People are always asking what this or that animal "means." Most often they are not even asking about a species but about a whole family or genus of animals. :"What does a frog mean?" "What does it mean if you see a bear?"
Americans tend to want everything laid out in a neat spreadsheet. Simple. Schematic. Unambiguous.
Traditional indigenous people do not see things that way. Keenly observant of their natural surroundings, they do not lump all owl species into one group, or all hawk species, or all snakes. They know that each one has its own nature, nesting habits, prey, and habitat.
They also know from observation and experience that individual animals have their own personalities and can sometimes act unaccountably differently from the usual behavior of their kind. Some of those are spirit animals.
Such animals may exist in the physical but also be moved by something greater than themselves. Just as humans are sometimes unexpectedly moved by spirit to do something unlike their usual way of doing things.
So the same animal may mean different thing to the same people in different circumstances. Furthermore, what an animal means depends on the life of the people the animal lives near.
For example, to people who weave cloth, some kind of spider is generally considered to be the patroness of weavers. Among the cotton-weaving peoples of the American Southwest, Spider Grandmother was believed to have woven the Universe.
But to their neighbors who wore animal skins, the spider would have no such importance. And so it is around the world. To know what an animal "means"" you have to ask which species? Which animal? What are the circumstances?
That is why we should all learn as much as we can about all the animals that are native to the neighborhood where we live. We should learn what they eat, where they nest and sleep, and what their habits are.
The more we learn about animals, and the more animals we know about, the better. But the animals most important to us are the ones that live where we do, and we should get to know them well.
For more information on classic shamanic practices, visit www.shamanista.com and see the list of links to shamanism-related web sites near the lower right corner of this page.
White Cranes has been studying and teaching shamanic practices for 20 years. Follow her on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/whitecranes and http://www.twitter.com/shamanista and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/whitecranes.
To learn to do shamanic practices in Houston, you are invited to join the Houston Shamanism Meetup group, http://www.meetup.com/houstonshamanism.
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