Quotes About Totem

There are thousands of names for them, in every culture—mana, psychic energy, totem, juju, chi, bioethereal power, the Force, the soul. It's an incredibly complex system of interweaving energy that influences good old Mother Earth around us, but it all boils down to a fairly simple concept: Shit happens.

The designs used by the Indians were partly geometric and were usually based on dreams of the owner. Often the owner's totem was painted on the door flap.

My armadillo had been amputated to resemble Watahantowet's totem, the tragic and mysterious armless man—for weren't the Indians wise enough to understand that everything had its own soul, its own spirit? It was Owen Meany who told me that only white men are vain enough to believe that human beings are unique because we have souls.

In America, we have three major sports - baseball, football and basketball. They get the most coverage. Then there's things like golf which mop up most of what is left. But track and field? We are way at the bottom of the totem pole.

And yet I think I now understand the impulse which drives men to shoot bears. It isn't for the pelt or the meat or the sport - or not only those things. I think they need to do it. They need to kill that great Arctic totem to give them some sense of control over the wilderness - even if that is only an illusion.

Religion and culture are like a totem pole extending far underground, under the layers of the earth, of different eras of cultures and times, going far into the core of philosophy.