Imbas Forasnai and smearing of butter on the third eye

Imbas Forasnai is a very mysterious process of enlightenment. The Irish hero Fionn Mac Cumhaill would enter this visionary state of Imbas (Inspiration), when he needed to foretell the future, after partaking of the first three drops of the Salmon of Wisdom, which told jhim all things past, present and future.
J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams, Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture 1997 p60, notes that ancient *hzeng(w), to anoint the salve or besmear, lead to the word awcanem in Armenian, to anoint. In Old Irish, imb means butter and Old High German, ancho means butter, from the same root as salve or ointment. In India, ghee is sacred butter which is used as an anointment.
The Smertae Tribe in N Scotland, is likely to be named from this smearing anointment word.
It would appear that imbas as inspiration and imb as butter and the process of anointment and smearing, are somehow connected. Perhaps it was the oily nature of a salmon, cooking in a cauldron, which provides this connection with the opening of the third eye to the divine light where time and space are all one, but this is a profound mystery, which requires much future research. It may be that the cow is relevant here for its milk and butter, because Fhionn partook of the three drops of the cooked salmon by the River Boyne or ancient Buvindia, meaning white cow. White Cow was another name for the Milky Way, hence milk and butter on the third eye allowed a vision of the cosmos, from underworld up to heaven. The spiralling galaxy of the Milky Way around us, would be a vast anointment in space, some 52,000 light years across, powered by a Black Hole, at its very centre; so time and space will do some very strange things within this vast cosmic scheme. The fact that the heavenly canopy was called the Dagda's Cauldron, can only add to the salmon's brew in the cauldron, for in Mesopotamia, fish is used to also mean star, just as the underworld, under water, reflects the stars in heaven, and the scales of a salmon do shine like stars.

The invention of augury from birds

Tatian's Address to the Greeks, Chapter 1, states that the Phrygians, who lived in NW Turkey and were said to be a very ancient people, as well as the Isaurians, invented augury from the flight of birds.
This claim is supported by the evidence from the Etruscans in N Italy, because recent evidence has shown that this mysterious people came from W and NW Turkey.
The Etruscans excelled at prognostication from the flight of birds. Irene Rosenzweig, Rituals and Cults of Pre-Roman Iguvine 1937, p26, states that in Tables VIa-VIb47 of the lustration of the sacred mount in Iguvium, the introductory auspices began with the observation of birds:-
           1/ Parra or Oxifraga/Ossifraga or Avis Sanquali (Unknown Bird)
           2/ Cornix (Ravens)
           3/ Picus (Woodpeckers)
           4/ Pica (Magpies)
We know the Parra is not the eagle, because it is noted elsewhere that a sign of the eagle would prevail over the woodpecker and the Oxifraga (Parra). British folklore features, to this day, prognostication by magpies and ravens.
The birds were observed by the augur from his seat in the Tabernaculum, whereupon he would pass this on to the Flamen or priest.
In Rome, Ex Avibus or divination from birds, was divided into the Oscines auspices from their singing, including ravens, crows, owls and hens, and the Alites from their flight, including eagles, vultures and Avis Sanqua or the Ossifrage and the Immusculus. However, some birds like Picus Martius, Ferones and the Parrha, could be either Oscines or Alites (Cic,De.Div. ii,34, i,39, Liv i,7,34 and Virg Aen 1,394.).                                                        Pliny, Nat Hist, 10, 7-8, has further information on the vulture and Ossifraga, which Festus said was sacred to the god of oaths trust and contracts, called Sancus, whose temple was on the Quirinal Hill. Sancus was probably a Sabine god and Titus Tatius was probably responsible for a shrine here to this god. Tacitus Vol. 2, relates that Titus Tatius was the founder of the Sodales Titii, who observed birds during ancient Sabine procedures of augury.
It was the Etruscans who founded Rome. Romulus built on the Palatine Hill, while his twin brother built on the Aventine Hill, as settled by auspices. Plutarch mentions that Remus saw 6 vultures, while Romulus saw 12 vultures.
Pliny the Younger gives an alternative version to Tatian above, that the invention of auspices was made by Tiresias, the Seer of Thebes. Auspicium from auspex in Latin, means 'one who looks at birds', that is bird flight.
However, already in the C14thBC Amarna Letters, the King of Alasia in Cyprus asked for an 'eagle diviner' to be sent from Egypt.
Calchas was bird diviner of Agamemnon, involved in the Trojan War about 1180BC (Homer Iliad 1.69).
Furthermore, the Druids were also adept at bird divination and we have no idea whether they invented this independently, or whether it stemmed from the common ancestry of Indo-European culture that they shared with the Etruscans and Romans.