Reading and learning the spirit of animals is a spiritual practice that spans cultures, time, and space. Each culture has symbolism and significance to the animals native to their lands. It is a part of one’s craft that takes practice, knowledge, and intuition.

ANIMAL SPIRITS

The spirit of an animal refers to the qualities, behaviors, and pure essence of the creature.

Modern spiritual advice takes a deeply devoted practice of reading animals and waters it down to an online search that results in a few key words from a silly website. You will not find a lengthy lists of spirit animals with their keyword associations on my website. You will find stories that dive into the natural sciences around these animals and what that could mean for their spiritual significance because that is what our ancestors did.

OUR ANCESTORS

Our ancestors didn’t use online search engines to look for the spiritual associations for spirit animals. They read the land. They read the ecology. They allowed behavior and nature to bring them the medicine of the animals.

My father was the one that taught me to read animals. These were stories that were passed down from folk to folk. He taught me that you must be quiet, watch, learn, and listen to your gut—time and time over. It takes observation, patience, and feeling the whispers of the spirits.

READING ANIMALS IS MULTIFACETED

Reading animals is a multifaceted craft worthy of time and effort. Reading animals will provide you with far greater spiritual medicine than a list of keywords. Don’t get me wrong—those lists are extremely helpful in the beginning of your developing your craft, but the ancestral ways will expand your craft exponentially.

HOW TO READ ANIMAL SPIRITS LIKE OUR ANCESTORS

I’ve narrowed this practice down to three easy steps to get you started. Reading stories on spiritual allies and spirit animals from the Folk Medicine Library can be a good step towards developing your craft of reading animals since I write these stories through the ancestral lens of learning to read animals.

1. Studying animal behavior: what biology has to say about this creature? Where does it live? What are its feeding/hunting/foraging behaviors? What are it mating patterns? Is it migratory? Is it solitary, herd, or flock based? What are the behaviors specific to this creature?

2. Studying ecology: How do the animals in the ecosystem interact and impact one another? How does the weather impact animal behavior? How do humans impact the ecology where this animal lives?

3. Listening to your intuition: What does the soft voice inside tell you when you see the animal? When you know the animals behavior and how it fits into the ecology what spiritual significance arises for you?

It takes time to listen to your intuition when learning the spirit of an animal because you must know the animals place in this world before you can decipher how this animals showing up impacts your world.

Take your time.

Study the animals—learn their behaviors.

Study the ecology—learn the land.

Listen for the whispers to learn the animal spirits.