The truth about your spiritual guide(animal totems)

[Naoki_ninja]

This journey is actually quite simple: the totem that most embodies your spirit is often the animal you are very close to. I however, am not around wolves all the time; but i have often felt a very strong connection between that animal and myself. I have had dreams where i am running with wolves and it's a very freeing experience. If you have or need help finding your animal totem that most embodies your spirit, feel free to post your thoughts here.

[metamorphocid]

while on 3 hits of acid i connected spiritually with my cat, and felt the deepest love for her i've ever felt in my life

[Naoki_ninja]

hmm,....well, to each is own.

[Dawn Wanderer]

I grew up identifying with the Mountain Lion (Cougar, Puma), I still do. I consider that my primary totem. Others are Owl, Frog and Spider.

....It's interesting that they're all hunters.

[st3wy]

I'm curious what mine would be i almost have no clue. i'm pretty easy going dont start shit but can rage if someone pushes the wrong buttons. i am strong and about 6 ft tall i am very into nature love to grow plants that have benefits for me like my san pedro, but also have tomatoes and oregeno (yes actual oregeno haha :)). what animal does that sound like to you? looking at what i said from a universal picture

[Dancing_Sun]

st3wy, i don't think that any person can really tell you what your animal totem because lies deep within you. You need to look inside and also ask for guidance, it may come to you in real life a dream or even a deep feeling.
I am deeply connected to the raven and many times when im in need he has come to visit with me.

[Action Lad]

I'm curious what mine would be i almost have no clue. i'm pretty easy going dont start shit but can rage if someone pushes the wrong buttons. i am strong and about 6 ft tall i am very into nature love to grow plants that have benefits for me like my san pedro, but also have tomatoes and oregeno (yes actual oregeno haha :)). what animal does that sound like to you? looking at what i said from a universal picture


St3wy, you sound like a human, and yes, humans are animals.

I wonder, is the Dodo bird a valid totem animal? Or did it go extinct in the spirit world like it did in the physical?

[goodvibes83]

I am 99.9% sure mine is a polar bear

[Kizen]

Mines a kangaroo,

Lol.

[janisjoplin!]

I feel like mine is a rabbit becouse we have rabbits in the feilds around my house and when i walk out to them they dont run occasionaly i can get to about one meter from them ,but pehaps they have just gotten used to my pressence???

[Tobias]

Animal totems are very important to our spiritual development and truly act as guide in an ever confusing world.

My primary totem is the Coyote and ever time I hear them in the middle of the night, it both makes me shiver as if they are warning me of some impending doom, yet at the same time their many differing vocalizations have a calming effect on me too...

My secondary totem is the Red-Tailed Hawk, which I believe in my case, acts as a type of visual portal showing me my future, especially when I find myself contemplating a journey other than a few miles...

[ZeroxBleach]

I love to observe my surroundings, and learn as much as I can about it. Not only that but I love to research and learn as much as I can about everything from science, to math, to nature. I'm a very shy and quiet individual when I first meet someone, but can open up quick. I'm also not one to hold a grudge.

I've been told if I had any kind of animal guide it would be a Red Fox... but I'm not sure. Foxes are my favorite animal, but can anyone possibly fill me in on if that might be mine? Or at least tell me what mine may be?

[goodvibes83]

this is not how i determined mine, and i dont know how helpful this is...but its a start...to say the least

http://www.spiritualnetwork.net/totems/discover_your_animal_totems.htm

[ippi]

I have met, my one totem face to face... It was beautiful, he was saying me some "power" and that day did really helped me lot in my life....

Second I use to dream about my one animal totem, but nowdays he is gone...

Greatest animal totem, for me, did born me...

[RunningMan]

Greetings from England Newbie here

I feel my Totem is an Peacock Butterfly i am very attracted to them and can watch them for hours leaving me very relaxed. Its a bit of a wimpy animal though do you not think ?

[Americunt]

I've recently found out that my power animal is Badger. I didn't know much about it, hell I've never even seen one before, but once I read up on it, it just made sense, and felt right.

Three totems that I am aware of are Spider, Moth, and Ant.

[opel diamond]

this is really interesting. i feel most closely connected with fish and birds....couldnt give you a specific though. i can watch fish for hours and birds. my fish totally understand me. :) maybe im reading too much into them though, i dont know.

[Mothman]

No idea what my totem animal might be. I am drawn to them all but I wanted to mention that I used to have a mix breed dog that I had a powerful connection with. We could communicate through thought. I couldn't here her in my head or anything it was more of just simply knowing. Anyway she could tell me what she wanted(through thought, no outward physical manifestation) such as a walk, food, toys and sometimes she would tell me to get down on the floor and scratch her belly. Doesn't sound to unusual right? I could also call her from another room with thought and I could give her very specific commands with just thought and she never once got it wrong. Never could do that with any other animal before or since. She was special and she convinced me that animals have a spirit.

[Runewolf1973]

I don't know what my totem animal is, but I know what my power animal is. I have two actually. Wolf and bear. It it like two sides of me. The wolf is always around. I can actually describe it to you. It is very large, more-so than modern wolves and it is silvery-gray in color. I actually discovered that it is 160 years old and I had it in a past life. I have had numerous dreams of wolves and bears. I always found myself running from wolves in my dreams. Then I had one dream where I was sitting beside a fire and a large wolf lunged up and attacked me. I tried to fight it off, then next thing I knew, I was sitting beside the fire again and the wolf is sitting quietly beside me like we were best friends. Before that wolves always frightened me in my dreams. Similar dreams occurred to me where I encountered large brown bears. My wife actually has a gift that is very uncommon. She literally sees ghosts and spirits like they were everyday people walking around. Animals too. I was kind of skeptic before, but then I came to my own realization that she was not just making it all up. She never told anyone before because she didn't want people to think she was crazy. That's understandable. Spirits are real and they exist. They are all around us. Each person has different vibrational energy and some people's energy is more in tune with the spirit world. It is kinda similar to radio frequency. Some hear it, others don't. Some see it others don't. She's seen both my wolf and my bear. The wolf is around all the time and goes anywhere I go. It follows me everywhere. The bear only comes out at certain times like when I am very upset or angry. My wife's even seen a time when I was really angry and my bear actually put it's foot down over the wolf's head! It's basically like it was saying "No, it's my turn!"

[Stephæ]

I'm convinced mine is the white tiger. A rare intellectual with the ability to fight until death and to stay strong at every moment in life. Also, an anti-hero of sorts.

[Runewolf1973]

Greetings from England Newbie here

I feel my Totem is an Peacock Butterfly i am very attracted to them and can watch them for hours leaving me very relaxed. Its a bit of a wimpy animal though do you not think ?

It is just how humans perceive things. I don't believe there are any "wimpy" power animals. Then again, the animal which you are drawn to is not necessarily the animal that is with you. From what I understand, if you dream of a specific animal in you're dreams several times, it is more likely your power animal.

[Runewolf1973]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is not a totem animal different from a power animal. The totem animal is more like the "clan" totem. The power animal is your personal protector.

[Mountain Valley Wolf]

Hey Runewolf1973----there can be some classification like that, but I think in today's world where most cultures have lost that connection, it doesn't make a big difference. In many tribes, the clan animal and power animal were the same.

Most important is that you have a connection to a spirit animal or bush spirit that protects and guides you, whatever you want to call it.

Naoki Ninja, when I first met my spirit animal, I had no idea what it would be. It was the wolf, but I didn't neccessarily feel so close to the wolf that i am aware of. Months leading up to my meeting with the wolf, I saw many foxes at night. At one point I felt like that might be my power animal---there are only a few wolves were I live, mostly replanted into the state.

After I met the wolf, there was a sense of---'I'll be darned.' But I didn't feel as close to the wolf until that event. Now the wolf is around me at all times. Also the turtle, or should say the Turtle Maiden has helped me, but that is another story...

[Spiritchalist]

-snip-

[Indy Hippy]

I'm not positive but I'd have to say that if experiances with animals can show you what your guides are mine would be hawk, rabbit, and horse. My hippie name is Little Hawk and my Native American name means Running Horse, tho I can't rembmer how to say it normally

[prana]

Well you see, I took this online quiz a year or two ago,, and it wasn't some kind of dinky online quiz (like a lot of them are), it had serious questions, a scale rating system, and FIFTY freaking questions. In the end, it said my animal totem was an otter. I stumbled upon a random link on reddit later that day of these two otters "holding hands", which was quite the coincidence because I have a lot of subreddits I'm subscribed to and rarely do I come across things like that. It was kind of neat :D

I have yet to come across the exact link since then, the few times I've looked. I looked at a few others, but they were more atypical. If I ever manage to find it, maybe I'll post it or something.

[Mountain Valley Wolf]

In my own experience and understanding, you must find your spirit animal through a spiritual experience such as a spirit journey, or a lucid dream, or through an elder or shaman (or shamaness) who finds or perceives it through his (or her) own spiritual perception. This is especially for those of us who have lost our archaic clans and spiritual earth connections.

I would doubt that an online quiz, no matter how serious, would determine anyones spirit animal-----But Prana, you do speak of a synchronicity----after you were told what animal it was, you then found a picture of it online----as if the animal was validating it for you. Perhaps you needed it, or needed to make contact so badly, that it used an online quiz to contact you. The spirit world does work in strange ways----or if you don't buy into that, our unconscious archetypes work in strange ways in influencing our modern linear-thinking-based objectivistic minds in this post-modern era.

Try to make contact with the otter, either through dreams or in other ways. When I look for it, I can always feel the presence of my wolf nearby----or I can call it, and I feel it's presence. In certain indigenous cultures, when you lose your spirit animal, you become ill. THough in other cultures it is your soul that wanders off making you ill.

[BlackBillBlake]

This is something about which I know very little. However, I have had the experience of feeling very close to cats at times, and I've always thought cats have a kind of grace about them which to me says they're totally centered in the flow of things. Once I had an experience where it semed to me that I could see the divine in a cat I was caring for at the time.

[BlackBillBlake]

In my own experience and understanding, you must find your spirit animal through a spiritual experience such as a spirit journey, or a lucid dream, or through an elder or shaman (or shamaness) who finds or perceives it through his (or her) own spiritual perception. This is especially for those of us who have lost our archaic clans and spiritual earth connections.

I would doubt that an online quiz, no matter how serious, would determine anyones spirit animal-----.

I think you're right as regards how it would have to be, although this isn't something I know much about.

You know, the idea that you could connect with or find anything much spiritual through an online quiz seems like a typical example of the shallowness of modern 'culture' to me. People seem to think there's a kind of commodity called 'spirituality' which they can get in the same way as they get fotball results.

[windy]

I found my power animal through prayer and ceremony. I had read alot about a connection you could make between living things...birds animals trees etc. I made a prayer asking to experience this connection. It was very involved with burning of sage etc. I wrote the prayer on paper. When I was finished I burned the paper with the sage and went outside one night and threw it out to the winds. As soon as I popped my little sack of offerings open an owl flew over me only a few feet from the top of my head shrieking. Now my vision and my hearing aren't good, but in the next few moments I could see and hear EVERYTHING. How grateful I am for this experience. I have been dreaming of owls ever since.

[Mountain Valley Wolf]

Wow Windy, that is a very cool and powerful experience, you definitely came upon your spirit animal in a meeting of good medicine.

For anyone that is willing to set aside their linear logical thinking, even for a moment, and truly wants to seek out their spirit animal---these powerful things can happen. While we all live in this 20th century moment, there is still that inner core of our brains that recalls the remote 100,000 plus years of human history before the dawn of agriculture and civilization!

[windy]

:)...yes, if you humbly ask the Spirits/God/Great Spirit from your heart, they will oblige. They are always willing to help :)

[BlackBillBlake]

Wow Windy, that is a very cool and powerful experience, you definitely came upon your spirit animal in a meeting of good medicine.

For anyone that is willing to set aside their linear logical thinking, even for a moment, and truly wants to seek out their spirit animal---these powerful things can happen. While we all live in this 20th century moment, there is still that inner core of our brains that recalls the remote 100,000 plus years of human history before the dawn of agriculture and civilization!

21st c isn't it?

But otherwise I agree. The 'modern psyche' is something like an artificial overlay.

[Mountain Valley Wolf]

When I went to a Canned Heat concert last year, Fito De La Pata introduced some of the set they did at Woodstock by saying, that we are coming up on the 30th anniversary of Woodstock---and I'm thinking "Wow, 30 years already, man that went fast." It wasn't until the next day that I realised----we were coming up on the 40th anniversary!

What can I say----time is so relative when you become an old hippy...

[BlackBillBlake]

Aha - yes I know the feeling.

[liquidlight]

Months leading up to my meeting with the wolf, I saw many foxes at night.
....this really reminds me of a dream i had some months ago; I was walking along a road at night and there was a fox trotting along beside me. Then my landlady and her boyfriend were with me and it's still nighttime on the road but the fox has now turned into a wolf with a bluish tint to it's coat created by the moonlight. I say to my landlady and her boyfriend "Look at the wolf" ... but they don't see it, they are still seeing the fox and they don't believe me when i say it's a wolf.

Is this teliing me that the wolf is hidden somehow and only seen by those who can see it?

[Mountain Valley Wolf]

Wow---that's cool.

The spirit animal, in a scientific format is an archetype. In a spiritual format the archetype is an eternal spirit that provides the prototype of the being that reflects it in the physical world----I could probably come up with a better way to say this (but I am supposed to be doing my taxes and am writing quickly even though this is once again creative avoidance...;) I have time...). It is more than just a mere prototype----it is the spiritual constant that lives in all wolves. In the eyes of many of the ancients, if a wolf dies, it returns to mother earth, the spirit to the spirit of the wolf, and then is reborn again from the earth, from the wolf spirit, from its mother wolf.

It is said that the spirit animal can take many forms. And can even appear in human form. So I would not be surprised if your spirit animal, as a wolf, was making itself evident through a fox to nudge you that it was there. That it is seeking to make contact. DO you live in an area where wolves no longer exist?

But this is based on the assumption that your spirit animal is a wolf. That is something you would need to find out. But if you really saw a wolf, and it was not your eyes playing tricks on you (and then again, it could even seem it was your eyes playing tricks...) or the way the light hit the fox----I would say it was something significant that was meant for you to see.

That is a cool story. It reminds me of a Native American I knew who was given his earth name. He met with an elder, they had a sweat lodge and the whole bit (I forget the whole story). And the elder gave him the name, if I recall, Soaring Eagle. Afterwards he was thinking that it was a cool name, but how did he know if that was his 'real' earth name? What if the elder just made it up, or it was based on random facts about his life that had no real meaning.

As they left the meadow where the sweatlodge and all the ceremony took place, he sat in the front passenger side of the car. Suddenly an eagle swooped down and flew along side the car---in fact along side the front passenger window. as the car drove down the road. He looked at the eagle, and he knew the eagle looked at him. After a little ways the eagle flew off, but he still felt the spirit of the eagle next to him. He knew that his name was Soaring Eagle. He also had renewed great respect for the elder that named him.

[liquidlight]

Well, i never considered any primary animal spirit helper of mine to be a wolf, ...there are a few but no wolves until that dream.
Am i right to assume that most people on this thread and beyond consider wolf in it's primary role to mean teacher? In this sense my understanding is that to see the wolf is to see the teaching in something ... to see beyond the mundane or outer appearance of in this case, the fox, to see the teacher within. Perhaps.
There is also the link that wolves, foxes, dogs, dingos, hyenas ect are all species related, so in that sense the fox is a wolf and visa versa in a similar way that as a human being i am a man but also a woman but my genes dictate that i have the appearance and function of a man ... just the way the genes express in each individual.

But yes, here in Devon we used to have wolves but no longer ... just lots of foxes. And i do feel a real kinship with dogs generally, i love that they are so playful and uninhibited. In fact another dream not long after the fox/wolf dream ... i was snuggling up to sleep with my landladys black Labrador, 'moomin', Awww!

Also just to mention, once when i visited London, on hampstead heath, a green woodpecker flew along like that beside my passenger window ... it was a great thing to see because you dont see them all that often where i live in Devon let alone in London, ... and they have such vibrant colouring. The funny thing was though, later that evening in a pub somewhere i overheard a snippet of a conversation and a woman was saying to her friend that she saw a green woodpecker today.... which is very telling in itself; Who saw the woodpecker?
The animal world is quite remarkable and surprising sometimes! Oh, and yes i agree with the archetype bit. ... sybolically as parts of ourselves.

[Mountain Valley Wolf]

Yes, I think the wolf is viewed by most as a treacher. But there also many other elements and lessons in what one's animal spirit is. The wolf is a very family oriented animal by nature, yet you also the lone wolf. In my own experience with the wolf, he has been a teacher, a helper, and so forth. I think that is typical of anyone's relationship with a spirit animal. There is a word I am trying to think of, it might be Souix or Apache---I forget the word----but basically it means that the spirit animal embodies the archetype, and therefore we learn archetypical lessons from this. It guides us from an unconscious level.

My wolf led me to another spirit teacher who fits Carl Jung's 'old man archetype.' Is he the wolf, or is he my inner self? I don't know. But I have learned things from this teacher that suggest he is not 'of me.' To make it even stranger, the things I learn from him, I have verified through my physical reality.

It is one of the ways that I see that the universe is much stranger than we can imagine.

But that is a great post---thank you for sharing.

[liquidlight]

I met that 'old man' archetype in a dream once. He was an old chinese guy ... the epitome of old and wise! It was to do with a relationship with a woman which had ended but which i wanted to continue; I was there with this young woman and the old man gave us a fortune cookie. We read it but didn't understand it, looking at eachother quizically. I then woke up and then went back to sleep and had the exact same dream ... you see he was a persistent old man! We still didn't understand and asked him what it meant but he was silent.
Anyway i eventually accepted that a relationship, ... a physical and worldly one with that woman wasn't to be, and i think that's what the fortune cookie was saying.

Yet this was something i knew deep down and when i accepted and surrendered to that knowing i had the most profound spiritual experience of oneness. I already was with her ... had been all along and always will be. I thought i needed to be with her physically in a relationship to 'be with her', but that wasn't the case. In letting go of her in a physical way i found i actually was her ... always one.
I think this old man archetype represents the wisdom of the higher self/ the deepest inner self ... all wise and all knowing, yet that higher self is not separate ... it is simply who you are at the deepest level, yet remains unconcious to us until we awaken to it, and it seems as if that wisdom and the things it knows come from without and from another but actually comes from within.
So when someone knows things they feel they couldn't possibly know it's natural in the way we think to summise that it comes from another entity ... but at the deepest level there is no other entity.

If that old man were an animal he'd be my white horse. The white horse was the first animal spirit i ever encountered and a couple of years later in a reading with a wonderful clairvoyant medium i know, she introduced me to a 'chief white horse' ... a smile spread accross my face "How did you know!?" i laughed. Yet here was my white horse now in human form. So how is 'chief' relevant? Well the chief is the designated leader yes? ... and the white animal is the spirit form and the chief of it's animal clan.

[Spiritchalist]

I had a very nice experience with Damascus, my Bear the other day.

I was meditating to clear energy blocks, and he came to me and began to massage the energy in my lower legs to clear blocks. He did both legs, and stopped at the knees, i asked him to continue because it was very calming, he remained, but did not continue. "Why?" I asked him, "It is your turn now, you must learn it", and then left.

After he departed I called to him, but to no avail. Suddenly, without intent to, I envisioned himself as I and I as he, "I am of the bear.. The bear is of me.. We are the Me, the Me is the bear" flashed through my mind.

I have a feeling that my calling in life is to play that of a healer, and the bear fits it quite indubitably, as Windy pointed out.

[windy]

in some traditions Bear is big time Healer

[liquidlight]

How funny ... i had a dream about bears last night.

[white dove]

butter flys does that count, eathril and eratic , pritty and peace full

[Mountain Valley Wolf]

I had a very nice experience with Damascus, my Bear the other day.

After he departed I called to him, but to no avail. Suddenly, without intent to, I envisioned himself as I and I as he, "I am of the bear.. The bear is of me.. We are the Me, the Me is the bear" flashed through my mind.

I have a feeling that my calling in life is to play that of a healer, and the bear fits it quite indubitably, as Windy pointed out.

That is a bona-fide experience Spiritchalist. Becoming one with your animal spirit. Another indigenous concept related to the other one I was trying to think of, is that the spirit animals we have are ours because they are our distant ancestor. In this context, you are a bear because your primal ancestor was a bear back when 4-legged and 2-legged animals had a closer relationship. I am not saying that is how it is, but that is an indigenous way of seeing the relationship.

In pagan Europe there were fierce warriors known as 'Berzerkers.' (There were also those of the wolf but I can't remember their name now). They were very fierce in battle, and were equally as frightening to the enenmy. They wore bear skins and bear claws---they believed themselves to literally become one with the bear, or enspirited by the bear. The werewolf stories as well harken back to an older shamanistic tradition where pagans became one with the wolf---their wolf spirit.

The church of course destroyed these older natural traditions, and through the conversions and crusades anything connected to the old ways was associated with evil and the devil. Hence the werewolf became an evil creature of the night.

While the bear in the case of the berzerkers was fierce, the bear is also a healer. This is a much more universal symbol of the bear and is the primary principal behind the typical bear fetish.

In case you are wondering, berzerker is the origin of the phrase, 'to go berserk.'

A number of years ago, I was giving my wife a massage, she had a lot of sore muscles. I don't consider myself much of a healer---I try sometimes, but... SO before I massaged her, I silently invited my wolf to come and join me, and provide whatever help it could to help heal her.

My wife layed in bed with her eyes closed as I massaged her for probably 10 minutes or so, then suddenly lifted her head and looked at me. I asked her what the problem was, and she said that she somehow pictured my hands and arms with lots hair on them.

[Mountain Valley Wolf]

I met that 'old man' archetype in a dream once. He was an old chinese guy ... the epitome of old and wise! It was to do with a relationship with a woman which had ended but which i wanted to continue; I was there with this young woman and the old man gave us a fortune cookie. We read it but didn't understand it, looking at eachother quizically. I then woke up and then went back to sleep and had the exact same dream ... you see he was a persistent old man! We still didn't understand and asked him what it meant but he was silent.
Anyway i eventually accepted that a relationship, ... a physical and worldly one with that woman wasn't to be, and i think that's what the fortune cookie was saying.

Yet this was something i knew deep down and when i accepted and surrendered to that knowing i had the most profound spiritual experience of oneness. I already was with her ... had been all along and always will be. I thought i needed to be with her physically in a relationship to 'be with her', but that wasn't the case. In letting go of her in a physical way i found i actually was her ... always one.
I think this old man archetype represents the wisdom of the higher self/ the deepest inner self ... all wise and all knowing, yet that higher self is not separate ... it is simply who you are at the deepest level, yet remains unconcious to us until we awaken to it, and it seems as if that wisdom and the things it knows come from without and from another but actually comes from within.
So when someone knows things they feel they couldn't possibly know it's natural in the way we think to summise that it comes from another entity ... but at the deepest level there is no other entity.


That is a great story of the Old Man archetype, and your comments on the old man are very Jungian (though a bit more spiritual than Jung would actually go----you could tell he wanted to---but to remain true to his profession he did not).

Jung would put it as a knowledge that taps into the collective unconcsious. But you take it, I believe, a step further and protray the collective unconscious as the great totality of the Hindu atman.

When I met the wise old man, who in my case is a Hopi holy man, I at first wondered if he was in fact me---I guess I said that in a previous post---if I was meeting with my 'self.'

In that we are all part of the great spirit I guess that is true, but I haven't been convinced yet that my ego should just be tossed out---so while I can see that on a deep level, I have found my wise old man to be a seperate entity on an experiential level.

I know he is Hopi, because I asked him his name----I knew it was significant and spent weeks and weeks pouring through dictionaries and lexicons of indigenous languages. Finally I found it in the Hopi language----Chief Spirit Guide, is its meaning.

One of the things he told me was the story of the Turtle Maiden. He said that the Turtle Maiden would appear to help people in the distant past and that people have forgotten how she helped them, and what she did for them. The Turtle Maiden would appear whenever a tribe or village desperately needed help. She often brought water to the early pueblos in the Southwest during times of drought. The turtle was her spirit helper.

When I researched this I found that there is various tales of the turtle maiden---typically referring to her as the maiden that fell to earth from under the tree of life, and was rescued by the turtle rising up friom the primal sea. In this aspect she is the Great Mother. But there is nothing about her bringing water.

I then discovered that there is a kachina called the turtle maiden. IN talking with various people knowledgable about her I discovered that the the turtle would bring water to the pueblos in ancient times. When they ran out of water they would look forthe turtle. But then I would ask about the Turtle Maiden, and people said that they didn't know much about her except that she accompanied the turtle. I, however, had been taught that it was the other way around in a sense.

Recently I discoverded that the indians to the SOuth---in Mexico---who share the same language family of the Hopi also have a turtle maiden myth. THis again refers to bringing them water.