We share our world with many fantastic creatures, and each has a lesson if we are willing to listen. The yogis teach that we humans have four natural instincts: food, sleep, sex, and self-preservation. So it is in the animal world. The human is just another mammal, and if we can let go of our illusion of dominance, we can learn from the similarities we have with the cohabitants of the planet we share. For example, do you like to live in the woods, need to be near water, or live in a city, or can you live anywhere comfortably? Are you a loner or do you prefer to be part of a traditional family or family-of-choice community? Are you a meat eater or would you prefer to have seafood or a salad? Are you a night owl, only coming to life after the sun has set, or are you a morning songbird? Understanding commonalities on a fundamental level may help you deepen your connection with the natural world.
There are plenty of excellent available books and oracle systems that focus on the totem aspects of animals; I have quite a collection myself and use them regularly. What I’ve discovered, and perhaps you have too, is that the meaning of an animal often changes depending on location, culture, or belief system. For example, an owl in one culture means wisdom, but in another culture it represents death. How cultures view animals may change, but what doesn’t change is the animal itself. Where does it live? How does it live? What does it eat? Just like animals, we humans have lifestyle preferences that change from person to person. My goal is to shed some light on potential similarities between you and a few animals by connecting your living habits via the chakra system.
The descriptions in this book are a combination of my personal experiences, observations, and research, but if you have personal experience with a particular animal, be it spiritual or earthly, honor the connection you have and use what you know. That animal is speaking to you directly. What I’ve written is merely a suggestion and may not match your experience. For the most part, I try to stay focused on the essence of the animal, but there are a few totem attributes filtered in as well.
I encourage you, if at all possible, not only to read up on any of the animals that call to you but also to spend time outside. Find a place you can sit still, watch, and listen. Are the birds talking to each other? Are the squirrels communicating? Even if you live in the city, there is wildlife. One summer night while I visited a friend in the mountains of Maryland, we witnessed thousands of fireflies communicating with waves of light through the trees. It was an amazing experience that we would have missed had we not been paying attention.
For this version of the Chakra Animals method, I focus on animals of North America because this is where I live. For clarification purposes, I use the term animal to represent anything nonhuman, such as birds, amphibians, insects, and other creatures. The way that I chose the animals was a combination of familiarity and research. Chakra Animals started out as a visual aid for a personal meditation practice. I shared that aid with a few friends, and they asked me to make sets for them. Knowing that I was going to be vending at an event in Massachusetts, I made a few prototype sets and offered to do readings for free to introduce the system. I created a form that listed about sixty different animals and asked people who visited my booth to check which animals they would like to see in a set and to add any animals that I hadn’t named. After I tallied the responses, I came up with this current collection of animals.
The first version of the book was very small, with only about a sentence or two for each chakra. After doing readings at an event in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, I realized that the book needed much more material, so I began its expansion. I don’t presume to be a chakra expert, nor am I a biologist, but I have forty years of spiritual and magical practice that have led me to this system. I truly believe that I could not have written this book any earlier in my life, that all my life experiences have given me a foundation to present this information in a way that may be beneficial to others.
The way that I made the correlations between an animal and the chakras was through a combination of intuition and logic. As a starting point, I would research as much as I could about a particular animal, and for each I had a list of search criteria based on the core aspects of each chakra. I asked, where does it live? How does it live and with whom? What drives it? How does it communicate? Does it mate for life or not? These are all questions that relate to how we live our own lives, and the parallels fell into place. As I was writing, there were times I would often feel like I was channeling the spirit voice of the animal. Sometimes they had a lot to say, other times not so much. I am pretty sure that Archangel Ariel, patron saint of animals and nature, was occasionally whispering in my ear to get her message out into the world. Wherever the messages originated, I now share them with you.
What’s Inside?
In the following sections, I’ll discuss potential ways to use this book, a brief overview of the chakras, some suggestions and examples for practical use of the information, and how to do a reading if you choose to, and then I will introduce you to the fifty animals. In the back of the book is a list of possible connections between animals and themes (such as abundance, leadership, playfulness, etc.) that you might find useful. This list is by no means all-inclusive but may give you some insights. Before you dive into your practice, you may want to skip to that back section and skim through it to see if there is anything specific in the list that you are drawn to focus on. Also in the back of the book are images that can be cut out so you can make your own visual tool. You’ll learn how to make use of that as we learn more about how to perform a reading in the chakras section of the book.
How to Use This Book
There are several ways you can approach this information. You can read the book from cover to cover and dog-ear and highlight places you want to return to. You can do a bit of bibliomancy and open the book at random to see what animal wants to speak to you. You can use the book in a similar way that you would use a totem guide, referring to a specific animal that has appeared to you or showed up in a dream. One practice I use is to pick an animal at random for each day of the week and connect that day to a chakra (Root: Monday, Sacral: Tuesday, etc.). The direct correlation may not be immediately clear to me, but it gives me food for thought as I move through the week.
My suggestion is to read all the animal descriptions, not just those for the animals you typically work with. Most of us who have worked with totem animals have a few we work with regularly, so we may not think about the possible connections we might have with others. I hope the information in this book surprises you with a few unexpected similarities with animals you had not previously considered. At the same time, I hope you discover a few surprises about your favorite animals as well.
My goal with Chakra Animals has been to try to help you understand that we are connected to the natural world in very down-to-earth ways. I hope you find this perspective fun and illuminating, and I also hope you have as much fun working with it as I’ve had developing it. It has indeed been a labor of love.