Animals have souls.

This fact and principle, simple and straightforward as it is, has been missed in varying degrees by the politically dominant religions of the world. Thus both Buddhism and Hinduism, although they allow Individual souls to mammals and even lower forms of animal life, dogmatically and arbitrarily assert that enlightenment or higher consciousness is not possible unless one is incarnated in human form, and often confine that prejudice to male human form only. Judaism, and its more politically powerful offshoots, Christianity and Islam, went even further in this arbitrary direction, utterly denying souls to animals.

What is so surprising is that perfectly nice people who would abhor racism in any form become so conditioned by false dogmas as to be vehemently racist when it comes to other species! Happily there are many exceptions amongst benign people. The convenient prejudice of the complete subservience of all other living beings to humans paved the way, of course, to a sanctioned mandate to plunder and pillage the earth and wreak destruction at will on all other species. And so it has been in all regions of the earth controlled by too anthropocentric creeds and cults. Plant and animal rights are far more than mere sentiment or even compassion: they are rooted in cosmic structure and process.

It is interesting that of all the religions it is only the currently nonpolitically dominant ones that allow for the spirituality and higher development of non-human species. The Native American nations speak reverently of the Wolf People, the Otter People, the Badger People, the Coyote People, the Bird People and so on.

Even the old pre-Christian folk tales of the European tradition speak of helpful trees, birds and animals. In short, it is the shamanistic religions above all who allowed for the spirituality of non-human life. And of all these religions those of Ancient Egypt and Persia were the most highly developed.