Home›Mammals›Sacred ToBrowse BySacred ToThis page groups spirit animals by the practical rule their sacred standing produces. Wikipedia notes that "the belief that an animal is sacred frequently results in dietary laws prohibiting their consumption." Browsing by sacred-to lets a visitor find every spirit animal bound to the same kind of rule.FactsLearn MoreSacred ToSourcesComments (0)Reader Challenges (0)FactsContested UseContested or Appropriated Modern UseWell-attested"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. 3OverviewWhat Defines This GroupingWell-attestedSpirit-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. 2DirectoryCategoryWell-attestedAnimals & Totems 1OriginsWhose Classification This IsWell-attestedModern zoological classification: Mammalia, a class named by Linnaeus in the tenth edition of Systema Naturae (1758). 4Learn MoreMammals 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.Sacred ToFilter Results12 entriesDomain / FunctionAllAgriculture and harvest (1)Beauty (1)Commerce and wealth (1)Creation and cosmogony (1)Death (1)Earth (1)Fate and time (1)Guide of the dead (1)Herds and pastoralism (1)Kingship and sovereignty (4)Love and desire (1)Magic and sorcery (3)Motherhood (3)Mountains (1)Music and poetry (2)Night and darkness (2)Protection and guardianship (3)Sea and ocean (1)Sky (2)Sun (1)The underworld (1)Travel, roads and boundaries (2)Tutelary of a place or community (1)Victory (1)War and battle (2)Wind (1)Wisdom and counsel (2)Writing, scribes and learning (1)Era of Attestation End YearAll400 (4)1200 (1)1521 (1)1572 (1)2026 (3)Era of Attestation Start YearAll2900 BCE (1)2600 BCE (1)2100 BCE (1)1400 BCE (1)800 BCE (1)100 (1)200 (1)400 (1)711 (1)1200 (1)1400 (1)GenderAllFemale (5)Gender-fluid across the tradition (1)Male (6)HistoricityAllLegendary: known from narrative tradition, not the historical record (2)Not a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being (10)Pantheon FamilyAllAesir (1)Status Within the TraditionAllNot formally addressed by this tradition (1)TheologyAllAnimist: persons and powers in land, water and living things (1)Debated (1)Monotheistic: one God (1)Polytheistic: many gods (9)Veneration TodayAllActively venerated in a living tradition (3)Historically attested; no continuous cult (9)Show ResultsBrowseCompareAmunSacred To1 entryBastetSacred To1 entryCybeleSacred To1 entryDurgaSacred To1 entryGaneshaSacred To1 entryHathorSacred To1 entryHecateSacred To1 entryInariSacred To1 entryIntiSacred To1 entryOdinSacred To1 entryPoseidonSacred To1 entryTezcatlipocaSacred To1 entrySources1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Treetier 12. Encyclopedia of Religiontier 1Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005the article on animals in religionView the Source3. The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and the Western Imaginationtier 1Andrei A. Znamenski, Oxford University Press, 2007on Michael Harner and the making of core shamanismView the Source4. Systema Naturae, 10th editiontier 1Carl Linnaeus, Laurentius Salvius, 1758the tenth edition, 1758Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptionstier 1Comments (0)No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.Sign in to join the discussion.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.