Totems

Animal Spirit Guides for your PC

While the concept of totem animals or spirit guides may not be familiar to some players, it is actually quite common across the spectrum of human belief systems. The Amerinds of North America are the first culture that most players will think of when talking about totems or totem animals, but they're far from the only ones. Totemic beliefs are also found among the Norse, the Celts, some African tribes (such as the Shona of Zimbabwe), the Australian Aboriginees, the Koreans, and others. Totem animals of a sort were also recognized by the very earliest Egyptians (which gave rise to animal-headed gods we know today, such as Horus or Bast), as well as the pre-Shang Chinese. Traces of totemic beliefs persist to this day in Chinese culture through their year-based zodiac signs and in a similar vein, we find such themes among the Greeks through their month-based zodiac (which we still use today), which was in turn taken from the Babylonians and Sumerians. So, I think the case can easily be made that the concept of animal representing the spirit or personality of an individual is a very common, cross-cultural belief.

True, many PCs will NOT hold this view -- I would actually affirm that most Oerdians (Europeans) as well as Medegian (Greeks), Nereganti (Egyptians), Zakharans (Arabs), Shou Lung (Chinese), and Kozakurans (Japanese) would find the concept of an animal spirit advisor as primitive or foreign, but in a universe where Thor rubs elbows with Zeus and Shang-Ti, then if the Norse, Celts, Flan (Amerinds), and Touv (pan-Africans) have totems, such entities exist (albeit unrecognize and/or rejected) for all individuals of all cultures. Because there are a number of spells and effects which call up an individual's totem AND because I believe that defining a PC's totem aids in role-play and character development, I think it's important for each player to define as early as possible a totemic animal spirit for each of their characters.

Below is a list of common totem animals from around the world. While I would recommend selecting a totem, this list can also be used to randomly generator a spirit guide. As a general rule, the totem should be some creature found natively in the character's cultural region, although there could be RARE exceptions. Also, totem animals are just that -- ANIMALS found in nature. Sorry, no unicorns, dragons, faeries, giants, cockatrice, nor plants, rocks, stars, etc. While the totem should NOT define the character, it should flesh out certain elements of the characters personality, much as many 21st century Americans who believe in astrology might hold that scorpios or tauruses tend to behave in a certain way. The symbology a totemic animal represents will be more subtle than this, but there should be some correlation between beast and behavior.

Unfortunately, the meanings associated with each totem animal vary somewhat by culture (hence a good reason why animals spirits should only come from the character's culture, since animals from another culture would be, by definition, meaningless!). As an example, among the Greeks, the owl represents a bird of wisdom and insight. But, to the Chinese and Amerinds, this is an evil bird heralding death, while in the Middle East, it was sometimes thought to represent a man's soul. Clearly, some animals have universal traits (the industriousness of the ant or bee, the ferocity of the lion or wolf, etc), but in other cases they do not (a lizard's ability to dream or a grouses dancing). I would suggest referencing a well-researched (read: probably non-New Age) book or website about totems or the shaman class article (although it is heavily slanted toward the Amerind viewpoint) for ideas of what different animals represent. And, when you encounter conflicting information, go with what the animal seems to mean in the character's culture (for example, snakes tend to be wicked in Europe and the Middle East, but wise everywhere else).

Questions? Comments? Funny stories? Lemme know...
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