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 In my experience, I believe we have multiple spirit guides. Some we are born with, others visit us sporadically during the course of life.

 Major guides typically accompany us throughout our lives and help us to learn major life lessons. Minor guides are temporary and help with daily concerns or issues that we struggle with.

 Of what relevance do spirit guides have on our spiritual awakening paths? Well, as implied by the name, spirit guides help our spirit, our innermost essence, to evolve in certain directions.

 For example, if one of your spirit guides is Kuan Yin, the Bodhisattva of compassion, you’ll be directed to open your heart and show more mercy to others (including yourself).

 If Freyja the Norse goddess calls to you, you’ll learn how to embrace your sexuality and the cycles of life and death – and so on.

 Depending on what inherited traumas, wounds, and contractions we individually possess, our spirit guides can help us work through those areas, releasing old blockages that keep us in small and constricted states of being.

 Until about 2015, spirit guides were just “spiritual mumbo jumbo” to me. I ignorantly assigned them to the woman-reading-a-crystal-ball-and-telling-your-future category.

 But things changed on one of the first-ever shamanic trips I took with a plant teacher (psilocybin mushrooms).

 My intention was clear: I wanted to get in contact with my spirit guide – if there even was such a thing.

 Going into the experience with a mind half open and half closed, I journeyed inwards through dancing patterns, kaleidoscopic images, and other wild scenes.

 But holding the intention to meet my spirit guide strongly in mind, I was eventually humbled. I traveled down what felt like a tunnel deep, dark into the earth. Chattering vampiric mouths, ghosts, skeletons, and other ghoulish images appeared around me. And then, finally, I reached the bottom.

 A face – half-man, half-goat – appeared on a black luminous background. He smiled at me, frowned, laughed, mused, glared, and about a thousand other facial expressions that all changed every few seconds.

 I had finally met him – Pan, the god of the wild places – my spirit guide. For what felt like ages I observed this trickster figure staring at me with endless different faces. I didn’t quite know what to do, say, or think!

 Later, in the integration phase of my shamanic journey, I realized that Pan had led me down into my inner Underworld and had initiated me onto my Shadow Work journey. One of his messages was this: we are all composed of many, many different parts and everything is not what it seems.

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 Through the next coming years, I continued to see Pan every so often in daily life and in my dreams. Not only that, but I continued to meet more spirit guides. The floodgates had been opened!

 If you’re dubious about the existence of spirit guides like I was, I encourage you to approach them with an open mind. Acknowledge the possibility that you might be wrong, that they might just exist. Allow a margin of error.

 On the other hand, if you believe in the existence of spirit guides – if you have had direct experience with them, but seek a stronger connection – you’ll find some continued helpful advice below.

 Right now, it seems to be a common trend to believe that spirit guides are primarily animals or angelic beings – but this is only one small dimension of the many possibilities that exist out there.

Fae

 A spirit guide could just as easily be a soft gust of air that makes the hairs on your arm stand up, as it could be a full-blown godly being that you meet during a shamanic journey.

 There are so many possibilities out there, and below I will break down the main “types,” “species” or forms of spirit guides which you might encounter on your path.

 Many spirit guides manifest themselves as half-man/woman and half animal. Examples include centaurs, fauns, harpies, mermaids, sphinxes, fairies, and minotaurs.

 Many deities also appear as spirit guides, for instance, Anubis (jackal-headed Egyptian god), Ganesha (elephant-headed Indian god), Ra (falcon head, human body), etc.

 As I mentioned above, the first ever spirit guide that I personally made contact with was Pan, a half-man half-goat entity, who “revealed” to me my own personal shadow self and the need for me to embark on a journey of healing my core wounds.

 Animals are well-known spirit guides and have gained a lot of popularity over the past few years, perhaps thanks to their accessibility in our everyday lives.

 Some ancient cultures, such as the indigenous Americans and Chinese, held animals as sacred representations of their tribes or lineages.

 Some ancient cultures, such as the indigenous Americans and Chinese, held animals as sacred representations of their tribes or lineages.

 These days, spirit animals come to represent and reflect a person’s own inner yearnings, passions, instincts, and needs, moving from group use to more personal and individual use in this day and age.

 Light beings are said to help people move through traumatic areas of life such as death, loss, and grief. Light beings are called such because of their tendency to appear bright, glowing, or full of light.

 Ancestral guides are entities that have some kind of blood connection to us and our lineage. An ancestral guide could be a recently deceased member of your family (mother, father, aunt, grandfather), or a long-dead relative that you have perhaps never met in your lifetime.

 When I have done shamanic journeying in the past, I have connected with what I consider my ancestors. To me, they appeared as shadowy beings that felt distinctly familiar. They taught me that although I felt alone and isolated in my birth family, I am part of something vastly larger.

 Shamans believe that the world and everything in it is composed of vibrant, living energy. This includes plants.

 Ayahuasca – a psychoactive brew that is made out of a vine commonly found in Peru – is one of the most well-known ways of getting in touch with the spirits of nature.

 Interestingly the Banisteriopsis Caapi (Ayahuasca) vine is known as “the vine of the souls,” and it is common for all those taking it to feel guided by the plant into the realms of inner and outer existence.

 The same profound capacity can be said for many other psychoactive (and non-psychoactive plants) such as certain species of cacti like San Pedro (mescalin being the psychoactive compound), certain Acacia species (DMT), and so on.

 Plants can either be symbolic, like in pagan traditions that associate certain qualities with certain plants, or experiential, where ingesting the plant stimulates mental, physical, and emotional expansion.