Oh how I love the Magpie, the Magpie I salute as I walk on by and wish well to his wife. The Magpie is linked to creativity and self expression, intelligence and cunning, such a beautiful bird with a strong folklore linked to omens and signs of death to fertility, a duality of good and bad. Although it is not known why magpies have become associated with bad luck, one can only assume it's due to it's dark history and nature of raiding song bird nests to eat the young and the fact they love shiny things. Magpies are members of the crow family and like all crows are attracted to shiny objects and have the reputation of stealing jewellery. Magpie theft has led to innocent people been accused of theft and has led to innocent people being tried, convicted and executed. That could be a good reason for a bad, bad luck theory.
A Magpie is a sign of you not speaking up, not using your voice, it is a sign to say that you must be vocal and not miss understood. It's said it's an omen for writers of all kinds and poets to be creative with words. Seeing a Magpie while writing is a sign that spirit is guiding your words.
A popular magpie superstition has people believing that that the magpie can foretell when they will have visitors in the future if a Magpie appears by your door. In China it is thought that the magpie’s song will bring happiness and good luck and in some parts of China, the magpie is considered a sacred bird.
In the North of England magpies are associated with witchcraft and it's said should make a sign of the cross to ward off evil after seeing a Magpie on your journey. It's said the Magpie is a witch's familiar, that if a witch cursed you to death then the Magpie will knock at your window 3 times as you sleep, if you answer your cursed. In Scotland a single magpie seen near the window of a house is a sign of impending death, possibly because magpies are believed to carry a drop of the devil’s blood on their tongues or in another legend because magpies were the only bird that didn’t sing or comfort Jesus when he was crucified.
In Cornwall it's believed if you nurse a sick Magpie and save it's life it will be loyal to you for life and will bring you many riches in the form of money and jewellery. It's said that if a person goes missing then the magpie can guide you to the missing person, this has happened many times in Cornish folklore. In Cornwall the belief was that if you seen a Magpie by the entrance to a mine then the devil himself was coming.
As the well known magpie rhyme "One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a boy, Five for silver, Six for gold, Seven for a secret never to be told." shows it is only seeing a lone magpie that brings bad luck and groups of magpies are said to predict the future. There are many different versions of this rhyme with some counting as high as 20 birds. Seeing 3 or 4 magpies predicted the sex of a unborn baby. Through this magpies have been linked to fertility or maybe the magpie and fertility goes way back. We will never know.
But the next time you see a magpie, note what your thinking about at the time. It could be good or bad depending on the situation at hand and your thoughts.
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Image by LiaSelina #magpie #witch #omens #witchcraft
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