Welcome to the Street Prophets Coffee Hour cleverly hidden at the intersection of religion, art, science, food, and politics. This is an open thread where we can share our thoughts and comments about the day.Animism is a religious view that sees souls in all things. These souls provide animism—life—in all things. For animists, all things are alive and have souls. It is not just animate beings such as plants and animals which have souls, but also inanimate features--including specific geological features, such as hills, mountains, rock formations, springs, rivers and lakes, as well as weather phenomena such as clouds and lightning, and astronomical elements including the stars, moon, and sun. This means that humans can communicate with them. More importantly, it also means that these other living things can talk to humans. Scholars looking at the origins of religion often view animism as one of the most ancient forms of religious expression.
It should be noted that animism per se is not a religion, but rather it is a fundamental feature of many religious traditions. In addition, while animism itself does not involve the belief in nor the worship of gods, it is also found in god-centered religious traditions. In his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Harari writes:
“Animism is not a specific religion. It is a generic name for thousands of very different religions, cults, and beliefs. What makes all of them ‘animist’ is this common approach to the world and to man’s place in it.”
In an article in Free Inquiry, Lawrence Wood puts it this way writes:
“Animism is not, as some have purported, a type of religion in itself. Rather, it is a belief similar to shamanism, or to polytheism that is found in several religions such as Shinto, Serer, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Pantheism, paganism, and the Inuit religions.”
Animism is, of course, based on the concept of the soul, the spiritual essence of all living things. In his 1871 book Primitive Culture, Sir Edward Burnett Tyler, the founder of anthropology, viewed the concept of the soul emerging as a way of explaining dreams, sleep, trances, illness, and death. According to Tyler, the soul was the spiritual entity which people remembered from their dreams and trances. It was Tyler who gave the name animism to the belief in souls.
In his textbook Social Anthropology, Paul Bohannan defines animism this way:
“Animism, to put it into its simplest terms, is the attribution of soul or spirit comparable to the soul or spirit of man, to nonhuman animals, to plants, and even to things and abstract concepts.”
In his book The Culture of the Sacred: Exploring the Anthropology of Religion, Michael Angrosino writes:
“It reflects the belief, prevalent in nonliterate religious traditions, that all living things have souls. Moreover, it is believed that all souls share a common spiritual essence, such that all living things—people, animals, and plants—are linked at the spiritual level.”
In general, an animistic worldview tends to be egalitarian, that is, all living things—plants, animals, rivers, mountains, rocks, etc.—are seen as equal to each other. In animistic cultures, people will talk about the animal people, the plant people, the star people, and so on. In the egalitarian worldview of hunting and gathering people, the non-human people are not viewed as gods or higher powers, but as people with different gifts. Each of these people are viewed as having different powers, both spiritual and physical. Since humans are a part of the natural world, humans are not seen as being either superior or subordinate to other aspects of nature. Yuval Harari explains:
“Just as there is no barrier between humans and other beings, neither is there a strict hierarchy. Non-human entities do not exist merely to provide for the needs of man. Nor are they all-powerful gods who run the world as they wish. The world does not revolve around humans or around any other particular group of beings.”
Animism is highly individualistic: each individual talks directly to the spirit world. And, more importantly, the spirit world talks directly to each individual. In animistic traditions, spirituality focuses on having a conversation with the spirit world. The idea of persuading other people to accept a particular doctrine or belief is totally alien to animism. An individual’s relationship with a guardian spirit is personal, and, in some cases, private. In his book Culture as Given, Culture as Choice, Dirk Van Der Elst puts it this way:
“In hunting-and-gathering lifeways, religion is usually a personal affair between you and whatever manifestations of the supernatural your culture recognizes. Any insight of status you gain from your supernatural connection is not usually binding on others.”
In animistic traditions, dreams are the vehicle through which the souls of other living things—the animal people, the plant people, the water people, and so on—communicate with humans. In some traditions it is felt that during sleep one of the individual’s souls can leave the body and freely interact with the souls of others. In his book Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, David Wilson writes:
“According to animism, spiritual belief originated from the experience of dreaming, in which a phantom version of oneself appears capable of leaving the body and traveling long distances. Sleep, fainting, madness, and death all lead to the notion of a world of spirits who enter and leave human bodies at will.”
One of the features that is found in many animistic traditions is the concept of the guardian or tutelary spirit which can help and/or teach individuals throughout their lives. In some animistic societies, it is felt that a guardian spirit is required in order to have any success in life. A man without a guardian spirit would be a poor hunter and fisherman; he would have no luck in gambling; he would be socially inept and unable to attract and keep a wife. A woman without a guardian spirit would be unable to find wild foods; she would be unable to process foods and prepare good meals; she would be unsuccessful in processing foods for storage; and she would be unlucky in gambling.
Shamanism is closely associated with animism and in many shamanistic traditions, the shamans receive their special abilities from guardian spirits. For example, among the Kapauku in West New Guinea, the power that a shaman possesses comes from a guardian spirit and the shaman will go into a trance to make contact with this guardian spirit.
Writing in the nineteenth century, Sir Edward Burnett Tyler envisioned the origins of religion through a cultural evolutionary model in which animism was the first form of religion which then evolved into polytheism and then into monotheism. In looking at the origins of religion today, it seems that animism and magic were among the earliest religious concepts and were probably the predominant underlying basis of the religions of hunting, fishing, and gathering peoples.
The hierarchical worldview that accompanies the concept of gods and higher powers, seems to have come about with an agricultural way of life in which humans are seen as dominant over nature. As human societies became hierarchical with the development of elites, social classes, and wealth distinctions, religion also evolved from the egalitarian worldview of animism to the hierarchical belief in gods who had control over nature and humans. Where animistic traditions saw the sun, the moon, and the stars as living things with souls, in the hierarchical religions these became gods. In a similar fashion, in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the spirits associated with geological features evolved into local gods. While the animistic traditions viewed the various spirits as roughly equal but with different abilities, in the hierarchical traditions these spirits became a ranked pantheon with some being considered superior to others.
Open Thread
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