OWLS

Owl Excerpts From The Druid Animal Oracle :

For Twilight has been described as owl-light, and going for a quiet walk in the woods at this shimmering time of twilight is an excellent way to develop a sensibility to the Otherworld and the inner soul of Nature. You may feel drawn to a study of esoteric lore or clairvoyancy. Working with the owl as your ally will help you to do this. ...The owl can signal a time of change, of initiation, of new beginnings. It can portend the death of one thing, but also the birth of another, An old Sussex saying is 'When owls whoop at night, expect a fair morrow.' Expect a bright dawn and it will surely come..
Because the owl is sacred to the Goddess in her crone-aspect, one of its many Gaelic names is Cailleach-oidhche (Crone of the Night). The barn owl is Cailleach-oidhche gheal, 'white old woman of the night.' The Cailleach is the goddess of death, and the owl's call was often sensed as an omen that someone would die. It was seen as a bird that calls for the soul, or that catches or takes it away. From Berne in Switzerland there comes a belief that the screech of an owl foretells the birth of a child or the death of a man - pointing to the owl as a bird of the Goddess who is both taker and giver of life.
Knowing of an impending death or birth suggest that the owl is able to foretell the future, and the owl is indeed the totem bird of clairvoyance and astral travel. The veils which surround the normal boundaries of space and time can be pierced, if you take the owl as ally.[...]
In later times, all that was sacred to the Goddess and the 'Secret Faith' was denigrated and labeled as evil by the Church in an attempt to convert people from their traditional ways. We see this process of denigration clearly in the folklore of the owl. Originally a sacred bird embodying wisdom and discernment, it gradually came to be seen as a bird of ill-omen. Farmers would nail their bodies to barn doors or walls; the fern owl was names "Puck" or "Puck-bird" - and old word for the devil; and owls in general were called constables from the dark land." It became a common saying that the owl was a transformation of one of the servants of the ten kings of hell.[...]
The owl is a bird set apart. She stands on the threshold of the Otherworld, reminding us of the ever-present reality of death. But death is the great initiator and as the owl hoots to us from the trees we may come to realize in the depths of our being that our death in reality marks a beginning and not an end.