Our Spirit Guides
Are eager to help us
Become our best Selves!
In the Shamanic worldview, everything we are taught by patriarchy to consider inanimate is a Living Being: Stones, Fire, Mountains, Waters, Wind, Plants, Planets, Stars, to name but a few.
Spirit Guides Come In Many Forms
For ease, we will put them into these four categories:
- Animals
- Plants
- Elementals
- Divine Beings
Animal Spirit Guides
Animal Spirit Guides can be Mammals, Birds, Insects, Reptiles, Amphibians, Water Dwellers, any creature with breath and movement that we typically identify as a living Being. They can even be Mythological Beings like Dragons, Unicorns, and Griffins.
My own Animal Guides include Tiger, Honeybee, Red Tailed Hawk, Dragon, Butterfly, Owl, Elephant, Elk, Spider, Lioness, Goose, Snake, Florida Panther, Wild Turkey, Wolf, Snow Leopard and Vulture.
Plant Spirit Guides
Plant Spirit Guides can be Trees, Shrubs, Medicinal Herbs, Flowers, Grasses or others of the Plant Kingdom.
Sometimes a Plant Guide can take a human shape so it is easier for you to form a connection to it.
My own Plant Guides include: Black Walnut Tree, Weeping Willow Tree, Apple Tree, Burdock, Plantain, Wood Betony, and Yomagi.
Black Walnut tree with Golden Eagle
Elemental Spirit Guides
Elemental Spirit Guides are Water, Fire, Earth, and Air. they can be represented as the element by itself or take the form of a Being more recognizable.
A Water Elemental Spirit Guide
might be a Spring, Pond, Lake, Creek, River, Ocean, Rain, Ice, Snow, Glacier, or even a Cloud.
A Fire Elemental Spirit Guide
might present as a small Flame, a large Bonfire, a Candle, a Torch, or even as the Sun or any other Star, they are after all extremely large balls of Fire.
An Earth Elemental Spirit Guide
might be a particular type of Stone, Mineral, Crystal, a Mountain, Rocky Canyon or Gorge, Soil, or even Wood.
Air Elemental Spirit Guides
might show up as the wind rustling Tree branches or swaying tall Grasses, as a Cloud, or even as a Bird!
Sometimes an Elemental Guide can take a Human or Animal form so it is easier for you to feel a connection to it.
Grandmother Moon is a Goddess, an Earth Keeper, and an Elemental Spirit Guide. (sculpture by Amanda Klish)
My own Elemental Guides take many forms:
- Water: Water itself, Dragonfly, Water Dragon, Grandmother Moon
- Fire: Fire itself, Keeper of Fire, Grandfather Sun
- Earth: Earth itself, Horse, Mother Earth
- Air: Air itself, Apple Tree, Deer, Father Sky
Grandmother Moon, Grandfather Sun, Mother Earth, Father Sky, and Keeper of Fire are first and foremost Divine Beings but they are so intrinsically associated with their elements to me that I wanted to list them as Elementals as well to give you an idea of the breadth of form Elementals can take.
A painting of the Egyptian Goddess Isis
Divine Being Spirit Guides
Divine means:
- a Goddess or God
- of, from, or like a Goddess or God
Thus all beings are Divine! You are Divine, as am I. As are all Living Beings.
But for the purpose of understanding our Spirit Guides, I am more narrowly defining the Divine Beings as:
- Deities
- Goddesses and Gods
- Mythic Beings
- Supernaturals
- Immortals
- Our own Ancestors
- Deceased Wise Elders
- Guardians of the Land
- Star beings
- Light beings
- Angelic beings
Divine Being Spirit Guides tend to be human-form (Anthropomorphic).
Some of the most commonly known Goddesses and Gods are of the Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and Hindu pantheons, but there are Divine Beings associated with all cultures that ever existed on Earth.
And there is patriarchal judgment in which Beings are commonly defined as Goddesses or Gods versus which are just called Mythic Beings or other “lesser” names.
Our Divine Being Spirit Guides can also include historically known, deceased, Wise Elders such as Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King Jr. to name just a few well known people.
And they can be Obscure: a medicine person, holy person, or wise person unrecorded in his-story but significant among our own Guiding Spirits and in our lives.
There are also Land-linked Spirits, Guardians of particular places. Sometimes these Spirits are humans who once dwelled in that place and whose Spirits have taken up residence and guardianship there. Very significant among my own Divine Being Spirit Guides are the Three Indigenous Grandfathers and Three Indigenous Grandmothers of Braided Root Waters.
My own Primary Spirit Guides are the Earth Keepers of Turtle Island (Indigenous North America): Grandmother Moon, Grandfather Sun, Mother Earth and Father Sky.
Goddess Mother Mary and Snake Spirit Guides
Windhorse Woman and Windhorse,
two of Betti’s Ancestral Spirit Guides
My other Divine Being Spirit Guides include:
- The Egyptian Goddesses Sekhmet and Isis, and the Gods Horus, Khnum, and Anubis.
- The Hindu Goddesses Kali Ma, Kuan Yin, and Saraswati, and the God/dess Ganesh/a
- The African Yoruba Goddess Oya.
- The Christian Goddess Mother Mary.
And I also work with many of my Ancestors:
- Grandfather Malachite, an ancient, pre-patriarchal Aboriginal ancestor of Australia
- Grandfather Belladonna, a more recent Muscogee Medicine Man
- Keeper of Fire, an ancient pre-patriarchal Maori Medicine Woman of New Zealand
- Windhorse Woman, a pre-patriarchal Carpatian Ancestor
- Sythian Fox Woman, a pre-patriarchal Sythian Ancestor
- And five of my Hungarian lineage Ancestors, including my mom and her mother
And when one of my Ancestral Spirit Guides has their own Animal, Plant, or Elemental Spirit Guide, I consider that Guide among my Ancestral Spirit Guides.