In the very earliest time, when both people and animals lived on earth, a person could become an animal if he wanted to and an animal could become a human being. Sometimes they were people and sometimes animals and there was no difference. All spoke the same language. --Nalungiaq

Coyote said, "Bear, you better stay in the mountains." Deer said, "I want to go live in the mountains too!" Whitefish said, "I want some water." Duck said he wanted water too. Swan said, "Look at me, I am growing pretty now; See, I am white all over."

Bear pounded the ground.
--Northern Paiute story in How Animals Chose Their Places

To look at animals from an underworld perspective means to regard them as carriers of soul, perhaps totem carriers of our own free soul or death soul, there to help us see in the dark.
--James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld

During the hours of darkness, all baboons suffer from a deep-rooted primitive anxiety which continually startles them into wakefullness.
--Vitrous B. Droscher, The Mysterious Senses of Animals

Cows, pigs, horses, sheep, goats,
dogs, cats, hens, geese--noisy goods!
Little bees that stick to all flowers.
These are the ten beasts
of all the world's men.
--Mary Daley, Irish Laws

And God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
--Genesis (1.26), The Bible

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Animal Dreams

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old.
--e.e. cummings, 53

Muse	Dreaming
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