Customer Reviews

DIY Totemism

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This book was written at the level of an experienced pagan, versus the plethora of books written for newbies. I loved Lupa's style, as well as her focus on non-traditional totems and her section on therians using totemism and shapeshifting to work toward balance. Don't expect a beginner's introduction to the concept of totemism, and you'll thoroughly enjoy this book.

Although I look forward to this book coming out for a while, I was wary about whether it would just be a rehashing of Fang Fur Blood and Bone. I was thrilled to see that it is not. When there is overlap, Lupa just mentions the topic and refers you to her previous book. What strikes me about her aproach is the specificity in it. I had never thought about the sub species of my totem or how and why it evolved how it has.

Her writing style is very readable funny and sarcastic at points.Its a fun read as well as being cutting edge.

Its a great book for those looking to further their exploration of totemism or those fairly new to it. This text and Fang Fur Blood and Bone makes a great set. Expecialy for those loking for totemism with teeth instead of a more new agey aproach.

This book really is a do-it-yourself book on totemism, and it really is a wonderful and more in-depth successor to some of the martial covered in the author's earlier book Fang Fur Blood and Bone. The author gives many suggestions on various ways someone interested in working with totems on different levels can go about it. Instead of simply being a dictionary or reference book of rituals and ways to work with totems, the author sets their book into being something that will expand the readers mind and knowledge into what they can do themselves. Each chapter has several general open-ended questions and practices the author suggests the reader might want to try out.

Lupa also takes time to really talk about totems other than what most other books on totemism might generally over look. Totems of smaller animals, extinct animals, and even animals which most people in the western world might over look as totems that could be worked with because they are usually though of as `food.'

The author's writing style and use of personal experiences in the book really helps keep the text alive and following from chapter to chapter. The book has a sparse few number of spelling errors and one or two footnotes in the book were cut off in mid sentence, but it was nothing distracting. All in all, a lovely book.

My personal context:

I'm a (mostly) lifelong vegan, now ovo-lacto vegetarian. I've always been passionately connected to animals. My spirituality is extremely tied into interaction with the non-human animal world. I admit to being very sensitive about human-animal interactions. Consequently, I hesitated to purchase this book because I'd read elsewhere that Lupa discusses the subject of animal sacrifice in her book Fang and Fur, Blood and Bone. I've also seen her artwork, on her website, which incorporates animal parts/skin. I'm adamantly against the former and dubious about the latter.

However, in reading Lupa's blog and other online articles, I've found her to be a conscientious person; someone who appears to put much thought, research, and careful consideration into her views and actions. So I was willing to come to this work with an open, but cautious, mind.

What I've gotten so far:

DIY Totemism is around 200 pages of frequently insightful and original content. From my experience, it simply doesn't compare with previous entries in this field. As Lupa repeatedly points out, this is NOT a dictionary/encyclopedia. This is praxis, not endless hypothesizing, or the presentation of a dogmatic codified system. The Egyptologist, researcher, and Druid Akkadia Ford has said, "Practice is the most advanced form of theory; ultimately a Druid is either one with their gods, knowing how to make the requests and to be answered, or they are not Druid at all." To me, it appears that this is the spirit in which Lupa addresses Neopagan Animal Totemism.

Table of Contents:

Ch.1 - Rant On! Some of the Problems with Neopagan Totemism

Ch.2 - Starting at the Source

Ch.3 - Some Totems You May Not Have Considered

Ch.4 - The Last Totem card Deck You'll Ever Need

Ch.5 - Everyday Totemic Work

Ch.6 - Animal Totems and Chemognosis

Ch.7 - Magical Shapeshifting with Totems

Ch.8 - Using Totemic Techniques in Therianthropy

Ch.9 - Ask Not What Your Totem Can Do For You

Ch.10: - Creating Your Own Totemic System

Afterword: The Future of Neopagan Totemism

Appendix A: Animal Friendly Nonprofit Organizations

Appendix B: All-Purpose Generic Guided Meditation For Totemic Work

Appendix C: Are We Just Spitting Hairs? (Therianthropy and Totemism)

Appendix D: Shamanic Journeying and the Totem by Ravensari

Appendix E: Working with Extinct Species by Paleo

Appendix F: An Introduction to Therioshamanism

Appendix G: My Frank Appraisals of Totemic Literature

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

So far, I've been most interested in the section on "Food Totems." These totems are the animals that most humans consume as food-animals such as cows, pigs, chickens, goats, etc. Since I've never personally looked at these animals as food, I'm obviously coming at this subject from a different angle than Lupa.

Issues:

I have three serious issues with this section so far. First, Lupa says on pg. 60, "...animals that we slaughter by the millions every year..." and again on pg. 60, "...we even impact far-away places like Brazil in our hunger for beef, with thousands of acres of rain forest being slashed and burned to create pastureland for cattle."

I know it might seem incredibly minor to many people, but I think it is critically important that people who wish to spiritually co-walk (or however one characterizes themselves on an animal oriented path) with animals should be as accurately informed as possible about the actual state of animal welfare on our planet. To that end, the number of domestic animals slaughtered per year for food does not number in the millions.

On the contrary, it numbers in the BILLIONS. The number of domestic land animals killed in 2007 in the USA alone was over TEN BILLION (see wfad dot org slash statistics slash index dot htm). This does not include non-commercial scale operations, hunting or commercial fishing, nor does it include the number of wild animals killed through the pollution and contamination caused by factory farming. Remember, this is the number killed in the U.S.A. ALONE. In 2000, the world total of land animals industrially slaughtered for "food" was 45,000,000,000 (Forty Five BILLION!)! (from the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service). Again, not including fish, not including animals killed as a byproduct of grain production, not including animals killed through pollution from industrial agriculture... (According to the documentary Earthlings (see: earthlings dot com) Americans eat, in one day, the same amount of chicken that was consumed in an entire year in the 1930's. According to various statistics, the average American consumes between 58-80+ pounds! of chicken per person per year.)

In regards to the destruction of the Brazilian rainforest for grazing land, "In Brazil alone, more than 63,000 square miles of land has reportedly been abandoned in this way." (for an extremely shocking discussion of this subject, see rain-tree dot com slash facts dot htm under the heading Grazing Land). 63,000 square miles is a heck of a lot more than "...thousands of acres..." - in fact it is FORTY MILLION THREE HUNDRED and TWENTY THOUSAND acres. That is JUST in Brazil. This land becomes total desert in less than a decade. Not even good for scrub grazers like goats. Nothing grows and the rains no longer fall there. All so people can have cheap Big Macs or industrially produced bacon for breakfast.

So why did Lupa say millions and thousands? Was this a lack of research? Was this an intentional soft-peddle so as not to alienate readers? In either case, how can she feel that she is truly engaging this particular area of Totem interaction if she is not fully informed or fully informing her readers about what is really going on a day to day basis with real world animals? ... Does this reflect an unintentional bias on the part of someone who consumes animals? I don't know. To my mind, this is an odd oversight on Lupa's part, given the care with which she appears to engage her research material on the whole.

I DO understand that it is not Lupa's intention to advocate for any particular "lifestyle/dietary choice" in this book. However, given that the whole thrust of this work is an examination of the potential for magico-spiritual relationships with non-human animals, it seems to me that it is foundational to the discussion to be informed of the day to day relationship humans are having with the other animals. Imo, Lupa missed a chance for a real depth of discussion on this subject that many of her readers may have never been exposed to before.

You might think I'm making overmuch of this issue because I'm a vegetarian and must necessarily want to convert others to this point of view, but that wouldn't be correct. In fact, I would like to see Lupa engage this material more deeply and profoundly as much FOR vegetarians and vegans as for omnivores. Having been a part of both of the former communities for the majority of my life, I've seen that many vegetarians, and especially vegans, can have a grossly oversimplified, Disneyfied view of animals that can be detrimental to the realities of the human/non-human animal interaction. Their paradigm may not be as damaging as the wholesale devastation occurring because of the prevailing view of animals as commodities, but it can still be damaging and unrealistic in its own way (in a totally bizarre way, militant veganism often ends up reinforcing anti-vegetarian sentiment!).

I would like to see Lupa engage these particular subjects at much greater depth and breadth. With her considerable intelligence and excellent reasoning skills, I believe she could contribute truly valuable and original insight on subjects such as veganism (and to be clear, I am not vegan and DO NOT advocate veganism in the slightest), animal rights philosophy, deep ecology, "dietary and lifestyle" choice in relation to this spiritual path, etc. In addressing these critical areas she could substantially raise the consciousness of those involved on all sides of these issues, thereby radically deepening and expanding the potential power for change inherent in this path.

The final concept I took personal issue with is the section regarding animals used as food in other cultures that are generally eschewed as food in Western culture, animals like horses, dogs, and cats. It is my view that certain animals should be exempt from consideration as food animals by virtue of the role they have played in the evolution of human civilization.* Even a cursory examination of the history of dogs, cats, and horses should reveal that they have played wholly unique roles in the development of human civilizations. Yes, cows, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, etc. have also been of pivotal importance to our evolution, and yes these animals have been individually shown to be capable of bonding with human care givers at a very deep and emotional level - demonstrating deep intelligence, personality, and feeling. However, it can be argued that horses, dogs, and cats (there are some others - but these three in particular) have endlessly demonstrated, over thousands of years, a level of devotion to and interaction with humans that no other animals have. It has even been argued by some canine researchers that dogs have guided the course of our evolution as much as we have guided theirs. Indeed, some have asserted that we would still be hunter gatherers without dogs! (Watch the completely awesome PBS produced, Nature: Dogs That Changed the World). How many other species, besides dogs, will routinely and willingly endanger themselves on our behalf? ... Without cats, the grain based agriculture that allowed massive civilizations to evolve would not have happened. As for the horse, the importance of this animal to the evolution of civilization and human development has been documented at interminable length in countless books.

Lupa makes the argument that in ancient cultures, many of the most "sacred animals" were eaten. Her example references the Buffalo in Lakota (or Lahkota, as spelled in the book) culture. However, Lupa repeatedly points out that this is a book of _Neopagan_ Totemism. As such, there is no need to endlessly look to the past for how we should do things in the present. To that end, when it is manifestly no longer necessary to consume the particular creatures that were consumed in the past (or, as some would argue, to consume them at all - at least in affluent cultures), why perpetuate the idea that, on some level, it is a morally acceptable modern practice? Eating cats, eating dogs, eating horses, etc. is absolutely MORE than a matter of cultural purview. In addition to which, it can be easily and compellingly argued that food customs are not necessarily a cultural trait. Besides which, even if something IS a part of a culture, that does not confer automatic sanctity on that practice. Would Lupa defend the right of certain African/Arabic cultures to practice female genital mutilation or the forced scarification of prepubescent boys, or African Muti killings simply because these are "cultural customs"? I certainly hope that Lupa is not simply falling back on the tired cliche of justifying atrocities through the invocation of cultural relativism.

"Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity..." - George Bernard Shaw

...

On the whole, DIY Totemism is an excellent and unique approach to a much abused subject. I encourage anyone with an interest in this subject to get this book. It is worth its price, if for nothing else than its truly fresh perspective on a very timely subject.

I'm looking forward to seeing Lupa's further engagement and deepening of this material.

...

Three other minor issues:

There are a few typos-nothing too egregious, but a bit annoying nonetheless. Also, the index is truly anemic. Perhaps if this book is re-issued at some point, the index can be greatly increased. Finally, I was a bit disconcerted to see how many times Lupa used Wikipedia articles as references. Surely she could have uncovered more substantive reference material. Wikipedia is not an acceptable source for a college paper, much less for a published book for mass market.

...

*There are other animals, for other reasons, that I believe should be exempt from human consumption also, but that is beyond the scope of this review.