A totem is any supposed entity that watches over or assists a group of people, such as a family, clan, or tribe (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary 1 and Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition).

Totems support larger groups than the individual person. In kinship and descent, if the apical ancestor of a clan is nonhuman, it is called a totem. Normally this belief is accompanied by a totemic myth.

Although the term is of Ojibwa origin, totemistic beliefs are not limited to Native American Indians. Similar totemism-like beliefs have been historically present throughout much of the world, including Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa, Australia and the Arctic polar region.

In modern times, some single individuals, not otherwise involved in the practice of a tribal religion, have chosen to adopt a personal spirit animal helper, which has special meaning to them, and refer to this as a totem. This non-traditional usage of the term is prevalent in, but not limited to, the New Age movement, and the mythopoetic men's movement.

Totemism

Totemism played an active role in the development of 19th and early 20th century theories of religion, especially for thinkers such as Émile Durkheim, who concentrated their study on primitive societies (which was an acceptable description at the time). Drawing on the identification of social group with spiritual totem in Australian Aboriginal tribes, Durkheim theorized that all human religious expression was intrinsically founded in the relationship to a group.

In his essay Le Totemisme aujourdhui (Totemism Today), Claude Lévi-Strauss shows that human cognition, which is based on analogical thought, is independent of social context. From this, he excludes mathematical thought, which operates primarily through logic. Totems are chosen arbitrarily for the sole purpose of making the physical world a comprehensive and coherent classificatory system. Lévi-Strauss argues that the use of physical analogies is not an indication of a more primitive mental capacity. It is rather, a more efficient way to cope with this particular mode of life in which abstractions are rare, and in which the physical environment is in direct friction with the society. He also holds that scientific explanation entails the discovery of an arrangement; moreover, since the science of the concrete is a classificatory system enabling individuals to classify the world in a rational fashion, it is neither more nor less a science than any other in the western world. It is important to recognise that in this text the egalitarian nature of Lévi-Strauss and his work is manifested in all its force, and more importantly Lévi-Strauss diverts the interest of anthropology towards the understanding of human cognition.