Do you see dragonflies a lot?

It's okay if you don't.

We think of totems as things like bears wolves eagles lions and large scary beings who were in competition with early humans. But little magical creatures like hummingbirds butterflies and squirrels can also carry psychic power.

The Dragonfly is a totem animal. Mine, in fact, dear reader. It says to me, the material world is an illusion. The great Hindu teachers call it Maya. If the material world is something along the lines of a lucid dream, then with practice one can learn to deliberately create it the way one wants it to be. I appreciate that dragonflies are carnivorous, that they shimmer in sunlight, that they metamorphose, that they are older than the dinosaurs, that when they are newborn they have gills and breathe underwater. What could be more dreamlike than that.

A dragonfly will appear to me when I need to be reminded that my experience is not just happening to me, without my volition, but that I am attracting experiences that make my beliefs true for me. And my belief is nothing more than a thought I continue to think. And I can think whatever I please. So take that, reality.

Inserting the truth of the Dragonfly is a great thing to do when you get one of those bummer cards like the Five of Cups or the Five of Pentacles. The Aquarian deck I use doesn't have a card with a dragonfly on it so we'll just do it for ourselves.

Photo by Karen McDonald.