I will follow you into the dark

This morning I was in a cafe reading Stories from the Messengers, Mike Clelland's second book about owls, UFOs, and synchronicity. I read this:

A white owl glided gracefully into their headlight beams and flew right in front of their car, just a few feet off the road. They both got the sense that it was guiding them somewhere. Caught up in the thrill of following this majestic bird throughout the night, Bert accelerated to keep up with the white owl.

At that moment, I became curious about the background music and googled the lyrics. It was "Here to Forever" by Death Cab for Cutie.

I remembered that years ago I'd posted one of that band's album covers, with a crow on it. I thought the black crow made a nice complement to the white owl. I remembered that Edgar Allan Poe's famous Raven had originally been an owl, and that the bust of Pallas in the published poem is a holdover from that earlier imagery.

Given the Chinese tradition of the Red Crow of the Sun, there could even be a tie-in with recent red-and-white posts. Maolsheachlann recently listed his favorite animal as the crow and his favorite color combination as red and white. And didn't that Death Cab album cover show the crow tangled in red thread?

I looked up that old post, "Corvids singing in the dead of night" (July 2021). It had attracted two comments, not counting my own reply to one of them. The first quotes extensively from Poe's "The Raven" and draws especial attention to -- what else? -- the bust of Pallas:

Is the Bust of Pallas the TV? Looks like Edger Allen Poe prophecied that the corvid will nevermore leave the TV.

The second comment was from someone going by A. That got my attention because someone using the same handle recently commented on "The white blood of Jesus." A writes, referencing Death Cab for Cutie:

The first result for me was "I Will Follow You Into The Dark", which is about death.

This brings us back to what I had just read when I took a break to look up a Death Cab for Cutie song: "following this majestic bird throughout the night."

We may have some Elijah symbolism here, too. The prophet was fed by ravens, and as Hinbad the Hailer he ascended to heaven "in a yellow car," or cab.

Update (1:40 p.m.): Hours after publishing the above, ending with the reference to Elijah's supernatural chariot of fire as a "cab," I read this quote from a self-styled shaman in Stories from the Messengers:

Everything happens simultaneously everywhere. It’s like a dream where you get in a taxi in Paris, and at exactly the same time you get out of that same taxi in New York.

Another reference to a taxi providing transportation of a supernatural sort. 

Second update (1:45 p.m.): Shortly after the above quote, I read this:

Was Gwenhyfar, the white owl, one of the messengers that brought the knowledge of the cauldron of Annwn or the Holy Grail, to Arthur?

Gwenhwyfar is the Welsh name of Guinevere, who was the main focus of the Wendy Berg book I just read. Turning from that to a book about owls and UFOs, I certainly didn't expect to run into Guinevere and Arthur and the Holy Grail again!