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A friend of mine insists that her dog is pagan.

Well, if one defines “pagan” as “following the thews (customs, life-ways, religion) of one's thede (= tribe, people),” I guess I could buy it. Witches (insofar as we follow anything) follow the Witch religion, dogs follow the Dog religion. I would imagine that the Dog religion is a pretty basic biological religion, with an ethical code strongly based on loyalty.

Rather like human paganism at its best, actually.

Then, of course, there's the Kitty-Cat religion. I'm certainly not privy to the inner mysteries here, but so far as I can tell, Cat religion is monotheistic.

There's one god, and it's Me.

Maybe that's where the Abrahamics got it from. This would fit with my theory that monotheism is essentially narcissism writ large.

I'm playing here, of course, but the question is a serious one: can animals—let me be specific and say non-human animals here—be said to have religion? The answer, of course, would depend on how one defines “religion.”

I grew up hearing stories about my father's boyhood dog Tarzan.

Tarzan was big and black, and loved kids. Tarzan also loved to sled.

When the kids went out to sled down Pittsburgh's icy hills, Tarzan always went along. The best part was, after a ride, Tarzan was happy to pull your sled back up to the top of the hill for you.

But Tarzan was no fool. He didn't mind doing the work, but there was a price to be paid.

Tarzan wanted another ride, and he wouldn't let go of the drag rope until you let him back onto the sled.

My youngest aunt and oldest cousin were born in the same year. Those two were Tarzan's babies, and he willingly took on the role of nanny. Both of them learned to walk by holding onto Tarzan.

When they were both upstairs, Tarzan would lay at the head of the stairs, and nothing would move him. Those kids were not going to fall down the stairs, and Tarzan made sure of it.

One day my grandfather got home after a long shift at the steel mill. (He operated a crane at J & L for more than 30 years.) Tired and irritable, he trudged up the long, narrow flight of stairs, only to find the dog lying across the top, blocking the way.

“Move, Tarzan,” he said.

The dog looked at him, but didn't move.

“Dog, get out of the way,” said my grandfather.

Tarzan didn't move.

“Dammit, dog, move!” said my grandfather, and kicked him.

I can remember the look on my grandfather's face as he told this story. He was a gentle man, really, and—I think—ashamed of having lost his temper.

Back in the 80s, a friend was thinking about getting a new dog. She planned to name him Yahweh.

People, of course, name their pets for gods all the time. (Whether or not this is a good idea lies outside the parameters of this post.) Still, naming your dog Yahweh seems a little...well, let me at least say that I wouldn't do it. Do you really want to use someone that you love to even a score?

For this was the Reagan Era, and the Age of the Culture Wars. The danger of a full-blown theocracy in the US seemed like a very real possibility at the time. (The Kreesh-chun Reich certainly seemed to think so.) So you did what you could to strike a blow—even a symbolic one—against the theocrats and their triumphalist ways.

One can, of course, readily appreciate the idea's humorous potential.

"Yahweh bit me!"

“Bad Yahweh! Bad boy!”

“Yahweh really stinks; I'm afraid he needs another bath.”

“Oh no, Yahweh peed on the carpet again.”

Still, when it comes to Yahwehs, one has to admit that one—even one that only exists in people's heads—is bad enough.

Today we're going to discuss the different ways we might work with crystal to increase the vibration of our non-human family (and how they likewise might enjoy these interactions). We'll talk about cats, dogs, fish, birds, plants and trees...

CATS AND DOGS

Cats and dogs react to crystals in different ways. For example, my friend Renee has a bowl of crystals that her cat likes to touch. She said it uses its little paw and moves them gently here to there.

The moments that really matter, are the ones where our hearts change. I recently heard a former lawyer involved in fighting racism saying that she had been trained to think you can’t change people’s hearts, so you’d better focus on changing the laws. Then she discovered Theory U, a new business framework that acually fits like a glove to the sacred feminine- yes, a new tide is here! She discovered that in fact you can change people’s hearts, and those are the moments that really matter. Changing hearts is even more important than changing laws. Every time our heart changes, that will have a lasting imprint on our lives- and on the lives of those around us.

For me this gave words to something that has been happening in my trainings but that i never quite could pin down.  Now I see: moments that hearts have changed! There have been so many of those! I challenged myself to remember them, and to start writing about them.  So here is the first... the most powerful of all... and it was with... my dog!

Title: A Feral Darkness

This is not the first time I write about dogs on this blog. I wrote about guard and hunting dogs before, in relation to ancient Hellenic society, as well as mythology. Yet, none of the myths I tackled in that post, relate to the constellation of Canis Major.