The Grimoire Day 16

In which I talk about more shit about which I know next to nothing. 
In this case, magic animals.

Day 16


I'm not being flippant.  Okay, I am, but just a little.  The idea here, again, depends on your level of involvement.  On a level that I don't operate where anyone can see me (and I won't tell you how often I've operated on that level in the past or if it is ongoing), the idea is that there are spirits that are animals, have animal forms, appear in animal forms (the distinction is important, it's like the difference between Zeus turning into a bull or a swan or something and Bast being a deity of cats, and that is violently over-simplified) that will invest their attentions in you or help you with work when you ask, or it suits their purposes. 

On a different level, there is the idea that an animal observed has mental and emotional connections, psychic connections, if you will, to human qualities and behaviors.  Big cats do certainly look pretty confident, don't they?  Imagining yourself as one, or having the aspects of one, that might help you in a tight spot.

Whichever way you go where spirit animals are involved, when you bring them to mind, they can definitely be quite helpful when you work.  Imagine an animal whose characteristics match something that you want to accomplish, and it will put your will in the right place. 

Now there is a chance that a person who is interested in using animal imagery in their work is wondering if they have an animal that is particular to them.  Some animal to whom they have a really strong affinity.  That would not be me; in thinking about this post, I thought of all the animals that are significant to me personally, and whose qualities I've drawn into myself or into something I've done, and the list was pretty long.  It was also pretty much all the animals I am likely to see often, less opossums, seagulls and ducks. 

For me, it's rabbits more than anything, but that's mostly because I was born in a Rabbit year.  Also, I think they look cool, and they run pretty fast, so I think of them as connected to my running. 

Though, over time, squirrels have sort of replaced rabbits in that aspect, since I tend to see them often when I run, and I think of them as my friends.  It's the endorphins talking, but frankly, the only part of magic that's ever going to be quantifiable and falsifiable is the parts where you trick your brain into helping you do something, so I run with it.  The rest of it is what you want to believe, and is unquantifiable and unfalsifiable, and personal.  You don't have to defend it, or even share it if you don't want to. 

You might be different.  You might have an animal to which you feel a very strong personal affinity.  If that's the case, you want to know how to find out what it is?

Trick question.  You already know.  Yes, I know that means if I am right, there are like 7 cat people and 8 dog people for every wolf person out there (largely regarded as one of the most popular animals to have a really strong affinity for [and, in some circles a cause for derision], and I don't blame you, they are cool and smart and social and badly misunderstood for thousands of years).  But yeah, that's about it.  If you have a really strong affinity for an animal, you had it before you started here.  If you didn't and you don't, trust me, I felt left out, too, but that's not how I roll, and I've sort of accepted that.  That's not to say you won't develop a really strong affinity for a particular animal archetype that will go on to help and guide you in every working, but if it doesn't, it doesn't. 

Okay, now we've gone as far as we can without talking about something I wanted to hold off on.  Given that I live in North America with my hirsute, long nosed, blue eyed, pasty Nordic appellated self  where it has been, at times very popular for co-chromatic residents of this continent to make a salad bar of the religions of the people we killed in order to live here and whose descendants we continue to be abominable to, there is something that needs be addressed:

If you want to use animals in your work, do it.  Make it up as you go and never play it off as something that you did not do yourself in order to grab for witchy street cred.  Let your actions speak for you, and if people turn their nose up and what you do under your own steam, fuck 'em. 

If you want to use animals, or anything else the way someone else used them in history, ask yourself this: did three of my grandparents do this?  If they did, awesome, you don't need any permission from the likes of me.  If no, then there's still a chance for you to do it too, but, look at it this way, if you want to do a certain work a certain way very badly, then you want to learn all you can about it.  Everything you can find, carefully, as many primary sources as you can find, as many real practitioners as you can find.  May take years.  Probably should take years.  And if, after that, you feel that you can, I'm not in any position to judge you.  If you notice a couple paragraphs up, I stole my affinity for rabbits off of someone else's zodiac, in fits-on-a-placemat form.  So, yeah, I'm asking you to be better than me.  I wouldn't ask you to do anything I don't ask of myself, so don't worry about that. 

And yes, we will talk about this more, very soon.

Bonus Thing I Use in Magic:

Bees.  At the end of the summer, I can usually find the remains of a bee or two that has worked itself to death.  I love bees.  I kind of treasure them.  When I make things, sometimes, I will use those remains (dried out in the car - the greatest place on earth to dry out anything on a sunny day) in the working, because it's something that I love.