What is "totemic"

Usage examples of "totemic".

He used to believe in all that nonsensewell, maybe not Little People, since that was an Osage thing and not Cherokee, but in spirits, and totemic animals, vision-quests, and all the rest of it.

On receiving the bone, the man at once smashes it, hastily buries it in a small pit beside the totemic emblem of the departed, and closes the opening with a large flat stone, signifying thereby that the season of mourning is over and that the dead man or woman has been gathered to his or her totem.

This conclusion is suggested first of all by the practice of the Arunta and other Central Australian tribes, who observe very similar ceremonies with the avowed intention of thereby multiplying the totemic animals and plants in order that they may be eaten by the tribe, though not by the particular clan which has these animals or plants for its totem.

Totemic spirits traveled too, but as long as members of the clan had their amulets, their totems could track them from the cave and come when they were needed.

Some felt it must have been a combination of several totemic essences, perhaps the entire male population, but most opinions fell into one of two camps, divided almost entirely along the lines of age.

And so the Aborigines had made them places of totemic and religious significance, spinning Dreamtime stories from cracks and folds until the rocks became a kind of mythic cinema, frozen in geological time.

Interspersed amid these totemic items were stray Q-tips and cotton balls, lip liners, Max Factor eye makeup, mascara, blush, and everything else I used in a losing battle to make myself beautiful.