Book Review by Heidi Rain

Spirit of Change, New England's Holistic Magazine

November/December 2002

“We are all more intimately connected than we can imagine,” Dawn Baumann Brunke states on the opening pages of Animal Voices. Birds, horses, cats, giraffes, guinea pigs, turtles, elephants and flies all share their perspectives, heard through the medium of animal communicators, enriching our view of the world, each other and ourselves.

 

Once she starts to “hear” birds, Brunke begins her own investigation of interspecies communicators. Their experiences, supplemented by her own, fill the pages of Animal Voices with fascinating expressions of “the one great intelligence that can manifest in myriad different ways.”

 

Transformation and awakening are what we can learn from animals, as these “divine messengers throughout the ages” each convey a particular piece of what we need to reconnect with a sacred view of nature. Ostriches, llamas, elephants, whales, cats, dolphins and the other animals “interviewed” all impart the basic message that “We are all one.”

 

Snakes work with people to help them understand the shadow self as revealed in the projection of our hate and fear onto animals, while flies remind us that “consciousness is everywhere and it doesn’t matter the size of the body.” Bears, who very much enjoy being in their bodies, bestow upon us the gift of being really grounded in the Earth plane. Polar bears, with “magnets on their feet . . . choose to live at the pole to hold the planet together.” Black bears hold the Earth together in a more energetic way, through sleep and dreams.

 

Brunke transcends the oft-stated, simplistic animal rights claim that “it’s bad to eat meat” with an understanding of the sacred aspects of the predator-prey relationship so well understood by the animals, encouraging us to “open up to the planetary lesson of the divine dance.”

 

In a brief Appendix, we are taught the basics and some fine tuning of animal-communication skills. The thoughts, feelings and magical information of animals are readily revealed to those who take the time, care and effort to listen to and hear them.

 

An altogether stunning revelation of the myriad voices of the universe, Animal Voices offers us yet another unique way of tapping into the web of life. As a group of animal spirits channeled by an animal communicator tell us, “Stop trying to heal the planet and everybody on it. Heal yourself and work to maintain your center and balance. Then everything else will fall into place.”