In studying to become a shaman I have to identify and learn to work with my guides. There are several types one of which are animal guides. In our first class one assignment was to discover them.

Huston we have a problem. See I am not really a nature girl. I love nature and enjoy being in it. The problem is that growing up I was not exposed to nature. My family was not a camping family. My parents are from Brooklyn and the Bronx in New York. What can we expect! For most of my childhood cows and horses were classified as “wild”.

Let’s look at my knowledge base of nature. When it come to identifying plants I tend to go with tree, bush, flower, and grass. I can identify roses but I am a bit lost after that. Animals? I can identify a few breeds of dogs by site. Like five. Cats we have maybe three. I know what a gecko looks like because I owned one. Other than that we the generals. You know… cows ( or moo moo’s depending on how long I have been in the car) horses, sheep, llama, squirrel, and the little brown guy who eats grass and looks kind of prickly. With this knowledge base I am supposed to figure out animal guides?

This is where having a mind, spirit, and guides who know how to work with you comes in. Interestingly I have recently learned to identify hawks because they are around work. Thankfully I have cat’s so I can recognize their features.

When we were given this assignment Sandy, our teacher, told us to look to see what animals we saw repeatedly. I usually see animals everyday not counting my cats. The minute we got this assignment I only saw my cats for two weeks. Let me say it was like they knew of this assignment. Suddenly when I turned around I had two cats sitting and staring at me. This is actually weird for them. Like two little statues. Then I finally saw hawks. Now since I do see the boys everyday i wasn’t sure on cats, but with the bizarre behaviour I thought it likely. The hawks were all over the place when I drove to Michigan. I mean a ton of them flying over the highway for four and half hours. I started thinking maybe. Then I meditated on animal spirits.

I don’t get clear pictures like some people do when they meditate. I get shapes, colors, and feelings. During my meditation I kept seeing the wings of a hawk and a specific color pattern which I was able to identify as the red-tailed hawk. The next vision was a bit harder. I saw a cat paw in snow, ears that were cat-like and reminded me of Toby’s. Kind of fur standing out all over. Then a color pattern.

Let me stop here and say that there are a ton of cats in the world.

After much research I discovered my other animal guide is the lynx. Cool animal and I seem to remember learning about them in school at some point. What you ask? That they existed.

Now I know two of my animal guides. There is a lot of work to be done researching them. There maybe a third, the starling. I was gifted with a show of about fifty of them at work one day. They stayed with me the whole time I was outside flying around and didn’t leave until someone else came out. Actually I had to ask Darryl what they were.

One of my lessons in pursuing this is that even though I know this is my path it doesn’t mean it is going to be easy. I am excited about all the knowledge though!

Do you know your animal guides? If so, how did you discover them?

Peace and blessings!