There is a reason that in the cave art of southern France, and in many spiritual traditions, including ancient Egypt, there are part human, part animal figures depicted—it is because they really are neither human nor animal, they are gods, archetypal beings. They are entities that have a consciousness that belongs to a more profound level of reality—the magical level. Though animals are innocent, unlike humans, and that sets them apart from humans, still animals are not necessarily, in and of themselves, magical beings. They are magical beings only when they have an unbroken connection with the magical realms, on a level beyond the world, with the mystical beings that live there and belong there. Otherwise, they are innocent beings caught in the net of the physical world.
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