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 The way to begin a journey, they say, is at the beginning - yet so much has been lost of our past that it is difficult to find those first few steps when we began to think differently of the animals around us. 

We can perhaps begin at the times when early man began to paint upon the walls of their cave dwellings, when we first began to take pieces from the bodies of beasts we encountered and crafted items that had no obvious purpose except our own adornment. Many of these items would later become linked to the beast in a spiritual sense, with certain items seen as giving it's carrier some of the beasts spirit or power - so ensuring protection, luck in the hunt and therefore favor among one's own people.

The fact that early peoples relied so much upon the living world that they were directly in contact with meant that we understood the essential links between predator and prey, strength and weakness, birth and death. The seasons brought periods of bounty and hardship, shared by the beasts around us and as we watched and learnt how the animals lived from season to season, it is not hard to understand that we identified with some, feared others and sought to connect on a deeper level with friend and foe, predator and prey.

From the earliest cave drawings we know that most animals depicted were those we hunted, so we can assume from this that we wished to gain favor with these beasts and were grateful for the food and other valuable resources they provided us with. We can also assume that the predators that shared our surroundings were both something to fear and aspire towards - for their skill at hunting must have been admired and any part of these animals would usually be hard-won, rare and worthy only of the most respected people in our tribes.

As our relationships with these animals evolved, certain powers were attached to these beasts and sometimes a magickal version of each beast was created to represent the essence of such animals. The boundaries between us and the beasts around us became blurred, men could become beasts, beasts could become gods. It is in this way that the spirit beast was born.'

 pirit beasts, or animal spirit guides, are our guardians and our  guides. They speak to us through the sounds of nature, through  visions, dreams and visitations. They teach us to respect and  connect with the Earth, to trust our instincts and to let go of the  anxieties and fears of the modern world and embrace their natural  power.

Spirit beasts have been with us since we first opened our eyes upon the Earth, teaching their wisdom to those who care to watch and listen. Although we may choose to follow a primary guide, we have something to learn from each of them. This site outlines many of the spirit beasts that we can seek wisdom from, although by no means is it an exhaustive list - spirit beasts are as many as there are animals themselves and if a certain animal comes to your attention, you can learn to connect with it by following some of the advice on the Connecting with your spirit beast pages.

Ancient peoples who depended upon the land and its wild creatures for survival, knew and appreciated the wisdom of the animals. They invoked their power not only in hunting rituals, but in events such as childbirth, healing of wounds and disease, finding water and knowing when it was time to move on from one area to the next. They left very little mark upon the land until they began to establish permanent settlements. The more 'civilized' we became, the more we lost touch with our natural surroundings and our animal guides were often ignored entirely or dismissed as pagan superstition.

With new-age paganism and environmental awareness becoming more popular in the modern world, the love and respect for animals and nature that our earliest ancestors enjoyed is beginning to resurface, with many of us realising that the empty space inside us can only be filled by connecting with the natural world and its creatures.

The following beasts and their descriptions are by no means an exhaustive resource for all things spirit beast. The way we see beasts and the beasts themselves can change from place to place and culture to culture. The beasts I have chosen for this book are those that have an almost universal symbolism throughout a wide range of countries and cultures, partially due to their appearance across a wide range of continents , and partly because the people who came in contact with these beasts observed the same attributes and were affected by the same hardships.

In this book, I have included also the beasts that are not of this world – those that appear again and again in the myths and legends of many cultures. The fact that they may not exist on our plane does not diminish their power as a spirit beast, nor make other beasts less powerful. For this reason, they have not been separated from the others in this book.

Where a symbolism is shared by members of a group, such as birds, there is a seperate entry for this as well as entries on actual species that are thought to have their own unique set of attributes. Each beast in this book has been known to possess power and have the ability to appear in dreams, visions and even in the mundane world, in order to guide, comfort, confront, teach and protect.