Personal Totems

Following up on my previous post...

Choosing your totems is a deeply personal process and one open to interpretive selection. It may seem simple at first: look up the typical symbolism associated with the totem and see if the proverbial shoe fits. The reality is a bit more involved. What if your view on the totem is different from that held by the majority of the occult community? Does that make you wrong for seeing things in a different light? No; well, not as long as you can support your perspective with a well-thought out and well-reasoned answer. This is one of the many reasons not to concern yourself with seemingly cliched totem choices. Totemic spirits have gained that place in lore for a reason: these animals/beasts (as yes, even mythic beasts count as potential totems) serve a specific purpose that has made them important to humanity at one point or another. As an example, I'm going to share my own key totems and a bit on the reasons I've chosen them.

As a bit of a primer, I do feel that I should note that I've chosen my totems based on my ancestry. This isn't necessary, nor is it really relevant, but my spirituality being what it is, the link to tradition reinforces the bond. My totemic core connects to the heart of Irish myth with a healthy dose from the Norse influences that I've incorporated in recent years. Beyond that, I tend to use a more primal visual aspect when undergoing any sort of meditation, often going back to prehistory when possible. This is more a matter of personal preference; I do so as an effort to connect with a more or less pure state of the universe before humanity had a chance to start mucking it all up.

By far the most important totem for me is and has always been the corvidae, ravens and crows. Before I even started to really look into pagan traditions, these keenly intelligent and inquisitive birds fascinated me. As I took those first steps into the pagan path, they became far more important. As aspects of the Morrigan in Irish tradition (the goddesses Nemain and Babd both manifested as ravens) and as pets of Odin in the Norse tradition (Hugin and Mugin, memory and wisdom), the corvids are connected to both of my key patron gods (and in an odd coincidence, my name is an adaptation of the Welsh name for ravens; go figure). Not surprisingly considering the mythology, the corvid is a totem of the mind. These birds are among the most intelligent to be found, capable of mimicking speech, forming elaborate social bonds, and demonstrating impressive memory. For me, ravens and crows represent this primal sort of intelligence that we've lost touch with, one focused on survival and innovation without the niceties that we confine ourselves within. Ravens are very much the mental part of my totemic core, and one that I never leave behind; I wear a necklace that I've removed perhaps twice in the last year and a half with a simple silhouette of a raven on it for a reason, after all.

The second key totem is one that I never really connected with until recent shifts in my perspective. I never really associated myself with the wolf due to the cliches attached to them. Many of the more out-there types in the occult community, particularly when dealing with those who support the concept of a spirit-beast/animal-soul paradigm, default to the wolf as the standard (lycanthropy has its roots in Euro-descended cultures for a reason; sometimes the cliche makes sense, after all). In light of my newfound connection to the Fenris myth (which will likely be a future subject in its own right), the wolf has gained a higher importance for me as a totemic symbol. Much as the ancients did, I view the wolf as a predatory agent of change. The wolf, for me, is a dual-aspected symbol. On the one hand, the wolf is the lurker in the darkness, waiting for the weakened members of the herd to wander too far from the safety of numbers and become vulnerable -- the wolf encourages evolution through thinning out the weak, serving as a representative of survival of the fittest. On the other, the wolf represents the safety of the pack -- the fundamental reward of keeping in close with those you can trust and forming strong bonds with those who can shore up your own weaknesses with their strengths. This duality combines to perform both tasks at once, reminding you that not only do you need to refine your weaknesses, but you need to remember the value of others in supporting those weaknesses you've yet to overcome. The wolf is very much the spiritual component of my totemic core for that very reason.

That would seem to leave the physical aspect, eh? Most fitting from my totemic core for that would be the bull. Bulls are often associated with fertility and with agriculture, which is all well and good, but has nothing to do with why I connect with them. For me, the bull is a symbol of the warrior ideal. Warriors, as I see them, should be calm and accommodating when at peace, but ready to unleash their full destructive fury when pressed. Bulls present that same potential. By and large, the bull in the wild spends its life grazing in the fields and striving to avoid falling prey to predators, while its domestic counterparts have served dutifully as work animals and provide great nourishment. When forced to action, however, bulls can be as fierce as any beast and easily remind us of their incredible strength. This, to me, is far more valuable than any sort of devotion to the tiger or lion (more aggressive, predatory physical totems) as it has a much more accessible relation to daily life. What good is great strength in a society where using it would make you either intolerable or a mere brute? Far better to build that strength in the off-chance it may be needed and to be able to defend oneself as a last resort. I suspect that in a different age, I may have chosen differently here; hundreds of years ago, in the age of the sword, one would do very well to invoke the lion. Perhaps it is a sign of humanity's domestication of itself that selecting a beast of burden would make so much sense.

There are, of course, others that I find valuable. The Irish Elk is a strong candidate, as is the great bear. Dragons are, in all honesty, a bit too versatile for my liking as a totem, though they are excellent for heraldry and iconography. Perhaps more than any other aspect of esoteric pagan belief, totemic thinking is an interpretive art and your mileage may vary. Ultimately, you just have to sort out what is most important and most relevant to your needs.

A Totemic State of Mind

Symbolism is a very powerful thing for pagans of all stripes (and for nearly every other religion). The various gods and goddesses, and other divine and semi-divine figures, all draw upon symbolic representations in their associated mythologies. After all, what could be more iconic than Thor's hammer, the triquetra knot, or the Eye of Horus? We've grown accustomed to these symbols as iconography, and we know what to expect from these images. We've come to expect those symbols as part of our cultural identities.

This iconography extends far beyond the gods and the divine, however. Something that has grown increasingly relevant to my own spirituality is the concept of totems, spiritual symbols of qualities or concepts that one seeks to draw strength from and to emulate in their day to day life. I used to be highly dismissive of the idea of something like having a "spirit animal", and to an extent I'm still hesitant to fully accept the notion the way that others do; I think there's a lot of distance to cover between regarding these totems as symbols and the idea of a spirit beast or even the "animal-soul" ideas of some subcultures. The idea of a totem on the other hand, is a very powerful concept with a great history across several cultures.

Now, just to clarify that last bit: Spirit guides are one thing, spirit animals and animal-souls are another matter entirely. Spirit guides are a bit closer to the totemic concept, but show up more as a meditative tool -- they come into the subconscious during times of reflection to bring a symbolic sort of path out of the proverbial mental fog. Spirit animals/animal-souls, meanwhile, are more along the lines of people who believe that they were born infused with the spirit of a certain animal -- rather than merely admiring what the animal represents, they seek to emulate the animal to the extent of assuming it as part of their identity. This can sometimes go far beyond any sort of spirituality, and frankly I consider it more of a corruption of the totem concept that takes the idea too far; emulating the symbol is one thing, attempting to assimilate it is another all together.

Now, it's fairly obvious how totems originated. To the ancients, nature was much, much more immediate than it is for us. They lacked the separation created by modern comforts, and the hunt was less of a past-time and more urgent. Animals held a far greater sort of relevance to them, and as a result, the ancients imparted a deep, intimate sort of symbolism to the idea of these animals. Looking more at the ecology of the northern hemisphere, two of the main recurring totems are fairly predictable: the stag and the wolf.

Deer, elk, caribou, and other animals of that "stag" archetype were an essential part of the environment. The hunt provided food to eat, leather for clothing, bones for tools and trophies, and myriad other boons to the hunters. Most cultures came to revere the stag for this reason; even though they preyed upon the animals, they respected how important those animals were to their own continued existence. Stag become a totem of vitality and survival, representing strength and the providence of nature (often personified with horned gods like Cernunnos and Herne that, among other things, represented the hunt). Wolves and their ilk, on the other hand, served to remind the ancients that despite all of man's tools, nature still held many dangers that could threaten us. They came to represent the predator and, indirectly, the indomitable aspect that warriors sought to have, they served as rivals and antagonists to our survival and drove us to become better hunters (personified most notably in Fenris, the great wolf-god that would ultimately devour Odin).

A truly totemic viewpoint will incorporate multiple totems (one of the shortcomings I find in the animal-soul idea is the exclusion of other totems -- you lose a considerable amount of potential by overlooking what other totems can bring you). Ultimately it comes to a respect of the natural order and an understanding of how that order is maintained or was intended to be maintained. It's easy to lose touch with that natural aspect in the modern era as distant as most of us have come from that intimate connection that the ancients had. We aren't dependent on the wilderness for our survival, we're dependent on the grocery store. We don't need to revere and respect the predators to stay alive, we have our locked homes and cities for that, and only have to worry about other people. We've grown far from our roots. Thinking in a totemic mode brings us closer to those roots and reconnects us to our true nature.