My Totem Animals
One of my favorite workshops to teach is “Connecting With Your Totem Animals.” That workshop is always fun and illuminating, and, there are all those wonderful animals… Animals are an integral part of our earth experience, and each, by way of their own true nature, are wise teachers and guides. Studying them, and interacting with them, has brought me greater understanding of who I am and why I am here on this amazing planet, as well as great pleasure in my connection to all that is. There is a reason we are so drawn to them, and many reasons why we are each drawn to certain ones, or fearful of certain ones, and why we have the encounters with the ones we meet.
For me there have been certain animals that have held prominent places in my life. There is a great deal of information available “out there” about animal totems and their meanings. Great references are the books “Animal Speak” and “Animal Wise” by Ted Andrews, and Jamie Samms “Medicine Cards” - and there are many others, as well as a wealth of information on the internet. Or you can take an experiential workshop like “Connecting With Your Totem Animals,” and meet some of your animal guides “in person,” so-to-speak. You don’t need books or cards, or another person, to tell you which are your animal totems, you already know from your own predilections and life experiences. Some are with you a lifetime, some for only a while, but you know those who have come into your life as guides and teachers.
For me, the following animals have offered themselves as my totems, or guides. They have all, each in their own way, made themselves known to me…some, like wolf, more extensively than others. I share the following information and experiences with you for that reason only – to share. I am not claiming to offer the last word on this subject, but to offer my own personal experiences, and my own personal sense of the wisdom I have gained from it. The following have walked with me, each in some way that has enriched my life and my human experience. They are not the only ones, but they have been the strongest in their impact in my life…so far…
Wolf
Eagle
Red-Tailed Hawk
White-Tailed Deer
Dolphin
Dragonfly
Turtle
Snake
Chipmunk
Spider (shadow)
WOLF
Number one, of course. Wolf has been “with” me since childhood, both in recurrent dreams and in a sighting that my family insisted at the time was my imagination, or a dog or fox, but I was sure that the animal I encountered when alone on a woodland trail was a wolf. In later years, after becoming well-acquainted with wolf “in person,” I could look back at what I saw that day, and am even more sure that it was wolf….though whether real or spirit, I will never know. In my dreams I often encountered a wolf pack, and once I dreamed that a wolf leaped in through my bedroom window…an image that seemed so real that I woke up immediately, fully expecting the animal to be standing in my room.
Wolf was also my first shape-shifting experience, and I still remember a “lost day” in my early 20’s, the time span from late morning through late afternoon unaccounted for, and my only memories of which are of running through the woods from the viewpoint of a wolf.
Wolf always attracted me, and so it was that I was only mildly surprised at myself when the day came that I met Sylvi, and she came into my life. Some of my many experiences with Sylvi are chronicled here in “Sylvi’s Pages. In Ted Andrews book “Animal Speak” he states that for those with a strong wolf totem, wolf will often come into their lives in a physical way – and mine surely did.
The following article is one I wrote in 2006 for WolfStone’s original print newsletter “Awakenings.”
EARTH MEDICINE - WOLF
In ancient times, as the legend is told, a very powerful shaman decided to try and turn all of the animals into human beings. But the job proved too great for him, and he succeeded with only one thing – the eyes of the wolf. Look into the deep, golden eyes of the wolf and they will gaze back with that calm and unwavering stare, an expression of the self-esteem with which wolves rightfully hold themselves.
Wolf Medicine is of the highest power, and, in many legends, it was Wolf who was chosen by Creator to be the foremost teacher to the two-legged – the human beings. (See Wolf Tales – “The Wolf Song Legend”) Wolf, of all the children of Turtle Island, is most like the humans in many ways, for they are social by nature, with a well-defined structure of social interaction defined by rules and rituals inherent to the life of the pack.
Strong, loyal and intelligent, wolves model for us many of the ideals of desired human behavior, while remaining symbolic of the balance and harmony of the unadulterated natural world. Among the many things that wolf teaches us are: to be nurturing and tolerant of the young, to honor strong, wise leaders and reject weak ones, to take care of the extended family, to use teamwork to achieve goals, to take only that which is needed from nature, to set clear boundaries where appropriate, to greet each other with affection, to communicate clearly, to raise our heads together in song, and to work, play and celebrate life together.
You don’t often get a second chance to make a first impression with Wolf, so be cautious in how you first present yourself to wolf-people, for to the degree that they are loyal and devoted to those that they accept and trust, they can also be unrelenting in their distrust. Coming on too strong, too “alpha,” is often a big mistake. And yet Wolf will avoid confrontation whenever possible, and within the wolf pack it is often the subtlest of signals that are used and understood.
Wolf language, both physical and vocal, is extensive and complex. In the wolf pack, postures, facial expressions, even tail positions, all clearly express intent to those who “speak” the language, and the wolf’s varied vocalizations are expressive to the extreme. Thus wolf represents communication over confrontation, with those who “understand their language” and are wise enough to exhibit correct behavior. With those who don’t, more aggressive action may need to be taken, but even then the wolf will only go as far as is needed for understanding to be reached.
Interlopers into the balanced world of wolf may never even know that they are there, for Wolf also has the remarkable ability, aided by their keen senses, to simply melt into the background when not wishing to be seen. And be sure that they will have smelled, heard and seen you coming (probably in that order) long before you think that your presence has been announced.
Of all of Wolf’s powerful senses, the sense of smell is the most discerning (this correlates to our psychic senses.) A wolf can pick up a scent over a mile away. As the sense of smell is the only one of our five physical senses to bypass the critical faculties of the mind, Wolf Medicine helps one to step past the limits of the egoic process, to tap more fully into their intuitive and psychic powers.
After the sense of smell comes hearing - and Wolf Medicine will help you to hear the truth in all messages. Although wolves have keen eyesight, which serves them especially well in the dark, their greatest visual ability is to detect movement – and they will focus on any motion in their environment, all senses fully on alert, until they have discerned it’s source and nature. Even when appearing to be at rest or asleep, wolf is hyper-alert to it’s surroundings at all times. Wolf Medicine helps one to remain aware and focused, quickly able to evaluate all input and to assess its importance to “the whole picture.”
Wolf Medicine also teaches how to pace oneself in life for optimum endurance. Capable of amazing burst of speed when necessary, but also able to maintain a ground-covering easy lope for days at a time, Wolf also knows when it’s time to rest, to catch your breath and to save your energy for those times when most needed. Wolves may sometimes just run for the practice, for teaching the young hunting techniques, but they also know instinctively when the energy being expended is not likely to bring fruitful results. And then they still may run - just for the sheer joy of it - knowing that joy is its own reward. Knowing when and how to best use your energy is a gift of Wolf Medicine, as is knowing when it is time to play.
In Wolf originates the canine characteristics of optimism, playfulness, loyalty, curiosity, adaptability and joyful interaction with nature, nor has Coyote cornered the canine market on the role of “trickster.” While, for the most part, maintaining an image regal, aloof and dignified Wolf can also risk looking silly for the sake of a good joke…a very valuable teaching about not taking oneself, or one’s position, too seriously. Life is to be lived consciously – fully awake and aware and wholehearted, with humor and with caring, in balance and in harmony with both the true nature of our being and with the natural world around us. Wolf can help to show us the way.
To learn more about how Wolf mainfested beautifully
in my life, see "Sylvi's Pages."
RED-TAILED HAWK
Other than the treat of many sightings in nature of this beautiful raptor, my first red-tailed hawk encounter came to me in a dream about eight or ten years ago.
In the dream I was in an open-sided, dilapidated barn of some kind, and there was a hawk that had flown in and was perching on a beam above me. Suddenly it flew down and became entangled in a strange, complex, box-like contraption that was behind me. The box seemed to be made mostly of some kind of clear plastic material, and so I could see into its maze-like interior, wherein the hawk was trapped. I worked carefully, and with great difficulty, to extract the hawk from this trap, and with persistence I finally succeeded.
As I held the large bird in my hands it suddenly turned into a human baby, only a few months old and wrapped in a soft blanket, and said to me with a smile, “I guess that you’re my mother now!” As I cuddled the hawk/baby in the blanket I turned and saw a baby stroller sitting just outside the barn door in the sun. As I walked towards it, the child in my arms kept shape-shifting from hawk to child and back, I smiled to think how interesting it would be trying to explain to others why my new baby kept turning into a hawk!
After that dream, my in-nature hawk encounters seemed to increase for some time, both in number and in closeness. It helped that in that time I lived in several places where they were quite numerous.
It was about seven years ago that my most memorable hawk experience occurred.
”The Gift of the Red-Tailed Hawk”
My spirit brother, White Wolf, and I sat down cross-legged on the floor of his room, a bag filled with red-tailed hawk feathers between us. We had decided to present gifts of honor to several of the children at our fire-circle gathering that night and thought we would include a small hawk feather in the sacred bundles which we would be giving to each of them. White Wolf reached into the bag, placed some feathers on the red cloth he had spread on the floor, and started sorting through them. I watched him do this as we spoke of the children we would be honoring that night, and of our pride in the progress in personal growth that we had observed in these young ones.
I held and caressed some of the beautiful, softly banded brown and white primary wing feathers as we spoke, and then set them aside, as I knew we would be selecting smaller feathers for the children. White Wolf continue sorting and considering various ones, when suddenly, with a look of surprise on his face, he held up two lovely, identical secondary wing feathers, each about five inches long.
“These feathers are vibrating!” he exclaimed. “Feel this…”
With a smile of amazement, he handed me one of the feathers. Our fingers touched as I took the feather from him, and I felt a spark of energy pass between us. Then I, too, was filled with wonder, as I felt the feather vibrate softly in my grasp…and then, without intention, my eyelids dropped suddenly shut and I was…
…rising, gliding - above the house and yard … out across the golden, sun-drenched field, towards the dark, dappled woods and the hazy blue of the mountains beyond. I felt the sunlight - warming me, glistening off of the feathers of my outstretched wings, and heating the air that lifted them in soaring flight. I could sense, without seeing, the span of those wings, stretching out on either side of my strong, compact, feathered body - just as I could sense that I was not alone - that another of my kind flew nearby, beyond the reach of my peripheral vision.
My eyes had telescoped - below and beyond me the land spread its richness and beauty, perceived through vision more centered in focus than anything I had ever experienced. There was a sharpness and clarity that felt quite natural to me - yet somehow, in the back of my mind, seemed slightly alien to that which I felt I should remember. My body seemed to know each breath of current, each lift and flow, and responded naturally. Exalting in such power and grace, in strength of body and span of wing, I was one with the sky, the sun, the wind, the earth below - the ancient circle of all creation. I heard my companion call from the further reaches of the lazy spiral, which we formed in the sky - “keeee- keeee” - and I answered back with my own clear cry. My heartbeat echoed the lyrical rhythm of life, in harmony with All That Is. I was blessed by it all - the glory of flight, the warmth of the sun, the soft breeze, the instinctive shift of wing and tail as I circled gracefully in the glorious afternoon sky, the recognition of companionship, soul-connected, near by…
…and then I was sitting once again, cross-legged, my eyes still heavily closed. I felt the hardness of the wooden floor beneath me. The coolness of the house was startling against my so recently sun-warmed body. There was a sense of heaviness as I felt my being settle into its familiar form once again. A sensation surrounded me, as though of giant wings briefly enfolding my shoulders in a soft embrace, and then I felt what could only be the playful tap of a wing tip brushing the top of my head, and a warm rush of air flowing past and above me.
Slowly, reluctantly, wonderingly, I opened my eyes - only to meet White Wolf`s equally awe-filled eyes gazing back at me. “Did you…?” we both began, and then stopped as we realized that we had, indeed, shared the experience of hawk flight. We communed for the moment in grateful, blissful silence, and then quietly shared with each other our individual memories of the experience, only to find them identical. Then, somewhat shaken, yet peacefully joyful, we completed our task of preparing the gifts for the ceremony, basking in the awesome blessing that Hawk Spirit had bestowed upon us.
EAGLE
Both Golden Eagle and Bald Eagle have come into my life at various times, and so as I number them both among my totems, I include them both here under the heading “Eagle.” Having been told by a friend that there were no golden eagles in New Hampshire, and that what I was seeing as such had to be an immature bald eagle, as, before they matured into their white head feathers, they looked a lot like a golden…with the one exception that proved to me that, at least in some cases, he was wrong – the trademark, and unmistakable, white-with-black-tip tail feathers of the immature golden eagle.
I was living high on a mountain-side at the time, and in front of my house was a 100 acre field overlooking a 600 foot drop to the lake in the valley below, and then a beautiful vista of rolling hills and mountains reaching off into the distance, a 60 mile view on a clear day. It was definitely “raptor heaven,” and a day didn’t pass when we didn’t have numerous hawk and eagle sightings. While living on the mountain, I had the honor of many close-up sightings…of both immature and mature eagles, both golden and bald.
Eagle first came to me in the dreamtime as well. In that dream I was standing in a huge field under a wide sky (much like the mountain-side field I would later come to live by.) Two eagles, starting as far-way dots in the sky, came flying towards me, landing in the tall grass about 100 feet away from me. They were a male and a female bald eagle. I could tell from their size in the grass that they were normal sized eagles at first, but they then started to walk across the ground towards me, and as they approached they grew taller and taller, until they were about my height, standing before me eye-to-eye! The male then took another step forward, leaned towards me and licked my face! The feeling I received from these eagles was very loving and kind.
As with the hawk, once I had had this dream I started having more and more eagle-encounters, many afforded me by the year I was fortunate enough to spend in the mountainside location mentioned above. One such experience actually brought me to my knees, a moment shared with two of my totems - both hawk and eagle.
One day in late spring I was out in the middle of the great field enjoying the incomparable view when a red-tailed hawk flew overhead, chasing a golden eagle who had evidently threatened its’ nest. They were flying so low, abut 10 feet over my head, that I could see each feather and each bright eye. The fearless hawk was only half the size of the eagle, but she did not hesitate in her relentless pursuit, fully intending that the eagle depart from her nesting territory completely. The eagle rolled once, lazily, when they were right over my head, the sun glinting off its golden wings, showing its’ talons to the hawk, but then continued on effortlessly, as though to say, “I was going this way anyways…”
The sight actually brought me to the grass on my knees in amazement, and I found myself saying “Thank you!” to these beautiful birds that had inadvertently shared there lives with me by way of this unique experience. I watched them until they flew beyond my vision.
We moved to this mountain home in early spring, and I soon was spending most of my time out doors, working in the gardens and just being with the views and the wide expanse of sky. Every day the eagles would appear often. If too long went by without seeing them, often it seemed that a call would bring them. We would call to them in Lakota, “Wanbli! Where are you?” and soon they would appear. Coincidence, perhaps…but it happened so consistently that we liked to think that they were responding to our call.
One day I was out planting flower seeds around our “wishing well”, Sylvi near by, when an eagle came flying in very close above our heads. It circled us for quite awhile, tilting one way and then another as though to scrutinizing us with both eyes. After studying us thoroughly, it soared off into the distance. There was also a group of three or four that we saw together often, and one of these had a missing primary feather on its left wing, and so was easily distinguished. I called it “One Feather,” after the missing one.
I could have stayed on that mountain forever, but after our years lease was up the landlords chose not to renew it, as their daughter wanted to live there. With great sadness we packed up and moved. The little log cabin we found to rent next was nice, but no match for our eagle’s aerie. And although I often saw circling “Peace Eagles” – turkey vultures attracted to the location by the “road-kill café” offerings of the nearby interstate highway, their see-sawing flight was no match for the eagles soaring grace.
One day I was walking down a trail along a nearby pond, where I often went to meditate. I was feeling sadness that day and a sense of “overwhelm” from some recent losses in my life, and my mind returned to the eagles and how they had disappeared from my life. Leaving the mountain had seemed a little bit like being “cast out of paradise,” and, in my state of depression, I was feeling “unworthy” – no wonder the eagles no longer bothered with me, I thought… Without thinking, I found myself crying out from the emptiness in my heart, “Wanbli, where are you?”
Suddenly I heard a loud flapping sound off to my left, towards the pond. I spun around, and there, about 15 feet away from me, coming in for a landing on top of a 10-foot-tall broken tree stump, was a beautiful golden eagle. It perched on the tree and stared right at me for the longest time. My heart filled with love and acceptance, and all the upwelling of emotion spilled out of my eyes and down across my face in salty teas of joy. For the second time in my life, Eagle brought me to my knees, and I placed my hands on Mother Earth in gratitude, calling to the eagle “Thank you! Thank you!”
The majestic bird finally spread its magnificent wings and held them open, glistening in the sun for a moment, as though spreading them in a benediction or an embrace, and I could feel love of the highest vibration enfolding me. Then it launched itself into the air and over my head, as it wheeled about and flew off over the pond. As it left I could feel the message come to me, “I am always right here. Just call.”
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