Animals that carry religious or spiritual significance, from creatures believed to embody or accompany a deity to species treated as sacred, forbidden or symbolically charged in a tradition's own terms. An entry separates the animal's ordinary biology from the meaning a tradition assigns it.
Facts
Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern Use"Spirit animal" is a twentieth-century English coinage of the neoshamanic movement, from Michael Harner's core shamanism (1980) and the popular animal dictionaries that followed. It is not an Indigenous term, though it is routinely marketed with Indigenous associations; the meanings recorded here belong to the named traditions. 2 Learn More
Spirit animals
This group gathers spirit animals not sorted into a particular zoological class, the beasts held in various traditions to carry powers, teachings or kinship with people. The idea that an animal may be a guide or emblem is ancient and worldwide, from totem and clan animals to the guardian creatures of many cultures.
The browser will find the spirit animals the atlas classes here. The entries describe each animal's symbolic associations, distinguishing long-standing cultural meanings from the modern "spirit animal" and "power animal" concepts.
All Dietary Law
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Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and the Western Imagination
Andrei A. Znamenski, Oxford University Press, 2007on Michael Harner and the making of core shamanismView the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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