The first stories are always animal stories. The first paintings, the first religions, the first expressions of human consciousness were born in the imaginations of hunters and gatherers huddled around some precious fire on a plain where wolves spoke to each other and owls answered.
In the beginning, before there was time, was union. Life-giving Sun took as his mate the dark and fertile Earth. From this marriage (which is creation) emerged a fantasia of life forms living in harmony and equality, like a song with no words. The song sufficed for millions of years. Call it Eden.
The making of our human story begins with a trickster in the shape of an animal. In some American Indian cultures he is Coyote (see THE WORLD & I April, 1990). Others call him Raven. In the Judeo-Christian myth, he is the Serpent. Like the sun, Trickster is usually male, but unlike the sun, he is cunning and duplicitous, often funny, sexy, prone to mistakes, prideful. He is a survivor among mysteries - curious and changeable - like us.
The trick he plays on humankind is the double-edged gift of consciousness, and therefore language. Language can be seen as a process of naming, and naming implies both separation and relationship: I, the namer, stand distinct from you (or it), the named. Yet we can observe each other, learn, communicate, speak.
In About Looking (Pantheon, 1980), John Berger says:
The eyes of an animal when they consider a man are attentive and wary. The same animal may well look at other species in the same way. He does not reserve a special look for man. But by no other species except man will the animal's look be recognized as familiar. Other animals are held by the look. Man becomes aware of himself returning the look.
Once there was no line between I and All. Then we were tricked into consciousness. Suddenly there were clans: Woman and Man and Tree and Elephant and Frog. The clans spoke different languages. They no longer shared the simple, single story. There was conflict and complexity. But through all cultures for all time, until now, the people knew they were dependent on the animals and the fruits of the earth and the rain. They were also related to them. The old tribal rituals and stories are a dialogue between man and other natural forms.
Speaking animals
In the oral-tradition creation myths, in fairy tales, and even Walt Disney cartoons, animals speak. “Animals first entered the imagination as messengers and promises,” says Berger.
Raven spoke to those intelligent enough to listen. Coyote spoke. Whale spoke. They told our species things about the natural world and our relation to it that were crucial to human survival. These days we can hear the voices of coyotes in Beverly Hills, and crows in the cornfields, and the secret chewing of termites, but we have mostly lost the willingness to pay attention, the ability to listen. The animal who speaks is our most petty self: Donald Duck; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
In Europe, North America, and
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