Represented by: Common Starling
Upright meaning: Standing up for your beliefs, competition, perseverance, protection of territory and self
Reversed meaning: Defeat, lack of self confidence, surrender, exhaustion
While designing the major arcana for Occult Ornithology I tried to incorporate elements from the original Rider-Waite deck in my designs when it felt natural. In the case of the 7 of wands I liked the central figure in his defensive stature and wanted to get a similar feel with my own design.
Starlings felt like a natural choice for this card for me, starlings are extremely intelligent birds that work together in a defensive flight called a murmur. Sometimes up to a million starlings fill the sky with their defensive flight pattern and it’s mesmerising and beautiful, even with smaller flocks. I included a murmuration in the background of my card, as well as my single starling at the foreground looking spiky and defiant!
I’ve had the itch to draw starlings for a while, they’re one of the most beautiful species of birds with their iridescent feathers and speckles. For years I thought they were named after their speckles looking like stars, turns out the name starling comes from the name Stare. Starlings also have crazy mimicry abilities, I didn’t know this until a few years back when I thought a gull was screaming on my roof but I could only see a little starling blasting out the perfect gull call, since then I went into a bit of a rabbit hole and found some impressive starling videos on the internet. I’m glad I could include these in my deck!
The Art of Katie Whittle 