Working with TOTEM Animals: The Grim
A dapper, canine banshee being enters the scene-- just in time for All Hollow's Eve!
So, high strangeness has been at an all-time high during this Spooky Season. And, considering that we wrote about it in our recent Aries Full Moon Deep Dive (below), you’d think that I would be prepared for it.
Spoiler alert: I was NOT, in fact, prepared for it.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not having a good time with all of the Woo… of course, in between encounters with Arkham Asylum escapees and energy vampires on Etsy messenger;)
The best part of the recent high strangeness? A new TOTEM Animal, known in folklore as The Grim. But don’t let the name fool you— he’s not spooky or scary or altogether kooky. He’s not even a little bit “grim”. Or, I should say, he’s not grim not to me.
He’s also not just a Harry Potter character, though I would like to point out that The Grim aka Padfoot aka Sirius Black was played in the movie series by the ultimate badass: Gary Oldman.
Just saying.
And, from my direct experience with The Grim, I can confidently assert that, like the Harry Potter character he inspired, he is the consumate gentleman. In fact, I’m downright impressed with his gallantry— and his classic, sharp sense of style.
A spectral hound
My latest TOTEM Animal adventure started a few weeks ago.
Almost every day, I kept seeing a large, dark dog out of the corner of my eye in various rooms of our house. Each time, my first thought was that it was my dog, Gus, who is a German Shepherd and seemed to fit the bill. But, when I poked my head into the room in question to ask him what strange and likely problematic thing he was doing all quiet-like and without human supervision, the dog evaporated into thin air.
I would then call for Gus, and he would come barreling into the room from another part of the house, leaving me wondering what the hell it was that I had seen.
And, in keeping with the tradition of shamanism, I spent more than a few minutes wondering if my eyes were going, if my brain was atrophying to soft boiled egg, and if I needed to seek out the therapeutic ASMR of a padded room. It doesn’t matter how many iterations of this exact same spiritual process I go through: I always spend at least a little bit of time wondering if I’ve lost my damn mind.
Pro tip: that actually means the shamanism is working;)
Besides, these momentary sightings weren’t the only sign that I had a new, canine friend.
References to a very specific type of dog— looking a bit like a dark, brindled Dutch Shepherd— kept popping up in whatever TV show, book or podcast I was consuming at the time. I thought it might have just been a result of me anticipating my dog’s 9th birthday, which happens to be….drumroll please…today.
(Happy Birthday, Gus!)
But, as I now know, it wasn’t my dog. Or, at least, not my physical, corporeal dog in this earth plane. And, sadly, it wasn’t a nervous breakdown or some strange eye disease, either. It was, in fact, a new TOTEM Animal bringing with it a robust list of new spiritual to do’s!
The sound of the Barguest
Another strange sign of my new, spectral canine friend?
During multiple nights in the last week, my husband and I heard a very strange and very spooky sound. It reminded me a bit of the Fairy Music we’ve previously written about here on Substack (see link below), but it was somehow lower and, as I expressed to my husband, somehow more masculine…?
I remember wondering if it was the Banshee, an Irish being from fairy folklore whose song is a harbinger of the death of a family member, but kept hitting a psychic “naw” when I started down this line of inquiry.
The strangest part of this deep, tonal humming that seemed to be coming at us from every direction at night? My husband and I both noticed that, the more you tried to listen to it, the more you could hear it— almost like it was a frequency that you could tune into or something. If I stopped trying to “tune in”, it would dissipate.
We were so confused by this that we made frequent trips outside into the backyard in our jammies to make sure that some neighbor wasn’t playing singing bowls or otherwise trying to trick us during this Spooky Season.
The outcome of these very spooky backyard investigations in our slippers? There was no discernible music coming from any earthly source. In fact, when we went outside, we couldn’t hear it.
Weird, right?
I wouldn’t solve this riddle for many days, but suffice it to say: there is an ancient tradition of a masculine fairy music— referred to as the Ceol Barguest— that, like the song of the Banshees, serves as a premonition of the coming of The Grim.
God bless Irish folklore Subreddits, and their illustrious Redditors— without them, I would have never made this subtle connection!
The astral meeting… in a phantom
The last night that we heard the spooky, spectral music, I met The Grim in a “dream”. I put that word in sarcastic quotes because it actually had all of the hallmarks of astral travel: lucidity, psychopompic adventures, and artifacts and elements of the Astral Realm, which we previously wrote about here:
The scene: In the “dream”, I found myself in my old office building in downtown Chicago, recognizing various former coworkers stressed out and running around manically.
I was accompanied by a very dapper English gentleman in a fantastic, tailored suit. He looked a bit like if Jeremy Irons and Rudolf Steiner had an uptight, Aristocratic baby, and I somehow knew that a.) we were buddies, b.) his presence indicated that I was going to be “winning life”, for some reason and c.) no one could even start to fuck with me while he was nearby.
It was a very, very liberating and empowering sensation. He was strangely familiar to me, and I felt a sense of ease that I haven’t felt in years. I remember “wondering” who this mystery man was, how I knew him, and what he was doing in this very, very lucid “dream”.
I walked around the office, feeling super relaxed, happy, and super duper magnanimous, approaching folks to tell them that I didn’t harbor them any ill will and that I wished them well on their impending journey to the afterlife, whether a literal death or just a professional or economic “passing”. They seemed really wound up about something happening in the industry or the economy as a whole.
Just then, this well-dressed man-person walked up to me and showed me a brochure he took from a trip he had just made to Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. I wrinkled my face, saying, “I’ll take you to a real museum”, referring to the Art Institute of Chicago.
He nodded, saying, “I’m looking forward to all of this [while he gestured around at the pandemonium] to be over so we can do more fun stuff. Soon enough.”
I knew that this statement meant that my previous industry or just the economic world as a whole was heading into a biblical reckoning, and that the energy of it hitting the crescendo before the immediate crash was vaguely bothersome to him— kind of like the subtle disdain for the upstairs neighbors’ late night footsteps.
Before leaving the building with my new friend, I saw my old boss and walked up to him. Laughing and amused, I put my hand on his arm and said, “I don’t want you to hold onto this anymore. If I hadn’t been laid off, I was going to quit. I was actually going to resign the next day, so you didn’t do anything bad.”
My former boss looked at me, irritated, and said, “I know that. You told me that. I’m the one that wants to get laid off. I beg and pray to God everyday to get out of this fucking place. I’m an equity partner, but I don’t get any of that equity if I quit. So, I can’t quit this hellhole.”
Whoa. That’s a bit of an insight, I remember thinking to myself. And I wondered how many of the miserable-looking worker bees surrounding me in this dreamscape had the same hold-up preventing them from running to freedom.
Then, my well-dressed astral companion approached me to leave, and we walked out to a gorgeous black Rolls Royce. Before he could open the door for me, an offleash dog ran up. Just then, my friend— who I now know to be The Grim— turned into a dark, large dog, running right up to the offleash dog to aggressively assess and sniff it.
After a few very, very tense moments, he walked away, turning back into a sharp-dressed man before opening the Roll's Royce’s door, inviting me to enter and sit.
The fairy connection
When I woke up, I knew this was something.
What is a being that turns into a dark dog and warns of impending doom for others while also inferring that I am going to be just fine from an abundance mindset?
I took to the interwebs, literally typing this into the search bar: “Shape-shifting dark dog fairy being myth folklore.”
I mean, I’m not going to brag, but my grasp of Google SEO for myth stuff is pretty f*cking tight.
And, guess what: it’s totally a thing.
The Grim considered to be a really real supernatural being in Northern England, Scotland and Ireland, and has a deep, ancient and incredibly rich mythological history. To save you a bit of time— and spare you all of the minutia I waded through to get here— here are the highlights:
The Grim, also called the Barguest, is a spectral dog often seen or depicted as black or brown, with reports saying that it either looks like a Cane Corso or German Shepherd.
The Grim, like the Banshee, is said to be a harbinger of death, and its “howl” (or song) is one of the key warnings of its coming.
The Grim seems to be really mean to mean men, but kind of awesome to those folks that are hard working and kind to animals. In one story I found, he guided a young boy and father to literal buried treasure.
The Grim has strong fairy connections, often documented as being seen near fairy “wraiths”, or circles of power, and even accompanying various Sidhe figures…including Mab herself!
One of my favorite quotes from my research? “Barguests ensure that all deals made with creatures from the Underworld are upheld. They are great companions and loyal. They have a strong sense of duty.”
This was totally the vibe of The Grim in my dream, and I think the reason why I felt so comfortable in his familiar presence.
But I still have one question: what is the impending doom that he is guarding me from? And what, if any, deal is made with creatures from the “Underworld” that may involve me?
Like, can I get the meeting minutes or something?
And, of course, Odin’s involved
When reflecting on this research, I made a strange connection to some other spiritual scavenger hunt clues I’ve been collecting.
Before I figured out who The Grim was, I kept wondering if he was a manifestation or emanation of Odin. He had some of that classic Odin energy— the sharp clothing and the sweet black ride— but it just never fully fit.
When I read the bit about The Grim guiding folks he liked and guarded to buried gold, a supernatural memory came to the surface: earlier this year, I had a fascinating dream with Odin in which, among other fantastical things, he reiterated that I needed to get ready for abundance. I wrote about this vignette in this post:
And, while it’s not out of the question that abundance might be coming my way, I’m not exactly chasing that dragon or working on a business function to capture millions of dollars ala Scrooge McDuck.
BUT, given the ephemeral connection between The Grim and Odin that I just couldn’t shake the research indicating The Grim would lead certain individuals to buried treasure. Let’s just say I’m paying attention.
If a stray spectral dog runs up to me at the park and leads me to a spot in which its digging up some treasure, I’m not going to say “no”.
Happy (almost) Halloween, folks.
And stay alert out there— the fae and their consorts seem to be getting quite active as the veil between the world thins.
-Rachel
happy birthday to Gus!!