Power animal
A power animal is a notion drawn from shamanic practice, where an animal spirit accompanies a person and lends its qualities: the eagle’s sight, the wolf’s endurance, the snake’s caution. Shamanic traditions describe it as an ally met in dreams or on an inner journey. The contemporary reading, spread by neoshamanism, keeps an image of an intimate resource: a symbolic support you call on through demanding passages.
What the traditions tell
In the shamanic cosmologies described by Mircea Eliade, the practitioner travels between worlds alongside allied spirits, often in animal form. These traditions give the power animal a role of protector and guide: it would lead, warn, and lend its strength. The encounter would come in a dream, in trance, or during a ritual, and the bond would need tending, like any relationship that matters.
Making it your own
You do not need to be a shaman to take the image for yourself. Choose, or let come, an animal whose qualities speak to the season you are living through, and call on it as a marker: what would the wolf do, right here, right now? It is a symbolic support, a way to embody a strength you already hold without always daring to name it.
Sources
- , Le Chamanisme et les techniques archaïques de l’extase (1951)
- , Animal Speak (1993)