Observing Signs: Intuition

Observing birds flying, listening to the oaks' fronds whishing or the river water flowing, touching the grass in a meadow, perceiving the scent of a forest, are peculiar and very important religious aspects in the Traditional Roman Spirituality.

Nonetheless, in the modern woman's and man's eyes all this could appear as the most stupid and non-sense thing to do. They could ask you: what are you doing? You are just wasting your time! This reaction is typical for those unable to understand the deeper meaning of the signs' observation.

When I'm in otium sitting in meditation I often commit myself in observing signs. Sometime I ask to some Cultores and Cultrices information about role, meaning and sense of this particular practice. With regards to this I have received different kind of replies: someone told me that observing signs can be useful to predict the future, someone else told me that it can help you to know the Gods'/Goddesses' will (?) or if they are favourable or not (actually I'm still asking to myself what does it mean: The Gods'/Goddesses' will...)

For who, maybe like myself, trying to go "further" and beyond an estremely superficial dimension of the Traditional Roman Spirituality, these profane trifles are quite useless. For this reason I think it could be better to consider this issue through a deeper perspective trying also to understand what meaning and sense this "science" and "knowledge" (which in the past occupied a critical role both in the public and private spheres) may have today.

We have learnt that Nature can be described through general physical laws whose dynamics, to be considered as valid, have to be verified and confirmed in a lab or by theoretical and mathematical models. Nonetheles when sitting in otium and in meditation (for example under a tree) I soon abandon this belief: I realize that this idea is not correct. What I can see and perceive is that what is around me is constantly under the influence of a large number of continuing interferences. It seems to me that everything is under the influence of randomness.

Any event could be considered as a random event. But our attention and observation should be directed to understand the meaning of  this "randomness" which usually is totally unnoticed. Observing signs materializes this interest, attention and perception of "coincidences". These coincidences are not mere fortuitous "random events" but the act of "coinciding", "overlapping" and "crossing" conditions. These coincidences provide us with the idea of the great importance of what is normally labelled as randomness which on the contrary is the normal condition where any uniformity is broken, where any thing and any moment become a specific and peculiar entity.

For this reason observing signs drives us to the observation and to the meaning of the "real-reality" hic et nunc rather than a generic, standard and theoretical "ideal reality".

The "moment", or the Time of Observation, becomes the materialization of an unique and specific moment where the accidental events' configuration acquires a precise peculiar architecture and structure where some elements "coincide" overcoming the "law of randomness". Therefore the coincidence in a given Time and Space is not the result of a generic "randomness": it rather results from the interdipendence and overlapping of events and conditions in a psycho-physical dimension. The question is not to consider events as random events but to acquire a calm awareness about their coincidences within macrocosm and microcosm.

The vivid perception of the continuing Change and the idea that "anything is flowing" is the central core of signs' observation. This practice stimulates intuition or the ability to develop an "inner sight" (in-tueri). The aware perception about signs drives us from the exterior things, pertaining a dimension composed only of phenomena, to the deep essence of the Real World hidden behind the superficial level of the exterior world. For this reason signs' observation is not directed to predict the future (1) but rather to move towards the Divine, the Deities therefore moving behind the surface, the appearance, the illusion.

If sings' observation cannot help us in predicting the future, in several occasions it can be linked to another question: "What can I do?". Even in this case, it is necessary to go beyond the profane level. The answer to this question derives from the idea of intuition (as mentioned above), introspection and the consequent awareness that in the events' flowing, in the coincidences' generation and in the process of continuing change, we partecipate to the Fate: even our actions and inactions are interferences in the Great Flow.

Signs' observation is therefore a conscious and aware attention to these continuing interferences. this condition helps us to remain awake, being less indifferent and distracted, having a particular attention to the "details" and signs representing and symbolizing the Gods'/Goddesses presence and the Reality itself. Of course it doesn't mean we must have an obsessive attention towards all the possible signs (superstitio): it rather means to be awake having a constant self consciousness.

These premises are the fundamental foundations of the Augures' Science: without this spiritual predisposition this science will be unavoidably weak...

(1) I have to say that some authors - i.e. Publius Nigidius Figulus - thought that having the same exact conditions that event will repeat again: so it could be possible to predict the future...