This page groups spirit animals by the culture whose records pair them with a deity. Wikipedia notes that "the Egyptian pantheon was especially fond of zoomorphism, with many animals sacred to particular deities -- cats to Bastet, ibises and baboons to Thoth, crocodiles to Sobek and Ra." Browsing by attested-in-region lets a visitor find every spirit animal recorded by the same culture.
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. 3 Overview
What Defines This GroupingSpirit-animal entries whose subject is a mammal in modern zoological classification. The class is a browsing frame only: traditions sort animals by their own criteria - edible and inedible, clean and unclean, wild and domestic, kin and stranger - and not by biological class. 2 Origins
Whose Classification This IsModern zoological classification: Mammalia, a class named by Linnaeus in the tenth edition of Systema Naturae (1758). 4 Learn More
Mammals as spirit animals
This group gathers the mammals among the spirit animals, the beasts that many traditions, from indigenous totemism to modern spirituality, hold to carry particular powers, teachings or kinship with people. Mammals, being warm-blooded and often close to human life, figure largely in such lore as guides, guardians and emblems of virtues.
The browser will find the mammal spirit animals the atlas gathers. The entries describe each animal's symbolic associations across traditions, distinguishing long-standing cultural meanings from the modern "spirit animal" and "power animal" ideas that have popularised the concept.
Attested In Region
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005the article on animals in religionView the Source 3. 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 4. Systema Naturae, 10th edition
Carl Linnaeus, Laurentius Salvius, 1758the tenth edition, 1758
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.