Barbelith Underground > Temple > Power animals: What if someone said your power animal is a toad? A scorpion?

MC: that is sooo CUTE!! And it's "vulnerable" too! Awwwwwww!!!!!

On toads: Here's a Huron myth.

I'm sure I've read a toad v. frog myth, but might be conflating that with a Zulu story about Lizard and Chameleon. OOoooooo! this is it! It's in the moon!

Toad does a lot better in dry situations than Frog. Toads change shape, from water to land. They have beautiful eyes, and are all *very good* at camouflage. They ooze poison when threatened, and if they feel frightened, they can produce a copious quantity of (rather clean, it must be said) urine.

(You're sure it's a toad and not a Horned Toad, I guess. They're actually desert-dwelling lizards that can squirt blood out of their tear ducts.)

Here's a Lao folk tale about Toad.

He's apparently not very well liked by the Inuit. However, say the Fali of Sudan, that that rules out half of humanity.
"...'humanity is divided into two clans, those of the tortoise and the toad (the world arose originally from two eggs, one tortoise and one a toad's, which turned in opposite directions while their insides went round the opposite way. From these two eggs stemmed the first division of the universe). These two clans represent 'the wild earth' and 'the Human earth'."

I'm not sure about this, but this children's book says Toad was a bit of a trickster for the Maya - it's a tortoise vs. hare story, only with Toad in the tortoise spot, beating Deer by having well-placed friends (rather than simply plodding onward).

The Andaman Islanders made Toad dance when he sucked up all the water. He danced so hard, the water flew out of his mouth, ending the drought. According to that page, Toad is halfway between Snake and Frog.

There's a Toad Clan in the Creek Nation - that might be a profitable source of totem information. Ditto (and I'm embarrassed I didn't know this) the Seminole Nation. And, apparently the Zuni.

This Lakota story has a toad changeling in it.

This page has lots of toads and frogs, from the Far East especially. This passage stands out:
The toad, like the frog, is also associated with fertility which can be considered an aspect of prosperity.

Sherwin Nuland in The Mysteries Within (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000) says, in his chapter on the uterus, that that organ was actually thought to leap about inside the woman's body like a toad. The unstable psychological state that used to be called hysteria was once attributed to the imaginary activity of the toad inside the woman [230].

The fact that the organ is susceptible to warts only confirmed its toad-like nature. Significantly, the uterus is the only organ which in votive offerings is represented by an animal rather than a simplified form of the actual shape. [Votive offerings are small representations of a part of the body left, either before or after a healing, at a place of worship.]

Nuland says that the toad was considered a Seelentier (German for soul animal) and the relation between the mythic animal and the reproductive organ is a tautological or circular one. One contemporary votive toad-uterus offering appears with a cross etched on its back as if to indicate its essential spiritual nature.

There are pictures of some of these votives here.

Toads are freaky.