Novice practitioners make initial contact with their power animal, and then do nothing to deepen the relationship. Like any relationship, time, effort, and energy must be put into this connection. Power animals are allies, partners in life, and they must be honored and respected.
Many animal spirits have specific names, while others refer to themselves simply by their species name, such as Cat or Crow. More often than not, the animal will give you its name if it desires you to know it, with unusual sounds and syllables. It's traditionally not our place to name our animal allies, unless they request we do for the sake of easy communication. Some animals ask us to choose a name or symbol that will be the common name used in the relationship, though it is not the spirit's true name. You can pick a name you like, or generate a magickal name or sigil from a variety of ritual magick and numerological techniques available.
Many magicians seek out the true name of the spirit they call upon to use it in binding seals and sigils. It is said that to have the true name of a spirit is to have absolute power over it, for a spirit name is the being's true energy, its true vibration, not just a symbolic title. In shamanic relationships, such bindings are usually not necessary when working with totemic partners.
Acknowledge your power animal. Think of it often, and thank it for guiding and protecting you. I thank all of my animal allies on an almost daily basis. I have made the Shamanic Smudging Ritual (chapter 3) a part of my daily altar devotional (OTOW, chapter 9). When I smudge to each direction, I associate an animal with each direction to teach me the lessons of each element and world. Primary power animals are usually in the center, in the heart. As I honor each direction, I thank the animal spirit for its blessing in my life. As you take more progressive journeys and gather more animal allies, you will determine which animal is best suited for each direction. As you develop your relationships with them, their role in your life will become clearer. They will tell you the direction from which you should honor them. The smudging ritual gets the attention of your allies and gathers them together before any journey.
Fetishes for your medicine bag or altar are important ways of connecting with the energy of your animal ally. Look for potential charms to connect you with your animal spirit. If something is not readily apparent, the act of making your own fetish is incredibly powerful. Fetishes can be simple pieces of art, like the simplistic cave drawings of the Stone Age people. You don't have to be a talented artist to make powerful magickal symbols. Take a stone or a piece of wood, cleanse it of all harmful energy, and then draw the image of the animal on it. Consecrate it in a ritual, and ask the power animal to charge the fetish with its energy. Carry it in your medicine bag or pocket, or keep it on your altar.
Animal mask-making is a beautiful art form. Making elaborate masks and costumes is not only a way of honoring and connecting with a power animal, it is also a powerful tool to be used in ritual and ceremony. When a shaman dons a magickal mask, the qualities of that animal or spirit are invoked, literally transforming the shaman from the outside in. Mask-making is a complicated, creative project. For more practical information, I suggest the book Sacred Mask, Sacred Dance by Evan John Jones with Chas S. Clifton, and a trip to your local craft store.
Animal masks are also worn when animal dancing. Shamans "dance" their power animal by mimicking the animal's moves and sounds, to fully embody the medicine and lessons of the animal. How can you know what an animal is about unless you try to see things from its perspective? Animal dancing helps you get into the spiritual skin of your ally, and know it more intimately.
Some traditions have very specific steps for specific animal dances. The animal forms found in many martial arts traditions probably arose from these shamanic traditions. Though formal dances and moves are great things to learn, most modern shamans simply move intuitively, as guided by their power animal. You may feel silly at first, but the more you ritualize it and seek to embody your power animal, the more freeing and powerful the dance will become.
Modern animal dances incorporate symbolism from the animal and tools from your life. In a dance for a winged creature, you could have feathers in each hand. My favorite dance is that of snake medicine, used when you want to shed your old skin and transform yourself. Snake medicine is about embodying something new and letting go of the old. Start by wearing some old clothes, things that you never want to wear again and that symbolize the "old" you. Ritually shed your clothes while imagining yourself as a snake. When done, dispose of your old clothes.
Traditionally you should burn them, but burying them or simply throwing them away works, too.
~HAPESHIFTING
The rites of animal masks and dance are deeply connected to the experience of shapeshifting.
Shapeshifting occurs when the shaman loses his own shape and individual identity to take on the shape of an animal. Though this definition confuses many because they think the transformation occurs on the physical level, the true transformation happens between worlds, to the spiritual bodies, not to the physical flesh and blood.
Though the ritual performed when wearing an animal mask or doing an animal dance can facilitate shapeshifting, the transformation usually occurs spontaneously in a shamanic journey. Students have reported to me that during a journey they merged with their power animal, becoming one, or they mimicked their power animal's shape, to keep up with it. They didn't consciously intend it beforehand. The transformation came naturally.
In this new form, they moved differently, saw things in a new way, and felt a shift in their body, thoughts, and emotions. Their spirit bodies assumed not only the shape but also the energetic pattern of the animal, conferring these new blessings. They felt their flesh taking on feathers, fur, or fangs. They received the animal's talents and qualities. In essence, they embodied its medicine.
One student, Olivette, vividly described a meditation prior to any shamanic training where, as she drummed for herself, just to meditate, she felt her body morph into a falcon, an animal she had always loved. She described the feeling of her flesh and bones shifting into the structure of wings while simultaneously being aware that her arms were still drumming.
We can become so immersed in the instincts of our animal persona during a shapeshifting experience that we find ourselves doing things we normally would not do, at least from a human perspective. My friend Leandra, when undergoing shapeshifting into her totem animal snake form, found herself devouring a mouse before she realized what was happening. On a personal level, she had great difficulty with the very visceral experience, though part of animal medicine is to learn that such actions on the part of the snake are strictly instinctual, a matter of survival, and not personal or human. They are ways to understand the circles of life, death, and rebirth, divorced from our human sensibilities.
Shapeshifting is different from pretending to be the animal, although imagination starts the experience. Many practitioners comment on what they thought the experi ence would be like versus the actual experience. My student Claire thought that shapeshifting into a bear would feel lumbering, but when she did, she felt quite comfortable and powerful. Before the journey she gave no thought to the sense of territory a bear would have, but was keenly aware of it when she experienced her journey through a bear's perspective.
Merging with your totem, rather than shifting your own shape, is another powerful experience. Merging grants many of the same experiences as shapeshifting, but offers a few more. Both help you build a relationship with your totem animal. Both help you get in touch with your animal nature. Merging, however, has the added benefit of helping your totem animal understand a more human perspective. It increases your ability to communicate with your totem, and even enhances your communication skills with physical animals.
The ability to shift shape can be a test. To enter a special place in the other world, you must change shape to move past barriers. Sometimes a shaman will undergo a series of metamorphoses, several animal shapes in rapid succession, as a test of wits and adaptability. If you can shapeshift into the appropriate form for the place, it indicates you are ready to continue the journey and are prepared for whatever you will encounter there.
Try this shapeshifting journey if you have already established a link to a power animal. If not, wait until you make a connection to an animal spirit before attempting the exercise.
EXER C I S E 12
Shape shift ing Jo urne y
1. Start with the Shamanic Smudging Ritual from chapter 3. Use it to create your sacred space. If you choose to journey inside a magick circle, cast your sacred space. Start your
journey music, and assume your trance posture. Have any power objects or tools you desire at hand, and wear your blindfold.
2. Do Exercise 1: Entering a Meditative State, counting backwards to focus your thoughts.
3. Call upon the gods and spirits to guide your journey:
I call upon the Goddess, God, and Great Spirit, all my guides and guardians, to help me on this journey, for the highest good, harming none. So mote it be.
4. On the screen of your mind, conjure up the World Tree, the great tree with its branches holding up the heavens and its roots digging deep into the Underworld. With each breath, feel the tree become clearer in your perception.
5. Imagine that the screen of your mind is like a gateway. Step through it, and stand before the great tree. Touch its bark. Hear the wind blowing through its branches. Smell the earth. See the World Tree. Feel the World Tree. Know the World Tree.
6. State your intention:
I ask to journey with my power animal and experience shapeshifting in a manner that is correct and good for me, harming none. So mote it be.
7. Call to your power animal. Feel the animal meet you at the base of the World Tree to guide you, or feel its presence call you into the other worlds.
8. Let the animal ally take you on a journey and guide your experience. Through its urging, you will feel your awareness shift shape and become something else. Usually your first shapeshifting transformation involves mimicking the shape of your primary animal ally, but you might be guided to take the shape of another animal. As always, follow your intuition.
9. When done, hearing the callback, return to your original shape. Remember what it feels like to be human. Remember your identity, and feel yourself flow into your natural shape.
Return the way you came into the other worlds. Your animal guide may guide you back out, or simply point the way. Thank your animal guide, knowing it will respond to your future journeys. Go back to the base of the World Tree, and thank it for this journey.
Thank the gods, spirits, and your power animal. Step back through the screen of your mind, and look at the tree from a distance. Let your awareness of the tree fade away.
Bring your awareness to the physical world. Do any necessary closing rituals.
Shamanic animal shapeshifting is not the only form of shapeshifting. Celtic shamans are known to take the shape of many things, from natural phenomena like floods, clouds, and rays of light to the roar of the ocean, the sound of the wind, and the point on a spear. These transformations demonstrate their connection to all of nature. Look at the "Song of Amergin"
at the very beginning of this book. It is one variation of many translations listing the shapes Amergin can assume. The seeds of advanced shapeshifting and merging are found in earlier exercises from The Inner Temple of Witchcraft, including Exercise 13: Mental Projection and its
"cloud busting" variation. We learn to mimic and merge with the spirits of the natural world to make our magick. This is one of the secrets of shamanic weather magick.
HE fAERY REALM
What is the faery realm? Who are the faeries? Just as when you ask, "What is a witch?" you will get many different answers to this question. The faery folk cause much controversy since the term has come to apply to a wide range of beings. Everybody might be right in their own way, but everybody isn't talking about the same thing. The recent popularity of faeries has caused a lot of confusion.
Traditionally the faery folk, also known as the fey, fey folk, fair folk, gentry, kind ones, and good people, are a race of beings with a strong history in European lore, particularly Celtic.
They are equated with the elves, dwarves, brownies, sprites, pookas, pixies, leprechauns, and nymphs of folklore. Though they appear in myths around the world, and are described in many
different ways, their best-known myths come from the traditions where witchcraft was practiced. Witches are known to ally with faeries, so when witches were maligned in a particular society, so were the faery folk.
The term faery can be traced to the English fee, from the Greekfatua and Roman fata, meaning "fate." Perhaps the faeries are beyond mortal fate, or play a hand in our fate. Many witches use the spelling faery rather than fairy to distinguish the true mythic beings and spiritual energies from modern pop-culture images. The archaic meaning of the word fay or fey refers to being enchanted or bewitched, while a state of enchantment is called faerie. Modern practitioners use the terms interchangeably now for both the race of beings of the faery realms and the feeling of enchantment when the human and faery realms cross paths.
Our modern image of a faery is the tiny, winged creature that flitters around sprinkling stardust and moonbeams. Though this is one definition, it is not the only one. "Serious"
students of faery lore think our modern "Tinkerbell" image of faeries comes strictly from the Victorian era, not any true pagan faery lore. That image was popularized during the time of the Victorians, but tales preceding that era describe the fair folk as being of normal or even gigantic stature. Evidence of the tiny, winged image does predate the Victorians, however, and can be found in ancient Mediterranean art associated with tombs. Some feel the faeries are the souls of the departed, or perhaps the soul's guide to the next world.
In modern New Age practice, the faeries are described as devas, nature spirits, and elementals. Though they have much in common with the faery folk, those names describe three different orders of beings. In the context of nature, devas are the architects and overseers of nature, working from the Upper World. Nature spirits refer to the animating, building force of the various aspects of nature. The deva of dandelions holds the blueprint, the aura, and genetic code patterns of the dandelion, but the nature spirit of that particular dandelion creates its roots, leaves, and flower. Nature spirits exist in the Middle World, and I think of them as the middle selves of nature.
Elementals are often confused with nature spirits, but elementals are beings who embody one of the four classic elemental energies, and are called upon in ritual from the four directions.
They embody a single element at one time-fire, earth, air, or water. In many traditions, the form an earth elemental takes is called a gnome, and is thought of as a faerylike being in shape. An air elemental takes the form of a sylph, a winged humanoid akin to our modern image of faeries, increasing the confusion.
Most traditional myths refer to something else when they speak of the faery realm. The inhabitants are linked closely with the elements, nature, and devas, but appear to be independent of them. Faeries are associated with the land below through ancestor reverence.
To the Christian church, the faeries are the souls of the pagan dead who did not convert to Christianity, and are forever doomed to walk between worlds in limbo without the presence of heaven.
In many Celtic traditions the fair folk are linked with the race of gods who walked the land of Ireland, known as the Tuatha de Danaan. This tribe came to the British Isles from their mystical lands in the four corners and conquered the Fomorians. Later the Celtic people themselves migrated to the isles, and the Tuatha vanished beneath the hills and forest into the lower worlds. They were first honored as gods, but their status was eventually reduced in the world of mortals. Perhaps their diminished size is symbolic of our perceptions of old ones-as they became less known and less involved in our lives, their stature became smaller and smaller.
Those Celtic spirits living under the hills became known as the Sidhe (pronounced "She") and became a part of our folk tales and legends. The Sidhe are considered a powerful race of faery.
Norse traditions have two distinct races and two distinct worlds associated with the fair folk.
The Upper World contains the light and fair elves, the helpful spirits who live in Alfheim. They have associations with noble ancestors. The word elf is rooted in Old German and means
"white being" or "bright being," referring to one from another world. Below is the realm of the dark elves or dwarves. They live in the land known as Svartalfheim. Though many can be helpful, we associate the more mischievous and malicious elves with this realm.
In interpretations of Judeo-Christian mystical texts, the faeries are a race of "fallen" angels,
neither evil nor good. Truly their fall represents their descent into matter, into the land, not into sin. They are the mirror image of the angelic hosts, governing aspects of nature's development while the angels govern and guard the more human intellectual realms. Faeries are male and female, like much of nature, not genderless as the heavenly angels reportedly are. They have more of an "ego" or investment in the world because they are merged with the physical, with
neither evil nor good. Truly their fall represents their descent into matter, into the land, not into sin. They are the mirror image of the angelic hosts, governing aspects of nature's development while the angels govern and guard the more human intellectual realms. Faeries are male and female, like much of nature, not genderless as the heavenly angels reportedly are. They have more of an "ego" or investment in the world because they are merged with the physical, with