Lupa Greenwolf | Animal Magic, Neo-Paganism, & Connecting With Totems

00:07 The planet's puppet masters almost surely have a plan. There clearly may be something there beyond the realm of man, until we've thoroughly tested every last closed chested view and find the more you think you know unless you really do Where would we be without THC? We know the lying to us just don't know to what degree. Where would we be without THC, The highest side chad show? Greg Carlwood and company

01:01 Alright, higher side chatters if you ask me. The best models for reality are ones that put consciousness center stage and acknowledge that this energy is not only a human quality but something that radiates from all life – plants animals and otherwise. And western society's worldview that non-human life forms are just meat robots running instinctual programs has become the justification for a whole lot of cruelty destruction and sometimes even eradication Yet we are in a small sliver of time and space in which our isolation has made us cold and ignorant, not just in regards to the importance of nature and the power of consciousness but of course the usefulness of magic as well. So today were going to talk about animal magic totems and occult areas that we have yet to fully explore because these traditions go back far as time itself but are completely taken for granted today ironically within an empire that still invokes the bald eagle as its primary symbol

01:56 However, these values live on in indigenous cultures we've yet to disrupt, the pagan communities that still practice the old ways and they're returning under the guidance of teachers like today's guest Lupa Greenwool. Lupa is a naturalist neo-pagan and ritual toolmaking artist living in the Pacific Northwest. She's the architect and creator of The Tarot of Bones as well as author several great books on these subjects such as Fang & Fur Blood & Bone A Primal Guide To Animal Magic Skin spirits, animal parts in spiritual and magical practice, and natural spirituality from the ground up connect with totems in your ecosystem.

02:33 Here to bring us back to nature, school us on animal magic and help us connect with a totem you won't find on a smartphone screen. An ambassador of animal spirits, professor of neo-paganism, and master of her domain, Lupa Greenwolf welcome to the higher side! Hey thank you so much it's good to be here Yeah I'm really excited we could do this i think It's going to be a lot of fun I've always been really interested in animals and more recently magic, so it's going to be great to explore where they intersect. I guess to kick this off maybe you can tell us a bit about your particular flavor of magic and how you got into it because we talked to chaos magicians astrologers traditional Solomonic magicians even Thelemites and Masons on occasion but I think people will be a little less familiar with terms like neo-pagan and totemic magic So give us a little background on ya

03:25 Alright, so I'm kind of an interesting case. unusual directions or at least a bit of a winding path. So I started out with generic Wicca-flavored paganism by way of Scott Cunningham, who is a pretty well known author. He wrote some classic books like Wicca Guide to the Solitary Practitioner and so forth and a lot of people especially in the 90s cut their teeth on his works

04:00 So I spent a few years doing that thing and then i discovered chaos magic in the early 2000s and latched onto that for a few years. And then for number of years, I basically was working towards trying to create a sort of neo-shamanic path using all the various things that I had discovered and learned and put together over the years The thing that I found as i was trying to create this formalized path with you know rituals and holidays and devotions and practices, all this dogma

04:39 No more i found it took me away from the things that really sound sacred which were. No actual nature itself you know physical nature being out in the woods and the fields and engaging with the world, what a one to one level is really getting distracted by the abstractions and the symbolism that are so prevalent in paganism and which I was trying to latch on to pretty heavily. And, so finally a few years ago I just said fine! I'm done with this. I am going to strip everything down and get back to the very very basics

05:19 What has fascinated me since i was a very young child and that's being outside. And learning about the animals in the plants and the fun guy and everything else, any ecosystem and that's why found the most inspiration throughout my life time and that's what i'm going to keep myself focused on so To me, as a neo-pagan as opposed to an indigenous practitioner totems you know I'm not Native American. I don't have any background in that so what i practice is very different from what somebody from an indigenous community would practice but to me a totem is an archetypal being that

06:00 embodies all the qualities of a given species. So, for example I don't just work with bear because there are eight different bear species on the planet and you know polar bear is a very very different being from sun bear and most people when they think bear they're thinking like grizzly bear And they don't think about things that make each of these species unique so a lot of my practice is very much about working with the totems of individual species. The other thing, and I really really want to emphasize this is that as a naturalist pagan, I don't really believe in the supernatural per se anymore. I think that things have natural explanations and rather than trying to prove that all this stuff exists outside of my own consciousness

06:51 I am perfectly happy with the fact that right now all the evidence points to all this being existing within the highly complex and beautiful terrain that is my conscious mind and various levels of my consciousness. If I find evidence otherwise later, awesome! But I want listeners to understand that you don't have to literally believe in all these things in order to work with totems and spirits and so forth You can also take a completely symbolic perspective but you can also take it literally if that's what you choose I want people understand that what i say here is not holy rich and you're welcome to take. And use as much of it as you find useful if there's stuff that isn't useful to great now leave that by the wayside, why think that's a great break down in of course i'm reminded of loan mylo de ketch book its all on your head just have no idea how big your head is and just that idea that

07:50 All of reality could be in our head. We really don't have a good proper model of consciousness interacting with reality when it comes to the mainstream, you know? You have to go these alternative places where they even recognize consciousness let alone how powerful it might be so I think that's really interesting Yeah and I think thats a really especially in paganism, in the last several years has been this real push to try to scientifically validate people's beliefs. You know we've spent a lot of time being told oh we're crazy because you know many pagans believe in spirits and magic and so forth and oh that's just crazy talk! And it's...you know people in general have a whole bunch of beliefs of all different sorts that can't really be

08:38 scientifically validated. But I think sometimes we've looked to some of the, you know sort of more experimental ends of physics and so forth to try to give ourselves some kind of validity in the world because just saying hey I believe this doesn't seem to work for everybody. The problem with that of course is that we then take little bits and pieces of science that sound good and we try and shoehorn them into our beliefs in ways that really aren't appropriate. For example, a couple of years ago I read a blog post by a woman who was claiming that piezoelectricity was what made crystals do their thing. Now piezoelectricity is a very specific quality basically if you take a quartz crystal

09:36 and you apply a little electric shock to it, it will vibrate. And it vibrates at a very specific frequency and this is a physical vibration that can be measured And if you strike that quartz crystal, give it a physical blow. It will create a tiny amount of electricity so it's either an electrical to mechanical shift or mechanical to electrical and this is actually what makes quartz watches work because what happens there's a teeny tiny quartz crystal inside your quartz watch lets off a tiny electric spark, it makes the crystal vibrate and that's what moves the second hand.

10:19 So this is very specific. It's not that this quartz crystal is constantly emanating energy, it has to be affected by either the electrical impulse or the mechanical impulse." Well, this person was basically saying, oh yeah piezoelectricity is a thing that makes quartz crystals give off super magical energy all the time and I basically wrote a blog post talking about how no, that's really not the case and can we please stop abusing science? Like I said, I recognize that we really want to validate our beliefs but I don't think misusing what scientific data we do have is going to help us either in understanding what we're doing or in making ourselves look more valid. So I think we really need to be comfortable with the possibility that like you said, we don't know how big our brains are

11:10 The mind is a really fabulously complex place and I think it's a really amazing playground to explore both on spiritual and other levels. Well said, I think that's a great example. I love a good data-based argument rather than one that is just emotional or wishful thinking and it is really interesting that we do see a high level of consistency of ideas when it comes to indigenous cultures in these types of realms and the respect for nature, respect for animals and the type of practices they engage in And were obviously pretty sure they didn't have any contact with each other so It seems like some of this

11:49 Is the kind of natural conclusions people might come to without the imposing western structure but. I do think anyone who has pets is probably really wanted to get into their heads or at least recognizes that animals seem to be more aware and lucid than we give them credit for. I've watched my pet's dream quite a bit, i also sometimes wonder if my cats can see spirits based on how they act but i'm curious just generally how you fold plant and animal consciousness in your world view? How do you see these non-human persons experiencing the world

12:26 There's a wonderful quote by Henry Beston that I absolutely love, and it goes like this. We need another and a wiser and perhaps more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified in the whole image in distortion We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err and greatly err."

13:04 For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained living by voices we shall never hear They are not brethren They are not underlings They are other nations caught with ourselves in the net of life and time fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth And I really love that quote because we tend to be exceedingly anthropocentric. We are very human-centered and that's even when we mean well, one of the things that we really have to keep in mind

13:51 When we're dealing with other species of animal because we are so far and will be a homo sapiens apians. We are the only remaining human eight yeah we have big brains we have opposable thumbs we walk upright doors were still eight. So we can to really try to shove other animals into our, Wave seeing the world so whether we're judging wolves and sheep by you know how useful they are to us or. when we misinterpret an animal's behavior by anthropomorphizing it, by saying oh that dog is showing its teeth. That means it must be happy. There are a lot of videos online of animals doing various actions that are actually pretty serious signs of stress and unhappiness that we misinterpret as cute I think the one most glaring example

14:52 There's a video of an animal called a slow loris. It is kind of very primitive primate and they have these sort of raccoon looking spots over the eyes, little bitty ears that look like little teddy bears. And there is this video of this guy tickling this animals ribs And this is an animal you can hold in your lap, it's the size of maybe a large cat. And as this person is tickling this animal, this loris' ribs, its putting its hands up And the caption of course on all those Facebook pages and stuff is like, oh look it's so cute. It's being tickled aww! And two other things that people a lot of people didn't get is that A, putting the hands up thing and displaying the claws was actually a fear and threat display on part of animal also

15:49 That loris almost certainly had its fangs removed because they have canine teeth and slow lorises in the pet trade have their canine teeth yanked out because they're actually slightly venomous. And also, because it can deliver a pretty powerful bite if they want to. So this is an animal that's already been subjected to a great amount of cruelty and has had its main form of defense removed And is now being subjected to greater stress and torment for the enjoyment of millions of people on YouTube. And so we get that with lorises, we get that with canine body language and behavior, we get that with feline body language and behavior or horses, I mean pretty much anything

16:37 There are so many examples online, I can't even think about it of people basically trying to say well that animal is doing a thing like a human does so it must be experiencing the same feelings and thats really not what's happening. So it's not just a matter of, you know hey we need to not value animals based just on whether we like them or not. You know gosh I hate snakes so snakes are bad but you know I really love puppies. You know I think it's really important that we value both the snakes and the puppies whether we like them or not. I'm not a huge fan of mosquitoes but I really value them both as insects that have persisted as a group for millions and millions of years, never really cut out a niche for themselves. And also because they're really important to ecosystems today both

17:27 carries of their own DNA and also food sources for other animals. They're really integral, if we didn't have mosquitoes there'd be a lot more hungry bats out there but it's also important as I said especially with people who really want to connect with their pets It's really important that we take that step back and learn about canine or feline or avian behavior on its own merits as opposed to just making assumptions about what the animal is doing based on what we think it's doing. Well said and I know exactly what you're talking about with that Loras example. I've seen the video for people who haven't it is a very adorable creature, but then when you Realize that it's actually scared and frightened and you see all the damage done in the animal trade It is like incredibly depressing when that switch hits and you're like oh god Here's humanity just doing what humanity does and it's just really sad but

18:29 But I guess how do we better resist that temptation or get more into the animals mindset when human context is all we have? I guess magic helps. Well, yes and no. Magic is this really subjective thing that we put a lot of ourselves into I think it's really important to do things like meditation. You know, i really love guided meditation as a general tool just because It's a great way to get out of your own head It's a really wonderful way to imagine what it might be like to be you know for example a wolf or a raven or A mudskipper Or any number of other animals

19:13 I've done so many meditations over the years with various totems where they've shown me what it's like to be that particular animal. And i think that's really important to get out of our own heads for a while and explore, you know? To have more empathy for other beings The big caution that I would give is Even when we are working and again, this is kind of where I'm really caution the whole you know This may just be in our own heads thing even our own magic and spirituality even animal based is still very heavily informed by our biases as humans because There's only so much that you realistically can get out of your own head and perception. Mm-hmm You know

19:58 you're still interpreting things based on however many years you spent as a human being with all of its various conditionings and neurological patterns and so forth. So yes, go and do meditations. Yes, go and explore other levels of consciousness to the best of your ability but also ground that in actually learning about the animals that you're working with. Because the thing is, totemic knowledge... Hang on I've got like 8000 different thoughts going on at once. So in Western society we are probably the most divorced from the rest of nature

20:48 any society out there and that includes people who claim to be close to nature in this community. Indigenous communities who, whether they still live their traditional ways or whether they have shifted some to a more Western way of being or had it forced upon them. But the practices and the beliefs that many indigenous communities have were forged by people who spent every single day living very, very close to the rest of nature. Not just in a practical level you know we have to get our food from the land and yeah we have pay attention to the migrations of animals and so forth but also the more your around something the more you notice details about it So most of us in the Western world spend most of our time immersed in a very human dominated sanitized landscape

21:53 But if you spend a lot of time outdoors on a daily basis, you just normally start paying more attention to the animals and the plants and the weather patterns. And stuff that you don't really notice when you're in a building all the time. And so for us to say something like well I'm going Work with totems or other nature spirit we're bringing a very divorced from nature perspective. you know, unless you are spending every day spending some time outside and being really reliant on the natural world your experience is going to be different than indigenous people for thousands of years have had traditions that brought them directly in contact with nature. So when we go do something like a guided meditation with for example black bear

22:55 The totem black bear we are going to be bringing our general lack of experience with the environment that black bears are found in. To the table so that's going to really affect how that meditation goes for us because we don't have the depth of understanding for the most part of how that ecosystem works or where the bears part is in it compared to somebody who observes bears on a daily basis. So I think to the best of our ability, you know most of us are even those of us who love nature, you know i spend as much time out there than I can but I still have to do a lot of learning from books and documentaries and classes and so forth because

23:46 You know, I'm not going to be out in the world out in the natural world enough to be able to sit and watch a single bears day-in day-out activities. Whereas somebody who's outside everyday in that bears territory is probably going to have a much better idea of what that bear daily movements are like because they're neighbors with each other. Do you get what I am saying with all that? Absolutely that makes a lot of sense you can't touch on this but my next question for you was gonna be to maybe get into some more historical context cuz divorce like is it is pretty perfect term does people forget that even though things like animal magic are considered. Weird and nonsensical in our society that is the exception

24:30 not the rule. And I guess, I would ask if you could tell us a little more about the history of the practices you engage in and just kind of how widespread they've really been? Okay so there have been multiple cultures over the history of our species that have had animal-based ritual practices Some of these have been focused primarily on wild animals. More agrarian communities have focused more on their domestic animals as being special, some work with both So there's always been this drive to reconnect with the rest of nature, especially ironically as we become more perceived to be divorced from the rest of nature. The more we feel were disconnected, the more I think there is a desire to reconnect but we don't necessarily know what it is that we want or how to voice it and so

25:30 Part of what I think modern animal magic practitioners have been seeking is that reconnection, you know we feel on some level that there's something more than You know this very human dominated world that we live in where everything is about us and everything else was shoved into this little category called nature That ends up on the back page of the paper Whereas in communities that never really left nature, it's a reaffirmation of their connections with the rest of the world. I think for people like me it is a deep desire to find something that has been deeply lost in our own communities you know as I said

26:17 a European mutt who grew up in the Midwest U.S., I'm now in the Pacific Northwest, and was raised by Catholics and so...I didn't really grow up with this tradition of feeling connected to the rest of nature and feeling like the other animals are my kin even though I may have had ancestors way back when before Catholicism who had similar beliefs and feelings. And so I really feel that, you know for a lot of us coming from a Western perspective who didn't have that Indigenous background we're trying to piece together something that was lost a long long time ago

27:02 And there's the struggle of do we try and borrow from indigenous communities, and navigate the harm that appropriation can do? Or do we try to forge our own reconnections based on our own experiences and biases and worldview. And so I think that's why there is not really a single animal magic in the Western perspective because so many of us have found different paths to reforging those connections and also because we tend to come from much more individualistic community. Yeah, there are just a lot of complex questions and issues of respect that come into it when you really get into these topics

27:54 I guess you know you did tell us how you conceptualize totem animals but how do you separate totems from other types of spirits is it something that's just self evident to a experienced practitioner. Well i said a totem is an archetypal being That in body all the qualities of a given species so we're not just talking about an individual brown bear. We're talking about brown bear who is sort of the black leather term beauty. All brown bears you know brown bear watches over

28:31 every single member of that species that has ever existed and is very much concerned about the protection and preservation of those animals. And so in working with them, for lack of a better term they just feel bigger and more powerful again more akin to a deity as opposed to an individual spirit guide It is subjective and it's kinda one of the things where you have to experience it yourself but its pretty unmistakable when it does happen. Yeah, there's something different about this particular being. They're more... they're just more. Does that make sense? Absolutely! I've heard them described as beast master entities which is a term i like that kind of speaks to that same thing. Mm-hmm yeah and I think that's really how you want to conceptualize it That's great. It's just the matter of understanding

29:24 My totem is not a white wolf named snowflake or whatever. My primary totem, and part of the reason that my name is Lupa, is Gray Wolf who watches over all gray wolves and who's an intermediary between the species Canis lupus and the whole rest of the world including humans And i think that's just so fascinating of course a major question has got to be how can people find their total animal i guess what you tell us about that it's more than just picking favorite animal right. Yeah i mean its again it kinda depends on the person you know we don't have any long long tradition of

30:08 coming of age rights where you go out into the deep woods or the deserts, whatever the far-out wilderness happens to be. We don't send people out there to find themselves once they hit puberty or once they become an adult or whatever we consider that major threshold. In fact our American society in particular is seriously lacking in formal rites of passage, short of graduation and getting married and things like that. We don't have a lot of introspective rites of passage

30:44 So again, it's a matter of really figuring out things as we go along. There are a number of ways in neo-pagan totemism that people try to find their totems. Again take this with a grain of salt because this is speaking very much for my own biases but I have ones that I like and ones that I don't like. One of the ones I'm not so crazy about is, oh well I went outside and saw this hawk sitting up in a tree outside my yard. And it's been there for the last week and i've seen it every single day that must obviously mean that the hawk is my totem

31:24 And while, yeah it's really awesome that you have this red-tailed hawk that has been hanging out in your yard. It is probably not because of you. It is probably because your yard is part of a pair of hawks territory and you've just been annexed and now you have avian neighbors congratulations! You should see a reduction in the number of mice in your area." And so again, that whole you know what i saw this animal it must be something about me is a very human centered selfish way of viewing things. Just because an animal runs across the road in front of you doesn't mean that anything special but just happens to be that maybe there's been improvement habitat your area and there's more wildlife which is awesome. So its very much a whole thing if you're making things about us and I really don't like that

32:12 I'm also not a fan of, well you know i saw this animal in my dream and therefore it must be my totem. The thing is our unconscious mind is a really crazy place the conscious mind likes words and concepts and very rational and straightforward ways of communicating our unconscious mind really loves symbols and weirdness and when the two of them try to communicate sometimes it gets really strange Because most of our dreams are just Our minds way of processing the things that happened to us throughout the day you are fears or experiences our excitement it's basically putting everything away in the giant rolodex head. You can find it later and so the symbolic unconscious part of my mind likes to sometimes pick animals as a symbol of a thing thats going on in our head let's take a dog for example if I dream about dog

33:13 For me personally, that's usually a good thing because I love dogs. Dogs are awesome and you know, I get to play with the puppy in my dream but for somebody who is absolutely terrified of dogs maybe they got bitten really badly when they were kid having a dog in their dream may be a nightmare so...I don't like dream dictionaries because there There's no universal meaning for symbols and dreams right now if i dream of a dog it's not gonna necessarily be the same reason that you dream of a dog make sense. And so, I'm really a big fan of doing your own personal interpretation, figuring out well why did that animal show up in my dream? And 99 times out of 100 it's going to be because it was a convenient symbol for a thing that happened to you recently or thing even thinking about. That being said with both regards to dreams and waking animal sightings if you feel deep deep down that there is something

34:15 noteworthy or special about that encounter beyond, oh wow I've never seen an animal before. Explore it! Explore that possibility One of my favorite ways of helping people find totems is through guided meditation. I have a very specific meditation that i use, it's kind of basically the same format that everybody else uses which is you visualize going into a tunnel in the ground and when you come out of the tunnel you find yourself in a wild natural place. I don't tell you what that place is because I want your mind to pick it out When you are that place and hopefully things go well your totem shows up it gives you just enough structure to shift your consciousness into that meditative headspace where you can be open. Talking to your totems or totems for that matter you can have more than one but i don't like giving people specific click no habitat or species

35:14 Because there are so many animal species on this planet and your totem could be any of them. It's also the reason I don't like totem cards because there is really only so many animals that you can fit in one deck, and what if your totem happens to be an animal that is not in that deck? So I really emphasize guided meditation as a way of finding totems just because it is open-ended and you can use that meditation just to go into the totem spirit world. And say for example, a bobcat runs across the road and you feel there's something really really important about that. You can go into

35:57 A guided meditation specifically to speak with bobcat the totem and ask well was there anything to this particular encounter with that you trying get in touch with me or did i just happen to have a really rare sighting of this beautiful wild cat. Does that make sense it does It does and so I guess the next step let's say you do a meditation, you do connect with a totem animal something becomes clear. What comes next? How do you foster that connection and strengthen the bonds and what are the benefits of doing so well i mean one of things to do is go back in visit on a regular basis just like he would with any other friend or ally relationship when i do guided meditations work with totems im not going deep deep deep into the spirit realm

36:46 I'm basically going into what i perceive it sort of an in between place between our world and the spirit world. And you can also think of it as a deep in between place between the conscious mind and unconscious mind depending on your perspective all that. And so, it's basically neutral ground where if i want to speak with that totem or they wanna speak with me, it's like having your favorite coffee shop that you gonna meet with friends You know, it's like that kind of place. Except it's bigger and you know It's a good place if the totem wants to show you things or explore things with you You have the space to do that Or if they want to introduce you to other totems So just going back and visiting and working with them on a regular basis is one thing Another thing that a lot of people like to do is set up a small altar or shrine To that Totem

37:34 In their home and the value of that is that it gives your conscious mind. A constant reminder of that being in there important to you in all the shows that told him, did you really want them to stay around your baby giving them their own place in your home this is not to be anything especially elaborate it can just be a little shelf on the wall, we maybe have a couple statues or pictures are other representations of that but it's important because it shows both them and you. That relationship is important and then a lot of people call on their totem for another guide during ritual practices meditation things like that and it's basically saying hey

38:19 Again, you're an important part of my life. I'd like you to be a part of this." Even if it's not a totem... For example, if I am looking for work of some sort, I tend to really have my go-tos from job hunting or if I'm looking for another contract or if I'm looking for a good publishing opportunity or something, I will talk to Beaver and I'll talk to River Otter or I'll talk to Badger depending on what kind of work it is. I'll talk to these totems because both beaver and you know, beavers very much about work. And you know having a good home and stability and so forth badger has taught me a lot about persistence and toughness which is something really need when your job hunting

39:05 and River Otter does everything with play. So I want to be able to find stuff that, you know...I want to find work to do that i'm going to enjoy and so I might invite those totems when I'm doing some kind of a ritual just like myself up for an interview or what about to overhaul my resume or anything else work-related and ask for their guidance in there help as much as I'm able to. So those are just a few of the ways that we can connect, but i think probably the most important reason to connect with totems and I think the one that gets overlooked by far the most you know... As I said earlier, I mentioned earlier that totems are an intermediary between their species and everything else including humans

39:58 And because humans are having such a drastic impact on the rest of the world, you know the totems have basically been coming to those of us who will listen and they're trying to get us to pay attention again. You know those of us in the western world were causing most trouble. The totem's were basically casting about trying to get somebody from this highly destructive group of humans to pay attention to them again Unfortunately, again because we tend to be so selfish and anthropocentric. We're always thinking in terms of me-me-me-me what can I get out of it? What can I learn how can I be empowered how can i make my life better etc etc etc And the thing that gets overlooked the most is How do we give back? How do we listen to the totem's needs and their desires for their species and how do we help facilitate that

40:51 No people sometimes like to talk about making offerings to the various spirits they work with and a lot of times it ends up being things like i'm going to leave food out for animals. to help the nature spirits. I'm not sure how that works, but you know apparently leaving food out for the animals is good for nature even though it promotes those animals becoming reliant on humans for food and it's just really a bad idea from an ecological perspective. But really in my experience one of the most important offerings you can ever make to any nature-based being

41:27 Is actually working to help. Physical nature connected to that being for example to help a totem you make an offering to a totem you do something to help it's physical counterparts weather that, volunteering to help improve that species habitat, whether it's making a donation to an organization that is working to preserve that species and its habitat. Whether its volunteering with an animal rescue wildlife shelter you know that just some of the things you can do to help those totems. You know a big part of my personal

42:09 practice is not drumming and dancing and things of that nature. It's volunteering with local conservation organizations doing things like invasive species removal, habitat restoration and community education...things of that nature. I've donated money to a lot of organizations over the years Try and help them facilitate their actions even if i can't be there to help them themselves so. You know it's really important to me you emphasize that yes if your spirituality helps you become a better person awesome if your spirituality promotes you,

42:53 Becoming a more responsible part of your entire community and not just human community. That's why i think you level up to me one of the signs of an advanced practitioner is they want to give back as much as possible not just about me it's about that interconnection does that make sense does it does and stewardship seems like a natural component to this kind of stuff when you're in the mindset, i'm just so interested in the minds of animals and my hope or suspicion would be that.

43:30 to get better insights into their minds and logic in the way they think that this stuff might be able to be helpful. And I guess, I would ask if tapping into these beast master entities or any of these animal magic practices have helped you in that regard? Are there insights or examples you could share that other people just might have no context for because they haven't done this kind of work? That's kind of a tough question Again, as a human being in a human body with the human brain and consciousness and understanding of the world I'm very limited in how much I'm able to really understand about an animal's world. Even when I do meditations with totems where they show me what it's like to be that particular species It still filtered through that human consciousness Mm-hmm

44:26 In conditioning and so forth, so I think what it's done for me is helped me to learn to be more empathetic. What other beings and a consider that there are being that see the world in ways that i don't. I am not a big fan of this whole thing of People who claim that they can talk for animals people who claim that their animal communicators. I have a really tough time with that because i don't know what they're basing things on besides vague psychic powers, it's presumptuous you know i don't know if there paying attention to the animals behavior i don't know how much they know about the animals that particular species vocalizations i don't know

45:18 how much they know about that species overall. And again, you know I've seen so many people who really want to communicate with animals but they're coming from a very human perspective So...I really hesitate to say something along the lines of yes my spirituality has helped me understand physical animals more Currently sharing the living room with me right now in my studio as I sit here and speak with you is a 20-something year old African gray parrot. He belongs to my housemate who owns this place, she's only here part time right now

46:02 I'm the caretaker of the place, but she brought one of her African greys out here to keep me company and so I could keep him company. And I've never really had experience with birds before now did i go and talk to a totem african gray? Yeah! I did just because birds are tiny dinosaurs and I tend to understand mammals better And I think that experience of going and talking to African grey, the totem helped me to remind myself that there are consciousnesses out there besides mammalian ones. And that I really need to open my mind to them and understand their perspectives and their priorities are a bit different than what a lot mammals may be after

46:51 But I think what was more valuable to me in bolstering that was A, reading up on African gray behavior from people who have been living with them for years and years and years. And also just hanging out with this particular bird and getting to know his individual quirks and personality and so forth. So I think that meditation reminded me to keep my options in my mindset open But i don't think it gave me any super amazing insight into you know this particular birds wants and needs that's something i had to learn on my own. And if he was having behavior issues i would be more likely to take him too,

47:40 a parrot specialist as opposed to an animal communicator. So again, like I said, i think the spiritual part of my relationship with nature has a lot of value but i tend to give it limitations compared to you know each part of my life has its own sort of bailiwick and boundaries so my spiritual stuff tends to be more based on My personal development and that includes reminding myself that i am just a teeny teeny teeny little part of the huge amazing universe. With all sorts of different beings in places and so forth right on it seems very clear that your,

48:29 Incredibly respectful and humble about these kind of things in trying to keep the ego out of it, add another thing i'm really interested in that was a chapter in your bang and for blood and bone book is familiar as from what i understand these are often physical animals that a magician has a strong connection to rather than a spirit animal like us and we see this in movies like a wizard using animals to fetch something important or act as spies. Is there a real precedent for that in these sorts of practices? I think so, yes. It's not something that you see... So when I speak of a familiar and also want to add the caveat that I've only actually had one familiar and that's one that I worked with while I was working with that book. A skink right? Yeah she is a barrel skink and cute little lizard spent most her time hanging out under the sand but you know she came out when it was important

49:27 Like me, she's an introvert. And so it's not just any animal that a magician or pagan or witch happens to own because I've had other pets and so forth but specifically it's an animal who actively makes themselves a part of your ritual practice. And again, you have to kind of have some skepticism, a healthy level of skepticism just because your cat likes to jump up on the altar and knock stuff off doesn't mean that we're familiar but you can definitely tell certain animals when you do rituals or spells whatever they will actively lend their energy to the proceedings so you can feel it, you know it's there and that is

50:17 Is i think what makes a familiar i think the concept has been kind of money. because a lot of the information that we have is honestly from the European witch trials where you had inquisitors and other people basically feeding information to their victims who were basically as Catholic as they were, Protestant as they were in order to try and get a fake confession. So you'd get a witch hunter or inquisitor whoever saying That cat that you have it's a gift to you from satan and it runs errands for you and your witchy friends. You know basically feeding all that information the people in unfortunately don't think a lot of people understand, the context under which that information about suppose witchcraft came from right and so again this is something like totemism my base we had to recreate

51:15 for myself based on the experiences and resources that I had access to. The thing that I found through my own experience is that it's not just any animal, its an animal who very specifically wants to be a part of your workings and you can't really... Just because you have an animal that you love does not mean they're automatically going to be your familiar if I were ever to go back to actively practicing magic again I'm not going to assume that liberty the african great parrot who sitting here looking at me with some curiosity i'm not going to assume that he's going to this. Step up and be a part of what i'm doing right they can choose you but as i wrote in the book yeah you can actually go into,

52:02 A shelter or a pet store or wherever else you happen to be looking for you basically do ritual before you start the quest. For a familiar and open yourself up to the universe in say hey i'm ready help me find that perfect animal who's looking for me, add my found my familiar before That's really interesting because you know i have two cats and both times I went to the humane society to pick one. I kind of let them pick me in both cats ended up putting there at different times, they put their paw on the glass now like that's the one will take that when i feel like ever really strong connection to both of them and no i didn't really do anything

52:45 Magical on purpose necessarily, but I think I was in the same frame of mind that. I wanted an animal to pick me and I think that's the way to go about it exactly And I think that's important to allow other species to have agency whether that's dealing with individual domestic animals that you know we want to find a good home for or whether that trying to Navigate our very complicated Relationships with wild nature and the animals that live there again whether it has been. For ill intent you know people justifying the slaughtering of large predators because they kill livestock in their port must be bad or weather for good intent but being harmful you know,

53:36 Assuming that my pet chihuahua must have the same food that i do because. I would never eat that dog food and neither should he in you know so you end up with a fifteen pound chihuahua that looks like a sausage with legs when we shove our human biases on to other species it very frequently ends up being Harmful to them and so when we give them some level of agency with it within reason, you know Then we stand to learn a lot more from them. I mean i'm preparing to build a chicken coop out here because I want to have some chickens and i'm going to have to deal with the fact that we have a number of predators around here ranging from stoats, raccoons, black bears. That's what I am gonna have to protect the chickens from and so not gonna give the raccoon enough agency to get my chicken but rather than shooting the raccoon

54:35 You know i'm just going to work to make a stronger chicken coop if they happen to manage to get in and so I allowed on that level of agency. This is a being that i share my world with and not going to forcibly change that i'm just going to nudge, a couple things around so that my chickens are safe does it make sense absolutely absolutely Wow well lupa i really think this kind of brings us close to the finish line i'm really glad you were willing to talk to us about this stuff i love the idea of dissolving barriers between man and beast by whatever means necessary. And i guess i would also ask before we go do remind people of your work that you do and where they can follow up on this stuff if there are still hungry for more any other projects you got in the works

55:27 Yeah, thank you. It's been really awesome being here and I really hope people enjoyed it. I hope you are willing to be patient with me when I get kind of opinionated if you like what i'm talking about and you want to find out more my website is thegreenwolf.com not green wolf but THE Green Wolf when I registered the domain years ago someone else already had green wolf so I did THE Green Wolf And I'm also all over the place. I'm on Facebook and Tumblr and Instagram, you can find the links on the website in the link section of the website My latest already completed project is The Tarot of Bones which is a full tarot deck plus companion book

56:13 You can find information about that on the website. My current project is actually a book called Vulture Culture 101, A Book for People Who Like Dead Things and if you're interested in working with hides and bones this is actually a book on the people who are interested in hides and bones as collections and so forth how to find them how to process them what do with them what's legal what not what to do about ethical conundrum And so forth and there's actually an indiegogo campaign starting on february six if you wanna be a really early adopter of the book which i want to have out later this summer, back in the go go and help with initial printing costs and so forth and get an early copy the books so.

56:57 There's more information about that project at vultureculture101.com But like I said, all things lupa can be found at thegreenwolf.com My email is there if you want to contact me chat ask questions etc feel free to get in touch Awesome! Well thanks again i definitely learned a lot I really appreciate your perspectives given how long you've put your attention on these themes so great work and take care of yourself out there Yeah and thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it, and it's really a privilege. Thank you! You got it Good times with Lupa Greenwolf everybody. I hope you found something to like about that, something interesting to chew on... I sort of figured it would be great to step away from the dense heady political kind of stuff and toss in one those random topics and I thought animal magic was a decent one As a stoner who now works from home i got these two cats, this dog Now I've got these fish that live on the underside our little indoor aquaponic garden

58:00 And I'm just fascinated with observing all of them, trying to figure out what they're thinking. And I just find it crazy that someone wouldn't think these animals are conscious so that they don't have emotions and decision-making abilities So i thought maybe we could explore getting some insight there since a person who's knowledgeable in animal magic should have a deeper understanding perhaps of animals in general And I think Lupus shared what she could in that regard. Also the concept of overarching animal beastmaster spirits is pretty interesting too, I got room in my reality model for that but I did try a few meditations trying to connect with the spirit animal too why not see what happens?

58:42 And it's just tough with these things because I don't know my own mind well enough to know if i just projected something in there, filled into blank. If an animal came to mind that was random or if there is something deeper there but out of my meditation exploration came the gorilla Or Gorilla as Lupo would say and I don't particularly resonate with gorilla I don't spend a lot time thinking about gorilla Gorilla does not take up a lot real estate in my mind but maybe I just need to do it a little bit more. Also, today was a bit of a rare show in that Lupa has obviously changed her mind a bit when it comes to animal magic... That is fine, of course! And I probably should have digested more recent work and might have picked up on that vibe if I did But I dug into her early book Fang & Fur Blood and Bone A Primal Guide To Animal Magic because it was the most all-encompassing

59:36 Her more recent work is focused on one art form like skull scrying or the tarot of bones, but it's a fair point that a person can change their mind on things in over a decade. But of course I dedicate a lot of thought to the path i want to navigate through a conversation. So if I'm bringing up something that's maybe a six on the weird scale and she says she might think that it's too far-fetched, I don't really have a game plan for pivoting away from more and more out there stuff! It's all good, it's kind of funny... And I'm sure you can hear it in my voice a few times in the interview

1:00:14 But I guess one of these points was about overtaking of an animal. Now, I don't think that's too far-fetched to project your consciousness into a falcon let's say if a person can invoke demons or undergo possession why couldn't an animal be possessed by a skilled consciousness projector? I guess you don't really need it if we have remote viewing You don't need to warg into a hawk when you can just project your mind out there like a cloud Remote viewing is a weird thing clearly they're not sending their optic nerve to the location so it's like are we just seeing with our third eye what can we see with our third eye, what do we really need our two eyes for? I don't know. I think remote viewing brings up a lot of interesting and curious questions especially since we have data that shows no this is a real thing We just don't know how or why

1:01:05 But remote viewing is one of those ideas that I think is on the spectrum, or maybe that's the wrong phrase to use but in the realm of possibility. So I respect her opinion and experience but it is a fairly rare thing to have a guest who has gotten more sobering on topics in their wheelhouse. I didn't expect her to have moved away so much from what she had written in the past but it happens. In the plus show, it came out a lot more because my questions got a lot weirder! It's not a bad thing but it was a little unexpected if you didn't hear the plus show some of the things I threw at her were shape-shifting and consciousness projection like I mentioned, the idea of other kin communities people who think they are part animal or their reincarnation has some residue from their last past life that was an animal... interesting stuff

1:01:58 But then also animal parts and skins in magical ritual, animal sacrifice in magic. Skull scrying and the terror of bones And connecting with plant spirits versus animals I even asked her how to better facilitate conscious communication between me and Miss Mary Jane You don't want just burn it all the time sometimes you wanna talk to it But on these later topics, especially when it came to animal skins and materials I think she knows quite a bit. And i find the idea of energy inside of an animal hide for example really interesting Dr Steven Skinner actually highlighted that when he talked about following the grimoires to a tee you need to get the material that they tell you to get You can't substitute animal parts for plastic because the energy is not there

1:02:51 So I think it was great to try to at least take a swing and an animal-centric show through the lens of magic. I hope you agree Of course, Western society has done a great job of stripping plants and animals from our worldly experience except for the solitary trees and asphalt prisons that line the grocery store parking lot. And the birds hovering overhead looking for something to land on that isn't lined with spikes So it's probably a good thing to pay tribute to that animal kingdom once in awhile Maybe down the line we'll do it again with more Indigenous perspective perhaps? Either way, big thanks to Lupa for giving us her time and keeping it real. Do check out her books and website if you have any interest in these areas. I know she came from a more personal journey type of perspective but there's a lot lost knowledge in this realm so I like digging into it whenever we can find the angle to do so!

1:03:46 Alright, so we took a bit of walk down a path less traveled today and then coming up next is a helluva guest way more in that conspiratorial wheelhouse. I consider him a well respected name in the alternative community one of the most respected that hasn't been on THC yet. I like his work alot I got some resistance to some aspects of it, but he's a great guy and i'm lucky to be adding him to the long list of great names that have graced the higher side with their presence. I'm sure you're gonna dig it! But that's all I'm gonna say about it. Except that its Joe Atwell So, I'll see you then! Your move animal spirits spirit guides and beast master entities of the other world You're...fuckin'... Well I wonder what its like to be a rainmaker I wonder what its like to know that I made the ra-

1:04:46 I store it in boxes with little yellow tags on every one And you can come and see them when I'm done, when i'm done Well I wonder what its like to be a superhero Wonder where I'd go if I could fly around downtown yeah From some other planet I'd get this funky high in the yellow sun. I bet my friends are all being stunts, they're stunts

1:05:39 Yeah, I stayed up watching you Hopeful worried about here If i was someone else we'd soon fall apart Strange where were you when we started this game? I wish the whole damn world would listen to THC I wonder what it's like to be the head honcho I wonder what i'd do if they just did all that I said. I shout out in order, this may be something to make me wanna change my hair. So, I don't care. Straight up what did you hope to learn about here? If I was someone else would the song

1:06:51 Strange where were you when we started this game I wish the real would listen to DAC Please don't change, please don't break All the only thing that seems to work it all And for you please don't change at all. Straight up why did you hope to learn

1:07:27 If I was someone else would this song fall apart? Shame's where it all would've started, This is a waste of real world but just stop asking and change