Jeremy
You summed it up when you said there is no correct view and to follow your gut. Also you seem a shapeshifter to me, what you are to yourself is defined by your own labels and mine dont have to stick. The thing with me is, I have always felt a lot of things, contemplated a lot of things, about shape shifting for instance and totems. Then when I study what ancient peoples believe, like the Irish, I find out that is how they believe. I believe in racial memories. The ability to know instinctively the things your anscestors knew. I will start a thread on that later explaining it more, but that is what I believe I have and why I take to these things so easily.
As you can see from the posts here many people have taken the test and it gives them animals totally unrelated. My last post stated it is a very limited test, and at best it is useful for keeping us interested in such things. I do not weight into an esteemed shaman's view of my totem, and even less in an internet test.
Francois is a shape shifter as well and he has stated he does not do it for frivolous reasons. I do it for what he and shamans would consider frivolous all the time. So I often, as when I was a christian, fall outside of that which is accepted in spiritual traditions of any sort including shape shifters.
I have been compared to a new ager, I am not. But them, Druid, Celts, Pagans, Wiccans, Christians, and other mystics, have taken upon them christian mores. Sexuality, violence, even verbal biting, are often rejected by them. It is claimed by them that Pagans didnt do such things, and then christians came along messed everything up. Nonsense. Prechristians were violent, killed, attacked, and were as frivolous as christians were.
They are kind of like Jehovahs Witnesses who claim that there was once a kinder gentler christianity, an original, pure christianity which became corrupted. And the various pagan groups are returning to the kinder gentler prechristian religions. They forget war existed long before the advent of christos.
Then they claim that matriarchal societies (those ruled by women) did not practice war, were not violent. There is just one problem with that, we have no evidence of matriarchs. The best we have are the celts which were nearly an equality, but still men held sway overall. Women were socially nearly their equals, but not quite. True there were queens, but so were there in other patriarchs.
If there were matriarchs in the distant past, we have no sure way of knowing how they lived, and much of this return to a gentler spirituality is based on suppositions that women are less violent, therefor a matriarchy would not war. This ignores several factors, one being that women, when violent, are often far more vicious than men. Take a look at any female gang. Second, is that war is usually simply a matter of resources. If people have stuff, comparable to the stuff of other people, and there are few poor, and other economic problems, then they usually dont war. Assuming the population levels in the distant past were not as high as they are now, wich small tribes who often did not run into each other, of course there would be less war. Cant have war if there is no one to war with.
As you can see even though my spirituality is outside the norm, even in those circles that are outside the norm I am still outside the norm. Why should I trade the decisions of the GB and elders over my soul, for those of a shaman. Why should he determine (quite possibly inaccurately) what my totem is, rather than me determining for myself? If I went with others opinions I would defintely have had the wrong totem. The badger, as Beck said, feels right to my bones.
One final thing. A person might have a totem, and not be a shape shifter at all. Everyone can shape shift perhaps, but not everyone does. THough what you are talking about in your fighting is indeed a form of shape shifting.
Let's see, three wives, seven concubines, nine slave girls, and twenty-seven black nazi female body guards. I've only got forty-five women to go and my cult is complete
