Pagan, Shinto & Spiritual Book Reviews March 2017

Rachel Patterson, Pagan Portals – Animal Magic: Working With Spirit Animal Guides

(Moon Books, 2017)

Fellow Patheos Pagan writer Rachel Patterson‘s books are often like the Pagan literature equivalent of snack food: small, light, fun, and sweet. Great for consuming between meals of heavier tomes. Her latest release, Animal Magic, is typical of her work. It also typifies the genre of modern, Western writings on shamanic concepts: approaching ideas like animal guides and medicine wheels as aspects of spirituality that can be explored safely by anyone, not just the initiated.

Animal Magic is a brief introduction to the role of animals in witchcraft, with a particular emphasis on seeking and working with animal guides. This includes meditations for meeting your animal guide, suggestions for deepening your relationship with the animal guide, and an interesting section on “shadow animals” – animals representing more challenging or darker aspects of the self. The most useful section for me was the list of different animals at the back, and what they represent.  I would have loved to have seen this expanded some more, to include more animals and more depth regarding their meanings in cultures ancient and modern around the world. But as a little taster to the topic, Animal Magic satisfies, and Patterson’s enthusiastic and engaging style makes it highly readable.

I found it a particularly interesting and revealing experience reading Animal Magic straight after The Catalpa Bow. Both books explore shamanism, yet they couldn’t be more different. In the scholarly Catalpa Bow, the world of shamanism is rather sinister, physically dangerous, and restricted to an elite who must go through extreme initiation rites in order to attain their shamanic powers. What’s more, the spirit animals one encounters in Japanese shamanism are malicious for the most part – they either possess their victims and make them sick, or they are employed by witches to bring misfortune to others. In stark contrast, the shamanism of Animal Magic is positive, friendly and open to all – no fasting or physical pain required. And the only animals one encounters are helpful guides who are there to assist you in your spiritual quest. In their differences, the two different books reveal that shamanism has shape-shifted in order to survive. While shamanic traditions are dying out Japan, they have taken on new life in the West by being re-branded as a technique for spiritual self-discovery for the masses.