THE VULTURE AS TOTEM
(click image)
The Golden Purifier
(CATHARTES AURA)
Here are somethings for you.... enjoy the medicine!
from:
http://sped2work.tripod.com/totem.htmlPRESENTED BY:
the Wanderling
The vulture is a very powerful totem. Its cycle of power is year-round. If you have a Vulture as a spirit guide or totem, it can show you how to use energy powerfully and efficiently. It glides effortlessly on the winds, soaring to extraordinary heights while using little or no energy. The Vulture skillfully employs already existing air currents against the pull of gravity, symbolizing the distribution of energy so that gravity (or cares) do not weigh it (you) down. In the process the vulture does not use its own energy, but the energies of the Earth instead, the energies of the Earth --- or the Natural Order of Things --- being ONE of the mainstay sources in The Power of the Shaman. A very valuable lesson.
"One day, when I was around ten years old or so, I went for a hike deep into the desert unescorted. When my Uncle discovered I was gone he went looking for me. During my walk I happened across the carcass of a dead rabbit and was fascinated by it for some reason. When my Uncle found me after cresting a small hill he saw me squatted down with the carcass. Joining me quite comfortably in a circle with the rabbit were three what were, because of this incident, to eventually become my Totem Animal --- VULTURES. From what he was able to discern from his initial vantage point I was neither afraid of them nor were they remotely afraid of me. As well, and he swore this to be true --- although I have absolutely no recollection of it and construe it as a possible total misinterpretation of facts --- that the vultures and I were sharing meat from the carcass between us.
"When my Uncle told his estranged wife about the incident she suddenly was very interested in me. You see, for some reason, in today's neo-Shaman environment there has been a stress placed on finding one's "power animal." The contemporary neo-Shaman workshops have a tendency to blind people to the fact that real animals are also spirit and power, and every bit as important, or even more so, than than a spirit guide that appears in some vision. His estranged wife, a Midewiwin Medicine Woman, knew that. In workshops, the totem-animal-visions of participants are never frogs, gophers or garden slugs, they are always wolves, bears, eagles, and falcons. If it were only so." [1]
The scientific name for the Turkey Vulture is CATHARTES AURA which means GOLDEN PURIFIER because as it goes about it's lifetime business it purifies the landscape and environment in it's own natural way, ensuring the continued health and life of other living things. The Vulture is a promise that all hardship was temporary and necessary for a higher purpose. Once a Vulture enters your life as a totem or guide, it will remain with you for life.
Vultures live and work together, both in cooperation and friendliness. They communicate with friends and neighbors when they find something to eat. They let the others know where the food is. And when there is a big feast they communicate with neighboring flocks in distant roosts. Also, Turkey Vultures that range within California Condor habitat areas, when they find food they will go to the Condors and lead them to it. One roost was observed when they had a dead cow in their neighborhood. They somehow contacted a roost of 100 vultures about 30 miles away to come join them. Several days later, before they finished their feast, two more cows died. Within a day the vultures had contacted another roost to join them. At night all the birds visited together in the same or neighboring trees. There were now three different roosts living together. When the cows had been cleaned up the several visiting roosts went home. (source)
In Greek mythology, the Vulture is the descendant of the Griffin. It was a very Buddhist-like, Zen-like symbol of the non-dual oneness of heaven and earth, spirit and matter, good and evil, guardian and avenger. The Vulture is the avenger of nature spirits. Ancient Assyrians believed the Vulture was, like Nagarjuna's middle way, Sunyata, the encompassing overall non-separated union between the day and night. Ironically, regardless of the less than good image the vulture is typically granted by most, think about it:
Unlike the needs of nearly all other living creatures, vultures do not kill.
Their prey either dies or something else kills it.
Truly a most noble attribute for any living entity, flora or fauna.
Herodorus Ponticus relates that great men of legend were always very joyful when a vulture appeared upon any action. For it is a creature the least hurtful of any, pernicious neither to corn, fruit-tree, nor cattle; it preys only upon carrion, and never kills or hurts any living thing; and as for birds, it touches not them, though they are dead, as being of its own species, whereas eagles, owls, and hawks mangle and kill their own fellow-creatures. That very same overall innate nature imbeded in the actions and life of the vulture, never killing or hurting a living thing or its own fellow creatures, is reflected for the most part, in and by the the actions and life of the person that truly has the vulture as a totem animal.