{"id":31630,"date":"2025-03-19T11:55:31","date_gmt":"2025-03-19T15:55:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/?p=31630"},"modified":"2025-03-19T11:56:43","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T15:56:43","slug":"codys-column-working-with-land-and-animal-spirits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2025\/03\/19\/codys-column-working-with-land-and-animal-spirits\/","title":{"rendered":"Cody\u2019s Column: Working With Land and Animal Spirits"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is eclipse night, and the rain is pouring down.\u00a0 I won\u2019t get to see the eclipse, but I will feel it.\u00a0 I have been feeling it in the land and animal spirits that live here along the Magic Skagit River.\u00a0 The ravens who have been visiting again, the elk all standing in a line alongside the road, two eagles perched on a branch chattering with each other, circles of water rippling on the river, nettles peeking up off the forest floor, Indian Plum flowers blooming, and of course the iconic daffodils blooming in the Skagit Valley.\u00a0 Tonight, I write to you about being receptive to these spirits.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Look into the water and see what comes out for you.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For some of you readers, you will feel more comfortable with a perspective shift, a mind shift, or a change in feeling about the land and animals.\u00a0 For others, you may feel more comfortable with ritual, routine, or ceremony.\u00a0 For the rest of us, we will probably land somewhere in between.\u00a0 With my outdoor cat watching me through the window, I will attempt to delve into the mysteries one can find themselves in when working with land and animal spirits.<\/p>\n

\"\"
With her paw at the window, she beckons to be fed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first mystery we find ourselves in is the inherent secrets of this work.\u00a0 Skills have been lost, connections severed, guidance obscured.\u00a0 Modernity has its own pace, and my first advice is to practice slowing down.\u00a0 This will have two effects.\u00a0 Once you slow yourself down, you will notice a change in your attitudes and feelings with the land and animal spirits.\u00a0 Keep at this practice of learning to use your own brake pedal.\u00a0 With training, you will notice the second effect and that is in the land around you.\u00a0 You will perceive how your actions become integrated with the actions of the land and animal spirits.\u00a0 This is beneficial because it helps us develop an authentic relationship to the land and its spirits.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Make a Sacred space for your land and animal spirits to visit you.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Land and animal spirits have their own relationship hierarchies, communities, places of friction, and unimaginable beauty in self-actualization.\u00a0 They want you to become more aware of this living system because you are already an integral piece of their world.\u00a0 Just as you observe how an organization, restaurant, or service industry is structured, you can begin to observe how the land and animal spirits are structured.\u00a0 Look to the smallest thing that you can see, the insects, seedlings, stones, leaves, and snails.\u00a0 How did they get here, what is their origin story?\u00a0 What do they do for the surrounding land?\u00a0 What small or big lessons can they teach us?\u00a0 I like to ask them questions like this and then observe even more.\u00a0 If you are feeling up to it, ask about the unseen microbial life next.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Life is a spiral journey; look how far you have come!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I do a meditative ritual to help me see how small is beautiful, but I also have a ceremony for the smaller land and animal spirits involving the use of a snail shell.\u00a0 I find a little oasis of beauty, a smallscape that catches my eye.\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s in my driveway and other times I\u2019m deep in the forest on a bed of moss.\u00a0 I place the snail shell down in an artful way and begin tracing the spiral shape with a wand made from holly.\u00a0 I imagine my body shrinking to the size of an ant so that everything small becomes big.\u00a0 Then I sit and meditate on this new shapeshifted state and use my mind\u2019s eye guided by beauty to find three treasures to notice\u2026sometimes there are more\u2026before I retrace the shell in reverse.\u00a0 Last, I take a moment to express gratefulness for the small treasures.\u00a0 I revaluate my large size asking, how I can make room for these small treasures in my daily life?<\/p>\n

\"\"
The sting of the nettle only serves to share how we can harness its potential for medicine.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As I said before, the land and animal spirits exist in a hierarchy but it is not like our human one.\u00a0 All the spirits I work with are fully actualized and they live in community.\u00a0 They are wise elders, occasionally into mischief, but open to teaching.\u00a0 Some just want to be left alone.\u00a0 In my practice I honor those spirit\u2019s wishes and ask that they leave me alone as well.\u00a0 You can do this with the help of your guardian or guide spirits or you can do this with your own protective ceremony.\u00a0 I strongly recommend that you reach out for a guardian spirit if you have not done so already.\u00a0 Some say work with one, others have many they work with.\u00a0 I am a bit of a hybrid who started with one, Wolf, who led me to others\u2026Raven, Bear, Elk, Frog, Snake, Snail, Coyote, Mountain Lion, and Eagle.\u00a0 There is also a guardian of the land spirit whom you may speak with.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Once you find a place where the spirits speak to you, honor them with gratitude.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My journey with the guardian of the land spirit is one of mystery to me.\u00a0 In previous articles I mentioned that I have seen him in human and animal form, (also as a tree that fell and later disappeared).\u00a0 Guardians of the land are patient and quite willing to help us remove what isn\u2019t working for us or the land.\u00a0 They help teach us some foundational lessons for working with the community of spirits present and they offer guidance to medicines for the land and for us.\u00a0 Many times these medicines are plants and trees, but I have on occasion seen the medicine be the presence of animals. \u00a0A guardian of the land will help guide you into the history of the land.\u00a0 They will also help you find your place on the land, whether through hard lessons or patient understanding.\u00a0 Be willing to learn from the hard lessons of others.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Listen to the stories of the elders of the land, they will speak of their hardships and lessons learned.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The spirits can teach us about big things going on where we live and even bigger things happening on this planet.\u00a0 The spirits have access to something greater than what we can see.\u00a0 I encourage you to try and sense what that is while you are walking in a forest, tending your garden, or noticing that small spider in your house.\u00a0 I have from time to time seen glimpses of what is happening globally but much more frequently I am instructed by the spirits on what is happening locally.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Work on harmonizing the global with the local. Remember that small is beautiful.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A ceremony you may consider is that of a land trust ceremony.\u00a0 It is a ceremony that shows you will be there for the land when the land needs you most.\u00a0 First make an intention to work with the land and animal spirits by representing them with feathers, stones, bones you have found, plant material you exchanged respectfully for, or something else that you have felt an inspiration to do with your land and animal spirits. Welcome them into your ceremony with an acknowledgement of their names and presence on the land.\u00a0 Offer to the spirits your gifts of communication and dedication to work with them in observing the land, helping the small elements and the larger elements harmonize with the seasons.\u00a0 This may look different for you in your area than it does for me in my area, but I urge you to allow yourself to learn while in ceremony.\u00a0 You may notice something new, something difficult, or something urgent for yourself or the land.\u00a0 You may also receive a job to complete whether it is a clean up task or a rejuvenating task.\u00a0 I have seen the spirits offer teachings for our own mental, spiritual, and physical health.\u00a0 Be ready for a change in your path.<\/p>\n

\"\"
We are like the roots of trees, going in every different direction searching for nutrients, often forgetting that we support much larger things.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I use rune, Tarot, and oracle cards to assist with the guidance in my path while working with the land and animal spirits.\u00a0 Try out an animal oracle deck.\u00a0 Sense the Fey at work on the land?\u00a0 Consider a faerie tarot deck. \u00a0Are dragons involved? \u00a0Guardian spirits? \u00a0Ancestors?\u00a0 Make small steps towards understanding.\u00a0 Big changes will come but not without the small steps.\u00a0 For my next article in April, I will discuss how I use rune, Tarot, and oracle cards to assist my practice in working with the land and animal spirits.\u00a0 Spring will come and show you how beautiful it is to take small steps towards change.\u00a0 Until then, I hope your journey with the land and animal spirits is filled with harmony, commitment, dedication, mystery, wonder, peace, and love.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Take a breath of fresh air and notice the dew early in the morning…may peace enter your soul.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"\"I am a husband, father, farmer, and friend. I live on the banks of the Magic Skagit River, ancestral lands of the Sauk-Suiattle people. I practice rune reading, tarot, land magic, and work with many spirit guides. My life began Pagan but I veered off into the Christian church in college. I found my way back to my Pagan and ancestral roots in 2005 and have journeyed along this path since then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is eclipse night, and the rain is pouring down.\u00a0 I won\u2019t get to see the eclipse, but I will feel it.\u00a0 I have been feeling it in the land and animal spirits that live here along the Magic Skagit River.\u00a0 The ravens who have been visiting again, the elk all standing in a line alongside the road, two eagles perched on a branch chattering with each other, circles of water rippling on the river, nettles peeking up off the forest floor, Indian Plum flowers blooming, and of course the iconic daffodils blooming in the Skagit Valley.\u00a0 Tonight, I write to you about being receptive to these spirits. For some of you readers, you will feel more comfortable with a perspective shift, a mind shift, or a change in feeling about the land and animals.\u00a0 For others, you may feel more comfortable with ritual, routine, or ceremony.\u00a0 For the rest of us, we will probably land somewhere in between.\u00a0 With my outdoor cat watching me through the window, I will attempt to delve into the mysteries one can find themselves in when working with land and animal spirits. The first mystery we find ourselves in is the inherent secrets of this work.\u00a0 Skills have been lost, connections severed, guidance obscured.\u00a0 Modernity has its own pace, and my first advice is to practice slowing down.\u00a0 This will have two effects.\u00a0 Once you slow yourself down, you will notice a change in your attitudes and feelings with the land and animal spirits.\u00a0 Keep at this practice of learning to use your own brake pedal.\u00a0 With training, you will notice the second effect and that is in the land around you.\u00a0 You will perceive how your actions become integrated with the actions of the land and animal spirits.\u00a0 This is beneficial because it helps us develop an authentic relationship to the land and its spirits. Land and animal spirits have their own relationship hierarchies, communities, places of friction, and unimaginable beauty in self-actualization.\u00a0 They want you to become more aware of this living system because you are already an integral piece of their world.\u00a0 Just as you observe how an organization, restaurant, or service industry is structured, you can begin to observe how the land and animal spirits are structured.\u00a0 Look to the smallest thing that you can see, the insects, seedlings, stones, leaves, and snails.\u00a0 How did they get here, what is their origin story?\u00a0 What do they do for the surrounding land?\u00a0 What small or big lessons can they teach us?\u00a0 I like to ask them questions like this and then observe even more.\u00a0 If you are feeling up to it, ask about the unseen microbial life next. I do a meditative ritual to help me see how small is beautiful, but I also have a ceremony for the smaller land and animal spirits involving the use of a snail shell.\u00a0 I find a little oasis of beauty, a smallscape that catches my eye.\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s in my driveway and other times I\u2019m deep in the forest on a bed of moss.\u00a0 I place the snail shell down in an artful way and begin tracing the spiral shape with a wand made from holly.\u00a0 I imagine my body shrinking to the size of an ant so that everything small becomes big.\u00a0 Then I sit and meditate on this new shapeshifted state and use my mind\u2019s eye guided by beauty to find three treasures to notice\u2026sometimes there are more\u2026before I retrace the shell in reverse.\u00a0 Last, I take a moment to express gratefulness for the small treasures.\u00a0 I revaluate my large size asking, how I can make room for these small treasures in my daily life? As I said before, the land and animal spirits exist in a hierarchy but it is not like our human one.\u00a0 All the spirits I work with are fully actualized and they live in community.\u00a0 They are wise elders, occasionally into mischief, but open to teaching.\u00a0 Some just want to be left alone.\u00a0 In my practice I honor those spirit\u2019s wishes and ask that they leave me alone as well.\u00a0 You can do this with the help of your guardian or guide spirits or you can do this with your own protective ceremony.\u00a0 I strongly recommend that you reach out for a guardian spirit if you have not done so already.\u00a0 Some say work with one, others have many they work with.\u00a0 I am a bit of a hybrid who started with one, Wolf, who led me to others\u2026Raven, Bear, Elk, Frog, Snake, Snail, Coyote, Mountain Lion, and Eagle.\u00a0 There is also a guardian of the land spirit whom you may speak with. My journey with the guardian of the land spirit is one of mystery to me.\u00a0 In previous articles I mentioned that I have seen him in human and animal form, (also as a tree that fell and later disappeared).\u00a0 Guardians of the land are patient and quite willing to help us remove what isn\u2019t working for us or the land.\u00a0 They help teach us some foundational lessons for working with the community of spirits present and they offer guidance to medicines for the land and for us.\u00a0 Many times these medicines are plants and trees, but I have on occasion seen the medicine be the presence of animals. \u00a0A guardian of the land will help guide you into the history of the land.\u00a0 They will also help you find your place on the land, whether through hard lessons or patient understanding.\u00a0 Be willing to learn from the hard lessons of others. The spirits can teach us about big things going on where we live and even bigger things happening on this planet.\u00a0 The spirits have access to something greater than what we can see.\u00a0 I encourage you to try and sense what that is while you are walking in a forest, tending your garden, or noticing that small spider in your house.\u00a0 I have from time to time seen glimpses of what is happening globally but much more frequently I am instructed by the spirits on what is happening locally. A ceremony you may consider is that of a land trust ceremony.\u00a0 It is a ceremony that shows you will be there for the land when the land needs you most.\u00a0 First make an intention to work with the land and animal spirits by representing them with feathers, stones, bones you have found, plant material you exchanged respectfully for, or something else that you have felt an inspiration to do with your land and animal spirits. Welcome them into your ceremony with an acknowledgement of their names and presence on the land.\u00a0 Offer to the spirits your gifts of communication and dedication to work with them in observing the land, helping the small elements and the larger elements harmonize with the seasons.\u00a0 This may look different for you in your area than it does for me in my area, but I urge you to allow yourself to learn while in ceremony.\u00a0 You may notice something new, something difficult, or something urgent for yourself or the land.\u00a0 You may also receive a job to complete whether it is a clean up task or a rejuvenating task.\u00a0 I have seen the spirits offer teachings for our own mental, spiritual, and physical health.\u00a0 Be ready for a change in your path. I use rune, Tarot, and oracle cards to assist with the guidance in my path while working with the land and animal spirits.\u00a0 Try out an animal oracle deck.\u00a0 Sense the Fey at work on the land?\u00a0 Consider a faerie tarot deck. \u00a0Are dragons involved? \u00a0Guardian spirits? \u00a0Ancestors?\u00a0 Make small steps towards understanding.\u00a0 Big changes will come but not without the small steps.\u00a0 For my next article in April, I will discuss how I use rune, Tarot, and oracle cards to assist my practice in working with the land and animal spirits.\u00a0 Spring will come and show you how beautiful it is to take small steps towards change.\u00a0 Until then, I hope your journey with the land and animal spirits is filled with harmony, commitment, dedication, mystery, wonder, peace, and love. I am a husband, father, farmer, and friend. I live on the banks of the Magic Skagit River, ancestral lands of the Sauk-Suiattle people. I practice rune reading, tarot, land magic, and work with many spirit guides. My life began Pagan but I veered off into the Christian church in college. I found my way back to my Pagan and ancestral roots in 2005 and have journeyed along this path since then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":295,"featured_media":31634,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10007,10004,10008,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-divination-articles","category-monthly-columns","category-spells-rituals","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31630"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31644,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31630\/revisions\/31644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}