picture taken with my old nixon j2 in majorca
How can the ancient religions and traditions of animism help us in our everyday life?
Animism is a spiritual perspective that animals and insects are guardian spirits, the animal symbol is sacred and symbolic and often used as crests for tribes, clans, families and chiefs throughout different cultures around the world, the animal spirit may even represent ancestors.
In our modern world where we are taught to live separated from the nature from which we come from, we need to more than ever to reconnect with the animal spirits around us and understand their powerful symbolism.
By watching and understanding other life forms, through dreams, walks in nature, books and other media we begin to see the god spirit in every being and the amazingness of the world around us that has the ability to help heal our negative thought patterns and depressive tenancies. The power of the creature begins to reside in us, as we learn new skills and ways of responding to our reality through the spirit guide.
Dragon Fly Totem
When I traveled around India I met an interesting character who asked me; Have you ever looked into the eye of a dragon fly? He said that; You would see a thousand eyes.
Having lived a fast past life in London up until then I never stopped to wonder about the eye of an insect but for some reason that stayed with me.
It's incredible to think of a creature like the dragon fly having multifaceted eyes, which are potentially lots of tiny independent eyes, with each unit consisting of separate cornea, lens, and photo-receptor cells. Certainly this creature has more than one visual perception but thousands!
Symbolically this teaches that we should be looking through multiple perspectives than just focus on one thing alone!
But this creature rarely stays still long enough to capture it's thousand eyes, if you get to close it will fly away and the way it flies is extremely dexterous that it can stop in mid air and change in any direction abruptly.
This represents agility, flexibility and lightness of being that we also need to bring into our own lives.
Dragon flies are born of the water and undergo an incomplete metamorphosis, the water represents the emotions, which is an invitation to dive deeper into feelings and with that comes transformation.
A dragon fly also changes color as it ages so symbolically this creature may be telling us it is time for change and shifting of our perspectives. Because this creature is easily adaptable there is an ease and joyfulness that comes with transforming.
The ancient dragon fly ancestor was giant compare to today with a 30inch /75 cm wing span, now these much smaller and condensed versions are threatened due to the loss of our wetland areas.
Like most creatures they tell us that we need to protect our natural areas to preserve the diversity of life on this planet.
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