~ Animal Totems/ Power Animals~

[Neamhain Riona]

~ Animal Totems/ Power Animals~



I will be getting most of my information from the book called " Animal Speak" by Ted Andrews. I will also be sharing some of my own experinces. If you have any that you wish to share. Please feel free to do so. It would be great for others to see what others have experinced. As we all know, that they seem to be different, and some yet the same.

 

[Neamhain Riona]

A totem is any natural object , animal, or being to whose phenomena and energy you feel closely associated with during your life.

We can use animals totems and their images to learn about ourselves and the invisble world. We do not have to believe that these images and totems are beings of great intelligence, but there is an archetypal power that resides behind, oversees and manifests through these creatures.

A shaman works to reconnect conscious human life with nature and spirit thorugh animal totems. The images of the animal help the shaman to transcend the normal, waking consciousness so that he or she can more easliy attune to the more ethereal realms and beings. By discovering your animal totem, studying it and then learning to mergge with it, you will be able to call its envery forth whenever needed. When you honor the totem, you honor the essence that lies behind it- be it an actual force or a specifc spirit being who uses the image and form of the animal to communicate with you.

Ancient priests and priestesses used animal totems to assista them in coming face to face with the spirit world. They would imitate the animals in posture dress, and dance, creating rituals around it so as to invoke and share in the energy manifesting in the world through that animal. The animal became a totem power or medicine. It became a symbol of a spefific kind of energy. When they awakened to that totem and honored it, they released the energy behind it into their lives.

You can learn to access that same energy. By doing so, you begin to learn the language of nature and open yourself to her secrets. The first step, through, is to determine what your animal totem(s) may be.

Most people equate the imagination with unreality. Nothing could be further from the truth. The imagination is a power of the mind to creat and work with images. It is this ability which can open us to other realms, assist us in healing, help us to discover lost knwledge and to open to higher vision and even prophecy.

 

[Neamhain Riona]

Do you know your animal totems?


Begin the process of discovering your animal totems by examinging the animals you have been most interested in and the times of you life that interested was piqued. Use the following questionaire to help you determine in which animals are probably totems to your in your life.

1. Which animal or bird has always fascinated you? ( We are drawn to that which most resonates with us. Those animals which fascinate us have something to teach us.)

2. When you visit the zoo, which animal do you wish to visit the most or fist? ( as a child this is especially important. children are more naturally open and thus are able to more easily recognize the animal that will be important to them.)

3. What animal(s) do you see most frequently when you are out in nature? Have you had encouters with the animals in the wild?

4. Of all the animals in the world, which are you most interested in now? ( our interests in animals change. Yes we usualy have one or two that are lifetime power animals, but others become prominent when there is something important or specific to each us.)

5. What animal frightens you? ( That which we fear the most is often something we must learn to come to terms with. When we do that, it then comes a power. Some shamans believe that fears will take the shape of animals, and only when we confront them without fear do tehri powers/medicine work for us instead of against us. Such an animal becomes a shadow totem.)

6. Have you ever been bitten or attacked by an animal? ( Historically, if a shaman survived an attack, it was belived that the animal was the shamans spirit totem and the attack was the totems way of testing the shamans ability to hand the power.)

7. Do you have dreams with animals in them, or are there animal dreams you have never forgotten? ( this is especially important if the dreams are recurring or if at leas the animal image in teh dream is a recurring one. children often dream of animals, and attention should be given to these animals. They will often refelct specific spirit toems of the child.)  

[Neamhain Riona]

The Basics of Animal Totems

Animal totems go by a variety of names. The yare called spirit animals, power animals, totem helpers, and others. Regardless of how people refer to them , certainy beliefs are common.

1. Every animal has a powerful spirit.

2. This spirit may be its own, or that of a being who uses the animals image to communicate messages of the world to humans.

3. Every animal has its own talents. A study of its talents will reveal the kind of medcine, magic, and power it can help you to deelop wihtint your own life. Remember, every animal has a specialty.

4. Lifelong power animals are usually wild, no DOMESTICATED, animals. There are a few execeptions, but even these exceptions are often just links to that true power animal. For example, people may have dogs or chats as totems. These have their own medicine and power, but the domesticated animal may only be softend form of tis wild counterpart. A dog may be link to the wolf, coyote, or any of the wild canine family. A cat may be a link to a member of the wild feline family, such as a pather, lion, tigers ( and bears oh my).

5. The animal CHOOSES the person, not the other way around. Many believe that they can just chose an animal and start communicating. Usually EGO gets in the way these times. The individual choses the animal he or she belives is the most glamorous and powerful, rather that what is harmonious to the individual. The results are ineffectual and often frustrating. No animal is better or worse than any other. Every animals medicine is unique. It is always much better to be powerful in mouse medicine, than to be clumsy and infeccectual in eagle medicine. YOu will find your greatest sucess in the animal that come to YOU.

6. You must develop a relationship with your totem. To communicate with them demands respect. You must learn their point of view. Animals won't just warm up to your immediately. They must learn to trust you and your limitations, and you must learn to trust them and their limitations. This takes time, patience and practice.

7. You must honor you totem for its medicine to be effective in your life. The more you honor them. the more signifcance you give them wihting your life. the more powerful and effective they become. Some of the ways you can honor them and draw them closer into your life is by:
A. Hanging pictures of them
B. Drawing pictures of them.
C. Buying figurines of you totem for yourself or purchasing small toekns and images of you totem and giving them to friends as gifts. These fetishes are a reminder of the power and spirt of your animal totem.


8. Once you learn to work with the medicine of your power animal, it then becomes a doorway to connecting with others of the animal relam. You are not limited to just one totem. Each can teach or add something to your life the otehrs can't. Working with your power animal will teach you how to align with others.

9. Although there are one or even several totems that are strongest in your life and remain with you through most of it. Others do play a role. You mahve a totem for a day. You may have a totem that assist you through a particularly rough period of your life.

10. More than one person can have the same totem.

 

[Neamhain Riona]

Meeting your Animal Totem

The exercise that follows is one that will assist you in meeting your animal totem. We will be using the creative imagination to help open the animal relam to you more effectiviely. Don't worry that you might be making it up. YOu will not be imagining it if it did not have some signifiance to you.
It is important to be relaxed and to not perform the exericse with any preconceived notions. Let the animal totem present itself to you. Let it choose you, rather you choose it. Keep in mind that the toem will have symbolic significane to you. The more you learn about it and meditate on how it might reflect your own life, the easier it will become to access its energies.

In exercises such as these, most people get into trouble with the interpretation of the images encountered. You nature totem may be bird, a mamal, or even an insect or reptile. REad, study, and learn about your nature totem to facilitae your being able to relate it to yourself. Don't just accept the totem without question. The imagination is a wonderful tool, but if not used prperly , it can mislead. Put your totem through a simple verification process:

* How does it feel?
* What emtions/sensations does it arouse in you?
* Is it an animal that interested you in the past?
* What does it make you think of?
* What is your heartfelt repsonse?

Do Not haphazardly discard it, simply because it is not as glamourous as what your ego may have wanted. The totem may be quiet appropriate to you, but you will not know untill you study and explore more closely the qualitites and characteristics of it. Keep in mind too that frightening images are more often than not projections of your own fears. They may also be expressions of resistance. It is amazing somethinges how prgrammed we are not to accept anything that can't be rationally explained in the moent. Moste peopel have some degree of programming of the idea " better the devil you know that the one you don't"

* Relaxtion
* Entering a cave or tree
* Leaving the cave or tree to enter a meadow or natural area.
* Experinceing peacefulness of nature
* Allowing the toem to enter the scene
* Allowing the animal to speak to you - its movement, sounds, form , color, etc will give you a message about its power. You may even hear its thoughs in your own. Allow it to tell yo u or show you how it has helped you in the past and how it will do so in the future.
* Give thanks to it for making itself know and ask it for some tangible confirmation in the next week or so that it is truely your animal totem. They may come in many ways. Dreams, pictures, figureins, television, nature.

* Move back to the cave or tree and step back through it to tis other entrance point. Then step out from it.

* Take four or five deep breaths ( slow) and allowe yourself to feel grounded and connected.

* Begin your verification process. Research and study the totem and its qualitives. Mediate and contemplate on its qualities as they apply to you and your life circumstances.

 

[Neamhain Riona]

Preparation

Drums and rattles are effective instruments to use, although they are not crucial. If drums and rattes are used, the rhythm should be slow and steady. You should allow the drum beat to lead you. I recommend you not not do any imagining, but simply sit and feel the drumbeat for at least five minutes. This relaxes you abd brings you body rythms into synchronizationjs with the drum. If you do not have drums or a rattle, you may use some soft music that is repetitive and nonintrusive.

Make sure you will not be distrubed. Sit or lie down, whichever is easiet for you, but make sure you back is streait so that the blood can flow freeup up the spine. Close your eyes and breathe deeply. Then begin to perform a progressive relaxtion. Focus on each part of the body, sending earm, soothing, senstaions through it. Begin at the feet and work your way to the top of your head. Take the time with his. The more relaxed yo uare the more effective the exercise will be . Don't worry if you mind wnders. Just bring it back to where you left off and contineue. Then simply imagine the scenes that follow.

Exercise

As you relax, you find yourself growing lighter and lighter. The surroundings seem to fad, and you are wrapped in the warn dark cloack of your own energy and mind. It is safe, warm and comfortable
In your minds eye, you begin to see soft light, and slowly the view opens. You find yourself at the edge of a crystalline pool of water. The sky above is blue, and there is a soft haze on the distant horizon. Above you, the sun and the moon can be seen together in the sky. YOu are not sure if it is dusk or dawn, but you know it is one of those powerful" between times" To your right, at the end of the pool is a waterfall. The spray from it is cool and misty, where it touches the pool, water ripples outward, distroning all reflections. It gives the area a surreal apperance.
You look about you at the green grasses and the distant trees, and all is silence. It is as if nature is in a state of quiet anticipation. You look back to the waterfall and you notice a dark area behind it. ou move towards it and you stand close to the waterfall, you see a cave half concealed behind it. You step carefly into the waters and into the muted darkness of the inner cave.
You are suprised, for it is illuminated with soft torches. The light given off from them give the open chamber a warmth. Somehow it looks familiar and it makes you feel as if you were expected.

To that bakc of that chamber is a tunnel that is also lit, you glance over your shoulder to the area beyond the waterfall, and then walk further into the cave. It is as warn and comforatbel as it first appeared, and as you step further in towards that back tunnel, you feel slight giddiness, and sofl childlike laugh slips out.

You step from the chamber into the path of the tunne abd begin to foloow it slowly. It is well lit, and you are not at all uncomfortable. You reach out and touch the walls with your hands, and you are surprised at their warthm It is as if you could feel the life blood of the earth .

( cutting this down)
You are going to be coming out to a field, with a huge oak in the middle of it. Walk up to the oak and sit down and lean up against the tree. Watch the scene unfold you. Many animals may appear to you. Go ahead and ask them " Are you my power animal?" They will answer you. Once you have found it ( if they present themselves). Thank them for their time. Start making your way back the way you came in, through the tunnel, the waterfall, etc.
Once you get back, reflect on what you saw and write the information down for further use.

 

[Neamhain Riona]

Lessons of Life, Death, and Rebirth

Magical Exercises for working with a predator totem.


1. This simple meditation/visualiztion is powerfully effective. For it, you must have knowledge of some predator and its most common prey. IF you already have a totem that is a predator use it. otherwise choose a predator. Visualize a bad habit, an uncomfortable situation, or something negative in your life ast the prey animal. Then visualize yourself as the predator. See yourself tearing at the "prey" and swallowing it. eliminating the habit.

2. A variation of this exercise can be used to effect changes in your life as well. AGain use the predator and prey image.
Visualize yourself hunting, stalking, giving chase to the prey ( which is the change that you want to bring). Decided on a realistic time frame that you would like to see it completed.

 

[Neamhain Riona]

The Symbolic qualites of Trees

Apple: Magic, youth,beauty, and happiness
Ash: Sacrifice, sensitivitgy, and higher wisdom
Aspen: Determination, Overcoming fears and doubts
Beech: tolerance, past knowledge, softens over criticism
Birch: new beginnings, cleansing of past, vision quests
Cedar: healing, cleansing, protection
Cherry: death and rebirth, new awakenings
Cypress: understanding of role of sacrifice
Elder: Birth and death, renaissance of faerie realm
Elm: strength of will, intuition
Hawthorne: fertility and creativity, magic
Hazel: hidden wisdom, dowsing and divination
Heather: healing from within, immortality and initition
Holly: protection, overcoming of anger, spiritual warrior
Honeysuckle: learning from the past, discrimination, change
Lilac: spiritualization, realization of true beauty
Maple: balance, practical expression of psychic, promise
Oak: strength and enduracen, helpfullness, continuity
Orange: clarity to emotions, release of trama
Palm: protection, peace, opportunity
Spruce: new realiations, healing, intution
Sycamore: communications, love, learning to receive
Walnut: eases transitions, following a unique path
Williow: magic, healing ,inner vision and dreams.  

[Neamhain Riona]

The Coyote


The Coyote myth lore is one of the most popular among the Native American. Coyote is a ubiquitous being and can be categorized in many types. In creation myths, Coyote appears as the Creator himself; but he may at the same time be the messenger, the culture hero, the trickster, the fool. He has also the ability of the transformer: in some stories he is a handsome young man; in others he is an animal; yet others present him as just a power, a sacred one.

According to Crow (and other Plains) tradition, Old Man Coyote impersonates the Creator, "Old Man Coyote took up a handful of mud and out of it made people" 1. His creative power is also spread onto words, "Old Man Coyote named buffalo, deer, elk, antelopes, and bear. And all these came into being" 2. In such myths Coyote-Creator is never mentioned as an animal, more, he can meet his animal counterpart, the coyote: they address each other as "elder brother" and "younger brother", and walk and talk together 3. According to A. Hultkranz, the impersonation of Coyote as Creator is a result of a taboo, a mythic substitute to the religious notion of the Great Spirit whose name was too dangerous and/or sacred to use apart from a special ceremony 4.

In Chelan myths, Coyote belongs to the animal people but he is at the same time "a power just like the Creator, the head of all the creatures" 5. Yet his being 'just like the Creator' does not really mean being 'the Creator': it is not seldom that Coyote-Just- Like-Creator is subject to the Creator, Great Chief Above, who can punish him, send him away, take powers away from him, etc. In the Pacific Northwest tradition, Coyote is mostly mentioned as a messenger, or minor power, "Coyote was sent to the camp of the chief of the Cold Wind tribe to deliver a challenge; Coyote traveled around to tell all the people in both tribes about the contest." sup>6 As such, Coyote "was cruelly treated, and his work was never done." 7.

As the culture hero, Coyote appears in various mythic traditions. His major heroic attributes are transformation, traveling, high deeds, power. He is engaged in changing the ways of rivers, standing of mountains, creating new landscapes and getting sacred things for people. Of mention is the tradition of Coyote fighting against monsters. According to Wasco tradition, Coyote was the hero to fight and kill Thunderbird, the killer of people, but he could do that not because of his personal power, but due to the help of the Spirit Chief; Coyote was trying his best, he was fighting hard, and he had to have fasted ten days before the fight, so advised by Spirit Chief 8. In many Wasco myths, Coyote rivals the Raven (Crow) about the same ordeal: in some stories, Multnomah Falls came to be by Coyote's efforts; in others, it is done by Raven.

More often than not Coyote is a trickster, but he is always different. In some stories, he is a noble trickster, "Coyote takes water from the Frog people... because it is not right that one people have all the water." 9. In others, he is mean, "Coyote determined to bring harm to Duck. He took Duck's wife and children, whom he treated badly." 10.

Sources:

1. American Indian Myths and Legends, 89.
2. American Indian Myths and Legends, 90.
3. American Indian Myths and Legends, 89.
4. Belief and Worship in North America, 29-30.
5. Voices of the Winds, 5.
6. Voices of the Winds, 26-27.
7. Voices of the Winds, 27.
8. Voices of the Winds, 45-46.
9. American Indian Myths and Legends, 356.
10. Voices of the Winds, 234.

Author: Tamara Kazakova