Other Animal Influences

These animals are the other ones that have been present in my life. They aren't theriotypes, but other animals that have signifigant meaning in my life.

Snake: Snake is my totem animal and one I will occasionally shift into. Snakes have always been a lifelong love, so it makes sense for one to be my totem, eh? Anyway, Snake usually shifts through when I may be angry or feel threatened. This totemic shift, so to say, usually results in me hissing and rising as a threatened snake would. Sometimes I may even get fully into a snake feeling. Snake occasionally combined with my bighorn sheep theriotype when I was younger, resulting in a combination of both snake and sheep: a snake-ram, as I called it. It had the head of a snake, body of a bighorn sheep, a snake tail and the snake head had the ram horns. A very intimidating sight if it were to be a true theriotype. I shifted into Snake a lot (or rather, Snake shifted into me) when I was younger. This was probably just Snake trying to help me deal with shifts when I got older. Nowadays, Snake doesn’t shift into me as much, but is still always there.

Raptor: Deinonychus, to be specific. Raptor has influenced me because I was one in a past life. Although I lack my memories of any of my past lives, I know what my body was like. I was brown and I had the general raptor body with the big, up-raised claw on the feet. My tail is long and my height is about three feet or so. We did not have feathers and I don’t think many other raptors did (like velicoraptor) did; fossil evidence doesn’t have much support for that. I came to the conclusion that I was a raptor in a past life because of my obsession with dinosaurs (my favorites are raptors, pterosaurs, the t-rex and others with names I can’t spell) and how I always “shifted” (or rather, lapsed into my raptor persona from my past life) into my raptor self. Now, this wasn’t influenced from movies like Jurassic Park, although I did like the movie, and generally anything with dinos in it. It was just something that naturally happened. Even when I was older, I was raptor. When my stepdad was angry at me once, he asked me, “Just who do you think you are?” And to which I replied, “A raptor!” So after a long search, I finally decided I was a raptor in a past life. With that decision, it wasn’t like it felt wrong…it felt incredibly right.

Zebra: Zebra is an animal that I recently figured out I had been. I was always horse-like and had an attraction to horses. I had always contemplated why I acted like a horse and loved them so. When I acted like a horse, I acted just like a horse, but I had other noises with me that weren’t exactly the average horse. So after a day of work at my first job, and I recalled a noise I had made, it hit me: I was a zebra! I don’t know much of my past life as zebra, but it is a strong influence with me. It explains my love for the African plains and love for horses and zebras. Although it is harder than my other animal influences to explain, I am certain that I had once been a zebra.

Black Eagle (formerly Hawk): So I've changed this from hawk...why is that? I know that the predatory bird feelings I get are not just cameo shifts or something else like that. It is a past life, no questions asked. I always thought I was a hawk because that was the word that best fit me. But when I started to do some research, trying to find a bird that looks like I did, I found that there are no black-colored hawks. This search led me to the black eagle. The black eagle is a bird that I connect with when I see it. When I look at it, I see my predatory bird self in it. It looks almost just how I see my past life bird self. So, as of right now, I was a black eagle, NOT a hawk like I once thought. But for whatever purpose, I will keep what I did have up, so I don't have retype anything.

What influences has hawk had over me? For a while, I have wondered what hawk is to me. It is not a theriotype, totem or some other random thing. It is truly there, but in what way I am unsure. I think the most likely option is a past life as a hawk. Of course, from early on I had acted like a hawk; that is, with the “flying”, bird screeches, faux hunting and whatnot. Today, though, the hawk influence isn’t as strong, but I still get those birdly urges and feelings, such as a hawk cry or the feeling that I need to shake my wings (as in my arms). I guess you could partially call this the work of a theriotype, but it just hasn’t had the true feeling of one. It could be a past life influence. I have seen this bird part of me, I would be an all black hawk. But it stands that the hawk has had a strong influence over me, although I don’t know what it is being influenced by. Past life seems to be one, but I am not sure. It may seem like past lives are reasons for a lot of my animal influences, but those things do happen, as strange as it seems. Or hawk could just be a case of cameo shifts and nothing more.

Wolf: Yes, wolf, as in a separate one from my theriotype. This wolf is one I was in a past life, and it possibly my last life before my current one. What makes this different from my wolf theriotype is that I was this wolf in a past life, and it does not influence my current life (that is what my wolf theriotype is for). I was a small wolf with a reddish pelt, very similar to a red wolf, but I always tend to think that I was a gray wolf, judging by my muzzle size and face build. My eyes are a dull yellow. I do not have memories of my past life, as usual, but there is one dream that I am beginning to attribute just may have been a memory…to a point. The thing about this dream is that the place in my dream was in current time, but the wolf I was wasn’t currently me. So I think it was partially memory, but because it was dream, it was throwing in some current time attributes in there. The dream/memory is very scary, and involves me running from hunters who are trying to kill me. The following is what it was like.

The dream takes place at night and begins outside my house. The general area is wooded and sparsely populated. There was some snow on the ground, I believe, but not much to make a difference. I was a wolf (duh). What kind I was, I’m not sure. I believe I was the general version of the gray wolf. It looked a bit like a red wolf, but the body is too big and furry for a red, so I believe it was a gray. I am at the beginning of my driveway. It is on a hill, so I can kind of hide on it. I look out beyond my garage and I see a band of humans with torches and guns. I can hear them talking, but I can’t remember what they were saying. But I knew that they were hunting wolf…me. The humans move to the top of the hill across from my driveway. I am scared now, so I take off across the small road and bolt into the woods. At that time, the humans see me and begin to chase me (like that wasn’t obvious). I can hear them yelling and at that time, a great fear and anxiousness overcomes me. I can feel the hunters on my tail now. I rush into a bush as one of them gets too close. I can see/ feel them getting into the bush and looking around for me. Their hands come by and almost grab me. I can remember them grabbing my leg. I yelp and manage to get free, but there is a victim. There is another wolf, a fellow gray, that is snagged by the humans. He is dragged out from the bushes. I think to myself that he sacrificed himself to save me, because he practically got in the way of the humans so that I could escape. The dream then flashes to my wolf brethren. He is standing on a platform with a rope around his neck. He looks solemn and impassive, and he doesn’t move. It is like he knows what is going to happen or he is drugged. Either way, he isn’t moving much. I quickly realize that the wolf who gave his life up for me is going to be hanged. The platform then drops, and my brother wolf struggles and struggles until death falls upon him. I’m glad I didn’t have to see that in my dream…then the dream lapses back to me. I am still running, trying to escape. Eventually, I do get away, but I have one of the most terrifying experiences locked into my mind forever. The dream ends with me coming back across the road from the woods to my house.

So the dream begins with the current time, but as I go into the woods, the whole time seems to change and I am somewhere else and in the past. I am no longer in the woods around my home. Perhaps it is kind of symbolic. I am wolf and as I go into the woods, time goes back and I am reliving a scene from my past. I know the woods around my home very well, and I know that the woods in the dream certainly weren’t the woods in real life. So I tag that dream as a memory of who I was in my past life as wolf.

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