In Therapeutic Shamanism, a Power Animal is the Lower-World OversoulOversoul. A branch of Mother Earth representing the whole of a species: the single being all the individuals arise from. Lower-World work is always with the Oversoul, never an individual; environments are composite Oversouls, wheels within wheels. More about this of a wild animal species, the whole species met as one wise being (Panther, Wolf, Eagle), with whom a person chooses to form a deep, committed and usually lifelong bond. It is not an individual animal, not a pet, and not one of the many animal helpers met in journeys. Its love is unconditional, and the bond heals Power-lossPower-loss. Disconnection from nature, the web of life and our place in it: like being unplugged from the national grid. One of the two root causes of shamanic illness, healed by reconnection (not by soul retrieval), beginning with the Power Animal bond. Read the full answer, our disconnection from nature and Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this.
What does “Power Animal” mean, and how is it different from a spirit animal or totem? #
There is no agreed shamanic vocabulary. Western culture killed off its shamans and lost their precise terminology, so “power animal”, “spirit animal” and “animal helper” are now used loosely, often interchangeably, by modern shamanic practitioners and in New Age circles.1 Therapeutic Shamanism gives each term a specific meaning.
Journeying brings meetings with many animals, some fleeting, some lasting months, years or a lifetime. These are animal helpers, guides and teachers, sometimes called animal totems elsewhere, and they can be loved deeply, but they are not a Power Animal. “Think of the difference between friends on the one hand, and a lifelong, committed, deep soul bond on the other.” The Power Animal, if a person chooses to enter into that relationship, is a bond of a different depth, intensity, loyalty and love. See What are totem spirits, and how do they differ from a Power Animal?
Is my Power Animal an individual animal? #
No. In the Lower-World, what we meet are not individual creatures but the Oversouls of the PeoplesThe Peoples. The Animal People, Plant People, Standing People (the Trees) and Stone People: our elder kin, of whom the Human People are the youngest and least wise. A family, not a hierarchy. Read the full answer, and a Power Animal is the Oversoul of its species. Individuality is a characteristic of the middle-world, and wholeness a characteristic of the Lower-World.2 When Paul Francis holds his own Power Animal in mind as Panther, in terms of being all panthers, the sum of all the individuals in the species, what we call the Oversoul, then he is relating to an infinitely wiser and more powerful being.
What is an Oversoul? #
An Oversoul is a branch of Mother Earth in the Lower-World that represents the whole of a species. Each individual fox is a twig projecting into the middle-world from the Fox Oversoul, “the Great Fox that all individual foxes come from”, and the thicker branches nearer the trunk of the great tree of the Peoples are Oversouls too, of a whole genus, family or class. The tree goes all the way to its trunk. The branches run from the individual to the species, then to Great Ape, Mammal, Animal and Plant, and Mineral, and the trunk is Mother Earth herself: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” At that depth everything emerges from a common branch, because the Lower-World is “the realm of unity and of the transcendence of separation”. See What is an Oversoul?
Why does language matter when referring to a Power Animal? #
A journey is co-created, and the words a person uses shape what they meet. Calling the Power Animal “my panther” makes the bond one with a limited middle-world individual; calling it Panther makes it one with the transcendent Lower-World being.3 Hence the capitals in Power Animal, Panther, Horse or Wolf (“Lowercase means of the middle-world, uppercase of the lower-world or upper-worldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer”), and the habit of dropping “a”, “the” and “my”. So “Bear appeared”, not “a bear appeared”, since “Using ‘a’, ‘the’ or ‘my’ reduces Animal to animal.”
What is a relationship with a Power Animal like? #
The bond is a sacred marriage. Paul once read a description, which he could not later trace, of the Power Animal as Mother Earth trying to tell you, in a form she thinks you will understand, how deeply she loves you and how welcome you are on the Earth.4 The Power Animal is already fully committed, so how far the bond grows is up to the person. Human relationships are conditional; a Power Animal loves unconditionally, will never abandon you, and shows more love and compassion than most people show themselves. This is how it helps heal self-criticism and “the deep Mother woundMother-Wound. The near-universal injury of inadequate mothering in Taker culture, scaling from the personal wound to a collective distortion of the Mother archetype itself. Largely pre-verbal, it is healed not by insight but by receiving healthy mothering: from the Lower-World, the Power Animal’s unconditional love, and Mother Earth. More about this” of disconnection from nature. It may still tease, chide or be stern, as a good mother can.
It is the most important of a practitioner’s Guides. A shaman’s power comes not from the shaman but from the bond with their Guides, so the Power Animal leads every journey, with the practitioner as its apprentice, and goes with them into every realm and into daily life. See What is the role of Power Animal in shamanic journeying?
What is the relationship between a Power Animal and Power-loss? #
By “power” shamans mean life-force, and Power-loss is the weakening of it that comes from cutting ourselves off from nature and Mother Earth. It has been endemic since the move to agriculture, around 11,000 BC, away from the way our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived, as one part of an interconnected web of life. A Power Animal is the primary and most powerful means of connecting back to that web, and that is why it is called a Power Animal.5 See What is Power-loss?
How do I find my Power Animal? #
A Power Animal is met by journeying to the Lower-World with a clear intent to meet it, and is then brought back to be present in everyday life, a process called a Power Animal retrieval. It is recognised by asking it, by its showing itself clearly, by its staying close, or by a simple knowing. What makes it a Power Animal, not just another helper, is the choice to commit to it. See How do I find my Power Animal?
Can my Power Animal have a gender, age or name? #
Not as an individual would. Because a Power Animal is the whole species, it is both male and female, and both old and young. Giving it a name and a personality turns it into an individual, middle-world being, with that being’s limits. Human Lower-World GuidesHuman Lower-World Guide. A face put on the human Oversoul: the Ancestors met through an individual form, genuinely other than us, chosen from pre-Fall hunter-gatherer humanity. Related to as a teacher, never a master. Read the full answer, by contrast, are met with a name and a face, because we are so wired to recognise faces as individuals, although they too are faces of something much larger.
Can an individual pet or animal I knew in life be my Power Animal? #
No. A beloved dog, cat or horse, living or dead, is more correctly called a familiar. A familiar can be a dear companion, even on journeys. It is a middle-world being, though, with middle-world limits, and “The animal Oversouls in the lower-world are of a totally different league altogether.”
Can my Power Animal be a domesticated animal? #
No. A Power Animal is a Lower-World being, and the Lower-World is nature as it was before farming, with no fields, no hedges and no domesticated animals. A Power Animal is therefore a wild species.
Should I worship my Power Animal? #
No. The relationship is a marriage and an apprenticeship, within an animist family of Peoples that “is not about hierarchy, but about family”. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors respected and honoured even the gods without worshipping them; gods who demand worship are the human-made gods of the FallThe Fall. The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. ‘Fallen culture’ is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. Read the full answer.6 What the relationship asks for instead is gratitude, given with no strings attached, and reciprocity. “We simply cannot ask an Oversoul like Panther or Wolf to teach us and heal us, and then ignore the plight of physical panthers and wolves in the middle-world.”
Can I have more than one Power Animal? #
It is possible, but uncommon. Most people can have many friends but find one deep, committed primary relationship more than enough, because such relationships take time, tending and dedication, and the same holds here. For a smaller number of people a second Power Animal arrives, usually several years later.
Can my Power Animal change? #
There are no absolute rules. Animals do come and go at different stages of a life, and some practitioners say a Power Animal changes as each chapter closes. In Therapeutic Shamanism, though, a Power Animal is defined by commitment, and a bond that is chosen and tended is likely to be lifelong. The Power Animal does not leave of its own accord: it “will never abandon you”, and the relationship is “a lifelong, committed, deep soul bond”, where animal helpers are more like friends. Paul has noticed that many practitioners who claim constantly changing Power Animals seem to have commitment issues in their human relationships too.
Can my Power Animal be mythical? #
Mythical Animals are fine to work with in journeys, but they do not always make good Power Animals. Some, especially flying ones such as Pegasus, Griffin and Thunderbird, have a more rarefied, Upper-World quality, whereas a Power Animal needs to connect a person both to the Lower-World and to nature. What usually works best is an Animal that also exists as a real, flesh-and-blood animal here, because the Power Animal is the bridge between this reality and the shamanic realms. There are “no rules, only guidelines”, and one or two good practitioners do work with mythical Power Animals.7
Can my Power Animal be prehistoric or extinct? #
Yes. Animals that became extinct in human times, and of which we keep an ancestral memory, make good Power Animals: Mammoth, Giant Sloth, Cave Bear, Cave Lion, Auroch, Woolly Rhinoceros and so on. They were once flesh-and-blood animals, and it is not long, in the scale of things, since they lived on the Earth. Their bones, teeth and bodies in the permafrost are still with us, and our hunter-gatherer ancestors painted them on cave walls.8
