How can I find my spirit animal in Celtic paganism?
Spirit animals are central to Celtic paganism because they live at the border of worlds. They are non-human, yet sentient. They are earthly, yet of the otherworld. They are embedded within nature, yet signify the divine. The interest spirit animals continue to attract attests to our hunger for a divinity that is natural and intimate. But most beginners face a big hurdle when approaching this topic: how do I meet my spirit animal?
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of bad information out there. Many pagans, including teachers, are role-playing paganism based on tropes in Hollywood, pop history, or scholastic warpings of shamanic view and practice. There are vague ideas of vision quests, psychedelic trips, or shamanic journeying, which often roll my eyes. I won’t name names, but there’s a lot of stuff out there that’s been cooked up in someone’s basement after too many nights of D&D, whiskey, crystals, and Joseph Campbell.
I do not have an unbroken lineage of pagan wisdom that reaches back to Celtic ancestors. What I do have is years of monastic training in a living religious culture that goes back millennia: Thai Buddhism. The answer to the question, “How do I meet my spirit animal?” is informed by my background and study of Celtic tradition and history.
The search for the right spirit animal depends upon intuition and reason to help guide us to the right relationship for where we are now. In this article, I will explain the role of intuition and reasoning in the search and offer specific, concrete practices to charge up those faculties to answer the question that started this: how can I find my spirit animal?
Building the Relationship, Finding the Right One
Before we go into the question of how to find our spirit animal, there’s a destructive assumption often hidden behind this question that needs addressing: the belief that there’s one spirit animal out there for us and that we must wait for it to magically appear and then it’s happily-ever-after. This is not how relationships with the divine work. Our relationship with our spirit animal is work, just like our relationship with our parents, partners, friends, and children. We never suddenly meet someone, fall in love, and are drama free ‘til the end of our days. The first step in a relationship is finding the right person or deity, but the millions of other steps that lay in the future after deciding are even more important. If we want this relationship to work, we must work to make it work.
Befriending Intuition and Reason
The basic question guiding this investigation is: is this the right spirit animal for me right now or not? Answering that question requires the intellect, which (for me) includes intuition and reason, to discern what’s right.
Intuition is the quiet voice in our heads or that inexplicable tug in our bellies that guides us. We often don’t know why, but intuition usually knows better than our heads when it comes to big decisions and requires a leap of faith.
Reason is the result of logical analysis. It consciously compares, contrasts, evaluates, calculates, and predicts using available information. Both are necessary. My advice: prioritize intuition and temper it with reason.
The following practices aid us in developing these two faculties. They allow us to sense more acutely with our intuition, discarding what’s off and drawing closer to what feels right. They allow us to evaluate ourselves better, our situation, and our deity to decide what’s right. There might be a lot of bells-and-whistles and smoke-and-incense around this search, but the practices boil down to strengthening the faculties of intuition and reason so we can make a better decision. That’s it. This fact is important to keep in mind as it’s otherwise easy to get caught up in the glamor or mystery of these practices.
Discovering Our Spirit Animal
To develop those faculties and find an answer, I’ve divided the practices into two sections, intuitive and rational, depending upon what faculty they focus on. This division doesn’t mean that intuitive practices don’t involve reason, nor vice versa. Instead, it simply means what’s foreground and what’s background.
Intuitive
Intuitive practices draw the answer from our deepest depths and thus have been preferred since time immemorial. The methods here can be elaborate and intense, partially because of the gravity of the relationship, but they needn’t be. Once we understand the basic principle of the practice, we can adjust the intensity and add bells and whistles to suit our needs.
1. Scrying: Scrying is a way of seeing or discerning the unseen, making the unconscious, conscious, and the inscrutable workings of the divine comprehensible. Examples of scrying include tarot cards, cloud reading, bone reading, tree reading, and just-about-anything-else reading. It’s not that the divine somehow shuffles the decks and makes a specific card come to the surface in a sign of grace. Instead, this world is already divine and pregnant with meaning and guidance. Scrying is simply taking the time to stop and listen to its message.
Whatever form of scrying we do, don’t expect to have the answer revealed in one 15-minute session. It will often take multiple rounds of this before the answer becomes unmistakably clear.
In this, as in other practices, it’s often best not to directly ask, “What should my spirit animal be?” Before asking that question, take stock. A practitioner should check in to see who they are and where they’re at. When our situation becomes clear, so too does our way forward.
2. Prayer: Prayer asks the divine for guidance. If a practitioner has a god they regularly work with, they can direct their prayers to them. In the Celtic tradition, prayers to Morrigan, Gwydion, or Dagda are suitable due to their connection to prophecy and magic, although other gods will also do. A practitioner can also pray without asking for help from a particular god.
There are a few styles of prayer. One is akin to a conversation with the divine, describing our situation and asking for guidance. Another form of prayer is akin to chanting, in which a practitioner places the request in the form of a song or poem, which they repeat and focus on. As with scrying, the answer often comes like a mushroom growing in the forest. When the time is right, it will bloom.
3. Evoking: Evoking is akin to prayer, but a practitioner asks their own heart instead of asking a deity for guidance. In this practice, they start by giving themselves time to settle into stillness (or as best they can), ask or call to mind the spirit animal, and then wait and listen.
The best way I can describe evoking is that it’s like trying to watch for fish in a lake. We can’t make the waters clear. What we can do, though, is be still and allow the waters to settle into stillness naturally. Once the waters are still, we patiently wait until we catch sight of the fish. Once we see the fish, we don’t catch it. We admire its beauty before it swims on of its own accord.
When evoking, a practitioner asks a question, like “What is my spirit animal?” and then allows the question to settle. They then rest and see what comes up naturally. After 30 seconds or a few minutes pass, ask the question again. If answers arise, note them—no need to think about the responses or rationally figure them out. Allow the heart to do all the work.
After doing this enough times, the answer will often appear spontaneously. It sometimes comes in a thunderous flash but sometimes in a quiet, confident whisper.
4. Stillness: Stillness consists of good old-fashioned waiting. It’s not waiting like some wait for the bus, scrolling through Instagram or chatting with friends. It’s waiting in perfect silence for however long it takes until the answer comes of itself.
Agnes Martin, the famed 20th-century artist, used this method for many of her paintings. She would sit in her studio for days, weeks, months and be still. She wouldn’t refine her craft, seek inspiration by going to galleries, or sketch, hoping for the muse to descend. She waited. And waited. And waited. When the mind was ripe, the painting would come to her in a vivid flash. She’d then whip into a flurry of activity until she executed it perfectly.
The same method can be applied to any other quandary, including our spirit animal. Sit in silence holding that question very gently in the back of your mind and wait. No need to think about it or ask it. Just know it when you begin and then drop everything, even the sense of having a question and waiting for an answer. Wait for however many days, weeks, or months as it takes until the answer reveals itself.
5. Ritual: Rituals and vigils are what many Celtic pagans first think of when finding their spirit animal. But, in truth, rituals composite these other practices into an organic whole. Therein lies its power: its ability to draw on a variety of our inner resources to focus the mind and tune us into the sacred. Given how detailed and lengthy the instructions are, I will not describe a ritual practice for finding a spirit animal here. Instead, I’ll save that for another post to offer examples.
6. Vigils: Vigils, like rituals, are a composite practice. They intensify one or many practices over a specified time frame. One example of a vigil is going out into the woods and spending three days fasting, meditating, and praying to have a vision of a spirit animal. A more modest form of vigil is praying all night under a full moon. As these can be varied and lengthy, I’ll also write another post later to describe them further.
Reason
Reason depends upon observation, the collection of facts and opinions, and deduction based on the information available. In excess, reason can become the enemy of intuition, but when used in conjunction, the two support each other in making better decisions. Neither intuition nor reason can tell us the answer because life’s too complex, and we mortals are too flawed to ever have the answer. The best we can ask for is better.
Unlike in intuition, where there are diverse methods, reason is straightforward with two main parts: analysis and evaluation. Analysis takes stock of our situation and the spirit animal. Evaluation weighs pros/cons and compares it to other options before making the best decision.
1. Analysis: Consider the following questions:
- Who am I? What are my strengths and weaknesses? What do I like and dislike? What works and doesn’t work? What are my needs and wants? Why do I want to work with a spirit animal?
- What is my situation in life right now? What are the most pressing issues? What’s my environment like? Who are my friends? What’s lacking around me? What’s in excess? What will life be like in the short and long term?
- What is this spirit animal? What are its strengths and weaknesses? What elements is it associated with? What energy does it bring? How does it relate to my own needs and wants? What might they ask from me?
2. Evaluation: Once you’ve analyzed yourself, your situation, and the various options available, it’s time to evaluate. The fundamental evaluation question is: Given who I am and where I’m at it in life, is this spirit animal suitable? Shortlist a few spirit animals, list their pros/cons, and see which one seems the best fit.
Discovering Our Spirit Animal
How a practitioner uses these tools to find their future spiritual partner is entirely up to them, but remember to prioritize intuition and temper it with reason. Reason can seem to suck the adventure out of this deeply personal and spiritual process, but reason itself is divine and, when appropriately used, enriches rather than detracts. And for the hyperrational, intuition is not the enemy.
These techniques will take time before bearing fruit. But if a practitioner is serious about beginning this journey, they should invest the time to ensure they’re heading in the right direction. If they find the right deity, magic can quickly happen. If they rush and grab what’s in front of them, they might be in for a drag. However one begins the journey, though, finding the right spirit animal is just the first step in a long, challenging, but life-changing relationship.