The animals of such stories are not domesticated, tamed or subdued to the will of humans, nor are they anthropomorphized animals or storybook characters whose actions mimic humans. They are wise beings in their own right whose words and actions cause the world to come into being. They are almighty, omniscient and full of wisdom. Some are tricksters, like Coyote or Raven, who both involve themselves in the laying down of laws for humans and whose lateral thinking discovers useful tools for living such as fire or agriculture. They are guardians for those times when humans overstep the respectful mark whereby all living creatures can be threatened by destruction or they are animals who partake of humanity in some way, like the Centaurs who are the teachers of humanity, bringing music, art and other essential skills.
We live in a time where we most urgently need the wisdom of the animals and creating creatures. Although Darwinian theories of evolution have told us that human beings are the summit of the evolutionary ladder, at the top of the food chain, we need the salutary wisdom of the animals to put us in our place, to remind us that we too are animals – sometimes animals ‘of little brain’. And like that supremely humble anthropomorphism Winnie the Pooh, a bear of little brain, with a little help from our animal advisors, we can sort out even the most troubling of problems.
Guardians of the Soul
In the Vedas, the Hindu god, Shiva, calls upon all the gods to help him overcome the invading asuras – ‘the non-gods’ or demons. They will be able to do this, he tells them, only if they are willing to leave off their godly forms and assume their animal nature. The gods are revolted by the idea and decline his invitation. We know from a wide range of world mythology how divinities have both humanoid as well as other animal forms – sometimes represented by their having animal heads on human bodies. A similar myth is told of the Olympian gods of Greece who fled the ravages of the monstrous Typhon by hiding themselves as animals among the Egyptian animal-headed gods so that they might not be noticed. This way of shape-shifting into animal form is not confined to gods alone.
From early times, we find the widespread notion that human beings have a multiple soul, part of which manifests in animal form. Shamanic traditions hold that in order to live in the most balanced way possible, it is necessary to discover the identity of this animal soul and meet it in dreams and visions, to dance with it in rituals, to wear parts of the animal in question, to keep attuned to its powers, to take its name or explore its nature in order to be fully at one with our soul. When someone falls sick, a shaman sends out part of his own soul to journey into the spirit realms to find the animal nature of the person’s soul and bring it back again. Cajoling, pleading, hunting, stalking, trapping and herding, the shaman uses all the skills of a real hunter to bring back the animal soul.
Magical creatures include all those animals that are the guardians of our animal soul. Among the Tzotzil-speaking Indians of Zinacanan in the highlands of Mexico, we find the belief that human beings have multiple souls, one of which is called the chanul. When the ancestors imbue unborn embryos with souls, they also install a shared soul in the embryo of an animal, so that when a Zinacanteco baby is born, then an ocelot or jaguar or coyote or opossum is also born. During childhood, the child discovers the animal with which it shares its soul. This companionship lasts throughout life, with the animal sharing its nature with the human.
In Central America, the animal guardian spirit is known as the nagual. To discover the destiny that the nagual gives an individual, he must go into the forest and sleep. In his dreams and visions, the nagual will come to him and the contract of his life will be set out. Naguales move invisibly, protecting and guarding those to whom they are attached. But individuals must know the right forms of prayer that necessary to contact and receive help from the naguales.
Carrier Indian myth tells us why we feel affinities with certain animals:
‘We know what the animals do, what are the needs of the beaver, the bear, the salmon and other creatures, because long ago men married them and acquired this knowledge from their animal wives…We have lived here thousands of years and were taught long ago by the animals themselves…our ancestors married animals, learned all their ways, and passed on the knowledge from one generation to another.’
Some stories of this kind reflect even deeper themes in our history. In Greco-Roman mythology, which has underpinned so much of our literature and thought, the giant Titans are said to have attempted to slay Dionysus Zagreus. The god tried to escape by shape-shifting, but when he assumed a form of a bull the Titans killed and ate him. But the goddess Athena rescued his heart, which she fed to Zeus, allowing Dionysus to be reborn. Zeus then destroyed the Titans and from their ashes created mankind, thus ensuring that human nature included both immortal and titantic elements in its make-up.
In our own times, we have been reintroduced to the idea of the guardian animal spirit in the work of Philip Pullman. Pull-man’s His Dark Materials shows how each character in his alternative worlds has a daemon or guardian spirit in the form of an animal. This daemon is an essential part of the soul, directing, prompting, guarding and warning its human partner throughout life. Pullman’s books reveal the horror of what it would be like to be parted from our daemonic counterpart. How can we continue to ignore our own daemons in a world that draws further away from common sense and the urgings of instinct? It is only when we accept and integrate the animal powers of our daemon that we can pass out of a fragmented and warring condition, so that our soul can be whole once more. Like the Hindu gods whom Shiva exhorts to find and enter their animal natures, so too it is our task to find our corresponding affinity in the animal world and embody its wisdom in our lives, for we have forgotten it for too long.
The Language of the Animals
One of the most impossible and exciting features of this book is the way in which magical creatures do not hold their form. Animals have a way of becoming humans, and humans animals. There is a good reason for this, and it is given in an Inuit poem, collected by the explorer, Knud Rasmussen:
‘In the very earliest time,
When both people and animals lived on earth,
A person could become an animal if he wanted to,
And an animal could become a human being…
All spoke the same language.’
The point at which human beings lost the ability to talk with animals is not known, but it remains a continuous thread in world folklore and myth. In the East, it was held that people ‘eat the heart and liver of serpents, hoping thereby to acquire a knowledge of the language of the animals’. Some of the Turkic tribes of Asia had the custom of giving the tongues of different animals to children who were learning to talk in order to accelerate the process.
In the West, the myth tells us that on Midsummer’s Eve, the serpents gathered together to spin a crown of ferns for their king. At their gathering they put their heads together and hissed glass wishing rings called snakestones, which would, if found, help people prosper in all enterprises. Pliny tells a similar story about ‘the druid’s egg’, a stone which is engendered by knots of serpents and which has special powers. Fern seed was the ingredient that helped herdsmen and hunters not only become invisible but also learn what animals were saying. The ability to relearn the speech common to animals and humans was also required by shamans and magicians in order to bridge the worlds between the mundane and time-bound realms and the timeless Otherworld.
There are many characters in world myth that acquire the ability to speak and understand animal speech patterns. In the Welsh story of the Oldest Animals, it is a man called Gwrhyr Gwalstwad Ieithoedd (Long Man, Interpreter of Tongues) who alone can converse