Animism

[MrRING]

Animism is often equated with primitive or uneducated thought, but why is that? Is it really more absurd, or less intellegent, than other belief systems?

From Winkpedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism

Animism is the belief that personalized supernatural beings (or souls) inhabit all objects and govern their existence.

Animism (from animus, or anima, mind or soul), originally means the doctrine of spiritual beings, including human souls. It is often extended to include the belief that personalized, supernatural beings (or souls) endowed with reason, intelligence and volition inhabit ordinary objects as well as animate beings, and govern their existence (pantheism or animatism). This can be stated simply as "everything is alive" 'everything is conscious" or "everything has a soul".

Modern Neopagans sometimes describe their belief system as animist. One example of this is the idea that the Mother goddess and Horned god consist of everything that exists. Pantheists equate God with existence, a similar concept.

The term is also the name of a theory of religion, proposed by the anthropologist Sir E. B. Tylor in his 1871 book, Primitive Culture.

And here is a guy who has a page trying to put a spin on a modern American animism revival:

http://hpwsys.com/dave/

And here is a wild-eyed anti-animism Christian site:

http://religion-cults.com/Ancient/Animism/Animism.htm

 

[Anonymous]

By chance I recently picked up at a booksale "The tomorrow of death;: Or, The future life according to science" by Lois Figuier (also called "The Day after Death" in some editions). It's a swedish translation, published in the late 1870-ies, and I'm a sucker for old books.

I started reading it yesterday and the fisrt chapter deals with the nature of the human soul, mainly the relation between the body and soul, between materia and spirit. The author is of the idea that we consist of a mortal body made of matters, but that our soul is immortal and will survive the body. Animism is one of the theories (along with materialism) that he spends a lot of time debuking. It's interesting to get the 1800-century view on the argumentation, by a beliving christian too.

In this "verison", not much attention is placed on the animalism idea of "soulful" plants, animals and objects, but rather the idea that the soul of every person is running everything in the body... being responsible for every heartbeat, muscle tension and breath through consensius action.

 

[Anonymous]

Animism is a tricky thing, at least for me. Even as a neopagan I'm on the fence about it. I tend to think that plants and animals have some form of soul, which is why I thank my herbs when I harvest. That said, I don't thank the pig that my Italian sausage comes from, but I recognize that I'm eating what was once a living being and what might have been, in another life, a human.

 

[theredmeanie]

It's interesting to think about other 'things' than ourselves having a soul, spirit or a nature. We've all heard about houses that have a presence of good or evil, and we've all seen malevolent looking trees. We talk about spirit in a totally abstract way (the spirit of the age, dark ages).
I like the buddhist notion of objects having latent nature that is only revealed by interaction; a scalpel for example: a surgeon reveals one aspect of it's nature, a twisted psycho reveals another. It was all there to begin with.

Is it all just projective identification?

 

[Yithian]

Animism isn't that big a step from Pantheism, a world view I have a great deal of sympathy with.

I suppose the distinction is that in the former every individualised thing has a complete soul or spirit in itself.

It is, in some sense, 'complete'.

How far can we push this though?

Does every atom have a soul, does every particle?

How substantial does a 'thing' have to be to be granted a soul?

Every thought?

If i break a stone in two, do they split this soul or spirit?

Does a river have a spirit? Does it change over time? Where does this spirit reside if the matter of its 'body' is protean?

Many questions, few answers.

 

[skinny]

bump

I've gradually surrendered to the (to me) obvious reality of a living cosmos outside of the human perspective for a few years now and this video just bumped up my consciousness of how it works that there is person-ness outside the human. I like to think I had always intuited this paradigm without it being linguistically allowed in my brainways, probably because of my rigid protestant younglife, and I have always felt relationship to country and to landform and to creature in varied levels of equal measure.

Gordon here talks about Animism as a cosmology with heartbeat in a way I'd never heard before. I've had his book now for over a year and I'm visiting a chapter about every other month or so and forgetting it so I can come back after and do a read through quick and go oh yeah that's what he meant.

Gordo focuses his subject on a place @Mungoman knows very well, Lake Mungo, and introduces us to the concept of ancient living place as eternally curated museum and of ancestor as living, through the characters of @Mungoman and @Mungowoman. He references both blackfellas and whitefellas throughout, so get ready for cries of appropriation before too long.

Please enjoy the conversation he has with your mind.

 

[Yithian]

bump

I've gradually surrendered to the (to me) obvious reality of a living cosmos outside of the human perspective for a few years now and this video just bumped up my consciousness of how it works that there is person-ness outside the human. I like to think I had always intuited this paradigm without it being linguistically allowed in my brainways, probably because of my rigid protestant younglife, and I have always felt relationship to country and to landform and to creature in varied levels of equal measure.

Gordon here talks about Animism as a cosmology with heartbeat in a way I'd never heard before. I've had his book now for over a year and I'm visiting a chapter about every other month or so and forgetting it so I can come back after and do a read through quick and go oh yeah that's what he meant.

Gordo focuses his subject on a place @Mungoman knows very well, Lake Mungo, and introduces us to the concept of ancient living place as eternally curated museum and of ancestor as living, through the characters of @Mungoman and @Mungowoman. He references both blackfellas and whitefellas throughout, so get ready for cries of appropriation before too long.

Please enjoy the conversation he has with your mind.

Very interesting.

I'm not sure about his sneers at mere chronological time, however; it's horses for courses and I'd rather my heart surgeon be future oriented and focused suitably on the precise duration between my breaths and beats than immersed in a continual present of becoming.

Equally, there may well, as your man believes, be great wisdom to be gleaned (he would have 'learnt' or 'received') from a synoptic view of existence that does not privilege (or even distinguish) present or future over past.

I don't see these two perspectives as mutually exclusive, nor do I suppose they are the only two productive lenses we can select from among according to our particular field of concern.

Where I do have difficulty (due, no doubt, to my ignorance) is with the idea that what we in the West have come to think of as mere 'things' may/should be granted personhood when they have agency: when they have acted to effect. I like this as a starting point (it begins to answer at least one of my questions in the old post above), but hasn't been fully explained.

Certainly, I can see the storm whose lightning starts a fire that destroys a wood, or the fertile soil that nourishes growth which feeds wildlife, as perhaps, viewable as having agency (do Sufists think similarly?). My problem is that (within the confines of that video) every example of such agency given is one in which Man interacts with 'things' and 'things' with man; the agency he discusses is exclusively the agency to influence Man, his body and his mind.

If Mankind were to go extinct—or to go wider, if all consciousness were to perish in some catastrophe—would these non-human 'persons' persist?

He states emphatically that lakes are persons, but is he claiming their personhood as an objective fact, or rather as a useful strategy to achieving a superior worldview? Rather how environmental campaigners seek personhood for rivers or whales in order to afford them legal protections...

Does he think the personhood of objects with agency is conditional on the presence of other consciousness to grant it? One assumes not, but he has not justified the alternative here.

Does his book fill in these blanks?

 

[skinny]

If Mankind were to go extinct—or to go wider, if all consciousness were to perish in some catastrophe—would these non-human 'persons' persist?

All consciousness is far broader than human experience. I think that’s kind of his main point. Persist in the sense of some human perceiving it? Ah there’s the rub.

I reckon he intimates that animist cultures accept that agency is inherent in the non-human / pre-human / post-human cosmos. Agency is the cosmos, in a way. We’re part of it but not central to it’s emanation. That’s hard for west to welcome, as you are no doubt aware over there in Occident.

Don’t think he says as much in this video, but it gets fleshed out a bit more in Ani.Mystic.

Thanks for raising the convo on this subject. I’m keen to explore all questions raised but the iphone is ifuckt

ill be at a keyboard n an hour or twoI

 

[skinny]

I'm not sure about his sneers at mere chronological time

I do not sneer at it either, but I do acknowledge the Indigenous paradigm of concentric time. You're born as a drop in a pond. Then the ripples emanate out to contact those of your Ma n Da n then the rest of the Fam. People you come into contact with are circular resonances of their own with connections to their relations. And so it goes. It's contact with people, not linear progress, that shapes existence. I am in alignment with that.

 

[Mungoman]

Very interesting.

I'm not sure about his sneers at mere chronological time, however; it's horses for courses and I'd rather my heart surgeon be future oriented and focused suitably on the precise duration between my breaths and beats than immersed in a continual present of becoming.

Equally, there may well, as your man believes, be great wisdom to be gleaned (he would have learnt/received) from a synoptic view of existence that does not privilege (or even distinguish) present or future over past.

I don't see these two perspectives as mutually exclusive, nor do I suppose they are the only two productive lenses we can select from among according to our particular field of concern.

Where I do have difficulty (due, no doubt, to my ignorance) is that what we in the West have come to think of as mere 'things' may/should be granted personhood when they have agency: when they have acted to effect. I like this as a starting point (it begins to answer at least one of my questions in the old post above), but hasn't been fully explained.

Certainly, I can see the storm whose lightning starts a fire that destroys a wood, or the fertile soil that nourishes growth which feeds wildlife, as perhaps, viewable as having agency (do Sufists think similarly?). My problem is that (within the confines of that video) every example of such agency given is one in which Man interacts with 'things' and 'things' with man; the agency he discusses is exclusively the agency to influence Man, his body and his mind.

If Mankind were to go extinct—or to go wider, if all consciousness were to perish in some catastrophe—would these non-human 'persons' persist?

He states emphatically that lakes are persons, but is he claiming their personhood as an objective fact, or rather as a useful strategy to achieving a superior worldview? Rather how environmental campaigners seek personhood for rivers or whales in order to afford them legal protections...

Does he think the personhood of objects with agency is conditional on the presence of other consciousness to grant it? One assumes not, but he has not justified the alternative here.

Does his book fill in these blanks?

I think that ALL life - even the lichen on our rocks, the bacteria under our nails and in our G.I.T. - are all the essential ingredients in the pudding called Earth (veering ever so close to the idea of Giai here).

 

[Mungoman]

I've got a four hour drive today - food for thought Skinny - thanks mate.

 

[Analogue Boy]

I don’t have many thoughts about animism but everbody is confident until they come across a big monkey with a shotgun.

 

[Frideswide]

or a

until they come across a big monkey with a shotgun.

Barrel.

The ones throwing the barrels are the worst.

 

[Mungoman]

Is animism just Old, old knowledge of the awareness of inherent energy in all things? Science from a distant and past age?

There is the idea that a full moon is beneficial to plant life. We know now, that it is the fact that a three day period either side of the full moon is awash with partial reflected EM spectrum, giving plants an extra boost. There is willow bark being an anodyne. Rumex for constipation, and conversely, diarrhea. Bread poultices being effective in festering situations. Bush remedies with simple ingredients.

All of these members of the plant Kingdom that are beneficial to us gets me thinking that we've been here before, We've had a herbal pharmacopea for thousands of years, and these old home remedies incline me to think of medicinal knowledge without the pharmaceuticals...so we make do in the ashes of our civilisation, and that knowledge is remembered, or handed down to the next generations.

And animism with it's belief that there is 'life' in all things on this planet is maybe another factual hint of what once was..?

 

[skinny]

Bloody hard to come at, isn’t it. This language and culture have been incredibly useful but can’t seem to accommodate Animist science and routine. It’s not as if it was once accepted and then empirical process ejected it. It has always been in every populated zone of life, yet euro-centric neural pathways have hardened to all but the empirically approved ‘facts’, petrified, as it were. I am an empiricist myself, but I have allowed for neural expansion - I exercise my mind and my philosophy. Those are living things too.

Bloody EngLish! Poor vessel for this stuff.

 

[Mungoman]

Bloody hard to come at, isn’t it. This language and culture have been incredibly useful but can’t seem to accommodate Animist science and routine. It’s not as if it was once accepted and then empirical process ejected it. It has always been in every populated zone of life, yet euro-centric neural pathways have hardened to all but the empirically approved ‘facts’, petrified, as it were. I am an empiricist myself, but I have allowed for neural expansion - I exercise my mind and my philosophy. Those are living things too.

Bloody EngLish! Poor vessel for this stuff.

Language is so limiting, isn't it Skinny...

You're right - animism in its various forms has been chugging along as an undercurrent to the extremes of contemporary invention quite nicely. And it seems to me to be obvious what it is and how it fits...which got me thinking of genesis (Yeah...I KNOW!!!).

In the beginning was the word ( the written word?) and the word was good (knowledge being so beneficial)...which makes me wander through those labrynths of my mind and consider whether prior to the genesis of Abramic belief, whether we have been here before...I think I should leave it there eh...

I can understand the pureness of animism and its simple logic - Now...I wonder if that gentleman that they nailed to a cross was one of those ultra savants who just understood that simple logic and could see between the atoms (so to speak) and...create with that awareness (thus, producing miracles).

Where DOES the mind go when it wanders...and wonders.

 

[skinny]

In the beginning was the word ( the written word?) and the word was good (

Gonna just streamconsciousise a bit here.

The word word as used in the Genesis proto-Jewish theological context originally meant a sound, as I understand it. Like a boom in the void. God spoke and THEN light expressed from his eye, at least as the Kabbalists see it. Sound first, then sight. It’s so meaningful. Sound is sometimes seen as more physical because the waves can be sensed through the skin, through physical feeling. Light is witnessed through the eye alone, although that idea itself is also dismissed as wrong by your light therapists and whatever. Heat from IR radiation burns, but light itself is often seen as the less tangible element in the equation.

Animist Australian cultures SING creation at every ceremonial gathering. If they don’t do it, creation dies. It needs constant revivication. The sound creates the vibration, which glues their cosmos together. I’m often prompted to burst into song when I’m out in the bush, because nature tends to sing more than speak. So it’s a way for us to understand one another. And getting to a single pointed idea is irrelevant. It’s the purity of expression itself that grounds those experiences. It’s like you don’t dance to reach a particular point on the floor. That’s not the purpose.

OTOH, Christians took the word to mean their Christ, in St John’s gospel. They needed to bring that old Hebraic notion from Genesis in to align with their New Testament so that, for some of them at least, it appealed to their Jewish detractors, whom they tried to bring with them, and so it came to be written as such.

Gotta go to a girl’s birthday party. Back later.

 

[Mungoman]

To be honest with you skinny, religion and it's intricacies just confuses me. I repeat what I have learned without seeing much logic to it at all.

Animism suits me because it is simple...There is not too much at all written into it, whereas Christianity/Judaism/Mohammedanism is old men laying down the law.

As for the Word/Logos, It makes more sense to me to hear a sound, as in the Hindu Faith who say, also, that in the beginning was the sound, rather than a word.

Maybe animism is a simplification of the basis of all religions that, The Creator, The One Who Is, is in all things, while leaving all those Psalms and verses behind for those Old Men to concern themselves with.

I agree with you about the singing while going bush - my thing is to talk, hold conversations with anything out there. Rocks, trees, animals, insects - It' reminds me of that old joke of...'there's nothing wrong with talking to yourself, and, there's nothing wrong with answering yourself - but things are crook if you continually ignore yourself.'

 

[skinny]

With you all the way, ranger.

 

[Mikefule]

Sartre argued that if you want to know what you really believe, rather than what you like to think that you believe, observe how you really act when presented with a situation. Actions speak far louder than words.

So when you stub your toe on a table leg, do you swear at the table? When your faithful old car has safely carried you 300 miles over the mountains in bad weather, do you pat the bonnet before you walk away? When your computer locks up, do you beg and implore it to just bloody well work, damn you?

Most of us act day to day, especially in times of strong emotion, as if we believe that some inanimate objects could hear us, and could have intentions of their own. The fact that we have a "faithful" car suggests a car capable of keeping faith. We feel at the time that we use words like faithful in a sense that is not just figurative.

Less fancifully: when I was a kid in the 1960s, it was common to be told that humans are the only intelligent creatures on the planet. This is clearly and demonstrably untrue, and not just because many humans are not intelligent. There are plenty of studies showing intelligent behaviour by corvids, cetaceans, and primates. No one who has spent time with dogs can doubt that they are intelligent and experience emotions.

Do I literally believe that a dog or a dolphin, or a corvid has a soul? Yes, to the exact same extent that I use the word "soul" about a human. I am aware of all the paradoxes and contradictions, but the word "soul" is useful to describe something we all perceive, even if that thing eludes definition.

Do I literally believe that my car or motorbike has a soul, or that my laptop is resisting me, or that the hammer that struck my thumb did so maliciously? Probably not, but it often feels like I do. It does not feel simply like I am projecting onto it.

But do I extend that to every pebble, every grain of sand, each individual tree, bird, insect, or cloud? No. Why not? Because there is no rule that I have to be consistent, that's why!

@Yithian above points out some of the inconsistencies If you pursue the idea to absurd levels of reductivity. If you break a rock in two, does each half have a soul? As with all or most philosophies or worldviews, excessive analysis can be destructive.

 

[Analogue Boy]

Sartre argued that if you want to know what you really believe, rather than what you like to think that you believe, observe how you really act when presented with a situation. Actions speak far louder than words.

So when you stub your toe on a table leg, do you swear at the table? When your faithful old car has safely carried you 300 miles over the mountains in bad weather, do you pat the bonnet before you walk away? When your computer locks up, do you beg and implore it to just bloody well work, damn you?

I guess Sartre never had to replace a toilet seat.

The denizens of hell cover their ears to silence the profanities a frustrated human can issue.