What are totem spirits, and how do they differ from a Power Animal?

Is there an agreed meaning for ‘totem spirit’? #

No. There is no standardised shamanic vocabulary. Our culture lost its shamans long ago, and with them their precise terms, so words such as ‘Power Animal’, ‘spirit animal’ and ‘animal helper’ are now used loosely, and often interchangeably, by modern shamanic practitioners and in New Age circles. One word ends up covering a whole range of relationships with animals that indigenous peoples would once have had separate and specific words for.¹

The word ‘totem’ also has a longer history in anthropology, where ‘totemism’ is used for the special ties some human groups have with an animal, a plant or another being. Where the word comes from, and how anthropologists have used it, belong to What is totemism? This answer is about the everyday spiritual use of the word, and how it differs from a Power Animal.

Which animals get called totems? #

Mostly the animal helpers, guides and teachers met in journeys. Anyone who journeys meets many animals. Some appear in a single journey and are never seen again, some turn up now and then, and others become regular companions for weeks, months or years; a few stay for a lifetime. These are the animals that are elsewhere sometimes called animal totems.²

They are real helpers, and the relationship with them is very like friendship. Some friends are passing acquaintances, some last months or years, and a few last a lifetime; a person can come to know these animals well, understand them, and love them deeply. Learning what each of the Animal People has to teach is part of shamanic work in its own right. See Who are the Animal, Plant and Stone People? and What is the medicine bundle?

How is a Power Animal different? #

First, in the depth of the bond. A Power Animal is not one more helper among many. The difference is the difference between friends on the one hand, and a lifelong, committed, deep soul bond on the other: the relationship with a Power Animal, for someone who chooses to enter into it, has a whole different level of depth, intensity, loyalty and love.³ It is chosen and committed to, usually for life. Like any primary relationship it needs tending, so most people find that one Power Animal is more than enough; for a smaller number a second may eventually turn up, usually several years later.

Second, in what kind of being it is. A Power Animal is the Oversoul of a wild species, met in the Lower-World: Panther rather than a panther, the sum of all the individuals of the species, from which every middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer panther springs. Thought of as a single animal, with a name, a gender and a personality of its own, it would be a middle-world being with all the limits that brings; related to as the Oversoul, it is a being of far greater wisdom and power.³

Third, in its role. In shamanic work the healing comes from the GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this, not from the shaman, and the Power Animal is the first and foremost of the Guides. The journeyer is the apprentice and the Power Animal the principal teacher, so the habit to build is getting out of the way and letting it lead. See What is a Power Animal? and What is an Oversoul?

What about a pet, or an animal someone has known? #

That is a familiar, not a Power Animal or a totem. Some people work in their journeys with an individual animal they know or have known in this life, often a much-loved dog, cat or horse. The right word for such a companion is a familiar.⁴ A familiar can be a real and gifted partner in shamanic work, but it is an individual, middle-world being, and both its limits and our own as middle-world beings need to be kept in mind; the animal Oversouls of the Lower-World are of a different order altogether.⁴

What does it mean when a particular animal appears in a journey? #

The first question is what it means to the person whose journey it is. In Therapeutic Shamanism the real and deepest meaning of anything in a journey, an animal included, is what it means to the person whose journey it is. People who come out of a journey asking an ‘expert’ what an animal meant very often find, when asked in return, that they do have a meaning of their own; handing that question over too quickly is one more way of handing our power to someone else.⁵

Only after that does it help to do some research into the animal, its habits and the meanings it has carried for people, which is where the left brain has its place.⁵ Whether an animal met in journeys is a Power Animal is a separate question; see How do I know whether an Animal I meet is really Power Animal?

Is the word ‘totem’ used in Therapeutic Shamanism? #

Not for a Power Animal. The animal helpers described above are sometimes called animal totems, and a Power Animal is something different altogether, so using one word for both would blur the very distinction this approach draws.⁶ The word does survive in a different sense, in the chakra teaching that is sometimes called the totem pole. See What is the energy body, and what are the chakras?