The Northern Cardinal - Messenger from Beyond

Earlier this week a cardinal flew across my driveway as I was leaving for work, and it made me smile. For one thing, cardinals are beautiful creatures. There’s something about the splash of bright red in midwinter that reminds a person of how vibrant and vital the world can be. But it also made me smile because I knew what my kids would say if they were in the car with me. “It’s Conrad! He came to visit us!”

Conrad is our dog who died a few years ago. Let me explain.

I used to have a coworker who loved cardinals. She was an older woman who often wore a sweatshirt with the image of a cardinal sewn on the front, and every Christmas she sent out cards decorated with — you guessed it — cardinals. One day I finally asked her what her affinity for this particular bird was all about, and she told me she believed cardinals were messengers from heaven. Specifically, they were the spirits of deceased loved ones coming back to visit her. I thought it was sweet. Weird, but sweet.

So, the next time the kids and I were playing in the yard and I saw a cardinal, I told them about my coworker’s theory. They immediately latched onto the idea, and from then on, whenever we spotted a cardinal we would debate who was visiting us. Was it my grandfather, who had passed away before they were born? Was it someone on their mother’s side of the family?

When Conrad died, however, the debate was ended for good. Now any cardinal is Conrad coming to say “hello.” It became a little family tradition.

I thought this cardinal business was just an “us” thing, borrowed from a quirky coworker. Imagine my surprise when I learned that the idea of cardinals as spirit messengers is actually rather widespread. There are lots of people who have personal stories about encountering a cardinal after the death of a loved one. The origin of this belief isn’t clear, but it seems to have been around a long time and it appears in many cultures.

The Spiritual Significance of Birds

Cardinals aren’t the only birds with a spirit connection. There is a long history of identifying a variety of them with heaven, spirits, or with gods. Consider the old practice of augury, which was a way of divining the future by observing and interpreting the flight patterns of birds. This assumes some kind of supernatural significance to their behavior.

Then there is the link to specific deities, such as the god Horus and falcons in Egyptian mythology, the Mesoamerican god Quetzalcóatl and his association with the quetzal bird, and the two ravens of Odin representing “thought” and “memory” in Norse mythology. The Judeo-Christian tradition also has its examples, such as the story of Jesus’s baptism in the gospels. In this tale, God’s spirit descends in the form of a dove.

Our cardinal friend, and his reputation as a heavenly messenger, is just one more example of the ways a belief in the spiritual potency of birds has manifested itself over the centuries.

Perhaps the connection between the divine realm and birds has something to do with the fact that they are creatures of the air, and the sky is associated with heaven. It’s notable that wind, breath, and spirit tend to be closely linked within many spiritual traditions. In Hebrew, the word is the same for all three — ruakh (רוח). The same is true for Greek pneuma and Hindi prāṇa, among others.

Given this association, it’s not much of a leap to see birds, who ride on the breeze, as special representatives of the spiritual realm.

Creatures from Beyond

Birds really are amazing — so familiar, but in so many ways also other-worldly. These ambassadors from the age of dinosaurs come in all shapes and sizes, from large, flightless ostriches to hummingbirds that weigh about the same as a penny. Avians are the only animals to have feathers, and the only ones to exist on every continent. They also migrate like no other creature, their flight giving them the ability to travel thousands of miles and continents away in a single season.

As for the cardinal, they don’t really migrate, tending to stay in the same range year-round. But here’s another interesting fact that connects them to spiritual things — they get the name “cardinal” because their plumage resembles the vestments worn by officials in the Roman Catholic Church. Red coloring. Head feathers that look like pointy hats.

So, do I believe the little red bird I saw in my yard is the spirit of my grandfather or my dead dog come to visit me? Maybe. Why not? The universe is a vast and strange place, and love has a way of outliving us. What better form for it to take when it leaves the body than a winged creature?

I can tell you this…I’m fully on board with the idea of birds as messengers. Their higher perspective allows them to see the big picture. When they flit across my path and alight on a nearby branch, tilting their heads as they look at me in their twitchy little way, I can’t help but think they’re trying to tell me something — about my life, about the world. Even if the message is just “pay attention.” That alone would be worth listening to.

Originally published in The New Outdoors