I keep seeing all over the internet (Tumblr is no exception) photos and jokes about Spirit Animals. Usually, the joke involves a photo of something the poster likes or finds amusing and calls it “My spirit animal”.
I do not believe that religions should be sacred and above humor but I do believe that, if one is going to make fun of something, then it should be done through the knowledge of what exactly one is making fun of or trivializing. When someone creates a cartoon of Jesus and captions it with something amusing, the humor comes from a shared knowledge in which the Christian tradition is based. Because it is inferred that, everyone who sees the Jesus cartoon has, at least, a passing knowledge in the history of Jesus and Christianity. Such is not the case with the concept of Spirit Animals (also known as Power Animals in some shamanic traditions), mainly because the religions and spiritual practices that use the concept have been swept off mainstream culture and have been subjected to hundreds (if not thousands) of years of oppression by dominator style cultures (mainly the three Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism).
Spirit Animals are a broadly animistic and shamanic concept that has entered the English language from Anthropology, Ethnography and Sociology. A tutelary spirit guide, the Spirit Animal helps or protects individuals, lineages and nations. In the shamanic worldview, everything is alive, bearing an inherent virtue, power and wisdom. The Animals represent a person’s connection to all life, their qualities of character, and their power.
The concept of such animals is present in several cultures across the world. In the Americas, it has been a cultural puzzle for anthropologists due to the fact that it is shared by so many different communities across the entire continent. Different First Nations from what is now Canada or the US, all the way down to Patagonia have included, in their spirituality, some kind of Spirit Animal that aids in ceremonies, shamanic initiations and/ or counseling and guidance. In some traditions of places that are now Mexico, South US and Guatemala, the Spirit Animal was called the Nagual and it involved a person with shamanic knowledge assuming the shape of the spirit animal and taking on shamanic deeds for their community. The Nagual is probably the most assimilated kind of Spirit Animal in pop culture, thanks, in no small part to the now infamous books by Carlos Castaneda, who introduced the idea to mainstream America through The Teachings of Don Juan.
During the forced Christianization during colonial times in the Americas, the Christian Churches (Catholic Church from Mexico down; different Protestant branches in North America) took special care to erase and oppress these traditions, relegating them to the fringes and subjecting those who insisted on keeping them to practices that ranged from shunning people from their own communities to torture or death in the most extreme cases (if anyone is interested in the kind of tactics used by Christian Churches to oppress Native American traditions, I would suggest reading on the history of South American First Nations and the individuals or groups that, collectively, refused to convert to Catholisism and the consequences they faced for doing so).
However, the concept of Spirit Animals is not exclusive to the American continent. A similar idea can be found in ancient European pagan traditions, where such spirit received the popular name of Familiar. Court transcripts of the Inquisition trials show that several of the witches sentenced to death by the Church at the time were proven to be evil (and as such deserving of tortures and eventual death in gruesome manners) solely based on their companionship of a pet that was referred to as a Familiar or Spirit Animal. The fact that many of these witches trials involved women and, particularly women accused of midwifery, illegal practice of medicine and daring to venture into areas of social interactions usually reserved to men is no coincidence.
Some anthropologists also consider the Hindu deities known as Vahanas to be part of the Spirit Animal traditions, while in Norse folklore the Fylgja was yet another animal guiding people’s fate.
What all of these traditions have in common, though, is the systematic erasure from mainstream culture and the hundreds years old obliteration and oppression of the people who practiced them. While I believe that making fun of Christianity (or any other dominator/ oppressor religion) is a tactic to dismantle authoritarian discourses and prevent further oppression, I also believe that trivializing the concept of Spirit Animals is nowhere near the same. The people who hold the concept dear have already endured unspeakable levels of oppression and every time we post cute cartoons calling them our “Spirit Animal” we are further buying into the discourse that made such traditions less than, unworthy or deserving of the oppression they endured. Pretty much like hipsters wearing headdress in a fashion style, what we do is contribute to continue the misappropriation and trivialization.
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