss
- Stolz von Stolzenberg, Daniel - Viridarium chemicum 1624
- Tae-kon, Dr Kim – Shape shifting to animals and birds and flying out of body
- Tagore, Rabindranath - Recovery
- Tagore, Rabindranath - The Gardener - The tame bird was in a cage, the free bird was in the forest
- Tesla, Nikola – Empathetic communication with pigeons
- The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead
- The Book of Taliesin - Buarch Beird - Llyfr Taliesin III
- The Dances of Manchu Shamans – Institute of Ethnic Literature 2003-2009
- The Healing Wisdom of Birds – Lesley Morris - On Parrots
- The Louvre - Cast terracotta funerary figure made in Myrina, 1st century BC
- The Marriage of Philology and Mercury - The Strains of a Cithara attract Hyperborean Swans
- The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine - Key 02
- The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine - Key 03
- The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine - Key 08
- The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine - Key 09
- Thelmar, E – 25 I hear the most grotesque and deafening death-dog barkings and howlings
- Thomas Keightley - Sami and Finnish Rune
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 06 - 5 Jabberwocky explained
- Touched by love
- Tulsidas - Vinaya Patrika 92
- Twelve drummers drumming
- Twenty cases suggestive of reincarnation – Dr Ian Stevenson – 17 The Case of Wijeratne
- Ursula Kollarin flies
- Uruk – Miscellaneous artefacts
- Usborne, Cecil Vivien – A communication from him after his death
- Various examples - 18 The Moon
- Various symbolic concepts - Babylonian Tree of Life
- Vaughan, Henry - Friends Departed
- Verlaine, Paul - Aspiration
- Verlaine, Paul - Je ne sais pourquoi
- Vignoli, Tito - On birds
- Virgil - The Aeneid - Mistletoe
- Viscount Adare - Experiences in Spiritualism with Mr D D Home – 24 We heard Home go into the next room, heard the window thrown up, and presently Home appeared standing upright outside our window
- Viscount Adare - Experiences in Spiritualism with Mr D D Home – 42 We all saw him approaching, raised off the ground, for he floated, by, at a height which carried him over the broken wall
- Von Stuck, Franz - 1891 Orpheus
- W.Y. Evans-Wentz - The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries - The Celtic Otherworld and the Sidhe
- Walter J Turner - The Hunter 1916
- Watson, Lyall - The Flood
- Watson, Sir William - Epigram - Love, like a bird, hath perch'd upon a spray
- Weir Mitchell - The Effects of Anhalonium Lewinii [part 2]
- Who Killed Cock Robin
- Wizard of Oz - Somewhere over the rainbow
- Yaqui Myths and Legends – collected by Ruth Warner Giddings BOBOK
- Yassawi - 16 from HIKMET 49
- Yassawi - 17 from HIKMET 64
- Yeats, W B - Anima Mundi - The Elements
- Yeats, W B - Collected poems - My mother dandled me and sang
- Yeats, W B - Collected poems - O sweet everlasting Voices, be still
- Yeats, W B - Collected poems - Three old hermits took the air
- Yeats, W B - Selected poems - The White Birds
- Yeats, W B - Shadowy Waters - There, there they come. Gull, gannet or diver, But with a man’s head, or a fair womans
- Yeats, W B - The Wanderings of Oisin - But now a wandering land breeze came And a far sound of feathery quires
- Yerka, Jacek and Maya Angelou - I know why the caged bird sings
- Zoroastrian - Symbols and concepts - The Faravahar
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Mushaf as-suwar - 9th Book about the Measures of the Fire