American Mink – Complex Thoughts and Philosophies
Neovison vison
Keywords: Requiring rich environments to thrive, protected safe places, fresh-water wisdom, complexity, being drawn to complex concepts and philosophies, dense study over light skimming, needing seclusion to find nourishment, being desirable for what you produce; not who you are, wanting energy in reserve, willing to go to deep, painful places for wisdom, connections to telepathy and mind-to-mind spiritual contact, using hostility as a weapon, underestimated intelligence, possible clashes with European mink and otter energy.
General Description:
The American mink (also known as the Mustela vison), is a highly specialised, obligate carnivore and semi-aquatic mustelid native to Canada and the USA, but introduced and naturalised in many other countries due to its exploitation and popularity in fur-farming (where it has escaped, or been deliberately released by farmers or animal rights activists). They require habitats associated with freshwater such as streams, lakes, swamps, estuaries and marshes. They prefer dense vegetation, good understorey cover and rockpools over other environments. They den under stones, tree roots, self-excavate burrows, or take the burrows of beavers or muskrats.
American mink are nocturnal, solitary, able climbers and maintain home-ranges (males tend to keep larger ranges than the females). Their diet reflects their local prey base and they tend to take fish, amphibians, crustaceans, muskrats and other mammals. They are competitive predators and will often dominate other predators in their environments, otters will outcompete them for fish, often forcing them to take more land-based prey. They are skilful swimmers and divers. American mink frequently kill more than they can eat and store the surplus for later. Both sexes are promiscuous and don’t form pair-bonds. They are considered secure by the IUCN at the time of this writing, but are threatened by fur-farming, habitat alteration, and chlorinated hydrocarbons which are thought to render them infertile and affect reproductive rates.
Lessons and Challenges:
If you have American mink as a guide or animal energy in your life, you’ll often find that you require and prefer rich environments in which to live. This can refer to wanting financial security, or an environment that is richly stimulating intellectually, emotionally and sexually. Generally, you will find that you suffer or do quite poorly in impoverished environments. This includes landscapes that are by nature arid, or semi-arid, as well as less literal landscapes that might provide little by way of external stimulus or comfort.
You prefer protected safe places that you can control wherever possible, this means that you generally don’t like people coming over uninvited, and that you have very firm internal rules about what is a safe place, and what isn’t. Your idea of safety can be quite stringent compared to that of others, and is often anchored more to protected places, than to certain people. In addition, you will regularly seek out seclusion in order to find nourishment, wisdom or energy. Conditions are optimum when your safe place is also a space where you are guaranteed seclusion.
American mink shares freshwater wisdom for those who are looking for it. For those who want to know more about the genius loci, or energy of streams, creeks, estuaries, rockpools, swamps, marshes, and other freshwater environments can find out this wisdom through the guidance of American mink.
American mink energy is one that is drawn to complexity in life, and those who have American mink as a guide or animal energy will find themselves drawn to complex concepts and philosophies. Ideas that have more than one philosophy attached to them will be embraced. Those with American mink as an animal energy or guide will often find themselves enjoying the ability to hold multiple contrasting or polarised opinions / philosophies in their heads, and can often argue these with other people, jumping from place to place and weaving complex counter-arguments and often changing their own internal positions with further examinations into the complexity of a subject.
In continuing with the theme of enjoying complexity, those that are scholarly, who have American mink around them, will find that they much prefer dense study over lightly skimming subjects. It might be that they find several subjects (or one subject) they are most interested in and seek to devour as much material on those subjects as possible. This will often be reflected in other areas of one’s life. Instead of playing many video games a little, you might find yourself devoting a significant amount of time to one and learning all its ins and outs. This can extend to hobbies, and focusing on projects in the workplace.
American mink – being one of the world’s most desirable and most-farmed animals for its fur – draws one’s attention to the pros and cons of being desirable for what you produce and not who you are. What you produce can include output in a workplace, creative projects (art, writing, dancing and so on), what you produce in the home (cooking and so on), and on a less literal level, can indicate the facade that one produces around other people; so that people learn to desire this, instead of the self-reality that is hidden behind the facade. Discovering the pros and cons of this process is intensely personal for each person, but when American mink is in your life, it’s either something you’re still struggling to understand and/or something that is a part of your life in many ways.
American mink energy has the possibility to clash with those who carry with them the energy of European mink and otter energy. In particular, American mink people can find themselves subordinated or easily dominated by those who have otter energy. Sometimes otter can be a shadow animal energy for those with American mink energy as a strong force in their lives.
Those with American mink energy want to have a surplus of energy in reserve, and feel very out of sorts without it. Most animals that cache food for later, tend to teach us to prefer to have stored up energy so that they know they can attend a spontaneous event or devote energy to unexpected internal and external upsets. Wanting a surplus of energy in reserve can also extend to desiring savings in the bank, food in the cupboards, bills paid in advance and so on. However, the presence of American mink tends to focus this specifically down to reserves of internal energy.
Any animal that burrows into the darkness for its food, not knowing exactly what awaits it there, is one that teaches us how to go into the deep and sometimes painful places for wisdom. American mink people tend to be quite self-aware, and as a guide, American mink is unafraid to drag one hunting for nourishment and wisdom in the dark recesses of the unconscious. These journeys are often painful, unfathomable and unknowable. American mink’s additional connection to water wisdom means these journeys are often extraordinarily life-changing for those who experience a great deal of general internal unrest and anguish. These journeys can take place spontaneously throughout the day, but also commonly occur during dream-states, and can be disturbing and ‘dark.’
Esoterically, the American mink has connections to the ability of mind-to-mind spiritual contact, and telepathy. Those who have American mink energy available to them often find that they are better equipped to understand other’s motivations, where people are coming from, and to intuitively pick up on unspoken thoughts. This can be deliberately expanded upon with spiritual work, but tends to occur spontaneously anyway. Care must be taken not to use this energy invasively.
American mink people tend to use hostility as a weapon, to get people to back off, or keep their space. Those who have American mink around them as a temporary guide will find that mink actively encourages them to use hostility to get people away from them, where in the past they may have used other, more peaceable methods.
American mink energy is highly competitive, and also filled with incredible intelligence and knowing. Those with American mink energy around them often find that their intelligence has been, or is being underestimated by others. People often perceive what they want to, and don’t see the brilliance that hides within. This can be advantageous in competitive industries, but also disadvantageous if the person in question also underestimates their own intelligence as a result of what is being reflected back to them. In these cases, American mink – not one for general insecurity – will encourage confidence and faith in these abilities.
The Shadow Aspects:
Those who fear or dislike American mink often find that they’re strongly against having multiple viewpoints of any one issue, and prefer to have one opinion for each topic. If they change that viewpoint, they change it completely, and dislike holding two opposing viewpoints in their head for any length of time and seeing the merits of both. These people are often uncomfortable in cerebral debates, or debates where people often play ‘devil’s advocate’ to their own opinions. American mink comes into the lives of people who fear or dislike it, to teach them that it is not as threatening or horrible as they think to hold two or more different viewpoints in their mind.
Additionally, those who have issues with American mink, may be avoiding confronting painful truths and feelings that they hold within themselves. These people may conduct the appearance of self-work, but skate past the truly painful places within themselves. American mink often comes within their lives to harry a person into confronting these places without skating past them or looking through them. American mink always comes with the assurance that searching these places leads to profound transformation.
Communion:
American mink is often easy to access, or ‘see’ in the mind’s eye during visualisation, but rarely speaks or makes its wisdom easily known. Living in a well-sheltered, cryptic environment, has given it cryptic habits as an animal energy and guide (your mileage may vary). So, despite being commonly spread throughout its natural environments, and naturalised in many others, it is still quite rare as a animal, and hard to understand as a guide. Visualisations that focus on rockpools, rock-ledges, sheltered platforms and woodlands filled with dense understorey can be especially favourable places to start working with American mink, since these are their favourite hunting grounds.
In situations where mink shows up, s/he will often teach by getting you to observe them, or simply to be around their energy. However, it’s possible to be taken deeper into their dens or underwater with them, those these encounters can be draining but insightful. American mink energy can also be contacted or discovered during initiatory journeys, and states of mind that involve transformation of dysfunctional thought processes or stagnant states within the body-mind. American mink does not provide much by the way of ‘aftercare’ after tough lessons, and it’s recommended that you have other animals or guides you can work with for aftercare purposes.