AN INTRODUCTION TO FERAL MAGICK
A very short preface to my new book being completed: Projected Publication 2025
FERAL MAGICK, NEO-ANIMISM AND WORKING WITH FERAL SPIRITS
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Only to the white man was nature a wilderness and only to him was the land ‘infested’ with ‘wild’ animals and ‘savage’ people. To us it was tame, Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.
– Black Elk, Oglala Lakota Sioux (1863-1950)
“ Humans are moral, civil and smart; animals are not. Indeed, it has been argued that animal metaphors reveal a deep sense of hierarchy in nature. …. humans sit one step above animals, who themselves sit above plants and then minerals. Just as we are on the third rock from the sun, we are on the third step from the top of the ladder, with God and angels above us. In this hierarchy humans have supposedly unique powers of reason and self control, whereas animals represent unrestrained instinct.
https://theconversation.com/why-its-so-offensive-when-we-call-people-animals-76295
The word feral has a lot to unpack. It comes from the Latin ferus meaning ‘wild’ and this nicely describes the magick of pragmatic Animism, the belief that all things are alive and embodied as spirits. When describing humans as feral, or the magick we do, it gets even more apropos. A feral animal or person is a “wild being who was once domesticated …and has reverted to a wild condition following an escape from captivity.” If we look at this from the point of view of the growing revulsion at our current dysfunctional culture and emerging dystopian world, it describes most free-thinking people I know.Some simply define feral as ‘wild’ or ‘existing in a natural state.’ Feral magick folks have indeed somewhat reverted to the wild state after fleeing domestication in order to work with wild magick. In many ways this describes all the Pagans, Feral Magick can thus be summarized as magick that is free, unfettered, Nature oriented, free of captivity and, most of all, wild. Yes, that is Feral Magick. If this shocks or horrifies you, this may not be for you, but my guess is that you saw the title of this book and your wild inner beast grabbed it. How very feral of you! You are one of us, one of us.
Citation: https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095814646;jsessionid=B50E05B003A872B056B37A5E6E280ED2 https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/feral
Feral magick in this book can be defined as the operating principles of intuitive spiritual Neo-Animistic practices which acknowledge and work with the Spirits of nature. In our case, the focus is on the Spirit Animals, or Animal Spirits if you prefer. So feral Magick is the active magickal work we do within an Animistic setting or Paradigm. It is therefore understood that the feral magickal person identifies as an animal within nature, a biological fact that escapes most humans. The key to this work is unleashing your Spirit Animal being and thus joining the Animistic universe as an equal. We refer to this inner animal that calls to be released from ‘domestication’ as the Animal-Self. It is unleashed by primal trance states and shapeshifting into the feral being we are. It does require a lot of letting go however, but once you have shifted into being unfettered, the world of Nature Spirits and powers is open to you. Once one had let go of domestication, that is, slavery to our toxic, stifling and anti-life culture.
OPENING TO THE NEO-ANIMISTIC WORLD
Animism teaches that all things such as trees, mountains, lakes and animals, are spirits, but it is the Animal Spirits who have the most agency. They have evolved for thousands of years to help, guide and free us. A good example is the dangerous direwolf who decided to protest us in our caves rather than eat us. If you have a dog, it evolved from ancient wolves. Yea wolves and Spirit Wolves. Case in point, the Wolf Spirit came to me and freed me, what Animal Spirit will call to you and change your life?
OPENING TO THE NEO-ANIMISTIC WORLD, AND SPIRIT ANIMALS
Once you open the gateway for the Animistic Spirits and open your own personal Animal-Self, then one or more Spirit Animal that is right for you will come. Spirit Animals have been helping people who have accepted themselves as one with the animals for millenia.
Feral magick is often about intuitive acceptance of the Spirits and will lead to you form relationships bond with all kinds of Spirits that call to you. These Spirits wish to help you become a wilder, happier, free being. Animism and the feral magick that helps implement it, is an ancient yet also ever-new, ever evolving intuitive magickal path with no set dogma or rules. Animistic feral magick is a pragmatic, open-source process as one lives and survives within Nature and is dependent on direct communion with and help from, There are no orders, holy books or grimoires. Feral magick requires nothing beyond basic civility of all spirits and acceptance that all is alive and interdependent within Nature. The goal of this work is to exist in a primal state of consciousness and living that frees you from the blinders placed on you by your civilized programming.
We live in an amazing but toxic cultural paradigm, nothing like the open Animistic world the Paleolithic hunter/gatherers Existed in. The simpler, wondrous world around them was a natural universe with abundant life and dangers. It was filled with Spirits everywhere who taught them much when treated honorably as fellow beings. Such early hominids, our ancestors, saw the world filled with people, but only some of the people were human. Some, though not all, animals, trees, rocks, mountains, rivers, lakes and more were alive and conscious and spoke to the humans that could hear and see and communicate with them. Their images and spells and teachings cover the ancient caves, some as old as 40,000 years old. Today we call these especially sensitive or psychic humans who saw the spirits Shamans, but in the past, when there were no blinders, all accepted the Spirits and the free-flowing world that was open to them and in constant flux. There are Animistic cultures still around today, in Australia, Africa, South America and Asia who still believe in the spirits and work with them daily.
Animists see that all beings are born, grow old and die and then they too become Spirits who live on as all other Spirits that fill the world. The Abrahamic religions radically changed that ancient belief system by declaring that those who die are gone forever, yet many of us still feel they are with us, help us and can bless us. This is an Animistic belief, the spirits are alive and with us..
In Japan Shinto, ‘the way of the Spirits’, pervades everything. Shinto offers us a modern example of Animism and pragmatic feral magick. Cars can have spirits and new cars are ritually purified (Harae) with a wand with paper streamers on it called a haraigushi. This Animistic Magick, which we refer to as Feral Magick, accepts the Animist point of view as a viable and more fundamentally true vision of the world of spirits we live in.
Many tribal cultures teach that it is the Animal Spirits, the most potent children of the Earth Mother, who guide and help us survive, but nowadays we have rejected and forgotten these crucial natural voices and teachings. I have increasingly loved this world since the Wolf Spirit broke through my wall and led me into the world of the spirits and the primeval heart of Nature which transformed me. My goal is to help open that door for you with this book. If you break out of your cage and escape domestication and leap into the real Anamistic world of wildness through intuition, an open mind and some feral magick, then your eyes will be open and the feral Spirits will guide you to freedom and wonder.
Embracing Nature is the Key to Connecting with Nature Spirits
All Feral Magick is empowered by Gaia, Mother Earth, the most powerful Deity we live with and who has given us everything. There are many gods, goddesses and forges we can work with, but nothing is closer to our soul, our dna, or very existence than the Earth and all that lives on, above and within it. While the Sun and to a lesser extent the mon empower, energize and regulate the natural world and our bodies, it is the Earth Mother who sustains, embodies and grants us immediate and continual Gnosis, if we enter HER world, something most civilized peoples have completely cut themselves off from. It has only been amongst tribal people in many countries that I have found this primal and all-powerful magick and ethos still alive. Unfortunately the cancer of organized religion, hyper capitalism and the delusion of human supremacy is continually destroying all peoples who live in nature, entwined with and working amongst the animal and plant spirits. In dozens of cultures I have visited, Pancha Mama, Gaia, Mother Earth is always honored and the core of life. As an Unchi Siberian Shaman said to me in an interview, ‘every footstep upon the earth must be a prayer of gratitude to her.’
The Feral Magick practitioner should start with this.
Foremost, you must be embodied in Nature somehow, you need a sacred place in the embrace of Nature and suffuse with the ecosystem you live amidst to dig deep and work this magick. If not where you live, you must find a sacred green-filled place where you and Mother Earth and the animal and plant spirits can connect
Always begin with the Genus Loci- the conscious energy force embodied in ‘Place Spirit’ (Genus-Spirit, Loci-place) in the nature you are working within.
Connect with that spirit first.
Then move your Magick outward, upwards and below
To do this, know your Nature, your Vital Center.
What animals live there?
Birds? Mammals? Fish, Amphibians? Reptiles?
What animals come through this area but don’t live there. Coyotes? Crows? Herons?
What insects live here? Butterflies? Ants? Scorpions?
None of this is Possible Until you Connect and Reintegrate with Your Animal-Self
Look in a mirror and say out loud: I AM AN ANIMAL! This is absolute truth, not an opinion. Truly accepting this as the first step is critical to becoming conscious of the destruction we are causing to the Earth. We have been programmed to believe that we are not animals, that God gave us and us only special, divine souls and animals are just mindless creatures with no spirits. We have been taught that we have dominion over nature and animals,and we can simply discount them. Yet modern science tells us we are indeed animals. Genetics has shown this to be true. Science uses classifications to depict relationships of animals, it is now accepted that humans and great apes are hominids and members of the same zoological family, Hominidae. We are genetically 98% the same as chimpanzees. We are animals as animals we each have an Animal Spirit and Animal self. This is the key to our ability to communicate and work with other Spirits as truly free feral Animists.
The false belief that we are not animals is the greatest divide between us and the natural world. We can not work with the forces of Nature if we don’t accept that we too are animals and an important part of the natural world, for good or ill.
Our animalness is what connects us to Nature and the Spirits. Your Soul is a Spirit, a human Spirit, an Animal Spirit, just as every other animal has a Spirit. Awakening to this truth gives us agency and acceptance that we too are a vital part of Nature and can thus save nature with this deep understanding or we can stay blind to our interconnection with all the other animal spirits (and tree, river, and mountain spirits) and continue to destroy nature. This dance between our awakened personal Animistic consciousness is what manifests the kind of free-flowing feral magick that embraces the Natural world and all the spirits and can help us live more conscious lives and maybe save our planet.
Citation: **https://www.britannica.com/animal/Hominidae
Humans have Always Worked in Tandem with Animal Spirits
I have spent time with Shamans in Oaxaca, Guatemala and Siberian Shamans from the Ulchi Tribe, the Nani Doro. I interviewed and worked with one particular Ulchi Shaman quite a bit and learned much about the Animal Spirits from her point of view. Ulchi Shamans are chosen when specific animal spirits come to them when they are very young. This can be in visions or in dreams or they speak to the child. This marks one as a seer or Shaman and from then on they are given to the tribal Shaman to be trained to use their gifts and work with the animal spirits to do soul retrieval rites and help others as they journey through the spirit world. Such sensitive magick makers easily interrelate with animal spirits because they grew up with an Animistic worldview and encountered many kinds of Spirits, even as children. Because of our upbringing, we need to work hard at deprogramming ourselves and evoking our true Animalself before we can effectively work directly with the Animal Spirits.
As an Awake Human Animal Reconnect and Reintegrate with other Spirit Animals
Once you have evoked and integrated with your Animalself, a kind of internal shapeshifting that requires practice, you will become proficient at entering a trance state and be open to the sublime Animal-Self Spirit that is part of you and which connects you with the world of Nature. Once you are thus a living feral part of the Spirit World you will be ready to call to and welcome the Animal Spirit or Spirits that is waiting for you
At this point, like most else in Animism, it will be up to you, through your Animalspirit to communicate, often in ways you can not predict or learn. The Animalself opens the powers of Instinct, Intuition and Insight, none of which can be intellectualized, all must arise from the deep unconscious and the Animalself. Every situation and person is different. Such feral magick is more akin to art and creativity rather than analysis and memorization! Much of my personal feral work has been guided by the Wolf Spirit that came to me. In traditional Shamanism, this is the path, the Spirit Animals that you need come to you, you don’t call them to you. Your path and your work with the Spirit that comes to you will be unique, personal and unpredictable. Working with spirits in this way is free flowing, without rules and is guided by your true will and the true will of the Spirit, When in an Animalself trance state, this will make sense to you because you also will be a feral being akin to the Animal Spirit that comes to mentor and bond with you. You will be feral equals and so simpatico. Once this relationship is formed, your partnership will be open, unfettered and intuitively guided.
Communing with Spirit Animals
A Spirit Animal can function in a relationship in many ways. It can be a Guardian or a Protector for you, a place or others. It can also heal you, motivate you, warn you, guide you and often help you see the best path to take in difficult situations. Spirit Animals are a crucial informational and spiritual link between the powers of Nature and your Animalself, your authentic being, and help you see and work with the flow of energy in the ecosystem. We call this vast interconnected energetic weaving The Wyrd. As they have for thousands of years, such Animal Spirits can guide, help and aid you in all kinds of magickal work in many ways. Shamans are aided by their Spirit Animals in this way for spellwork, healing, traveling in the spirit world, finding game like elk for hunters and much more. Your Spirit Animal will teach and guide you in many things and ways. The same can be said about the Spirits of various trees, mountains, rivers in many ways and so on. However, non-Animal Spirits are far less communicative and they fill you with direct immediate wisdom on deep levels, it is Spirit Animals that offer ongoing communication animal to animal, human Animal Self to Spirit Animal. This is because we are the same, we are all animals; we are equals in the eyes of Mother Earth.
It is important to note that your ‘favorite animal’ may not be the Spirit Animal that comes to you, that you end up working with. For example, I love gorillas and collect gorilla images for fun and send contributions to the WWF to protect endangered gorilla populations, However, I have never been approached by a gorilla spirit. Liking an animal is different from that Spirit Animal Spirit coming to you in dreams or visions. This is a true indication that this Spirit Animal desires to work with you and help you. This attraction, if you accept it, opens the way for using feral magick, that is the rites and rituals in this book, to work and bond with that Spirit Animal.
Citation* Oxford English https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/