Dialogue - What do you think of omens?

Questioner: What do you think of omens?

Alexander wrote:
I first started to consider omens (arishta) seriously after reading the reference to them in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. There is a verse where Patanjali states something along the lines of, “by rightly discerning omens and signs, the yogi knows future events.” Given my great respect for Patanjali, I pondered this for a long time. I suppose you could say prior to this I was in the camp thinking that “only all those quaint ancient peoples believed in prophecies” and were superstitious.

So, I conducted it as an experiment. I just started to pay greater attention to the world around me – and look at what signs or omens were crossing my path in life. One way you can think of this is to pretend you are a character in a work of fiction. Sometimes the writer will insert an occurrence or an object that has a lot of significance later on. Well, I found real life sometimes does this as well.

At one point in my youth I was quite conflicted over sexuality, debating the idea imposed on us by the priests that we must remain sexually repressed, or there was something inherently wrong about sexuality. On one of my walks pondering this question, two large dragonflies flew in front of me engaged in some kind of mating dance. This was a very visceral moment, and ended up being the answer to the question I was asking. The natural world itself loudly affirmed the rectitude of sexuality; that sexuality was something great and to be embraced.

Another object that has taken on a recurring meaning for me is the ladybug. One of my first cars was the Volkswagen Beetle, itself a ladybug, which showed a strange correlation between me and the insect. I have to say that after many years I do often see ladybugs at very interesting transitional times in my life. The ladybug is sometimes called the “good luck bug,” and is a sign of auspicious events in different cultures. I remember rebuking one of my students one year who were going to smash a ladybug, that “those ladybugs bring good luck.” Often I will see the bug at particularly difficult times for me, and I interpret it as an affectionate sign from the cosmos to “keep the faith” and “stay strong.”

In my writing, for example in The King Will Ride Out, I use these types of omens to add depth to the story. For example, the raven is a current motif or omen in the work. Here, the raven represents either wisdom, ill omen, or the power of the Hunyadis – the ambiguity and multiple ways it can be understood being a key dimension to discerning omens in real life.