Finding Sleep's Totem

I was surprised when late last week, my friend and tribal member “Sleep” made a spiritual request of me: Would I do a journey to find his personal totem?

Why didn’t he do his own journey to find this out? It seems his astral nastie (the weird gremlin-like thing that I’ve done battle with on and off for a couple of years now) literally started to attack him so he couldn’t keep the mindset needed to make the discovery. Which is oddly telling, in it’s own way, for what could compel a minor demonic critter to interfere in such a quest? The totem might be key to getting rid of “Little Shit” as they call the astral attacker.

I feel very honored that Sleep trusted me enough to allow me to do such a thing. I know both he and Reese have been resistant and even rebellious at the idea of me being an expert. I have been bemoaning the fact that apparently I seem intimidating to people regarding my knowledge of the paranormal and magickal. I’d prefer it if I was admired or sought out for my knowledge (and I know some do!) but in person, my presence is apparently more forceful than I realize. I’ve been working to warm up my social presentation and soften my harsher diatribes in the last year, and perhaps it’s made a difference.

I spent a couple of hours getting relaxed and then I undertook the meditative journey. I got some odd images that made no sense at first… a lush garden in a tropical setting, then a bantha from Star Wars. I was all, “HUH?!” Then I saw trunks and flappy ears and gray skin. And then– clearly, an elephant!

When I tested it, I got a final image of a herd of elephants raising their trunks as if to say, “Yeah! That’s it!”

Well okay then!

I was nervous reporting my findings to Sleep. My students have often been reluctant to claim totem animals that aren’t really “cool” by our society, which often means predators like eagles, or wolves, or panthers. But most people aren’t that forceful and dominant as those kinds of animals. (One’s totem is the animal they would change into if they had to represent themselves as an animal, and they’re born with it and have it for life. Guardian animals, and spirit guide animals, which are often called totems, by contrast, can be many different things for many different reasons and change fairly frequently.) My experience is that people resist the truth that their totem represents, even though knowing the right one gives them oodles more power to use in magick and a way to contact the spirit world that doesn’t work without knowing the correct animal. Eventually, most came to love their totem, and they learn to accept their own gifts better as well, rather than idealize themselves with a fantasy creation that only serves their false ego self. In our ego-driven culture, such lessons are often very difficult to accept– and I brace myself for the reaction when someone’s totem is revealed. I expect push back.

In Sleep’s case, I never imagined an animal outside of the Americas or Europe, but surprise! The images suggested a couple of past lives where he was working with or riding domesticated elephants, and there was an aspect of Buddhism to it as well.

Sleep was silent to begin with, perhaps stunned, as I was when I first got the visions. An elephant as a personal totem? It’s a powerful one, clearly, and hardly conventional for a Neopagan Westerner! But when the silence lengthened, my nerves grew…

He thanked me profusely though, and said it was the astral nasty, not necessarily a past life thing, that got in the way of his being able to do the vision quest himself. But–! He seemed to start to accept what I saw not long after that, perhaps realizing the immense potential of such a totem. He asked what the elephant wanted as thanks for finding him? I got the image repeated of a round fountain that I saw in the beginning of my vision quest. Sleep’s reaction was, “Interesting…”

Ultimately, I have no idea if he accepted what I told him. I think so? But after all the tussling over his thinking I was some sort of “only one way” for doing magick or whatever, I have no confidence regarding his confidence in me! I guess we’ll see. If elephant statues spring up in his room, I’ll have my answer, and I won’t even have to ask him.