Techniques to contact and summon animal spirit guides or totem animals are many. Birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects, all living things have wisdom to share and gifts to give, no matter how small they may seem. Attune to the qualities of powerful animal spirit helpers to enhance and cultivate a happy life.
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Opening channels to the spiritual awareness of animal spirits, guides and helpers can deepen understanding of unusual events, behavior or daily life. Familiarity with animal spirit guides eases communication. For beginners, the first animal spirit guide is often a pet, or domestic or wild animal in the vicinity.
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Pets & Domestic Animals
For pets and livestock, the connection is often already made. It just takes a focused mentality, touching or holding the animal like snuggling the cat or hugging the dog or scratching under the chin of the smart little pig of the litter.
Natural bonds are strengthened and communication heightened just by interacting with the animal, keeping the mind open to receive energies, thoughts and mental pictures but no expectation of instant gratification. Exploring these psychic or intuitive connections helps reinforce the bond and reach transcendent levels of perception.
Away from the animal spirit for a while, it helps to bring a picture, artwork, symbol or energy vessel to carry the essence of the animal and stay attuned. This is one way to maintain or call up a conscious or subconscious link to wild animal spirit guides too.
Ways of summoning or communicating with wild animal spirit guides, helpers or totems are different than those used for domestic animal spirits. The wild nature attaches to freedom and the cycles of the seasons.
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Spirits Wild & Wonderful
Wild animals awaken the untamed inner nature and allow expression of emotions, feelings and thoughts. Some of these spirits are dangerous, such as the bull and mountain lion, who can release strong emotions or elements of chaos.
At one time humans existed with other wild animals at the mercy of the natural environment. Animals taught them how to survive, what to wear, how to hunt, what plants to eat and how to respect the land and all her denizens.
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Ultimately the practitioner wants to return to the mental state of being in the wild world and a sense of reality in that world. Senses and instincts heighten as the spirit worker opens the paths to a primal place.
Even pets and domestic animals come from that essential place and some carry the signs. Working with those animals, the connection is stronger when calling up a recollection or feeling of the wild spirit in all things, an integral part of being.
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Calling up an ancient ancestor animal can be done in different ways, depending on the animal, its elemental and magical associations. It's also possible to bring up an animal spirit of which the practitioner was unaware.
Animal energies flow through and around us on conscious, subconscious and unconscious levels. Some may be passing by and others stay a while. Spirit workers often work with more than one animal energy at a time. These forces are always in flux.
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The first set of activities work for both finding a spirit animal and summoning its energy. For those who aren't sure about who the animal spirit is, or want to discover who else is in the area, the ideas below can increase abilities of mental reception. People will also discover their own unique ways.
How to Summon Animal Spirit Guides
Common methods to summon up or contact animal spirit energies include:
meditation - in a comfortable place
balance inner energies - aligns focus
trance work - enter a state of transcendence
drumming - especially triplets or triple patterns
focus on strengths or abilities desired from the spirit
slow progression of single notes on chimes or bells
music - people have spiritual connections to the feeling of music, which can mentally enhance harmony and increase positive flow of environmental energy
dance - improvisational or expressive, feeling rhythms of the earth & body, focus on connection to higher awareness
mind-clarifying crystals such as clear quartz
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For those who already know which animal is desired:
dance, sound out, move and act as the animal; perceive world as the animal might
draw, sculpt, make art with natural materials, compose music or write about the animal (Mozart wrote starling songs)
research or learn more about the animal for new depths of understanding - wisdom of details can give the animal more substance in messages, dreams, meditation
make an ornament featuring the animal
use an animal spirit altar to focus energies
if possible, observe the animal and its traits in the wild
Spirit animals don't always jump on command. Bears and other dominant energies, or independent spirits like the cat, may just show up when they feel like it. Others might be wary and it takes a while to build trust. Still others have a trickster side. Patience and awareness are key.
Spirits may seek a person out and make themselves known. They appear often in the environment around that person, in books, movies, meditation and dreams. The person might feel a special connection, as this animal has something to say or teach.
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Shamans may go into deep trance states, delirium or frenzy to seek elucidation through psychoactive elements found in nature, including fly agaric, peyote and stinking nightshade or henbane. It's not necessary to use hallucinogens or other mind-altering substances to contact spirits.
Animal Spirit Guides Online
... and more posted regularly.