coyotlboy–Thank you! I hope this blog brings you some good ideas!

Also, your paragraph listing your books has, in the first sentence, the word “both” that should be removed since you’re now listing more than two books.

I should do a FAQ for my blog and one for RTV, soon.

For another, you’re completely ignoring the animistic and spiritual aspects of my work with animal remains. I am a firm supporter of animal rights; however, I also believe that the spirits themselves need help post-death. I do not kill animals for my spirituality; a lot of what I work with are secondhand fur coats, taxidermy mounts, and what gets thrown out by fur coat factories.

As for my diet, yes, I eat meat, eggs and dairy. However, I dedicate as much of the grocery budget as I can to free range and organic food. In my belief system, plants are every bit as much alive and deserving of life as animals–it’s only the anthropocentric viewpoint that claims that only beings that resemble us have any form of consciousness. Just because we haven’t figured out how to communicate with non-animal spirits doesn’t mean that they don’t have any form of consciousness. Cleve Backster’s Primary Perception research has begun the rudimentary beginnings of scientific research on how to communicate with plants.

I am an animist. *Everything* has a spirit, and I work with those spirits. To me, eating a plant that was ripped from the ground is no different than eating an animal killed for food. What is important to me is how the animals and plants lived and how they were killed. In order for me to live, something has to die, unless I manage to live entirely on fruits and nuts, and grains that are somehow harvested without killing the plant.

In the end, it’s a delicate balance based on *personal* choices. I don’t believe in playing guilt trips or the shame game in order to make people see things my way. I present my perspective, and that’s it.

In other words, please don’t use my blog for your personal agenda.

Good luck along your spiritual journey.

– Rake