Spirit Lodge - Totem Animals - Page 130

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Totem Animals

Page 130

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Bear Medicine	Birth Totems	Coyote Medicine	Dragon Ranks	Dragonfly Medicine	Eagle Medicine	Four Animal Helpers	Grey Wolf Medicine	Hawk
Heron Medicine	Horse	Magpie	Raccoon	Salmon Medicine	Spider Medicine	Swan Medicine	Thunder Being Medicine	Totem Loss Disc

PRAYING MANTIS
By SisterCyber

www.sayahda.com/cyc3.html

FThe praying mantis has a great deal of myth and lore associated with it. Its name comes from the
manner in which they hold up the forepart of the body, with its enormous front legs, as though in
an attitude of prayer.

Martial art forms in China have adopted specific movements of the mantis into their practices.
These movements help the student reconnect with their personal chi or energy. The discovery of
how energy moves through our body, what it is projecting and where energy blocks are located
can be a great aid in healing ourselves. Those with this totem would benefit from prayer,
meditation and martial arts.

These amazing creatures serve the earth and her people in various ways. They consume large
amounts of insects helping to maintain ecological balance. Excellent hunters with an efficient
attack strategy the praying mantis always knows the right moment for attack and for retreat.
Time in the linear sense is irrelevant to the mantis. They move according to their inner instincts
and remind us to do the same. Moving effortlessly between worlds the mantis is associated with
time travel.

They help us break out of linear time and move according to our personal bio rhythms.
The praying mantis can remain motionless for an indefinite period. This ability helps them blend
with their environment becoming invisible to predators. They hold the secrets of materialization
and de-materialization and awaken this ability in people who hold this medicine. Perception
through stillness is part of its teaching.

Patient, perceptive and focused this little totem holds a powerful message. When it appears in
your life it is asking you to direct your energy, your thoughts or your actions in a different way.
Asking the following questions can give you the insight necessary to motivate appropriate
changes. Have I lost patience with a particular situation? Have I been too patient, and if so, has
this had a detrimental effect on me? Is my perception correct regarding a situation? Have I
become narrow minded? Am I focused on my objective?

2CrowWoman:
from an interview with Joanne Elizabeth Lauck

“The praying mantis is the oldest symbol of God, the African Bushman’s primary representative
of God on Earth. The Bushmen, (who were the first race of people on Earth), lived in intimate
connection with the Earth and the animals. Bushman champion Laurens van der Post was
intrigued that although the Bushmen were surrounded with all kinds of animals, they chose an
insect to represent God. Why was that? In search of that answer I re-introduce van der Post’s
idea that with us on an archetypal level is a ‘wilderness self’, a core identity and a foundation of
spirit with an image of God as an insect who represents a primal creative pattern. That
wilderness self makes itself known even today in our alienated world. It inexplicably directs the
physical praying mantis to make synchronistic appearances, particularly when one is studying
the Bushman. It happened to me. When I was reading A Mantis Carol by Laurens van der Post in
1984, (a true story about the praying mantis and a Bushman) I walked out of my office and there
on the door was a praying mantis. I hadn’t seen one for 20 years. Then I started to collect
similar stories. Joseph Campbell had a similar experience. He was in New York in his hi-rise
apartment and he was writing about the Bushmen, when all of a sudden he had an impulse to
look out of the window, and right there was a praying mantis. The Bushmen call them ‘the voice
of the infinite in the small’, which is where the title of my book comes from. I used it because it
really is about coming home to our wilderness self and the intuitive creative pattern inside us
which could help us navigate the uncertain-ties of the future. With this core identity restored,
insects will naturally be included in our circle of community and recognized as spiritual beings.”

In the Xhosa (a South Africa bantu people who have San/Bushman blood in their ancestry)
tradition the Mantis is also seen as a sacred creature. I was once told by a Xhosa woman that
mantis was "the one who teaches."