Animal Totems

I have a special gift. It’s unusual and I’ve never met anyone else who does it. I can see people’s animal energies; Their Animal Totems. I learned I had this ability three years ago. A wonderful friend and Theta Healer (Theta Healing is a type of energy healing. I will have to write about that on another post) saw this ability and lovingly nurtured it out of me in a fantastic and useful way. If you’re familiar with chakra energy, you will understand this easily. In each chakra center is an animal energy, which is part of your being. After I read someone’s animal energies, I then use my artistic abilities to paint their very personal animal totem. It’s been a wonderful learning experience for me. It started out that I could see these animals in people’s energy fields, but I did not really understand or know what they meant or symbolized. Everyday is a new learning experience for me. There are a few totem books out there that I use as a reference and the more knowledgeable I become the more I am able to offer comprehensive information so each person can enjoy the experience of learning about the animal energies and how they may help through out your life.



Animals have always come to me easily in the physical realm. I grew up in a rural part of California and if you ask my parents I was like Noah collecting animals with the vast number of “pets” I collected over the years! Looking back a couple of incidents stick in my mind that were early sign’s that I had this ability, but did not recognize their significance.

When I was around seven or eight my best friend, “Big Boy” a wonderful German Shepherd that my dad rescued from starvation went missing. The unfortunate part of living out in the country was that our pets disappeared often. I suspect most ended up road kill or coyote fodder. Big Boy had been a member of our family for several years and we were all devastated when he went missing. Every night the entire family called out his name across the fields and orchards hoping he’d come home. I cried every night when he did not come home. After a few days and nights missing my friend, I had a dream, which I now realize was a visitation. Big Boy came to me in my dream and walked me out to the location where I could find him. When I woke up I told my dad that I knew where he was. (I never told him about the dream, because I didn’t think he’d believe me.) It was a foggy morning and there were apricot orchards all around our home. Directly across the street was where Big Boy showed me his location. I looked in the direction directly in front of the house, I pointed and said to my dad, He is WAY out at the end of the orchard. We could barely make out a shape that looked like a pile of branched on the ground. He squinted and walked to the edge of the trees, then said that’s just a bunch of sticks, it is not him. But I begged him to go out and just LOOK!! After relentless insistence, he walked out there. A few minutes later he came back and said, yes it was him. Later he and a neighbor drove out and took him to the vet to find out why he died. They never really knew why. I already new he was dead, because in my dream he took me to see his dead body. I did not cry any more because after he had visited me in my sleep I knew he was ok. Because of that experience, I do believe our beloved pets will be waiting for us in the afterlife.

As I grew older I had very close relationships with my pets. I was very shy and insecure, but my pets loved me as I was and I had great adventures with the many dogs, cats, geese, chickens, a cow, a pony and a horse that came into my life. All these animals were teaching me great lessons, but I never saw my abilities as clearly as I do now.

For years animals had attempted to show me that I needed to “pay attention” to their presence and my abilities to see them in way most can not. The most blatant attempts came from birds! When I started driving, birds decided to launch a full force ambush! It all started about a few months after I first got my drivers license. I had stayed the night at a friend’s house, but had gotten up early to drive home. It was foggy and as I approached a bridge the fog got really thick and as I was slowing down, suddenly a mamma duck and a whole bunch of her babies appeared in front of my car and I could not stop or swerve, it was too dangerous. So I ran them down. A quick glance in the rear view mirror and all I saw were bodies before they disappeared in the fog. I was devastated and I cried all the way home. After that incident the birds were relentless. For the next 4 years, I was “attacked” by birds in the most bizarre ways. I had every type of bird launch themselves at my car. (There were many of my high school friends present and I soon earned the nickname bird killer). I had sparrows, robins, crows, chickens and hundreds of tiny little unidentifiable birds sacrifice themselves in an effort to communicate to me. I’ve hit, ducks, peacocks, pheasants and on a dark windy night a very large WHITE barn owl that scared the crap out of me causing me to scream out lout and nearly pee my pants! But seriously the most bizarre moment came one day my senior year in high school. My friends Don & George and I were driving to my house and way off in the distance we could see a big bird in the road, so jokingly they said, AJ hurry up and kill it. So I put my foot on the gas, but we were pretty far away, so it was just a joke, then we got closer and closer and the bird did NOT move and suddenly there came a point of no return where I and my friends realized that the bird was not going to move and I had to SLAM on the car breaks, which caused the car to slid into a screeching halt a mere inches from the beast, which upon closer examination was a Vulture. He had been munching on road kill and we had stopped so close that at first we could not even see the bird until he lifted his head and turned and looked right into my eyes. We all sat in the car frozen as we watched this bird decide it was time to fly away, which as if in slow motion he spread his gigantic wings and slowly lifted off the ground. We sat there motionless as he faded off in the distance.


I was so dumb; of course that was an amazing moment and a message from one of my now favorite birds. I believe it was a sign that I needed to stop everything, and look at the messages from my animal friends and I will be able to make a difference in the world. Vultures are wonderful birds that clean up the filth and toxins in our world making it a clean healthy place to live. One of the things I hope my totem reading & paintings will do for people is help them shed old toxic patterns and come to realize their own strength and special gifts. This is the gift my vulture encounter gave to me.