Animal Guides Animal Guides A-Z   Animal Guide Meditation Animals Lessons in Love Celtic Animal Allies Celtic Animal Birth Signs Children and Animal Guides God Spelled Backwards How Could You? How to Choose Your Totem Animal Types of Animal Totems Understanding Spirit Animals What Is An Animal Totem? Your Feline Familiar and It's Care   Animal Guides can be called upon for spells, protection, divination, and battle. Witches love animals. We never harm or kill them in our rites or spells. Blood sacrifice of any sort is against our law. That "eye of newt and toe of frog" stuff is nonsense. It is hard to reconcile the gibbering witches of MacBeth with the proud Pagan priestesses of Egypt, Babylon, Knosses, and Ireland, or with ethical modern Wiccans. Those were the Burning Times, when magick  and the craft itself became degraded under constant persecution.      Magickal knowledge was once so closely guarded that code words were often used for spell ingredients in ancient recipe books. For example, blood of goose actually meant sap from a mulberry tree and a pig's tail meant the herb leopard's bane. Patchouli leaves are still sold as graveyard dust by some occult suppliers. Some old spells that call for animal parts are included here as curiosities. I certainly do not mean for you to use them as written! These spells are mostly of use to thieves and jealous guys anyway. Rather than amuse you, dismay you, or inspire you in image magick. Remember that the animal parts called for may be code words for herbs, stones, or other ingredients.      The only part of an animal that it is lawful for a witch to use is the one the animal gives freely when it no longer has use for it ~ Sharks teeth, cat fur, peacock feathers, sea shells, and snake skin, for example. We otherwise use image magick instead of animal parts, or call upon deities that correspond to animals.      Meditate on the awesome prehistoric cave paintings of Europe and Africa, on how they reveal the religious importance of animals to humans. When you dream of an animal, try to speak with it. This is the ay to gain knowledge. Animals often come to witches as they do shamans, as spirit guides who help, teach, reveal secrets, bestow wisdom, and support magickal workings. I have included many animals here, along with "Chants" that you can use to bring in that animals "spirit". Please feel free to adapt these to anything that suits you. But, be ever mindful of the "Rule of Three", whatever ye sends out comes back to thee, times three!     Information for this section is from Animal Magick by DJ Conway and The Animal-Wise Tarot by Ted Andrews.