In September, I entered a sort of highly symbolical mode of being and embodied the deer. It's a figure, the horned beast, that already manifested itself subconsciously through my drawings in my teen and sort of guided, this death and rebirth process it channels, my entry in adulthood. So earlier this year, I felt very close to the deer (and it followed me everywhere with more synchronicity I can count on my hands), thriving alongside a revival of my animistic self.

Listening to Goa trance music I could feel like an animal. That is I would dance freely, then make a move and know that it belongs to an animal, then express myself following the vibe of that precise movement, variations of it. It was ranging from animalistic stuff to more weirdly organic things.

Then I went to a music festival of said trance music and on a lot of set, I would enter astate of imagination where I was taken on a journey, and a story of symbols and archetype would form to the music. The first set I was thrown into this dragon mythos thing, and it sort of became a running theme. A long time ago I had thought that human skin was like dragon's, and I had seen this movie Excalibur where Merlin said the Dragon inhabits the land and is everywhere, or other mystical non sense, and that resonated with me deeply cause I had experienced the world dancing and I felt it was like a serpent. Especially the trees that i love very much.

Then after my experience with Changa, I started drawing again and lizards, serpents and iguanas appeared and I'm now intimately convinced they inhabit the psychedelic realm (with really stretching the nuances of what a serpent can be)(I also wrote here about how I felt Changa is close to water, i think serpents are too). I've started to be fascinated with people's mouth when they talk (just the moving lips, sound is not even necessary) and started seeing eyes close to their mouth on their cheeks. Earlier on, before this, I already had been fascinated with an imaginary being that was a feather serpent (I saw him in a pine tree's leaf I carried with me for a will thereafter) and had this sort of personal myth that he came to give the gift of speaking with everything in the world, making it alive, to the last human on Earth. There was this association of the serpent (the toad too) with the tongue.

Totem the way I experience it is when your imagination (the archetypes, the divine realm and what not) reveal that it is alive to you, and you have a dialogue with it. It just come and give a thematic link to your days and the way you live. Then you explore that symbol, the symbol is not limited to its physical forms but you can find its attribute in many things. You don't only feel it but think it at some point. So you theorize a bit sometime, but the sensoriel part is more fulfilling. The things is you have to perceive thing on the symbolical level, from there it flows easily. Also, one afternoon I sung with the frogs and toads in a garden close to where I live, great experience.

This is my experience, fairly recent, with animism and Animal totem, I hope it helps you.