Patterns & Metaphors
Totemism
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A totem is a non-human object which, in animistic belief, is said to have a spirit with which humans can relate. The totem is usually an animal or an individual or species of tree, flowering bush or other plant. Less commonly the totem may be a mountain, rock, valley, waterfall, cave or other natural feature or natural phenomena. Animal totems are sacrosanct. The animal and the human kindred are considered to have had the same ancestor, and most primitive animistic magic rites have been centered on such totems. Miniature totemic representations can be made to wear as talismans or the totem animal may be sculpted in wood or rock metres high. The exact psychological nature of totemism has not been elucidated by scholars, and the theories of Durkheim, Lévi-Strauss, Frazer and Freud among others are unproven. Investigators have failed to consider the totem animal in parapsychological frameworks and as experienced in induced hallucinogenic altered states of consciousness. The work of the American sociologist, C. Castaneda, while not analytical, provides interesting insights into totemism. In addition, recent scholarly interest in Shamanic experience is also adding evidence that the inventory of psychic contents includes, besides an ego, super-ego, id, animus anima, shadow, etc, an animal. The constant companionship of animal with man in history and the ubiquity of animals in man's forms of presentation, particularly visual art, indicate that anima (soul) is attended by 'animal'. There are also indications that such a personal totemic 'beast' may be a trickster of polymorphic aspect or transmutable form whose uttimate appearance may be 'beauty'. Animale figures which appear in the literary psychological projections known as alchemy and fairy tales are evidence from the subconscious, as Freud and Jung adduced, that totemism is awareness of one's animal and behaviour in accordance with this knowledge.
