In addition to the Germanic
powers that he associates with his ashplant, and
possibly some ancient Celtic ones
as well, Stephen thinks of it in Proteus as his
"augur's rod of ash," associating it with Roman powers of
divination.
Roman augurs were priests who divined the will of the gods by
observing the flight of birds. They carried a rod or wand
called a lituus, which (like Stephen's ashplant)
was curved at one end. With it they ritually consecrated a
space in the sky called a templum, and then made
observations of the birds that passed through this sector:
what kinds, how many, flying in which directions, traveling
singly or in groups, making which sounds. Only certain species
of birds yielded significations, and the hermeneutics were
complex. These observations, called "taking the auspices,"
served as favorable ("auspicious") or unfavorable omens for
important activities like waging battles or erecting
buildings.
In the last chapter of A Portrait of the Artist,
Stephen stands on the steps of the National Library
watching the flight of various birds, counting them, listening
to their cries and wingbeats, wondering what kinds they are,
noting the direction of their flights. Twice, the narrative
calls the space in which the birds are flying "a temple of
air," "an airy temple of the tenuous sky." And Stephen thinks,
"Why was he gazing upwards from the steps of the porch,
hearing their shrill twofold cry, watching their flight? For
an augury of good or evil?" In Scylla and Charybdis,
standing once again on "The portico" of the library, he
remembers, "Here I watched the birds for augury."
Stephen's reference to his ashplant as an augur's rod in a
late paragraph of Proteus probably bears some
connection to his thoughts about George Berkeley in that
paragraph, because Berkeley too advocated the reading of "signs" in the visible
universe. Gifford observes that the phrase "Signs on a
white field," five sentences later, refers not only
to the scraps of verse that Stephen is writing down on a
corner of Deasy's letter but also to "birds (as the augur sees
them) against the sky." The first mention of "The good bishop"
follows two sentences after that.
