Animal Magic by Rieka Moonsong is part of a multibook "intro to magic" series. It's a great introduction into working with animal energy in your spiritual practice. This is not a deep dive or intermediate book, so understand that before getting into it, if you are more experienced with these topics it may not be the book for you.
I found it to be a great overview on working with animals and you can get a broad sense of what is possible to include animal energy in your day to day practice. There is information on general magical correspondences, protection rituals for your pets and home and guided animal meditations. Very nice artwork throughout!

Animal Magic is a wonderful book about the many ways that we can work with animals for guidance, growth, help, and protection. The books delves into animal messengers and guides, totems and familiars and ways that we can call upon animals to assist us in our physical, spiritual and emotional lives. There are simple spells for various needs, all positive….there is no black magick here. My favorite chapter was on familiars. I recognize my current dog as my familiar. She literally crawled across a floor through a litter 2 week old puppies while I sat on the floor holding the male I planned to adopt. She clumsily climbed up onto my lap and settled into sleep, as if saying “you are my home and I am yours”. I got the message and sit here with her now. Thank you to,#NetGalley for accepting my request to read #AnimalMagic

Animals have such pure and wonderful energies. This book is quite simple and light with beautiful illustrations 🐾 🌕

This had a lot of information but I was a little worried about the validity of it since even though the author mentioned trying not to appropriate which I appreciated it felt like the mentioned several practices that were closed. I did appreciate the bibliography at the end and the correspondences.

Discovering Animal Magic

What is animal magic? Well, the author states that animal magic can best be described as being able to access
the energy and power of an animal for magical and spiritual
workings. She, even, states that it goes deeper than that, it is calling upon those energies to assist with our witchcraft in general or very specific spells and rituals; that it is being open to receiving messages and guidance from the animal kingdom.

She discusses the origins of anima magic, the animal realm, animal realm portals. She discusses several animal and provides each's invocation ritual.

I truly enjoyed reading this book. The author provides clear information on many animals and their energies, which can be beneficial to one's magical practices. Additionally, the author provides a spell to open the crown chakra to facilitate receiving messages; one to call your animal guide to you; and a spell to reveal your familiar to you.

This is a great book for beginner to connect with and benefit from their familiar's energy. Highly recommend.

I want to start by saying I should had know better. I should had done more research into the author and the book in general before signing up to review it. I was hopeful because the author did not spell magic with a "k" so I was hoping it wasn't new age fluff, but that is really all I have positive to say. I want to like books like these, but this is another example of a book where someone is claiming to be born a witch and it just gave me an icky feeling. The art is stunning. I love the sketches and was really hoping this book wouldn't disappoint.

First the author claims that there is all this history and generations of knowledge contained, but then doesn't give any of that information. It doesn't actually say anything. Most of the book could be easily obtained with a google search. It also feels very culturally insensitive. So many people have rich histories with animals and this doesn't touch on that at all. Just a person claiming that this is her knowledge that she has because she was born a witch.

Another Wiccan book filled with cultural appropriation. Here are some of the things I took issue with. The book is not very detailed. All the information is surface level that you could find with a simple Google search. There needs to be a distinction made between the author's person practice and historical facts. Right now, the book is presented as almost entirely historically factual when in reality, a good portion of it is the author's own personal gnosis. There is nothing wrong with having a UPG, it just needs to be clear that UPG is different from facts. The Morrigan is described as a Celtic Goddess. While this is technically true, it would be more appropriate to describe her as an Irish Goddess because she has only been proven to exist in Irish mythology. There is also thinly veiled transphobia in the book. The author states that everyone has divine feminine and masculine energy in them and that we all need to tap into it. Again, this is the author's own experience, not a fact. There is very limited, binary-thinking when it comes to gender in this book and it just rubs me the wrong way. There is discussion of chakras without understanding the culture that they come from. This book has a lot of new age terminology, such as "vibrations," "twin flames," and "born witch," that stem from cultural appropriation. In the book, the author addresses cultural appropriation when it comes to the use of the term "spirit animals" but seems to completely disregard the subject in every other part. Had I known that this book had cultural appropriation and borderline transphobia, I would not have picked it up.

There were two things I did like about this book. The pictures were gorgeous and I liked how the author spelled magic as "magic" instead of "magick."

1.5 Stars

EN
This is a book about things I love - both magic and animals. So I was really excited to read it.
The author offers us various invocations for different animals and different purposes, almost for every type of need, with different perspectives, talking about the symbolism of these animals for cultures all around the globe.
I also really liked all the illustrations. They bring even more magic to the book.
I think the book was superficial, even though I feel that the author knew more than what is represented in these pages. Also, the invocations were a bit "off"... The best I can describe them is as if they didn't have much power or energy put into them.
For those starting to walk this path, it is a decent book. But... If you have been studying this kind of content for some time, this book is, most probably, no news for you.

PT
Este é um livro acerca de coisas que eu amo - tanto magia quanto animais. Por isso, estava muito entusiasmada para o ler.
A autora oferece várias invocações para diferentes animais e diferentes propósitos, quase para qualquer tipo de necessidade, com diferentes perspectivas, falando do simbolismo destes animais para culturas de todo o mundo.
Também gostei bastante das ilustrações. Trazem ainda mais magia ao livro.
Eu penso que o livro é muito superficial, apesar de sentir que a autora sabe muito mais do que deixou representado nestas páginas. Para além disso, as invocações foram um pouco "estranhas"... O melhor que consigo descrever é como se não tivessem imbuídas de grande poder ou magia.
Para quem está a começar a trilhar este caminho, este é um livro aceitável. Mas... Se já tens estudado este tipo de conteúdos desde há um tempo, este livro, muito provavelmente, não é grande novidade.

I have other books from this series and was happily surprised how comprehensive they are on their given subject and this one is very much the same.
This book covers every possible aspect of animal magic that you could want to explore and I will certainly be buying a physical copy to implement some of thr practices in my own magical practice.

I am rather unimpressed by this book. I read it in an evening. It’s not terribly long. It left me wanting more, though not in a good way. I feel like the author doesn’t go into any bit of detail regarding the subjects which she writes. In some places, she alludes to a topic in one paragraph and then just moves on without describing why it’s relevant to the reader.

For example, on Page 68 she mentions the Heart Chakra is tied to the element of Air, goes on to mention the heart is near the lungs, and then just starts talking about birds and their relation to air. I understand the book is supposed to be about Animal Magic. But even I, as a person with ADHD, wouldn’t have made such a loose connection to the Heart Chakra and birds. It just doesn’t seem to make sense to me.

She goes on to do this with each Animal and X element section. Fire = Ram = Aries = Solar Plexus. Water rules our emotions therefore it’s associated with the Sacral Chakra, So any water dwelling animal will do for this one. But you know what the book lacks? Any meaningful description of chakras, outside of what animals she believes represent each chakra or why they represent those chakras. How are chakras involved in animal magic? Your guess is as good as mine.

Animal themed festivals from around the world are mentioned. How do you use these in your magical practice? Who knows? The author doesn’t give a reason for including this subject other than animals are venerated amongst certain populations for various reasons. The Lopburi Monkey Buffet? Something about Hanuman. Hanuman is a monkey so we shouldn’t look too far into that subject, it’s not like there’s some deeper meaning behind the Ramayana.

In fact if you type “Lopuri Monkey Buffet” in to Google, almost the exact same sentence that appears in the book, is returned with the first result on Atlas Obscura’s webpage.


Atlas Obscura:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/monkey-buffet-festival

“Respect for monkeys traces back at least 2,000 years to the epic tale of Rama, a divine prince, and his struggle to rescue his wife, Sita, from the clutches of a demon lord. According to the tale, the monkey king Hanuman and his army helped rescue Sita. Since that time, monkeys have been appreciated as a sign of good luck and prosperity. Lopburi’s annual buffet is one way people mark their appreciation.”

Animal Magic:
Page 108

“The festival dates back over two thousand years ago to the tale of the monkey king, Hanuman. He and his army helped rescue Sita, the Wife of the divine prince, Rama, from the Clutches of a demon. Since then, The monkeys are said to bring good luck and prosperity.”


The reason? The author cites the page at the end of her book. She used it as a resource, just like your high school English paper, just switch the wording up a bit and you’re golden. Always nice to see an author do the hard research of using the first google search entry they happen upon for their book.

In short, this wasn’t the book for me. It may be for you. If you like cute poems ‘invocations’ about drawing inspiration from animals.

I don’t doubt the author’s knowledge of the subject, but I am unimpressed with the presentation.