Llewellyn Worldwide: Any animal species that has ever existed has a totem. (The same goes for plants, fungi, and the like, but we'll stick to the critters here.) Even better, we're not limited to working with just one totem. People often ask me, "How do I find my animal totem?," to which the response may be, "Well, which one?" Mind you, I'm not talking about a set number of totems. In my experience, we don't all have a template that we have to fill up with our own totemic menagerie. The nature and number of totemic relationships we have are unique to each of us. The most common way people find animal totems is through guided meditation. This usually involves traveling a path or down a tunnel that comes out into a place where you can meet your totem. (One example may be found
here.) The benefits of this method are that you have enough structure to get you into a meditative state of mind, while having enough freedom to allow whatever totem wants to meet you to show up. But what other options are there, especially for those who may not want to grub around in metaphysical tunnels? A deck of totem cards is simple, but severely limits the potential range of totems that can come up (since there is just one totem per card, and you can only fit so many cards into a deck). Animal sightings in dreams and waking life may or may not have significance, but most of the time the former is a matter of your brain picking out animal symbols at random while you sleep, and the latter involves living animals going about their daily business without a care for any human's spiritual business. Your favorite animal isn't necessarily your totem, either; totems most often choose us, especially those who shake us out of our familiar comfort zones.
So what's an aspiring totemist to do? Here are a few possibilities that may work for you.
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