The Animal Kingdom within the Human Soul

Astral and paranormal experiences, dreams and visions.
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Smaragd
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The Animal Kingdom within the Human Soul

Post by Smaragd »

Inspired by Tulihenki's writing about bees in another topic, I came back to wonder if the animal kingdom within our soul could be mapped to represent a more active part of the unconscious. The minerals and flora usually have some sort of background meaning even if in the center of focus, for even the stricking image of a red flower opening has this really large and general idea behind it that it could be seen more as the milieu rather the players on the stage. Animals on the other hand are more active participants, perhaps a bit more differentiated spirits?

How do you see or relate to meaningful connections to the animal kingdom? Are they important to you?

Next to some initial and general interpretation towards animals appearing to us, many Jungians have encouraged in to looking at the animals as they truly are in nature. This can be interpreted in the way that the language of nature having developed this species of the animal kingdom to appear in carnal form, would appear within our dreams through this same image and meaning. Even if we would not be conscious towards some of these animals having a specific trait, behaviour, physical detail, it could be relevant to the meaning of the encounter, whether it was in a dream or out there in the wild.

Detail from the Aberdeen Bestiary, Adam naming animals.
479px-AberdeenBestiaryFolio005rAdamNamesAnimalsDetail.jpg
479px-AberdeenBestiaryFolio005rAdamNamesAnimalsDetail.jpg (202.41 KiB) Viewed 5224 times
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
Seferoth
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Re: The Animal Kingdom within the Human Soul

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Hmm, i feel like i have a decently strong connection to the animal kingdom. I tend to care more about animals than i care about humans. If i read in a news that a bunch of people died in a terrorist attack i could not care less, it does not make me angry or sad or feel anything really. However, if i happen to read in a news that some animal was abused i get extremely angry or sad very quickly. I have pondered about this for quite a long time and i think it all comes down to innocence or to certain level of purity. Animals are innocent and pure by nature, therefore some part of me feels more empathy and sympathy towards them. As i personally see every single human as a monster, one way or another, it is hard for me to be sympathetic towards them, of course there are some exceptions to this rule as well. So perhaps in my soul there is this yearn for animalistic purity, a certain respect for being true to your very nature and being in a complete harmony in the environment you live in.
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Soror O
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Re: The Animal Kingdom within the Human Soul

Post by Soror O »

Smaragd wrote: Sun Apr 03, 2022 6:22 pm How do you see or relate to meaningful connections to the animal kingdom? Are they important to you?
I said to him that I was a wolf. "A wolf, really!", he replied, and continued: "But wolves are territorial and loyal, and you are not like that".

This conversation above pinpoints an important notion: when we gaze at an animal we have already subconsciously decided just what we are gazing at - there is no room for the pre-cognitive, pre-conceptual, intuitive - a therefore true - seeing and dialogue.

I watched a document named Misha and the Wolves. Misha was a girl and alledged holocaust survivor who claimed she'd been living among the wolves in the woods during the II WW. She was for example filmed and interviewed in order to appear in the Oprah Winfrey Show. This filming included takes where she communicated with wolves - and she really seemed to have an eloquent and special connection with them. She communicated howling and one wolf played with her as if she were a wolf - taking her head gently inside his mouth. But then it turned out that the whole story about her living with the wolves during the war was a hoax: she had never really been living with the wolves. It was a reality she had been living in, but just inside her active imagination. She was constantly daydreaming the story of surviving with the wolves and then it started to become her reality. Maybe she had been spending so much time with the (collective) soul of the wolf that the wolves remembered her - even though she most certainly never "actually" spend any time with the wolves. One lady (an animal specialist) also said that Misha had a soul of a wolf.

I once worked with a shaman, which appeared to me being more of a bird than a human. During a trans-state I become an animal sometimes, a bird, a snake, a bear. Once I touched a person and he spoke to me as an animal (he remained silent in words, but his bodies spoke).
If you want to reborn, let yourself die.
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Smaragd
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Re: The Animal Kingdom within the Human Soul

Post by Smaragd »

Seferoth wrote: Mon Apr 04, 2022 7:57 am So perhaps in my soul there is this yearn for animalistic purity, a certain respect for being true to your very nature and being in a complete harmony in the environment you live in.
I agree with you that animals are automatically a harmonious part of nature and thus have some purity in them. Meanwhile humans have to achieve their lofty human ideal to reach harmony with nature. The human state is rather a intermediate one where we either reach the next phase of harmony or have to try again. The animal states, as such, are not something I strive for as the laws are closer to the primitive rules of the jungle reminiscent of those in the upper elementary school years and thus a regression (youth of a human being is more like being an animal than a human). Yet I recognize the solem innosence and honesty of animals, and I am inspired to reach similar, not identical, harmonious state. What it means to reach that state for a human being is a bit different thing, yet shares the same idea of purity. As the freedom of choice, beyond basic instincts, is perhaps the most definitive attribute of a human being, reaching this innocence for a human being is a question of ethics. It is often a truly mystic process of finding the way to do what is right, although there's definitely a down to earth simple side to it also.

I think such refining work, finding the innocence of animals from oneself, is like finding shakti forms from one's soul and communicating with them. Perhaps these appear in different animal forms like Soror O described regarding her trans-states, perhaps at some point it appears in a human form as the mystic self or a doppelgänger. I'm talking here of shakti with a more specific meaning, the power form through which one's own soul speaks, not the manifested world in general. I have had bears teaching me a form of innocence, some sort of immunity towards the bestial impulses these bears have represented. The intensity went from absolute terror to nuissance and then at least partial peace with the animal. Alot of it was about learning to act from a proactive rather than reactive base. When an animal teaches a human being to transcend instinctual or reactive condition, I wonder if it is the work where these animals start to take the place of humans and humans moving on to angelic forms.

For an animal the harmony in nature seems to exist within the worldly cycles, weaved through the animal instincts to the intuitive powers of reality. Somewhere around here the animal soul finds its place within the great bosom of anima mundi, and thus appear to the humans as part of the world soul, the karmic weavings of the world and all that is meaningful. For a human individual the harmony becomes a possibility by fulfilling every aspect of humanity (the red thread going through it all being ethics) which the occult doctrines has been attempting to represent by the idea of initiations.
Soror O wrote: Fri Apr 08, 2022 5:25 pm I said to him that I was a wolf. "A wolf, really!", he replied, and continued: "But wolves are territorial and loyal, and you are not like that".

This conversation above pinpoints an important notion: when we gaze at an animal we have already subconsciously decided just what we are gazing at - there is no room for the pre-cognitive, pre-conceptual, intuitive - a therefore true - seeing and dialogue.
The part after the last comma and the overall tone does indeed take that room away. If it didn't have that, or if the inflamed intensity between the participants could be worked out first, then perhaps there could be a coming together of the intuitive meanings and the scientifically reflective meanings, the latter of which I pointed out in the starting post as a reflective surface known to many Jungian analysts. I believe true seeing and dialogue comes from joining such opposites.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
Tulihenki
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Re: The Animal Kingdom within the Human Soul

Post by Tulihenki »

I think that animals in human psyche or soul is vastly varied subject. When thinking about animal kingdoms and their instinctive behavior we see purity of nature and easily romanticize it to be something to strife for. If something is purity in somewhere else doesn't necessary mean that is purity in everywhere. There are reasons why we have animals inside us and why we have bestiality which doesn't mean that it is equally pure in us like it is in animals.

One of the many things I have noticed when leaving meat in food behind is rising animals inside me which teaches me to recognize patterns of animals. Maybe the most interesting one is a dog. A gentle pet dog is one of the most loving things I know and its loyalty can be truly beautiful and definitely something to look up, but within a dog inside man self's can rise also other things or maybe those same things but in a fetish form because sometimes I actually dream about being a pet dog - not meaning that I physically turn into a dog but staying in my human form and being someones pet dog. I know that this kind of fetish exists and some people are turned by that.

So power or energies of these inner animals are something else to be turned than just simply identifying oneself with them as they can create sideways and even regression that is not necessary.
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