What’s My Spirit Animal?

The practice of discovering and following the guidance of spirit animals stems from shared Native American culture. As their tribes lived so closely among the marvellous creatures of the wilderness, many animals became key figures and symbols for different tribes and communities.

Spirit animals took on a much more mystical and active role in American Indian culture compared to the tutelaries and familiars of other mythologies. Dreams depicting critters such as deer, oxen, horses, or cattle might be taken as the appearance of a tribesman’s spirit animal granting him a message. The message might be the start of a long journey, or a quest for self-improvement, or even an actual message to deliver to another tribe’s chieftain.

In essence, however, spirit animals helped a person mature and take on great feats, exemplifying the traits which they or their tribe needed from them the most. For a tribesman of enough merit, they might even take the moniker of an animal significant in their lives as part of their name.

Just look at such influential Native American heroes like Sitting Bull, Black Hawk and Standing Bear. Now those are formidable names – it’s only natural that only formidable people can earn them.

Finding your spirit animal can be a uniquely insightful kind of exercise to learn new aspects of your personality, especially that instinctual, primal side to which many of us usually don’t pay attention.

It’s precisely because we tend to ignore our primal side that we can end up surprised at what our animal spirit guide is. In fact, that’s the reason we’ve worked especially hard on this quiz. Think of it this way – since a spirit animal is a symbol for many of Man’s best traits over the millennia, perhaps your best traits are just waiting to be discovered. We hope you’ll learn something cool about yourself with this quiz!