Animism as Faith
Many of the New Age faiths identify as, or recognize a camaraderie with animism. The word animism comes from the Latin, anima which means soul. So, in turn, to an academic or scholar Animism is the doctrine or theory of the soul. To the average person, it is simply a path that embraces life — not just their own, but of life around them. To a scholar, the quest for knowledge about animism seems to miss the essence of the quest. Both the individual searching for spiritual guidance and the scholar are seeking the true knowledge of man’s nature and dignity through a better understanding of the soul and its connection to the body. It is a fascinating pursuit as both have embarked on the same journey — for different reasons.
Scientists generally follow one of two perspectives on animism –
I. PHILOSOPHICAL — the doctrine that the soul is the principle of life in man and in other living things. As applied to man it embodies the essence of spiritualistic as opposed to Materialistic philosophy.
II. ETHNOLOGICAL — a theory proposed in recent years to account for the origin and development of religion. This perspective is proposed by some evolutionists as the origin of religion.
Regardless of the approach, the scientist wants to understand what animism is, how and why it happens, and its impact on people to the extent that every aspect of the path is deconstructed and examined as a separate entity. The emotional and spiritual connect is dismissed as scientists tend to view animism as a cultural construct with little to do with spirituality. I have to say I am astounded at this approach and couldn’t fathom exploring the structure of animism without taking into account the importance of the human emotional and spiritual component. The constraints of the scientific method actually inhibit the scientist’s access to the full experience and knowledge of an animistic perspective of animism, thus it is realistic to assert that this approach is inherently limited in its scope.
For those who follow an animistic faith, this separation between the belief and the human is impossible. You cannot remove the belief from the human because it is a part of the human experience and being. It is both separate and a part of the soul and the body. Both the body and the soul are of this earth and thus the inherent energy is shared between the two and built upon the collective experiences. Understanding the uniqueness of this experience and the interrelationship between body and soul, mind and brain, it is not unusual for the animistic follower to be open to varied methods of understanding. Besides the methods available to the scientist, the follower may well recognize dreams and visions, apparitions in sleep and at death, mediums, intuition as just a few of the possible routes to knowledge.
It is interesting phenomena that many scientists and scholars have developed a fear-theory that proposes the concept that fear plays an essential role in animism. That we are consumed with appease vengeful spirits and are thus controlled by these entities. The thought is that “primitive” man developed an animistic view of the world around them based on fear of the unknown. This may be a peripheral thought based upon the fact that we cannot be all knowing thus there could be an underlying fear that the sun won’t return during winter, fear that drought will destroy the crops, that a sick individual will die, but it is not foremost or a major tenant to most animists. Rather, it appears that most rituals and beliefs were centered on giving thanks for the food, for the rain, for the return of the sun — not a sense of cowering before an all-powerful god who would punish them for some preconceived slight. It is the perspective from which one approaches the faith that influences the motivation behind an action. This scientific view appear to be much more associated with the vengeful God found in many of the modern traditional religions that require a strict adherence to the tenants of their faith for fear of offending their God and suffering his wrath.
Why is it that if a person sees is no distinction between the animate and the inanimate that he or she is assumed a savage, barbaric, uneducated, or primitive? To us, all nature is all alive. Every object is imbued with its own independent spirit. Spirits flourish in the rivers, the lakes, the fountains, the woods, the mountains, the trees, the animals, the flowers, the grass, and the birds. Spiritual creatures may well existence beyond our frame of reference — such as gnomes or ghosts, fairies, or goblins. We are open to new and varied ideas of existence because we believe that there are possibly other ways of existing besides what science tells us is authentic. We see the wonder and amazement of a night sky lit by the stars of The Milky Way which may very well be the path leading the souls home (however, I would think that less likely as the souls of this earth would resonate with the energy of their own earth); and who can say with absolute certainty that the Northern Lights are not the dances of dead warriors souls? Why couldn’t their souls take on the beautiful colors and dance in the atmosphere as they share of the same energy? Who’s to say that the Maori belief that the sound of the wind in the trees are not the whispers of the ghosts of the dead communing with one another or warning the living of what is to come. If God/The Holy Spirit can speak through a burning bush or a donkey why can’t a spirit also speak through the wind? As always, when we cannot know for certain, our questions lead us ever.
Modern scientists have even tried to develop a distance between early animism and the creation of the modern organized religions by stressing that animism has no sense of moralism to it. It’s actually difficult for me to take this statement as fact. First, the people who I know that are animistic are some of the most morally-driven individuals I know. They live their beliefs because their beliefs encompass their entire life and their surrounds. They give thanks daily for the food they have, the beauty around them, their interactions with others (not just humans), and for their health just to name a few of the things they do not take for granted.
If you study history and culture there is little doubt that man’s quest for spiritual knowledge in themselves and the world around lead to the formation of a more standardized and structured form of religious observation. It is only with the coming of the Neolithic revolution and the ability to provide surplus which led to civilization that we see a shift from animism to polytheism and then monotheism. I’ll talk about in greater detail about this shift in an upcoming installment.
For animists, we do not live in fear of the world around us, rather we strive to live in harmony with it for we are one with it — everything here on earth, in the earth, and above the earth (at least as far as the upper atmosphere is a part of this biosphere) and we embrace that oneness. We do not worship the earth or other objects, or the spirits; rather we respect and honor all that is. When we honor all that is of this earth, we in turn honor ourselves.
