Articles > Inner World - Animal Guides - First Look

It seems that each of us has our own special guide, an animal that informs us about our deepest selves and who is to some degree ourselves in animal form.

Also, there are totem animals that may come to you at particular times in your life - perhaps to help you learn a particular lesson. By giving you its strengths it can help you face and grow through life challenges.

Totems can also come to you in quieter moments of your life, and they often then inform us of what areas of our activities, attitudes or character traits that need attention.

Identifying your Guides

There are many ways to reveal your animal guides. Some people are given them during meditation, for others the knowledge comes when they put pan to paper and allow an image to come with their eyes closed.

Another way to approach this is to let your mind go back to your childhood. Was there an animal that terrified you, or one that fascinated you - or perhaps both at once?

Is there a story about a particular animal that you have never forgotten?

Were you always attracted to images of a particular animal, or did people often give you presents with the picture of a particular animal?

Using your Guides

In order to learn the most from an animal spirit you first need to respect it, look at, listen to and learn about the animal. Read about your animals habits and habitats, taking special note of its patterns of behaviour, the way it interacts with its own kind, and with other creatures; how it eats, sleeps, and what it likes to do - even what it dislikes.
Also consider your animals mythology and the symbolism it carries in different cultures. The meanings that have been assigned to your friend over the millennia can be immensely significant and relevant to the lessons that it is helping you with.

You may have several animals to teach you in your life, and it may be long after they first came to you that you accept their guidance. Simply take each one as you feel it is most important to you at this moment, and work through the many things that it may be offering you.

My animal guides - first thoughts

Birds - Mobile - trying to touch the sky - my first visual memory is of a mobile of birds above my crib

Large Cat - The one I always think of when I think of myself and any relation to animals during my childhood is the panther or black cat. The rug of my room at the shows had a wonderful picture of her - of which I was alternatively in love and afraid as a small child. I associate boldness and beauty with her. Strength and silence; hidden reserves, fearfulness, threat to any who would attack her; also protection of her kits and of me

I think of her - vividly, with a heartfelt longing for her presence in my life. And wonder if Mischa’s behaviour is due partly to the fact that she is trying to be my totem and should not be asked to play this role.

Scarab - The tiny scarab associated with infinite life and the desert world of Egypt also has haunted me from childhood.

I sometimes yearn to own one of the bracelets quite common in the 50s and 60s of scarabs cut from a variety of semiprecious stones and linked in gold.

Dog/wolf - This is the unthinking connection. As if I am quite simply a leader dog in person clothing.

Tit/wren - Tink the Great Tit gave me the gift of opening my heart chakra soon after my second level attunement to reiki.

I associate the traditional rebirth of the hunting of the wren at midwinter festival with this rebirth of my heart.

Bear -Though I cannot put my finger on this, and may simply be influenced by native American jewellery and wish - there seems to me a connection to the bear - particularly the duality between the benign creation of the teddy and the raw power and fierceness of most bears.

Dragon - Again, this could simply be a romantic link full of story and association rather than a true totem or guide.

Owl - The likeness of an owl has been given to me several times, and I am deeply drawn to them.

Books you might enjoy

Earth Medicine - Revealing Hidden Teachings of the Native American Medicine Wheel by Kenneth Meadows

The Medicine Way - How to Live the Teachings of the Native American Medicine Wheel by Kenneth Meadows