Totem

[Icarus]

For some people, animal medicine is as much a part of them as any other life practice that they may perform. Simple meditation, with the intent of finding your animal totem, will show you the "medicine" at your disposal.


How many of you know of your animal totem? Do you listen to your totem? Do you speak with your totem? Does your totem give you guidance or strength? Do you even believe in animal totems?

If you do not know what your animal totems are, then answer the following questions.



Animal Totems:

Life Long Totems: These are the animal guides that are with us throughout life. They began this life with us and will end this life with us. With their help, we can use their "medicine" in our own lives.

*If you could be any animal, what would it be?

**Is there a certain animal that has always captivated you?

*Do you often dream that you are a certain animal?

**Have you ever "shapeshifted" into a certain animal during meditation?

*Do you seem to run into a certain type of animal when out in Nature?

**Did you have an "imaginary" animal friend as a child?

*Do you ever sense a certain animal around you?

**Do you have certain qualities that "seem like" a certain animal's characteristics? Are you a very fast runner? Do you have a keen sense of smell? Are you "day-blind" but see fine at night?

*Do you look like a certain animal?


If you answered at least three times with the same animal, then there is a very good chance that that animal is your life-long totem.


Journey Totems: These totems are animals that appear during a certain time in our lives and are guiding us towards a certain lesson. They bring their own "medicine" to aid you in a particular life lesson.
The Journey Totem will stay for various times, but usually not less than two weeks.

*Is there a new animal that has suddenly started to appear every time you look around?

**Have you been attracted to a new animal recently?

*Have you had the urge to go see a particular animal at the zoo or other animal habitat?

**Have you recently dreamed of a particular animal that you never have dreamed of before?

*Has anyone mentioned to you that you are acting like a particular animal lately?


Message Animal Totems: These totems are the "post-people" of the Shaman's world. They bring special, and often urgent, messages from the Spirit World. They will appear one day and be gone the next.

*Did a particular animal startle you today?

**Did a certain animal that you have never seen before appear to you today?

*Did you recently dream of a certain animal giving you something, or speaking to you?


Shadow Totems: These are the "dark" aspects of our personalities that are embodied in animal spirits. They will continually test us and "track" us down in order to test us again. We have to learn to take their lessons on ourselves. We have to learn to understand the Shadow Totem's medicine and apply it in our own lives to gain strength. The Shadow Totem is our own weakness. By conquering our Shadow Totem, we conquer our negative aspects.

*Have you ever been in an animal attack?

**Are you afraid of a certain animal for no good reason?

*Do images of a certain animal make your skin crawl?

**Do you dream about a certain animal chasing you down, biting you, or killing you?

*Do you find yourself repulsed by a certain animal?

[Icarus]

OWLS:

Owls are the symbol of the balance between the forces of nature. They have golden eyes (which represent the sun) and use them mostly at night. Hence, you have the day in the night.

They are also the symbol of the goddess Athena/Minerva and symbolize higher wisdom.

In fact, those with the owl as their totem have the ability through the owl medicine to see through a person and look right into their souls. They will be able to see behind a person's words and decipher the real meanings and motives behind what that person says.

People with the owl as their totem also have the abilities of astral projection/travel, all forms of magick, prophecy, clairvoyance and clairaudience. Meditation on the owl and especially owl's vision will help you to enhance these skills.

Power time-this is when meditation is most effective, and when a person is at their highest potential for using energy in any form. For the owl medicine user, this is dusk and all through the night.
Great healing abilities also come along with this animal totem.
The owl's "enemy" is the crow, so meditation on this bird will also help you to better understand this totem.


SNOW LEOPARDS:

People with the snow leopard as their totem will have very strong intuition and know exactly how to corner their prey and catch it. In other words, whatever a person with this totem wants, they can get it, but only through the use of clever tactics and stealth. They have the very nice ability to confront and destroy their inner demons and torments.

Power times- Dawn and Dusk.

Since the snow leopards are native to the high-mountains of Asia, the sudden appearance of the snow leopard could signify that there is a past life connection to that area.

These are also known to be the least aggressive of all the leopards.

Leopard medicine- The person with this totem, or the person who has received this animal as their messenger, shadow, or journey spirit will have the ability to leap over any obstacle in their path. Sometimes, if the snow leopard appears to a person unexpectedly, it can signify a period of change that lasts about 24 months wherein the person will go through tremendous challenges to rid themselves of harmful or negative habits and replace those negative things with something more fulfilling.

The snow leopard, basically, is all about freeing a person from their own restrictions, prejudices, and bad habits and tendencies. They set you free by helping you make those leaps that you would normally be too afraid to attempt.

Adona Mara said:
I looked up these two little ladies, to see if their experience with each of them might be relevant. I found this information in the book Animal Wisdom by Susie Green (copyright Cico Books 2005. (Please respect the copyright when using the info )



Grasshopper/Cricket
Relaxation / Singing Your Love

Grasshopper is the harbinger of summer, her cheerful song trilling through meadow and field. More than that, Snowy Tree Cricket even broadcasts the warmth of a lazy humming day - add the number forty to the number of chirps she makes in a fifteen-second period for the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.

Aesop's ancient fable tells that in icy winter starving Grasshopper asked Ant to share her seeds. Ant asked, why had Grasshopper not toiled to produce her own store? Grasshopper's reply was that she had been too busy singing. But what Aesop did not realize was that Grasshopper dies before the cold of winter, so she was far wiser than he knew to take delight in every day.

If Grasshopper has chosen to hop into your world, it is time for you too to relax and enjoy life. Work and worry are not always the answer. Like Grasshopper, bask in the rays of a kindly sun, draw energy from its beneficence, and think not of the morrow. For Grasshopper knows that when the time is right, like her, you will hop effortlessly into a waiting future.

Grasshopper rubs her back legs over special veins in her forewings, transforming herself into a living musical instrument. Male Mole Cricket amplifies his sweet tune by singing from a specially shaped burrow, which sends his song one-and-a-quarter miles (2 km) away into the balmy twilight. As your guide, Grasshopper counsels that you too send your song of love loudly to the one you adore lest they be charmed by another's mellifluous melody. Grasshopper performs enchanting duets with her love. Be like Grasshopper and listen to the hearfelt sounds others are sending you so you may embrace their emotion in harmony.

Music is intrinsic to Grasshopper and those whom she has chosen will find that playing a traditional non-electronic instrument -- a simple flute, an acoustic guitar, a piano -- will cause their entire being to resonate with the harmonics of the spheres, releasing their feelings and passions, bringing both peace and joy into their lives.


Spider
Travel / Creativity / The Power of Touch

For four hundred million years Spider has spun her exquisite, multifaceted, magical silk -- more elastic than nylon, stronger than its equivalent in steel -- in every conceivable environment except the central Antarctic cap.

She flies to remote islands and uninhabited lands on strands of silk let loose into the air reaching heights of sixteen thousand feet (4,900 m) and journeying hundreds, even thousands, of miles through azure skies and dark, brooding storms.

If Spider has chosen to guide you it is time to expand your horizons metaphorically and literally. Travel to faraway lands or a neighboring town, to a wild flower meadow you have never visited before. See the world through new eyes and understand deep within that nothing is impossible. If you have always longed to live in a different world or in a different way, Spider counsels that the time may have come to make this dream reality.

Spider sees her world through touch, not light, translating vibrations in air, earth, and web into knowledge. She advises that you, too, take wisdom from what you cannot see and if the fleeting touch of another affects you, acknowledge that connection and encourage it to flourish.

From the silk on which she sails Spider also weaves her geometric spiral web, symbol of all creativity. Spider's silk comes from deep within her body, a liquid substance that hardens and takes form as she stretches and pulls it into her desired form. So the seeds of creation lie within your essence, but like Spider you must toil to bring them to light to turn imaginings into beauty. Spider's body is itself the figure-of-eight shape that symbolizes infinity and implicit within this, limitless creation. With Spider to guide you, your efforts will not be in vain. Hidden in Spider's web, in its angles and lines, its geometric form, is the basis of a primordial alphabet that in mythology spider wrought for man. As the written word transformed humankind it may transform you, and the knowledge or insights that you disseminate through this medium have the potential to bring both change and enlightenment to others.

Butterfly
Transformation / Tenacity / Compassion

Butterfly tastes flowers as she dances on their delicate petals, her glorious colored wings shimmering in the rays of a warm sun but her extraordinary beauty, gentleness, and seeming fragility belie her tenacity and bravery. Some, dauntless, scale the snowy alps to reach Europe, while others traverse the untamed oceans. Butterfly as your totem shows that openheartedness and compassion are not signs of weakness but of strength, and she counsels that through kindness and tenderness you will attain your goals.

Butterfly has a wider visual range than any other living creature. Her ability to see ultraviolet light means she sees designs and colors invisible to mere mortals. As your guide she suggests that you cultivate the invisible powers of telepathy, of extra-sensory perception in all its richness, so that you may see and understand what others do not, and the patterns of your life and those of others may be revealed. The color most attractive to Butterfly is yellow, so if she has chosen you as her apprentice make sure that yellow features in your environment and know that its appearance in your life has meaning.

Butterfly is also the spirit of dancing transformation and utter joyous metamorphosis. From egg comes the caterpillar who, when fat and plump, sheds her skin to reveal a jelly-like mass that hardens to become an impermeable pupa. From this seemingly dead mummy emerges Butterfly, her bright wings crumpled, soft, and drooping. Within moments her body fills their cells with life-giving liquid and imperceptibly they strengthen and open. Poised, now ready to journey, she takes to the azure skies. Beauty has been born.

Butterfly shows that to resist change is to remain forever unformed, soft, and squashy, or mentally crystallized, performing meaningless ritual and empty habits, closed from the greater whole. Her guidance is that even the most radical and transmuting change is natural, and to embrace change is to perform an effortless dance to the rhythm of life, bringing you time to reach your creative, emotional, and spiritual potential and utter fulfillment.

[Animal Wisdom by Susie Green (copyright Cico Books 2005. )]