Can animals be signs from the beyond?
Perhaps you have a story. Let us know [see below] if you do.
Especially, one hears about cardinals and butterflies.
We’ve seen this ourselves: how after a loved one dies, there is a flurry of bird — especially cardinal — activity.
In one case, a cardinal flew at low height over our car, then immediately circled back around without touching down to fly over our windshield again.
Or, a butterfly pops out of nowhere, likewise hovering at poignant moments in one’s life.
This comes across strongly in a current Netflix series called “Surviving Death.”
We’re not too big on most episodes in this series (which end up veering off into spirit mediumship and the like), but its reports on near-death experiences, followed by the animal signs, are powerful.
Striking was the case of a man named Mike Anthony, a bartender on Broadway who was attending a magicians’ show at the Marquis Hotel in the heart of Manhattan right after his father passed.
The magicians were mocking the supernatural (calling it “b—s—-“). “Every since my father died I have this thing with butterflies,” he says. “I see them in crazy places.”
And at the moment the magicians held up a sign with the above profanity, “I see up in the lights this fluttering.”
It was a butterfly — as if his father was nullifying the doubt in an afterlife instilled by the performers — and, back at his bar, as he later related what occurred to another worker there, they both were shocked to see a butterfly in the restaurant’s chandelier.
It was impossible: this was Times Square, and you had to enter the hotel through two sets of doors to get inside the building, take an elevator up to the theatre, and get off at a floor that had another set of glass doors before entering the show. The theatre had no windows. And anyway, windows don’t open in most skyscrapers.
Or there was the woman, Jeanne Wright of California, who told her mother, 97, before she died “to send us creatures. Send me a cardinal when you get to Heaven, then I’ll know you made it.”
The day after the funeral, while sitting with family playing canasta (her mother’s favorite game), “all of a sudden we heard something hit the window.”
They went outside and saw it was a cardinal they were able to pick up and hold in their hands.
When they set the bird to flight, it circled back and perched on her shoulder!
We once had a cardinal fly into our house, land at a back window, then come to the front of the house and perch on a windowsill, staying stock still on the low ledge (just three feet from the floor as we walked right next to it and opened a window through which it then, unfazed, glided out). It came at a: yes, poignant time.
Why cardinals?
bright red robes and hats since the sixth century. As the story goes, the first Europeans in the Americas took one look at the redbird’s vibrant feathers and crested heads (resembling a miter) and called the birds, which are unknown to Europe, cardinals. So, their ties to angels and heaven might come down to their very name.
“Cardinal: comes from the Latin root cardo which means “to hinge” or “to pivot.” This can be a sign that cardinals flit between the physical and spiritual worlds.
Many Native American tribes call cardinals redbirds as sacred animals that are believed to carry messages to and from the spirit world. They are generally viewed as positive omens that can protect or guard you from evil. (We’ll not comment on certain pagan elements of Indian mysticism.) There is an old folk saying: “When God sends a cardinal, it’s a visitor from Heaven.”
A woman named Jean Kuns sent the photo below to a blogsite called Wild For Birds, explaining that it was “not really an artistic shot but a personal favorite. This was shot a few days after my mother’s death after a late winter storm. She would have loved to see this! I inherited my love of birds from her. There were more than 80 cardinals that morning , I only managed to get 50+ in the picture. And no, this is not photoshopped! I’ve never seen anything like this since that day.”
We’ll take her at her word.
And butterflies?
Well, perhaps their remarkable transition from a crawling insect to butterfly — winged like an angel — serves as a metaphor for the transition from life on earth to a spiritual existence (with angels).
Butterflies and cardinals thus may be a sign of hope, rebirth, and renewal.
“This is a common symbolism associated with these birds, and it’s a reason many people love the sight of cardinals after they have lost someone.”
God’s creatures. God’s Creation.
Who can doubt His Hand in all that He created.
[Footnote: and as for animal intelligence, the clip below says all that needs to be said:]