The 'Animal Powers' of Your Soul Medicine Shape Perception, Character and Destiny

Soul Medicine as Power

In the previous two podcasts I’ve done for Elderfire, one of the main topics has revolved around soul medicine. I speak about soul medicine as a power, as a force held by the soul that is central to the reason souls come to earth in the first place.

What we experience as purpose, meaning, calling, and the craft we do in the world all have a deep resonance with soul medicine. Soul medicine is that essential aspect of self that allows us to transmit something of true inherent value to others.

I have spoken about soul medicine as a natural force. One metaphor I often draw on is likening it to heat from the sun, penetrating soil. Another is to think of soul medicine as soil itself.

Which metaphor applies depends on the person.

Some people carry a soul medicine that is more catalytic, young, and fiery. Others carry a soul medicine that is more soil-like: nourishing, holding, containing. Everything in between exists. The whole spectrum of nature is available to us in this regard.

These are only examples, meant to give a sense of how soul medicine is a dynamic energy that affects other energies.

How Soul Medicine Interacts

Just as the heat of the sun affects water differently than it affects soil, and differently again than it affects a human body or fungi, soul medicine interacts with what it encounters in unique ways.

These are the kinds of interactions that occur at the level of soul medicine.

Up to this point, I’ve tended to describe soul medicine as primarily projective. As something that does. Something that gives. Something that acts.

And this is only half the truth.

The Receptive Aspect of Soul Medicine

There is also an inherently receptive aspect to soul medicine.

Understanding this receptive aspect is essential for developing a more well-rounded sense of how soul medicine shows up in lived experience, and how it feeds into the unfolding of purpose, meaning, calling, and destiny.

It’s easy to imagine destiny as something far off. Something we move toward. Something we either arrive at or fail to reach. A pass–fail, on–off event.

But that isn’t what I’m talking about here.

If destiny were simply something that eventually happens no matter what, then there would be no evolutionary unfolding. No moment-to-moment arising. Everything would already be locked in place.

That would be a fatalistic worldview.

And if that were true, why come here at all for the learning process that characterizes the soul’s journey through life?

Responsiveness as Meaning-Making

What we actually have is something else entirely.

The soul, and the medicine it carries, is continuously responding and adapting to the unfolding of life. This responsiveness is flavored by the soul’s particular style, abilities, and power.

It is through this responsiveness that meaning is made.

And meaning is made in a way that is unique to each soul’s medicine.

This is where animal powers come in.

Animal Powers and Soul Medicine

Animals are born with inherent abilities. Each animal is gifted with particular powers.

The eagle has vision. It flies high, sees the broader picture, and can narrow in on fine details. This power fundamentally shapes how it perceives reality and how it responds to what unfolds.

This is very different from the dolphin.

The dolphin lives in water. It is social. It orients differently. It apprehends reality through a different set of perceptual and relational capacities.

These are animal powers.

And when animals respond to life, they do so through these powers.

Heaven, Earth, and the Nature of Power

In English, we tend to separate heaven and earth conceptually. But in many ancient traditions, these worlds are not separate at all. They bleed into one another. They diffuse into each other. They are expressions of each other.

The physical world was often understood as a materialized expression of an invisible world that precedes it.

What exists here exists there.

When I use the term “the heavens,” I am using it as shorthand for the invisible realms that constitute the rest of reality. The spiritual worlds. The unseen dimensions.

All of these worlds are nature worlds.

And the powers we see in animals here are reflections of powers that exist in those invisible realms as well.

Soul Medicine as Adaptive Power

At the level of the soul, we are given a set of abilities and perceptive capacities.

Soul medicine is the adaptive power that allows us to respond to the unfolding of life.

This responsiveness is how destiny unfolds.

It happens moment to moment.

Through adaptation.
Through response.
Through meaning-making.

We respond with a particular flavor.
A particular style.
A particular archetypal pattern.

When Soul Medicine Comes Forth

For many people, soul medicine doesn’t come online most clearly in the small events of daily life, though it can.

It becomes most visible at the crossroads.

The accidents.
The losses.
The tragedies.
The big desires that meet resistance.
The moments that force us toward the soul.

In these moments, soul medicine brings its adaptive, responsive power online. It processes experience in a particular way, just as the ego processes through the senses.

From there, soul medicine moves back into its projective quality.

It gives.
It acts.
It transmits.

Character, Destiny, and Unfolding

Over time, this pattern of responsiveness forms a kind of core character.

And that core character leads toward a destiny that can look predetermined.

But it isn’t entirely fixed.

There is space for creative, evolutionary unfolding.

Some events may be highly probable. Way markers on the soul’s path.

But much remains open.

And when something unexpected knocks us off course, the soul medicine often realigns us. What occurs becomes a kind of happy accident. Something new emerges.

Ancestral Memory of Animal Power

Indigenous and tribal cultures have understood this for eons.

For much of human history, animals were our primary mirrors.

Entire lineages were shaped by particular animal powers. Bear people. Wolf people. Bird people. Horse people.

These powers existed in the natural world and in the invisible worlds alike.

They were understood as essential navigational capacities.

Bringing It Together

Soul medicine is both projective and receptive.

It acts.
And it receives.

It gives.
And it processes.

We craft something.
And we are shaped in return.

Through this dynamic, destiny unfolds not as a distant endpoint, but as a lived, responsive process.

I hope this is helpful.