"he was inside the animal"

That’s why our inside animals are not like those on TV, where they are put into human stories. You don’t see a leopard just as leopard. It is put into a story of predators, of extinction, or ‘the wonders of mating.’ Or you are taught a lesson about motherhood, about how risky animal life is and how everything has to hide in camouflage; or it’s about big bucks competing for females. All humans imagine them. Get into them as imaginal beings, into them as images. That’s what Adam did: he looked at these images parading by and read their names out of their natures. He was inside the animal. He knew the animals of his imagination. He and they were all in the same dream.”

-James Hillman, Dream Animals

[drawing by Doug Millison]