TOTEM Animal Work

A rabbit, a crow and a snake walk into a bar...

A rabbit, a crow and a snake walk into a bar...

Sounds like the beginning of a great joke, doesn’t it?

And, to tell you the truth, it is. A kind of cosmic joke, but not at all mean-spirited. A wink of the proverbial eye from the world of spirit, sending little missives along in animal form— a kind of breadcrumb trail for us spiritual seekers to follow as we grow and develop and peel back the layers on our own understanding of the world.

TOTEM Animal work is perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of shamanism. The attempts to distill it into superficial, snackable “bites” through pop culture and social media have only further muddied the waters.

So, before we dig into the fun of it all, we need to dispel a few myths:

Myth #1: Someone else can tell you what your TOTEM is

In Native American and many other shamanic cultures, no one— not even a seasoned Medicine Man or Woman— can assign you a TOTEM Animal. Instead, they would facilitate the process necessary for you to make contact with the realm of animal spirits, empowering you to make the mutual decision with your TOTEM Animal to work together.

One of the shamanic rituals designed to facilitate TOTEM Animal work is the “vision quest”: a harrowing ordeal of extreme fasting and wandering in the wilderness, alone and without support, for many days at a time. It was a rite of passage among many Native American tribes, as well as other shamanic cultures around the world.

And while you don’t need to necessarily starve yourself or LARP in the wilderness for a week, you will be expected to treat this work with the requisite respect it deserves: time, energy, discipline, and surrender to spirit and the shamanic process.

If a practitioner demonstrates the cultural ignorance and spiritual hubris to just TELL you what your TOTEM Animal is— instead of perhaps noting what they’re seeing or asking you what you think it might be— run in the other direction. This shows a blatant blind spot when it comes to the crucial nuances of this very intense, intimate work, not to mention a proclivity to insert themselves in the intimate business of your own spiritual achievements— all while taking credit for it;)

Myth #2: You only have one TOTEM for your whole life

While I have certain TOTEM Animals with me since childhood (and possibly birth), I get new “animal medicines” all the time. The metaphor I use is that you may have one or several primary TOTEM Animals at a given time, and they sit on the bench next to the football (or soccer) field, ready to get in the action of the “game”. Others are seated just behind in the bleachers, ready to come in and out as and when needed as your spiritual work takes on new twists and turns.

Sometimes, you’ll work with a TOTEM Animal for a few days. Sometimes, a week or a month. Other times, they’ll be with you (of and on) for decades.

This is all TOTEM Animal work, and all of these beings are legit spirit guides for you.

And don’t worry: if you get a new TOTEM Animal, it hasn’t replaced your other friend. You can’t abandon these beings. You don’t trade them like baseball cards.

Remember: spirit isn’t confined by the limiting constraints of 3D reality like we are. TOTEM Animals really can be in multiple places at the same time.

Myth #3: TOTEM Animals are determined by astrology

I’ve been hearing a lot of this recently: “I had an astrology session and they told me my TOTEM Animals were x, y and z…”.

Yah, that’s not how this shaman stuff works. Astrology is a powerful divination practice, and I count astrologers among some of my closest friends and collaborators.

But astrology is astrology, and shamanism is shamanism.

What do I mean by this?

Well, TOTEM Animal work does not operate on divinatory systems, like astrology or tarot. Rather, TOTEM Animal work is a spontaneous, organic wellspring of spirit guides and related work that arises during our personal spiritual work and, very specifically, as a result of both fate and free will.

That free will part is important, indicating that we get different TOTEM Animals as we make different choices, ala a “choose your own ending” book. So, long story short, if you’re born in late June you don’t necessarily have Woodpecker medicine, the animal most associated with that time of the year in Sioux “astrology”. As a Cancer (in Western Astrology), your TOTEM Animal is not a crab.

You know what I mean? It’s just a bad fit. Square peg in round hole. Apples to oranges. False equivalency. And that stuff doesn’t fly (or swim or patter) in shamanism.

Myth #4: Each TOTEM symbolizes the same thing for everyone

This is where the Google machine gets us into trouble with spiritual work.

You see, there are “standard” definitions or meaning for TOTEM Animals. And you can find the worst of these on the internet if you do a quick search. But that’s not going to give you the full picture.

Not even close.

While I keep a copy of Ted Andrews’ books Animal Speak and Animal Wise around for their superior “starter definitions” of TOTEM Animals, I also know that these are just a jumping off point. The goal is to dig into the woo, asking the TOTEM Animal what they’re here to help us with or simply take note of patterns around their presence in our lives.

So, what IS TOTEM Animal work?

Now that we’ve handled a few of the myths, let’s get into what TOTEM Animal work actually is.

In my experience, this is one of the deepest shamanic tasks that anyone can undertake. It shifts our energy bodies, our physical bodies, our spiritual consciousness and even our awareness of the nature of our shared reality.

When a new TOTEM Animal comes in, everything in our life changes.

This is because of the energetic osmosis that occurs from this new being in our energy field. In this way, they quite literally infuse us with their essence, arming us with the perceptual abilities, skills and habits of the animal in question.

Our TOTEM Animals offer us “medicine” in the form of new psychic abilities, fresh insights and lessons learned, crucial physical enhancements or healing, and even a portal to the “wild unknown” of shamanic work more broadly.

In shamanism, we can meet our TOTEM Animals through our meditative technique: Shamanic Journeying. Other times, they simply come into our waking reality.

And the best way to explain it is to share a few real, recent examples:

TOTEM Animal: Rabbit

My recent TOTEM Animal work all started with a rabbit. Well, Rabbits, to be exact.

I was enjoying a simple cheeseburger at our local restaurant, Dai Due, listening to the audiobook version of the novel Rabbits, when I first noticed it: the matching rabbit-shaped hair clips the entire service staff just happened to be wearing. I was amused by the synchronicity, but didn’t give it too much attention.

At first.

Then, while I was still sitting there eating, a coaching client sent a message about encountering a rabbit in their meditation.

Hmmmm… seems like rabbits are going to be kind of a thing, I thought to myself.

On my way home in an Uber, I noticed a wild hare— a close relative of the rabbit— standing upright in a neighbor’s yard, staring right at me. This is the first such animal I’ve seen since moving to Austin two years ago, and the sighting came with an eerie, otherworldly quality.

The Spiritual Scavenger Hunt, as I like to call it, had officially begun.

And, in retrospect, I should have known this would happen.

Just a few weeks ago, I facilitated an online workshop in which we explored using tarot for “The Game”: a kind of inter dimensional scavenger hunt that invites in the strange, asymmetric magic of the world of woo.

Sometimes, just talking about this stuff makes it manifest in real time. This is one of those times.

This is especially true when you get a visit from rabbit as a TOTEM Animal. In addition to the internet drivel you’ll find when Googling rabbit as a TOTEM Animal, there is a deeper— and cooler— quantum entanglement, multiverse-related meaning.

The real meaning.

You see, the novel Rabbits— written by the creative genius Terry Miles, producer of the TANIS podcast— is all about an inter-dimensional “game” called Rabbits. The main character in the novel, “K”, slips between dimensions in a fluid, Mandela Effect-themed story. There are fairies and let lines and terrifying, grey creatures that emerge from portals.

Long story short? “Win the game. Save the world.”

It’s pretty badass.

And, if you’re wondering, yes: I am a Mandela Effect experiencer. I have distinct memories of things that “never happened” in “our version” of material reality. Of course, this would be easily dismissed as faulty memory if I didn’t have so much damn physical evidence of these “slips”— or others that actually agree with my version and noticed the cosmic version control issue right alongside me.

This is what rabbit as a TOTEM Animal represents to me: an influx of quantum strangeness and inter-dimensional communication with beings beyond our typical grasp.

And, in this recent example, it didn’t disappoint.

TOTEM Animal: Crow

With the head’s up from rabbit, I was more than a little interested when, just the next day, I was again listening to the Rabbits audiobook again when a new character emerged in the plot.

In the story, he introduced himself as “Crow”.

Just as Crow’s dialogue in the audiobook began, I removed my AirPods to assess a ruckus of squawks in my backyard. I looked up, and the biggest crow I have ever seen was chasing a red tail hawk out of a tree. The crow was easily twice the size of the hawk— something I didn’t even know was possible!

Just in that moment, I remembered a story a friend of mine recently shared: she had just seen the largest crow ever, and felt that this creature was communicating something deep and important to her.

Too weird, I thought, as I looked at a crow the size of a large toddler. I zoomed into the beak, and shook my head, realizing that it wasn’t a raven. It was just some kind of radioactively-large crow, ala the Godzilla movies.

Realizing the impossible synchronicity of this massive crow appearing right as I heard the name “Crow” in my ears and a day after a friend shared her giant crow story, I seized the moment.

I started making crow sounds to it. And yes, I’m fairly certain my neighbors think I’m a crazy person. Hell, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m a crazy person.

“Gwa. Gwa. Gwa,” I kept saying, as the crow flew down lower and lower, tilting its head while it assessed the strange woman making nonsense sounds to it. Yes, I follow a raven on Instagram. And yes, I was impersonating the sound his human caretaker made to soothe him.

I mean, I was doing the best I could. I’m not exactly a trained crow translator.

The gigantic crow ended up in my backyard, just a few feet away from me, cocking its head to get a better look at me. I told it that it was welcome to visit or even stay in our yard anytime. It thought about this, and then took off a few minutes later.

I haven’t seen it again. Or, I should say, I haven’t seen it again yet.

But, considering that crow TOTEM is associated with Odin and navigating between the worlds of the living and the dead, it certainly indicates that things are about to get very interesting.

TOTEM Animal: Snake

That night, I had perhaps the coolest TOTEM Animal dream of my life.

In the dream, I was placing metal tomato cages into a deep utility sink in our house. Just as I was getting ready to rinse them off, I saw what I thought were worms. Immediately concerned that we had brought some terrifying, Jurassic Park parasite pest into my home, I started panicking and spraying the cages with water.

I leaned over to get a closer look and noticed a little snake head on the wiggly creatures. Oh my god, I thought to myself, They’re snakes!!! Then I started seeing snakes everywhere: big ones, electric green ones, pythons and vipers and garden snakes.

They were gorgeous.

I went to get my husband to tell him the news about all of our snakes. I knocked on a door, telling him about the snakes and he opened the door while draped in a giant, lime-green colored pit viper. His dream reaction to my snake discovery? “Yah, I know. We’ve got a lot of snakes, lady.”

I woke up energized, manically telling my husband about the magic of the dream snakes. Later that day, I was watering in the garden when I noticed a silvery flash out of the corner of my eye, over by the red yarrow. I walked over and saw about six small black garden snakes wriggling on the top of the yarrow, digging down into the greenery to get away from the water from my hose.

OMG. The snakes are real. And they’re in the yarrow.

I’m still working with snake TOTEM to ascertain its specific meaning for me— along with crow— but feel that it may have to do with a recent appearance by Prometheus, the greek Titan and god of prophecy who is associated with the snake (in addition to Zeus’ eagle).

More on all of this to come…

TOTEM Animal Online Workshop 10/14

I’m so happy that all of this TOTEM Animal work has popped up just in time for fall. As the seasons change, our energies shift and we get an opportunity to reconnect with the natural rhythms and creatures of the earth.

I’ve decided to channel my rediscovered sense of inspiration and curiosity with TOTEM Animals into an online workshop: Working with TOTEM Animals.

In this three hour workshop, I’ll be distilling the shamanic lessons learned and best practices to empower the attendees to commune with their own TOTEM Animals. This isn't that superficial, cultural-appropriation drivel you can find all over the internet (or at a weird retreat in Sedona). Rather, this workshop will leverage ancient techniques to GO DEEP in meaningful, life-changing ways.

During the workshop, I will be faciliating a guided Shamanic Journeying Meditation, enabling the attendees to "journey" to the mystical realms of the Lower, Middle and Upper Worlds of shamanism to identify, commune with, and even converse with their own TOTEM Animals.

Do you want to know what your TOTEM Animal is? How to ask it meaningful questions in a vision quest? How to build a meaningful dynamic with this energy? Translate it into your everyday life? Experience the mystical phenomenon of biolocation shifting, animal "medicine" and more? Do you want to receive a premium PDF reference document with details, recommended readings, and more to reference moving forward?

If "yes", this workshop is for you. The value of this 3-hour session-- with a full hour of pure Q&A-- is unprecedented for the price. Spaces are limited, so be sure to sign up HERE ASAP.

Keep an eye out…

If nothing else, the change of the seasons always brings an opportunity to connect with some new TOTEM Animals. So, keep an eye out and give yourself permission to follow the rabbit down the rabbit hole. After all, that’s how Alice in Wonderland starts, and frankly speaking: that’s how all great spiritual scavenger hunts work!

-Rachel