Throughout history, people surely have struggled to understand at least two things: themselves and others. One solution is the horoscope, a concept that has been adopted by many cultures. The Chinese horoscope system, for example, is more complex than just the year of birth.
The Indians also have their own horoscope system: Vedic astrology, which according to tradition has Babylonian roots. Astrology was also practised in Mesopotamia, and the Arabs, who excelled in astronomy, drew inspiration from this to create a highly sophisticated system.
This system was used to provide people with advice when they were unable to make a decision, or to help them understand another person better based on this ‘map’.
The world of totem animals is based on a similar idea. Let me explain:
In his general theory of relativity, Einstein explains that space and time are not separate, but form a single dimension: space-time, which has a granular structure. This structure means that the planets orbiting the sun are not held in place by gravity, but rather the sun bends the space-time continuum due to its mass. The planets orbit around it as if they were balls on the edge of a funnel, and the funnel’s lowest point is its heaviest element, i.e. the sun.
It is difficult to imagine what this lattice structure means, so in my imagination I envisaged a simple representation, where this structure is depicted as a net. Thus, the planets and everything else in the universe that revolves around us, with their own weight, bend the space, this net, this veil, which we use to trap our souls as the planets were positioned when we were born.
However, it also becomes clear that this veil only roughly marks our lives at birth, and that many things depend on what we do with it, i.e. how we continue to weave it.
A totem animal provides a person with a very broad character profile. This is reinforced by the fact that the locals receive a new totem at the age of 19, which is not assigned based on their birth date, but on their emerging adult characteristics.