A Spirit Guide is a spirit that comes forth to guide you through the trials of your life and to help you to understand the lessons that these experiences are there to teach you.  Spirit Guides often represent archetypes of behavior for facing the challenges of life and they serve as paradigms of comportment for you to emulate in times of crisis.

The number of spirit guides one has various within each person's needs in facing their challenges on their journeys. Some may be with you throughout your entire life and some may appear only once to help at one particular fork in your spiritual path.

Spirit guides can go by many names and appear in many guises and they will come to serve you as benefic helpmates and protectors in times of moral uncertainty.  

Spirit Guides may be someone from your past who owes you a sort of karmic debt. One type of spirit guide found in folklore throughout the world is that of “the grateful dead” (grateful ghost). The most common story involves a traveler who encounters a corpse of someone who never received a proper burial. The traveler then respectfully buries the corpse and the traveler is later rewarded or has their life saved by a person or animal who is actually the soul of the dead person. Considering how many of us as children would hold elaborate funerals for a dead bird we found, that might shed light on why so many people have bird spirit animals watching over them.

Some may be spirits who have had physical incarnations, or they might be spirits who have never taken corporeal form. They may be people or animals that have crossed over from this plane of existence, entities from the spirit realm or from other dimensions. Spirit guides may be, from the perspective of  quantum physics, an unrealized form of conscious energy capable of interaction with the material world. 

When appearing to you directly, Spirit Guides may come as animal, vegetable or mineral, so do not think you are going crazy if you can "hear" a tree or rock talking to you. The people who cannot hear the rocks and trees may be the ones with the problem.
 

Besides appearing to you directly, these spirit guides will often work subtly, by creating synchronicities to bring you into greater awareness, sending people into your life or arranging for you to be in the right place at the right time to witness some unrelated event that provides revelations about your own experiences. So be aware of everything going on around you, no matter how seemingly mundane, for your “lesson” may not come with a shout, but with a whisper in the wind.

Of utmost importance to note here, if you are being drawn to the calling of any animistic, Nature or Earth based spirituality of the “Old Religions” such as Paganism or the Craft, whatever incarnation your spirit guide may take, may be to serve as an emissary of the Goddess Realm. A guiding and protecting Goddess Herself will often appear to Her chosen initiate in the form of a animal spirit and She will reveal Her true self only after the initiate is ready and willingly accept and embrace Her calling and becomes commited to manifesting into an “enlightened being" themselves.

 

 The goddess has never been lost.
It is just that some of us have forgotten how to find her.    

Patricia Monaghan

It must be counseled here that although Spirit Guides may appear in many guises and in many ways, one should act not just with discernment, but also with discrimination when calling upon “guides” in times of adversity. Often those who attempt to connect with spirits through such methods as the use of Ouija boards may draw forth beguiling, but malefic entities appearing in such pretense as that of angels, saints or other so called ascended masters whose real intent is not to guide you to where you are meant to be, but seek to divert you from your true path.

AND … although you may be drawn to seeking guidance about your spirit guides from mediums, psychics or other “intuitive counselors”, you can never be sure if that person, even with the best of intent, is not being “beguiled” by some spirit themselves.

“Let the spirits guide you, but never let them take you.”

~ E.J. Stevens ~

So be wary and try to use your best judgment in deciding who you seek advice from about your spirit guides. Your true spirit guides will get through to you, even over the distracting clamor going on around you, even when it is you causing all the clamor.

 Being human we can sometimes be obstinate and often down right petulant if we do not get what we want.  Spirit guides do not come to help us get what we want, the come to help us get what we need. Sometimes, if we are too stubborn to let go of our egos, a spirit guide, like the coyote spirit animal or the Hopi trickster god Kokopelli, will often trick us into taking a path we think is going to lead us to where we want to go, only to guide us to where we need to be instead. If that happens, we should not be unhappy at being tricked. We should be grateful that some benevolent spirit has taken pity on a poor fool and guided us get to where we needed to be, despite ourselves. A malevolent spirit might have taken us to where we wanted to be only then to discover they have brought us to a place we were not meant in order to be to keep us from reaching where we need to be.

Angel Spirit Guides (A Cautionary Tale)

Many peeople have Spirit Guides that they refer to as "My Angels" and there are a plethora of web sites on the internet to visit if you are one of those people.

It must be noted though that far too many of these people are not discriminating when it comes to "welcoming" these entities, leaving themselves open to deception and possesion and extreme cation is advised when encountering any "angelic apparition".

Demons rarely manifest themselves as they truly are. Their hatred, rage, and desire to feed upon chaos are hidden behind subtle and carefully chosen disguises. Rarely would anyone follow these creatures if they dared to show themselves as they truly are. Demons will often appear as a beautiful angelic being or one of saintly bearing that will manipulate the person to unknowingly commit evil or destructive acts. 

Don’t just accept whatever entity you may appear from angels as being angelic without examining and testing these "messengers" from God. Demons have the wisdom of the ages at their disposal and can draw upon that vast knowledge. With their penchant to exploit human weaknesses and their desire to feed upon negative energy these dark entities and demonic forces should be treated with deadly seriousness for demonologists believe that once a doorway opens and demonic entities enter it often takes nothing short of exorcism to remove them.

How to Protect Yourself From Fallen Angels (Demons) 

By Whitney Hopler

Fallen angels (also known as in popular culture as demons) attack you during the spiritual warfare of good versus evil that is constantly going on in the world. They aren’t just fictional characters in novels, horror movies, and video games, believers say. Fallen angels are real spiritual beings who have dangerous motives to harm humans when they interact with us, even though they may seem benevolent in order to influence people, say Jews and Christians.

Fallen angels can hurt you in a variety of ways, from lying to you and tempting you to sin, to causing mental anguish like depression and anxiety or physical illnesses or injuries in your life, according to the Torah and the Bible. Fortunately, those religious scriptures also suggest several ways that you can protect yourself from falling prey to the evil that fallen angels can bring into your life. Here's how to protect yourself from fallen angels .....

(Read full article: "How to Protect Yourself From Fallen Angels")

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