Animal Guides: In Life, Myth and Dreams
Author: Neil Russack
Inner City Books, Toronto, 2002, 222 pages

Once there was a lonely and confused young man who was an observer. He suffered a sanitized existence – controlled and carefully measured. He early witnessed members of his family making choices, dry and uncompromising, that furnished the objective trappings of security that soothed the pain of the family history –but did not, of course, heal it. In pondering his own history of isolation, he made the assessment, “What was left out was the animal inside who hungered to experiment and explore his own relationship to friends and to the world.”

Reading Animal Guides is a participation in this exploration, the further one reads, the deeper the bond established by the raw personal sharing that the author has the courage to include. The world is indeed welcomed by this once-lonely young man, now a Jungian analyst in San Francisco, as story after instructive anecdote about all manner of people is presented. Animal Guides appear to shepherd these seeking dreamers along their way – disappearing once they find pasture. Birds fly away, deer slip quietly back into forests green, and dolphins plunge to deeper depths, perhaps to guide the next unsuspecting dreamer.

What reads as a continuous flow is yet clearly separated into the four major elements of initiation and
transformation – water, earth, air and fire. Page after page of instructive descriptions of animals and insightful guidance each provides is fluidly, easily interwoven into Russack’s personal history. An eclectic, generous and rich collection of drawings and figure plates, both ancient and new, is included to support the ideas. Wonderfully engaging, they provide sharpened visual enhancement and animation.
   
Because the creation of this book is, in fact, an important part of the on-going evolution of its author, he speaks not only about his clients – with a respectful detachment I came to admire – but about himself. Refraining from judgment, he allows his clients their own process, which encouraged me, as reader, to extend to him the same courtesy, as he tells of experiences of his own that most people would be reluctant to share.
   
Russack clearly communicates that the reality of personal growth, of integrity building, is a total commitment. Comfortingly, he suggests that one is never left to face one’s troubles alone: guides will appear for every stage one is willing to enter. Some souls are willing to grow and some are not – yet. Never mind, the relentless hounds of heaven will no doubt chase them a little later. They usually do.
   
It is not that some people have water guides and others earth or air. No, it is that as one moves to deeper, or higher or hotter or colder places, different animal guides appear over time. They point out, encourage, warn or instruct, and invite us to compare our situations to the messages their natures imply. Their unselfish goal is to inspire us to connect completely with our own essence, which is why, according to Marie-Louise von Franz in “The White Parrot” (Individuation in Fairy Tales):

"…we make all this fuss about dream interpretation, because only by it can we tell where the flow of the unconscious libido is moving and try to adapt our conscious movement to it, for then we feel alive. Then, even if not much happens in our lives, or we have a boring job to do, or all sorts of frustrations, we feel inwardly alive."
 

Having read Leaving My Father’s House, I see a correspondence: Marion Woodman explains that life’s hard work is to give birth to that connected essence, moving it from the mind and into tangible reality. Of course the dreamed-of version always seems so much better than what manifests, which is why humility is necessary. And so, with his animal guides to midwife his book, Russack materializes another part of his own metamorphosis.

The book is so well organized that it doubles not only as an on-going series of stories and instructive, fluid conversation, but as an indexed compendium of animal symbols as well.

Animal Guides does not set up any hierarchy of animals. No particular creature is classified as more important than any other. Each animal has its place, with distinctive drives with which one can interact. The lowly turtle, for example – a first inspiration for the young Russack – cannot possibly be less important than the phoenix, simply because first hope is so poignant, so critical. As a discouraged child, also stuck under a roof he could not escape, Russack observed a turtle whose condition reminded him of his own predicament:

…to see this slow dependent shell with legs move with a plan and direction gave me hope…the sturdy legs were slow, yet demonstrated that such heavily burdened life can indeed move.

Nor is an animal guide appointed to an individual on a permanent basis. Instead, one is accompanied, sequentially, by all manner of creatures, depending on one’s own desire for growth, one’s own pursuit of meaning in life. It is important the Russack positions animals as guides and that they act the part and remain true to their natures – a bird is a bird, and a frog is a frog. Each generally represents an instinctual drive, definite and clear in its path, as indeed all true guides must be. In contrast to this straightforward aspect, a jumble of animals that can appear in dreams, may spell trouble. What Marie-Louise von Franz terms a mixtum compositum will neither usher
nor navigate. In her discussion of “The Bath Badgerd” (ibid) she explains:

  " If the unconscious wants to bring up a psychological content which is still so far away
   from consciousness that it can only be represented by mixtum compositum of many
   animal drives, in their positive and destructive ways, that shows that it is a content
   for which consciousness has not as yet any organ of reception: it cannot be met.
   Therefore it is generally experienced as something exceedingly demonic and
   destructive, because you would have to dissolve your own conscious attitude and
   become as chaotic as such an animal to understand what it meant."

Instead, in Animal Guides, each creature has an advent and departure according to the growth the seeking dreamer is willing to earn – not just by knowing but by practicing the action required. In so doing, the gift of connection of that which was severed is received. And that gift is to become more truly alive – a theme that is often repeated by Russack. He also points out that while there are rich rewards, there are responsibilities and painful price tags to one’s evolution. Russack openly shares his unique experience of achieving a state of rawness and vulnerability in his life – a process that brought him to his reward: the readiness to move to an even deeper place of healing. It seems that having created a sturdy and reliable nest of trusting relationships he found himself able and willing to fall apart in that nest, with yet more hatching to be done. Is this why the tale ends not with the powerful earthbound bull, but with a more versatile duck?

The finishing lines are, like the book itself, an invitation to a beginning:

“Where are you going with the duck?” someone may ask.
“Wherever it takes me,” I will respond.