Animal Messages

Susia Green's Animal Messages works the genre its title states: animal symbolism as spiritual guidance, creatures as messengers in the tradition this catalog documents from Ted Andrews's scholarship to the affirmation shelf's mascots. The record is thin, placing it among the genre's many under-papered entries, the decks that filled the animal-wisdom demand between the documented landmarks. Genre-filling decks have their own documentary value: the animal-messenger premise sold steadily enough to support dozens of makers, and the catalog's fuller shelf, King's dreaming system, the Creature Teacher's rounds, Boulet's painted spirits, stands on that broad demand. Green's entry marks the market's middle ground. It suits animal-oracle completists, genre historians mapping demand beyond the landmarks, and readers for whom any sincere animal deck serves the daily draw. The documented teachers hold the reference shelf; the messengers, like messengers everywhere, mostly just delivered.