I remember when I was working in retail, it was one of those days where the sky was very gray and stormy. My boss came up to me at Customer Service and said “I just came from outside, there are a bunch of black crows out there. Did you have anything to do with that?” Back then I laughed with my long black nails but in truth, animals show up when you’re in communication with the occult. They show up when you’re in distress. And they show up when you’re going through major transitions. It’s happened a few times in my life but never as much as the last 9 months.
Last year I was a part of a group ritual that really affected me. The next day when I finished getting ready I left my house to walk outside and there was a (what I thought dead) queen bee lying on its back, on the trunk of my car. I carefully put her onto a leaf concerned, and then laid her on the grass but as soon as I did, a few ants went toward her so I gathered her up once again. I didn’t want anyone to disrupt her in her death, somehow it felt holy that she fell onto my car and I felt like I had to protect her. I took her by the garage and laid her gently on top of the recycling bin. I spent a moment with her, looking into her eyes when I noticed she was still alive. I didn’t know this previously, but her arms were moving ever so slightly. I touched her arm, and talked to her for a minute. I told her I would come back for her the next day to bury her because I knew she was dying but that she was with someone and to not be afraid. I covered her with another leaf and left my house for the day. The next day I came back, removed the leaf to find her under there not moving at all. I took her across the street where there are a lot of trees and buried her. I didn’t know it then, but looking back this was the beginning of what bee would come to mean for me this year. Being called to step into being the queen of my own life, becoming the queen of my own universe, the center of it instead of orbiting around others as I always had - living for other people and who they wanted me to be professionally and emotionally. Stepping into my power of feeling, into being a writer, an artist, embracing the strong intuitive within. She showed up to show me and to tell me that it was time, as queen bees are a symbol of rebirth since they cyclically die so a new queen could reign.
A few months later I was experiencing a reverence for my feelings something I had never done, I found myself taking care of my own emotional needs. I was rescheduling things in my life that might not have been able to wait but I told myself they had to because I was not okay emotionally. I hadn’t honored my sensitivity like this before but it was also the beginning of this journey that I’m on right now of respecting my emotional states and how emotional matters must come first at times because I sometimes physically can’t handle anything else before I handle them. After taking care of the last thing I had to reschedule, I hung up, turned the corner in my car and saw a large mural of a bee on the side of a building. I had to get out and take a picture of her. Another queen, hailing me for moving in the right direction, for me, for once. I felt strengthened in that moment for all I had rescheduled in the previous weeks.
A few months after I was driving on a rainy day and encountered a black bird sitting like a chicken in the middle of the road. It was hurt, and I felt called to try to help it at least to the sidewalk because cars were dangerously flying around it. I parked, walking into the center, stopped traffic and guided it to the sidewalk as it half flew, visibly bothered that I was interfering with it. After it sat on the grass, I noticed it was shaking a bit, and I looked up the nearest animal control, getting on the phone. As I talked to the bird after I hung up, its eyes started rolling back. I began to sob, because I knew animal control wouldn’t make it. It died right there in front of me - I had stepped away to call animal control and when I went back to it, it was no longer moving, its eyes frozen in a stare. But this was a symbol and metaphor for my own life as well. Sometimes animals die in front of us as parts of us are dying too. It being visibly bothered reminded me of our stubbornness as humans, the way we try to stop change, stop our own death of parts of us that are ready to evolve. It reminded me of my own resistance that I struggled with.
Around the same timeline, since I love to walk now and I go to various parks to do so, I had visited 4 different parks on 4 different days (both up north and down south), and at each one a red-winged blackbird flew past me or made sure it got my attention with its voice. After the 4th time I looked them up and it was all about owning who you are, asserting yourself in the face of others. Owning the parts of you that others may push against or for me, feeling trapped into what others wanted me to be. Once again these animals were showing up to strengthen me, my resolve, and letting me know not to give up in the face of anyone.
Recently I took a trip to the beach on a very goth gray day, it was one of those cold summer days, my favorite kind. After I set myself up, I sat for a while with the ocean and over the sand where there would usually be nothing - no insects, no animals - a large looking bee hovered toward me from the left. I actually thought it was a small bird it was so big. I had never seen anything like this insect before, but it had black and yellow rings on its body and very large wings. I waited to see if it would pass but it hovered around me and in my humanness feared it so I got up away from my things. It stayed and went behind my chair for a while, landing and moving in the sand. I was able to go back and look at it up close while it did this, and it was fascinating. Its wings seemed as big as a butterfly’s. Even the largest bees I’ve seen did not look as large as this, it was the largest looking bee I’d ever seen, I did try to look it up but couldn’t find anything matching its size. It then sat a while longer, and hovered around some more and went down toward the ocean. After I got the nerve to go back by my things, I wandered down to where I thought it landed but it had completely disappeared. Another messenger - another sign in the bee family. The size itself spoke to me in the way of you’re getting stronger - keep going, keep growing.
In the same timeline, bees have also come to me in premonitive dreams, seldom and specific to the situations I was in, but in dreams they have operated very differently, they have been warnings.
If you’re going through a lot, take note of the animals who present themselves to you (during your conscious or unconscious states) as familiars to help you through whatever it is that is needed. If you see the same kind more than once, look them up as they could be spiritual totems. Synchronicities like this are usually from the universe to help you on your path.
Jennifer Diane is a writer, artist and intuitive based out of New Jersey. Healing with the Occult is a publication that shares hidden, transformative knowledge.