A Mystic Afternoon in the Library

How could a unicorn resist? As part of the Independent Booksellers Week organised by the Torbay Bookshop, a group of mystics came to talk about their work in our fabulous (new!) library, just opened last year:


The afternoon covered past life regression, totem animals, and astrology. All very different ideas, yet all connected by their authors’ belief in the spirit world that lies behind our reality.

The most interesting of the three talks for me was, obviously, the one about totem animals. My author needed no convincing, having already found me, her unicorn muse.

Celia Gunn, who introduced everyone to the idea of totem animals, had spent time living with the Native American Navaho tribe, where she had a vision of a white wolf, the tribe’s totem spirit. (She had some cool Native American boots, too!) After returning home, she wrote Simply Totem Animals, published by mind, blody and spirit publisher Zambezi to help people find their own animal spirit.


The idea is that everyone has a totem animal, and your animal’s characteristics will match your own. For example, unicorns are very magical but very shy, and can only be lured out of the enchanted mists by a pure and gentle maiden. See this post for Katherine's view of me. Other authors have also blogged here about their muses... and, yes, a surprising number of those are animals! There’s already a ferret, a spaniel and a unicorn, and we hope to bring you more soon. You can find these posts by following the links from the Muse Monday page above.

Have you met your own totem animal yet? Or is it like one of Philip Pullman’s daemons in His Dark Materials trilogy, and still “settling”?