Children, Wildlife, and the Art of Shapeshifting

Birdbrain, by Lori Field

Long ago the trees thought they were people.

Long ago the mountains thought they were people.
Long ago the animals thought they were people.
Someday they will say, long ago the humans thought
they were people.

Native storyteller Johnny Moses

In his novel, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, J.M. Barrie writes:

If you think he [Peter Pan] was the only baby who ever wanted to escape, it shows how completely you have forgotten your own young days. When David heard this story first he was quite certain that he had never tried to escape, but I told him to think back hard, pressing his hands to his temples, and when he had done this hard, and even harder, he distinctly remembered a youthful desire to return to the tree-tops, and with that memory came others, as that he had lain in bed planning to escape as soon as his mother was asleep, and how she had once caught him half-way up the chimney. All children could have such recollections if they would press their hands hard to their temples, for, having been birds before they were human, they are naturally a little wild during the first few weeks, and very itchy at the shoulders, where their wings used to be. So David tells me (page 20-21).

In the below lovely video, children's book author Cornelia Funke speaks about the need for wilderness in children's lives. "Kids are so very good at still being shape-shifters," she says, "and shifting into feathers and fur. They still understand that we are connected to everything in this world, and that we are part of an incredibly intricate woven web of life and creatures."

Philosophers´ ability to wonder has three aspects: becoming like a child again, critical thinking and asking philosophical questions in a meditative-existential way.

We all know, how curious children are. Children want to know something and see much more, than the adults do, they catch sight of things, which the adults not even put notice to. Childrens´ nature is much more watchful, much more curious and eager to learn. They are lost in being. It is therefore children have so easy learning maths, geography or whatever subject. When we become older, our mind progressively becomes crystalized, it stiffens, becomes heavy and dull. We stagnate. We begin to have prejudices about everything and everybody. The mind is no longer open, to any problem we have taken position in advance. We are lost in becoming, or in the will to power.

In her book, The Sense of Wonder, nature writer, Rachel Carson, writes:

“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.” 

In ancient times critical thinking (kritikos) had to do with three virtues: A) refutation of sophisms (elenchos), B) discrimination (the ability to discriminate between reality and illusion, good and evil, true and false - emphilotekhnein), and C) flexible thinking (learning to see, or rather, think about, things "from above", or from alternative viewpoints).

If we look at C, flexible thinking, then this is in reality the ability to begin to think like a child again (but controlled by the two other virtues). According to the myth of the Phaedros (by Plato), the soul is provided with wings by nature. Prior to its incarnation in a terrestrial body, the soul is thus able to rise up to the outermost limits of the heavens and follow the procession of the winged chariots of the gods. We here see his roots in shamanism, probably something which was taught to him, either by ancient Egyptian priests, or, by Mongolian shamans (or both).

Saint Amarilla of the Woodpeckers, by Lori Field

In her article, Shamans and Shapeshifters, Terri Windling writes:

In myths and ancient pictographs, the shaman is often characterized by the distinctive ability to change himself from human into animal shape. Sometimes this change is a literal one, human flesh transformed into animal flesh or covered over by animal skin; in other accounts, the soul leaves the shaman's unconscious body to enter into the body of an animal, fish or bird. In T.H. White's Once and Future King, such shamanistic practices are evoked by Merlin's preparation of young Arthur for his role as King. The boy learns to take the shape of animals and to live as animals live. In White's story, published for children, these scenes are rendered with gentle wit and charm -- yet they mirror older, darker mythic stories, ones where the lines are intentionally blurred between the human and animal states, between civilization and wilderness, between sanity and madness, and finally between madness and magic. 

It is not only shamans who have such powers according to tales from around the globe. "Shape-shifting," transforming from human shape to one or many animal forms, is part of a mythic and story-telling tradition stretching back over thousands of years […]. 

Philosophical death for the Platonists consisted in getting rid of one´s passions (separating the soul from the body), in order to attain the autonomy of thought. It could look like madness if you weren´t initiated into the spiritual practice behind.

Meditation was trained through Relaxationmeditation (incubation) and Harameditation (omphalos psychism – the same as in Zen Buddhism). Together they aimed at stillness (hesychia). In this stillness you began to ask philosophical questions in a meditative-existential way: How does man preserve peace of mind and balance in all the relationships of life? How do we learn to appreciate the true goods and flout all transient and vain goals? Is the destiny of Man part in a larger plan?

Pierre Hadot believes that we here see the reason why Goethe considered true poetry as an exercise consisting in spiritually elevating oneself high above the earth. For Goethe, poetry (included storytelling) in the truest sense is a kind of philosophy of nature in the ancient sense: it is a spiritual exercise, which consists in looking down at things from above, from the point of view of the nature of the all.

And who remember their true nature better than children?

In his text, The Return, writer and environmental activist, Rick Bass, writes:

"In a way that I haven’t yet figured out how to fully articulate, I believe that children who get to see bald eagles, coyotes, deer, moose, grouse, and other similar sights each morning will have a certain kind of matrix or fabric or foundation of childhood, the nature and quality of which will be increasing rare and valuable as time goes on, and which will be cherished into adulthood, as well as becoming -- and this is a leap of faith by me -- a source of strength and knowledge to them somehow. That the daily witnessing of the natural wonders is a kind of education of logic and assurance that cannot be duplicated by any other means, or in other place: unique and significant, and, by God, still somehow relevant, even now, in the twenty-first century. For as long as possible, I want my girls to keep believing that beauty, though not quite commonplace and never to pass unobserved or unappreciated, is nonetheless easily witnessed on any day, in any given moment, around any forthcoming bend." 

Inspiring articles:

The Gift of Wonder, by Terri Windling

Shamans and Shapeshifters, by Terri Windling

Shape-shifting, by Terri Windling

Dreams and Shapeshifters, by Terri Windling

Free Ebook:

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, by J.M. Barrie