Buffalo

Honor the Sacred

Buffalo naturally roam the prairies and live in great herds. When protecting a young buffalo, the adults form a circle surrounding the little one. The guardian buffalo hold their ground, facing outward, protecting the precious new life. Nothing is to harm the little one. Buffalo honor life as sacred.

Is there something you’re neglecting or disregarding? Have you stopped seeing the sacred in yourself, your path, your dreams, in others, in natural cycles on the earth, in the diversity of life?

Buffalo is calling you to take action in the way of the herd circling around – respecting, protecting, loving, and watching over. Buffalo Medicine honors the sacredness of life.

Art by PattyMara Gourley

Starfish

Wholeness

Starfish share the gift of re-membering wholeness. Starfish have the natural ability to regenerate their arms. Starfish don’t define themselves by the wounds or feel they are broken or lacking. Starfish actively engage in healing to regenerate, repair, and reweave the integrity of their being when injury occurs.

Do you identify yourself with injuries and old wounds? Are you approaching your life from a place of lack or brokenness? When have you felt a sense of wholeness and harmony in your body, heart, mind and spirit?

Starfish are calling you to see yourself and everybody else in their wholeness, even when there are woundings, illness, or imbalances. Starfish Medicine trusts in the ability to heal and regenerate, to reweave our personal and collective webs of life with harmony, integrity, and balance.

Art by PattyMara Gourley

Raven

Here & Now

Ravens spiral in the sky, soar on the winds, roost in tree branches, and walk about on the land. Ravens are fully present in every moment and circumstance. The Here and Now, according to Raven, is where the magic will be found.

Are you lost in the past, rehashing and regretting? Are you distracted by worries about the future? Are you overlaying emotions tied to the past onto the present time and circumstance?

Raven is calling you back to the Here and Now. See what is just as it is. Who you are. Where you are. How you are. What is actually happening. And the universe of possibilities that exists.

Raven Medicine lives fully in the present time and space, awake and aware, thriving in the aliveness, creative potentials, and magic.

Art by PattyMara Gourley

Python

Holding that Births

Pythons have the ability to constrict and suffocate. Yet Mama Python wraps her body around her eggs and remains with them until the hatchlings emerge. Python shares the medicine of holding in a way that nourishes the birthing of new life.

Where are there constrictions in your body, your heart, your life? What doesn’t have enough room to breath, move, heal, and grow?

Python is calling you to create birthing spaces. Who and what do you need surrounding you so you can rest, dream, transform, and open up into new beginnings? How can you offer spaciousness and care for others in their healing and growth?

Python Medicine steadily, patiently, and lovingly holds all that is readying to birth.

Art by PattyMara Gourley

Praying Mantis

Another Point of View

Praying Mantis hangs upside down in a lavender bush and sees everything
from a different point of view. Praying Mantis explores beyond the status quo, observing, listening, gathering information, and shifting perspectives with curiosity and ease. Praying Mantis examines diverse points of view without any judgment or fear.

Have you gotten stuck in a rut, holding on tight to a limited perspective? Do you dismiss the unfamiliar, innovative ideas without taking time to explore?

Praying Mantis is calling you to take a look from a different point of view. With curiosity. Playfully. Free of judgment. With respect.

Praying Mantis Medicine awakens the innate ability to see a wide-range of perspectives and explore diverse points of view.

Art by PattyMara Gourley

Great Horned Owl

Your Inner Authority

Great Horned Owls fly on silent wings, navigating the nighttime with great ease. Owls are skillful hunters who gather up vast fields of information with their highly attuned senses. Great Horned Owls follow their inner authority to express their genuine owlness, to stay true to themselves in a wide web of relationships, and to make choices for their unique lives.

Are you giving your power away to others as the authority? How has your inner knowing been hidden, buried and silenced?

Great Horned Owl is calling you to listen to your inner knowing, to open your wings and fly, following the perceptions, passions, curiosities, and skills that you naturally hold. Great Horned Owl Medicine honors the inner knowing as a trustworthy guide.

Art by PattyMara Gourley

Elephant

Body Love

Elephant is a teacher about body love, about embodying your own body with love, acceptance, respect, and judgment-free regard. Loving yourself opens up the possibility of truly loving any body else – another human, animals, plants, birds, bodies of water, all of humanity, our earth and the cosmos.

What judgments do you have about your own body? What false beliefs about better or less than, about being worthy of love or not, have you learned? These misunderstandings and lies cause great harm.

Elephant is calling you to embody your body, to embark on a sacred journey to become fully comfortable in your own skin. Loving your body, embodying love, is your genuine nature. Elephant Medicine awakens acceptance and love fully on the inside and then naturally shares these gifts with others.

Art by PattyMara Gourley

Coyote

Perseverance

Coyote is a powerful teacher about perseverance, about flourishing and thriving even against great odds. For many generations, humans have tried to eliminate coyotes. Yet the wild dogs have not accepted that agenda for their lives. Coyote hasn’t given up or gone to war against the humans. Coyote simply goes about being Coyote, flourishing in all kinds of climates and terrains.

Have you given in to somebody else’s agendas or judgments? Have you gotten stuck in retaliation and warring? Are you listening to the callings of your heart?

Coyotes claim their belonging and steadily pursue the passionate living of life. Coyote Medicine is uncompromising and ingenious in the quest to flourish and thrive.

Art by PattyMara Gourley

Luna Moth

Living Your Purpose

Luna Moth’s life purpose is the pure expression of her unique existence and all that she has come into her lifetime to experience and explore. She doesn’t try to fit in or be someone she’s not. There are no judgments of anybody else’s purpose in life as being better than or less.

Luna Moth’s genuine purpose is expressed in where she lives; what she does; her unique shape, color, and form; the way she moves through cycles of change; how she relates with her own and other species; and what she gives and receives in the vast web of life.

How do you describe your life purpose(s)? What have you come into this lifetime to be, experience, learn, explore, and share?

Luna Moth Medicine is the honoring of everyone’s life purpose while genuinely living yours.

Art by PattyMara Gourley

Bear

Gratitude

Gratitude, according to Bear, is a wide-open welcoming of the gifts. Gratitude is an interactive exchange, receiving as well as giving. Bear is a guide for living centered in gratitude, honoring and acknowledging the gifts of life even in the midst of challenges. Genuine gratitude, like genuine love, is unconditional.

You can untangle from patterns that distort and block gratitude. Using empty words to express thanks. Taking something that hasn’t been offered. Making judgments of better than or less.

Bear is calling you to open wide your embrace to notice and appreciate the gifts being shared in the everyday moments of everyday life. Bear Medicine lives with gratitude with every breath and every step.

Art by PattyMara Gourley

Aspen Grove

Holistic Well-Being

Aspen Grove is one organism, a whole being with distinct trees who are
interconnected with their root system. Aspen Grove is calling you to understand yourself as an integrated being with distinct and related aspects. Aspen Grove offers guidance for seeing your health – emotional, physical, spiritual – as naturally interwoven with the well-being of others in your relationships, in diverse ecosystems, and the vast web of life.

What aspects of your health are you paying attention to? What aspects have been overlooked? Are there connections, communications, and influences between you and others that are seeking more care and attention?

Aspen Grove Medicine is the remembering of the holistic nature of healing. When you’re rooted in this awareness, personal and collective well-being are enriched.

Art by PattyMara Gourley

Ant

Building from the Inside Out

Ants carry pebbles of sand, one by one, from underground and place them with great care on the earth. Intently focused on building their anthills, Ant People collaborate, communicate, and connect. Every action is guided by inner knowing. Everyone’s choices are connected with the whole.

Are you building without a guiding plan? Waiting for someone else to take the actions? Feeling lost and isolated? Disconnected from your own dreams?

Ant Medicine is purposeful, collaborative and interconnected. Ant Medicine builds from the inside out, from the inner world to the outer world, choice by choice, step by step.

Art by PattyMara Gourley

Dragonfly

Ancient Knowledge

Dragonfly carries ancient lineages through the spiraling flow of time, from the past to the now and shaping the future. Dragonfly Medicine is calling you to bring ancestral knowledges into contemporary times to remember the ways of harmony and balance.

Follow your passions and curiosity to find ancient art, stories, food, healing traditions, ceremony, music, structures for family and community, and relationships with the cosmos in diverse cultures, places, and times. Dragonfly Medicine understands ancestral knowledges are also shared by trees, rocks, animals, birds, oceans, and natural cycles of the sun, moon and earth.

Dragonfly Medicine brings ancestral knowledge into everyday life to leave behind the out of balance ways and generate healing, connection, and well-being.

Art by JoAnne Dodgson

Dung Beetle

Clearing Away

Dung Beetle engages in the sacred task of cleaning up and clearing away. Dung Beetles are purposeful and focused, artful and respectful, as they go about their sacred tasks.

Dung Beetle is calling you to clean up your inner and outer worlds, to clear away the items, emotions, beliefs, and habitual patterns that are toxic, burdening, harmful, and distracting.

Dung Beetle Medicine is regenerative, creative, and healing.

Art by JoAnne Dodgson

Elk

Council of Grandmothers

Elk Medicine calls in the Council of Grandmothers. The elders have guidance and healing to share. Ask, listen, and receive the elders’ wisdom.

The Council of Grandmothers is indicating it’s time to take your rightful place in the circle – holding your center, honoring your own and others’ unique gifts, giving and receiving the knowings gathered up through lived experiences.

Elk Medicine shares the ancient feminine knowledge that holds the blueprints for a flourishing web of life.

Art by JoAnne Dodgson

Fire

Adversary

Humans have long-standing relationships with fire. Fire offers many essential gifts with heat, light, comfort, cooking, land regeneration, and ceremony. Fire also causes injury and death.

How do you regard the challenging circumstances, people, and events in your life? With judgments? Fighting against? Powerlessness? Are you exhausted? Trying to take power over? Befriending? Learning? Aware of the gifts?

Fire Spirits offer transformative energies to regenerate a steady inner foundation, centered and connected, embodied and empowered, when facing a challenge or adversary. Fire Spirits guide the way to purposefully choose what you feed, to respectfully tend to yourself, others, and the circumstance, and see the potentials and gifts.

Art by JoAnne Dodgson

Flicker

Creativity

Flicker shares the gifts of creativity ~ making, birthing, co-creating, bringing something into existence. Creativity is filled with passion, exploration, relationship, and movement. Creativity is an organic dynamic which flows through all of creation, through all life, through every human being. Flicker Medicine engages in creativity without any judgments of better than or less.

Flicker Medicine holds a wide-open understanding of creativity. Dreaming a new dream for your life and the planet. Co-creating a meal, a relationship, a conversation. Making the flow of a day. Birthing a baby, a project, a death and completion of cycles. Crafting music, poetry, dance, pottery.

Flicker is calling you to welcome, honor, explore, enjoy, and share your natural gifts of creativity.

Art by JoAnne Dodgson

Lizard

Are You Awake?

Lizards soak in the sun, nourishing their aliveness, relaxed and aware, and responsive to their inner and outer worlds.

Lizard Medicine asks: Are you awake, staying connected with who you really are? Are your senses engaged, gathering information, interacting with the world around you? Are you remembering your power to choose what to say or do or think or feel next? Are you distracted? Numbed out? Disconnected?

Lizard Medicine offers a nourishing call to your awakening, to holding your center, to feeling your aliveness and being who you genuinely are.

Art by JoAnne Dodgson

Mountain Spirits

Seeing & Being Seen

Mountain Spirits offer guidance for creating genuine relationships by awakening the gifts of seeing and being seen. Seeing others for who they are. Allowing yourself to be seen.

Judgments and fears foster isolation and harm. Seeking others’ approval will only box you in. Requiring sameness and agreement leads to silencing, hiding, and erasure of diversity and uniqueness.

Mountains stand steadily rooted in who and what they are while weaving relationships with the vast web of life. The Spirits of the Mountains invite you to join them there ~ relating heart to heart, respect to respect, empowered being to empowered being with everyone and everything.

Art by JoAnne Dodgson

Sea Turtle

Home

Sea Turtles are home wherever they are and wherever they go. Sea Turtle Medicine is about exploring your relationship with home, beginning on the inside.

Being at home in your own skin. Feeling at home in your life, with your purposes, passions, gifts, and path.

How do you feel in the place where you live? Where on the planet do you feel most at home? Are you at home being part of humanity at this time on the earth?

Sea Turtle is calling you to embark on a healing quest to cultivate your inner home, so you can be at home, create a loving home, wherever you are and wherever you go.

Art by JoAnne Dodgson