Power animal
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Power animal, is a broadly animistic and shamanic concept that has entered the English language from Anthropology, Ethnography and Sociology. As a tutelary entity or spirit, the ancient Anglo-Celtic Tradition also contained a comparable understanding, refer Fæcce. In the shamanic worldview, everything is alive and carries with it an inherent virtue, power and wisdom. Or stated differently, our power animal(s) represent our strengths, our qualities of character, our power.
Power animals are endemic to shamanic practice. They are the helping or ministering spirit or familiar which add to the power of an individual and are essential for success in any venture undertaken.
In the shamanic worldview, it is commonly held that everyone has power animals: animal spirits which reside with each individual adding to their power and protecting them from illness, functioning in a fashion or manner attributed within the Judeo-Christian Tradition to a guardian spirit. The power animal may also lend its ward or charge the wisdom or attributes of its kind. For example, a hawk power animal may provide its charge with attributes of the hawk such as hawk-eye.
Nicholas Noble Wolf (2006) provides a definition:
A power animal is an aspect of self that is represented by an animal. The aspects of that animal apsect can be empowered and encouraged such that it assists you in your life. A power animal is not a separate spiritual being....[1]
Kenneth Meadows (2004) defines power animal:
A power animal is an energy-pattern--or energy-system--that appears in animal form and possesses sensation and the power of voluntary movement to carry out its inherent ability to perform the specific work it characterizes. A power animal is the very energy-pattern of an ability or abilities that the animal form characterizes!
According to shamanic understanding, we each have a number of power animals, for they are patterns of natural abilities and potentials that are inherent within us. A principal power animal is one that has prominence.
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- Meadows, Kenneth (2004). Shamanic Spirit. Inner Traditions.
