John Lennon’s Son Believes This Touching Moment in Australia Was a Message From His Father Beyond the Grave

Three decades after his father’s tragic assassination, Julian Lennon received what he believed to be a message from his father, John Lennon, from beyond the grave. As the eldest son of musical royalty, Julian is certainly used to seeing signs of his father scattered across various aspects of global pop culture. But this time, it felt more direct.

The experience touched Julian so much that he named an exhibition of his father’s legacy, which he curated with his mother and John’s first wife, Cynthia Lennon, after the symbol he associated with his dad: a white feather.

John Told Julian How He Would Talk To Him In The Afterlife

For some people, believing that their dead loved ones are communicating with them from beyond the grave requires a fortuitous encounter and a particularly uncanny feeling. For Julian Lennon, it was much simpler: John Lennon already told him what to expect.

“One thing Dad said to me should he pass away, if there was any way of letting me know he was going to be okay, the message would come to me in the form of a white feather,” Julian later explained (via White Feather Foundation). The musician said he was meeting locals while on tour in Australia when an Aboriginal tribal elder presented him with a white feather.

“[The experience] definitely took my breath away,” Julian recalled. “One thing for sure is that the white feather always represented peace to me.” However, Julian received more than a message from his late father with the elder’s gift of a white swan feather. He also gained a new life’s purpose.

How Julian Lennon Used His Father’s Message For Good

Julian Lennon’s relationship with his world-famous father, John Lennon, was notoriously tumultuous, which only made losing him to gun violence at such a young age more painful. When Julian was a young child, he often found solace and companionship in his father’s peers, like fellow Beatle Paul McCartney, who originally wrote the song “Hey Jude” as an ode to the young boy titled “Hey Jules.”

Still, Julian found a way to keep a strong connection with his father by pursuing the same goals of global love and peace that John worked toward in his time. Thus, it’s unsurprising that Julian used the white feather to symbolize these efforts. When the Aboriginal tribe elder gifted Julian with a feather, she also asked him to use his international platform to raise awareness of the Indigenous peoples’ and environmental plights. 

“The White Feather Foundation was created for the purpose of giving a voice and support to those who cannot be heard,” Julian wrote on his philanthropy’s website, which he founded after the chance encounter. “The tribal elders asked for my help, as I could bring awareness to their plight and to others who were suffering the same. Having had the White Feather bestowed upon me, I knew this endeavor was to be part of my destiny.”

Julian’s White Feather Foundation supports several humanitarian, environmental, and educational causes. He is also an accomplished musician, photographer, and author. In 2022, Julian embodied his father’s humanitarian spirit yet again by covering John Lennon’s 1971 track “Imagine” and donating the single’s proceeds to the war effort in Ukraine.

Photo by Keystone Features/Getty Images