The notion to build out a practice of hunting out and connecting with one’s astral animals, mainly under the framework of elemental equilibrium, has returned to me a couple times. The idea hit me on the head again today while driving. Hence, this blog post has come forth with approaches one can take towards this endeavor, which I do feel will be worthwhile. Here I share an inner working to symbolically work with, know, learn from & transform your elements in the astral. Your psyche can provide so much rich information & navigation if you but give it form & the stage to perform on.

First, to introduce the idea of mystical hunting. This is something an early mystical school taught me. Think of Odin and the Wild Hunt. Essentially, it can be approached under many guises, but you go out there in the astral and you chase things down. You’re a hunter or huntress. You pursue your prey, whatever it may be. For those in the Franz Bardon system, you are hunting out your soul mirrors – aka your positive and negative traits and working on elemental equilibrium between fire, air, water and earth.

The astral world is full of animalistic instincts. Our own primal instincts, or our animal nature, is sustained there. These animalistic instincts are deeply tied to our experience and ways of being. They are also part of who we are – whether we are cognizant of it or not, it often drives us subconsciously. Let’s take a cue from the below verse and apply it to our microcosm – begin to have dominion over your own inner animals – our astral ways that separate us from higher realms.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

– Genesis 1:26

Animals will become the symbols of your elements in the astral. We will learn to identify an animal to represent each of our elements to then interface with each animal. Depending on your inclination and experience, you may either sit in contemplation or go into deep meditation. For fire you will hunt out which animal will be the symbol of your inner fire. Same for air, water and earth. If you want to get more meta and if you have the bandwidth, chose two animals for each element: one for the positive manifestation of the element and one for the negative manifestation of the element. To keep it simple, you can choose just one animal to represent each element within you.

Determining which animal to choose for each element will be very personal to you. For the element of air, you might want to choose a bird of prey. There need not be obvious correlations between the animal and the element (as there is between birds and air). Go with your instincts and intuition. Now how to hunt out each animal for yourself? In your contemplation or meditation, consider the way the element works through you. Consider the traits of animals, from rabbits to bears to frogs to dogs. You can project outward or broadcast into the astral that you are seeking your element animal. Hunting, however, is going out and tracking it down. Like the mystical White Stag, it may unexpectedly bestow its presence upon you.

After you have hunted out your element animals of fire, air, water and earth, you will have either 4 animals or 8 animals, depending on whether you wanted to identify two different animals for each element or not. Custom tailoring meditations and exercises is something I encourage, as there should be some room for autonomy and options for what one resonates with. Like an accordion, it should be able to expand or shrink depending on the needs of the practitioner (this isn’t to say I don’t appreciate partaking in rigorous & strict systems and practices, though). Within your own self sovereignty, I do, however, encourage customizing your magick. So you have your astral element animals identified. What do you do from here?

To continue with this practice, you need a bit of a creative visualization muscle. Now you’re going to sit with them. Each animal. Either by going into meditation or imagined contemplation, what will they tell you? What will your relationship with them be like? Do you have to wrestle them? Are they friends that bring you flowers? Do they have sorrows to heal? Do they have treasures to reveal? From the position of striving towards elemental equilibrium, in creative visualization you want to engage with each animal first independently. Give it as much time as you need to get a sense of each one and what their symbology reveals to you. Then, and it could be within a day or weeks or months, depending on how deep you want to plug into this exercise, you will bring them all together into one scene. Witness how they interact. Are they in a feud? Do they get along? Do they begin dancing in a circle and say something? You want to get to a point where you can drop in at any time and get them rounded up to echo harmony and balance between all of them. If there are patches in your life where things get out of whack, go sit with your astral element animals. What can they tell you?

In the vein of customized meditations, this practice can be taken to the next level for further transformation. After establishing the foundation of the above exercises, pair each element animal with a mythological beast. For example, a dragon, griffin, unicorn and sphinx. Say my fire astral animal was a firefly and I decide to pair it with a dragon. Each mythological beast represents the higher spiritualization of the astral element animal. Here you can work with the concepts of above and below. The majestic dragon can then become the guide, protector and representative of higher ideals for my firefly. By creative visualization, astral projection, mental wandering or imagination, depending on your propensity, let these animals symbolically work together as your allies. Check in with them, let them reveal themselves, but also begin to dictate what your expectations are for these symbolic ambassadors of your inner elements. Have dominion over yourself.

The realms of the psyche, conscious, subconscious and unconscious are fertile grounds for profound + deep magick. Just as our dreams speak to us in symbols, we can use symbology as portals and gates to activate, maneuver and work with greater forces.