Photo courtesy of Kirklandj
A common question I hear is if Judaism has animal spirit guides or totem animals. There are references to angels that appear in the form of animals, but the idea of an animal spirit guide is not commonly found in Jewish mysticism. During a Zohar class, we studied a story of two men who went on a journey and were led by an Eagle. It conversed with them and eventually turned into a man who brought them to the heavenly beit midrash (house of study).
I'm not a person who has ever been attracted to animal spirit guides or totems. Most of the souls I encounter are in Human form, if they have a shape. I share this reference in answer to the questions I've received and for those who do interact with spirit animals.
From the Zohar, part III, page 161 bet, parsha Shelah. Translation by my teacher.
He [the spirit guide] turns to them and says, go out from here, you are meritous, you are righteous. They went out. That appointed being gave them each a rose and they went out. When they went out, the door of the cave was closed and couldn't be seen at all.
They saw that Eagle that was coming down from that tree. And he went into another cave. These two they smelled their rose and they entered into there. And they met the Eagle by the opening of the cave, he said to them: “Please come in true righteous ones, friends, because I have not seen the joy of friendship from the day that I'm here. Only with you.”
They entered into the cave. They arrived in another orchard and the Eagle is with them. They found people there studying the Mishna. So then the Eagle transformed into the image of a person in garments of glory shining like them [the masters of the Mishna]. And he is sitting like one of them. He said to those that were sitting there [the two people in the story]. Give honor to these masters of the Mishna who came here because their master has shown them great wonders here.
One of them said, Do you have sign? They said yes, we do. They took out their two roses and smelled them. The masters of the Mishna said “please sit down master of the yeshiva, sit down true righteous ones.” They were happy with them, and they sat down. At that time, they learned there 30 Halachot that they did not know before this, and others secrets of the Torah.
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7 comments:
You should read "Hearing Shofar" book 3. There is a whole section in there about this and about how the Ram/Sheep/Goat is the totem animal of the Jewish people. Really interesting. http://www.hearingshofar.com/book.htm
Thanks for the link, I'll check it out. Does he talk about the animals in Ezekiel too?
I really believe that each person's connection to Spirit is shaped by their religious background.
I realized after chatting with a friend who connects with angels, that while my connection to Spirit is largely through power animals (because of some very negative reaction to my Christian upbringing), that my power animal was the "same" as my guardian angel he identified for me. We saw the same thing, just through our different lenses...
Kara
Kara,
That's really beautiful, and very true. Though the paths are different, we all get to the same place at the end.
Thanks for this post, Aaron. It's a question I've often had myself! (And great to see you this week!)
Minna,
Great to see you too! If you come across any other references, please let me know. Or if you have any other questions like this!
Hi there,
Thanks for posting this article, I found it very interesting. I recently went to a funeral for a close family friend, and towards the end a fox came out and started to play and roll around in the grass several yards away. The widow we were there to mourn with started to laugh, when I asked her why she was laughing, she said "We have a late guest! My husband used to watch the foxes outside the window each spring quite enthusiastically. Maybe the fox came to see him off."
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