Honouring Our Spirit Totems

Taken from How to Meet & Work with Spirit Guides by Ted Andrews

There is a growing involvement in shamanism. The shamans and priests of ancient societies were the keepers of the sacred knowledge. They were tied to the rhythms and forces of nature. They were able to walk the threads that link the visible and invisible worlds.

Part of the shamanic tradition involves our reconnecting to the energies of the earth and all life upon it. “Once every people in the world believed that the trees were divine and could take a human or grotesque shape and dance among the shadows; and that deer and ravens and foxes and wolves and ears and clouds and pools, almost all things under the sun and moon, were not less divine and changeable.”

A totem is any natural object, being or animal with whose phenomena and energy you feel closely associated during your life. Although we will focus more upon spirit guides working through animal totems, they also work through the energies of objects. Some will reflect energies operating for only short times, and some are with us from birth to death and beyond.

We can use the animal imagery and other totem images as a way to learn about ourselves and the invisible 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 and oversees these creatures. These archetypes have their own qualities and characteristics which are reflected through the behaviours and activities of specific animals.

When we honour the totem animal we are honouring the essence that lies behind it. We are opening and attuning to that essence. We then share its power or its medicine in our life. The animal is a symbol of specific force of the invisible realm which manifests within the physical world. By studying the animal totem, and then merging with it, we become able to call its energy forth whenever needed. This brings to us those beings of the spirit realm which also work with that energy.

There was a time when humanity recognised itself as part of nature and nature as part of it. Dreaming and waking were inseparable realities; the natural and the super-natural merged and blended. People used the images of nature to express this unity and to reinstill a transpersonal kind of experience. This is seen in the wearing of skins and feathers as is common in many American Indian and Aboriginal societies.

Adopting the guise of animals – wearing skins or masks – symbolized a reawakening and endowing oneself with certain energies. Nature totems are symbols of fertility and life. Each species has its own power to remind us what we can manifest within our own life. The animal becomes a spirit guide. It helps us to bridge the natural world to the super-natural. It awakens the realities of both.

Animals have had much strong symbology associated with them. They have represented the emotional life of humanity, reflecting qualities that must be overcome, controlled and/or re-expressed. They are also symbols of powers – powers of the often invisible realms that we could learn to manifest within the visible.