When Animals Speak

Dream Messengers, Power Allies & the Quiet Language of the Wild

Animals have always spoken to us — long before books, before science, before we learned to prioritise the rational over the relational.

They speak in symbol, sensation, instinct, and dream.

Sometimes they arrive quietly, padding into our inner world at night as dream companions.
Sometimes they strut into our waking lives, showing us a new way of sensing our daytime reality.

If you’ve ever wondered whether an animal appearing again and again is “just your imagination”,… you’re not alone. And you’re probably not imagining it.

Becoming a Chicken Keeper (and Being Changed by It)

Recently, my family and I became chicken keepers.

It began with excitement and anxiety in equal measure — the simple, ancient joy of tending another life. Watching them settle into their rhythms. Discovering they hate chicken food and prefer a diet of quinoa and butternut squash (I seem to have accidentally brought home very middle-class hens). Waiting for the first eggs.

Then the delight when those eggs turned out brown, speckled, and blue. Honestly, I haven't been that excited, seeing the first eggs, since my kids took their first steps in the world! 

It is to me a small, delicious, daily miracle.

Even the Poo Is Medicine

Chicken poo — not glamorous, not Instagrammable — yet one of the most powerful accelerators of decay and rebirth. It speeds up the composting process. It turns waste into fertility faster. Richer. Hotter. More alive.

There’s a lesson here too.

Animals don’t just bring beauty. They bring process.

They teach us that nothing is wasted. That even what smells unpleasant has purpose. That life feeds life, endlessly.

And, as animals, especially our pets, so often do, the chickens followed us into our dreams

The Dream of the Escaped Chickens

Last night, both my husband and I dreamt the same thing. The chickens had escaped into the garden. We were trying to catch them.

What does it mean?

Chickens, symbolically, are often linked to:

• nourishment and provision

• daily rhythms and responsibility

• fertility, creativity, and productivity

• the ordinary sacred — life’s small, essential miracles

When they escape in dreams, it can point to:

• fear of “not managing it properly”

• anxiety about keeping something alive, contained, or safe

• the sense that new life energy is a little wild, a little untamed

A reminder that care is learned through relationship, not perfection.

This year, my husband and I are working together more closely than ever. We’re preparing the physical space, and the virtual space - online course platforms, to welcome new groups into The Herbalist’s Way and The Shaman’s Way, both beginning around Spring Equinox — in alignment with the Year of the Fire Horse, said by many astrologers to be the most transformative year in a 60-year cycle.

The dream of the escaping hens feels like a mirror for this moment.

Yes, there’s planning. Structure. Responsibility. But also a reassurance: leave room for wild, untamed growth.

Some of the most profound transformation happens in the unexpected moments — not the curated ones. It certainly keeps me on my toes!

Animals as Messengers in Ceremony & Journey

In my cacao ceremonies — even when they aren’t guided shamanic journeys — people often receive visions of animals.

Animals are one of the most accessible languages of spirit. They arrive bearing medicine: healing, insight, reassurance, challenge, and humour.

They don’t require belief systems — only an open heart, an open mind, and a willingness to listen to your own inner voice. This is where shamanism feels different from religion to me: it invites dialogue rather than doctrine.

If an animal appears in a dream, a journey, or begins turning up repeatedly in your waking life, start by noticing how you feel in its presence. Not what a book says it means — but what it stirs in your body, your emotions, your memories. Ask gently: Why are you here now? The first answer is often the truest.

Common Animal Allies (and a Gentle Reminder)

While every relationship with an animal ally is personal and alive, some animals appear frequently in shamanic work — not as fixed symbols, but as familiar teachers who meet us at different thresholds.

• Snake
  Snake arrives when something is ready to shed. She moves close to the ground, close to truth, reminding us that healing is cyclical — death feeding life, release making space for renewal. Her medicine is often felt in the body before the mind understands it.

• Bear
  Bear teaches the power of turning inward. He arrives with boundaries, deep rest, and the reassurance that strength does not always roar — sometimes it hibernates. Bear medicine often appears when we are learning to trust ourselves enough to pause.

• Deer
  Deer walks softly but does not lack courage. She carries heart wisdom, sensitivity, and attunement to subtle worlds. Deer often appears when we are being asked to stay open — even when life feels tender or uncertain.

• Wolf
  Wolf brings the medicine of belonging. He knows both solitude and pack, instinct and cooperation. Wolf often arrives when questions of leadership, loyalty, or finding one’s true people are alive in the psyche.

• Eagle / Hawk
  These sky-watchers lift us above the immediate moment. They offer perspective, vision, and spiritual overview — helping us see patterns rather than problems. Eagle and Hawk medicine can arrive when we are too close to something to see clearly.

• Horse
  Horse carries movement, power, and partnership. He reminds us that freedom does not mean going alone — it means moving in right relationship with our own energy, and with others. Horse often appears when momentum is building, and courage is required to keep moving.

• Crow / Raven
  These dark-winged messengers walk between worlds. They bring magic, liminality, and the intelligence of mystery. Crow and Raven often appear when something is forming beneath the surface — an idea, a transition, or a truth not yet fully named.

And yes — animal allies are not limited to the “noble” or the familiar.
They may arrive as insects, worms, creatures we fear or overlook, mythical beings, or even forms that defy ordinary explanation. Spirit is creative. It meets us in the language we are most able — or most reluctant — to hear.

The Medicine of the Unloved Ones

Take the spider. So often feared. Avoided. Swatted away.

Yet spider medicine is ancient and profound. Spiders are weavers of fate, story, and truth. They often appear when someone is sensing something important but not yet willing to look directly at it.

Spider doesn’t shout. She waits. Her message is often this: what web are you weaving — and what are you pretending not to see?

My First Power Animal: Coyote

My own first power animal was Coyote. The trickster.

Coyote medicine is playful, disruptive, and deeply compassionate in disguise. He doesn’t heal by being polite. He heals by unsettling stagnation — nudging people off well-worn paths, inviting laughter where things have become too serious.

Coyote helps me in my work by:

• encouraging people to try something unfamiliar

• bringing humour into heavy healing processes

• reminding me not to take myself too seriously

He helps me laugh at myself. He keeps the medicine light enough to land. And yes — he can be a little sneaky. But always in service of transformation.

When the Client’s Animals Arrive

When I journey for others — particularly during soul retrieval — it’s often not my animals that appear, but theirs.

Their animal spirits step forward first.

Sometimes these symbols mean nothing to me at all… until the client speaks.

Once, a worm appeared in a journey. I wondered if it was about composting. But later, the client shared they had kept a wormery as a child — a place of refuge, fascination, and quiet tending.

Suddenly, the medicine made sense: a reconnection with childhood joy, patience, and the beauty of small, unseen work.

The animals always know whose story they are telling.

A Living, Breathing Relationship

No animal has a single fixed meaning.

Your fox will not be my fox. Your spider will not be my spider.

Symbolism is a doorway — not a destination.

What matters is the relationship. The feeling. The context. The way the animal behaves in your dream, your journey, your life.

An Invitation: Learning to Listen

Your spirit guide team is already around you.

They may come as animals.
They may come as plants, stones, ancestors, angels, or mythical beings.
They may arrive in dreams, in ceremony, or in the quiet noticing of everyday life.

They are here — mostly invisible — waiting for you to remember how to listen.

This is why The Shaman’s Way: 13 Moons Journey unfolds over a year. Not as a quick fix, but as a rhythm. A practice. A set of tools for life.

Over time, you learn how to journey safely and clearly.
To recognise when your spirit animal guides are bringing medicine, protection, challenge, or humour.
And how to build strong, living relationships with your spirit guide team — and how those relationships evolve as you evolve.

This isn’t about becoming “shamanic.” In truth, you already are — we all are. It’s part of how we sense and interpret the world: through the right brain’s creative, expansive, unbounded awareness, living alongside the left brain’s rational, linear understanding.

The work is not to choose one over the other, but to awaken and integrate both. When these two ways of knowing begin to listen to each other, wholeness becomes possible. This is true holistic healing — and when it happens, our world becomes more alive, in a new, somewhat magical way.

If animals have been appearing for you — in dreams, in ceremony, or woven through your everyday life — consider that this may already be an invitation.

And if you feel the call to listen more closely… your guides are already speaking.

I’ll name my bias honestly — and with good reason. The Shaman’s Way, beginning in March 2026, arrives in the Year of the Fire Horse, a cycle that comes around only once every sixty years and is traditionally associated with profound movement, courage, and transformation. I won’t be here to teach this again when the Fire Horse returns — and even if I were, I doubt I’d be running year-long trainings at 113!

If you’ve been quietly wondering whether this path is calling you, this feels like a meaningful moment to listen. Not from pressure, but from timing. Some years support deep change more readily than others, and this is one of them.

Whether you are new to shamanic work or already walking a spiritual path, you are welcome here. We gather as a mixed circle — beginners and experienced practitioners alike — learning from one another as much as from the practices themselves.

While elements of this work weave through my other offerings, there is something uniquely powerful about this year-long container. Moving together through the seasons allows real integration to take place. We follow the path of the heart rather than the warrior, working with ease, humour, and grace, supported by our spiritual allies - the animals, the plants and the stone people.

The intention is not to struggle toward transformation, but to soften into who you already are — awake in both ways of knowing, fully human and playfully shamanic.