Animism is the experience that everything is alive, conscious and has a soul, not only humans and other animals, but plants, stones, rivers, mountains and the wind. It is humanity’s oldest spiritual practice, based on direct experience, not belief, and it is entirely non-hierarchical, with humans one of the PeoplesThe Peoples. The Animal People, Plant People, Standing People (the Trees) and Stone People: our elder kin, of whom the Human People are the youngest and least wise. A family, not a hierarchy. Read the full answer, kin to Animal, Plant and Stone and not above them. Shamanism is the practical application of animism.
What does “animism” mean? #
What is usually agreed is that indigenous peoples are, by and large, animists, and the word is used for the experience, found all over the world, that not just humans but all things have a soul, a life-force and consciousness.1 The religious studies scholar Graham Harvey describes animists as people who recognise that the world is “full of persons, only some of whom are human”.2
In Therapeutic Shamanism, animism is “the experience that everything is alive and has a soul”. Modern physics tells us that everything is made of energy; animism goes further, and experiences that “this energy is both alive and conscious”. That includes rocks, rivers, storms, thunder and fire, and even human-made things. Their consciousness is very different from ours, which is why so many Westerners struggle to recognise it.
Is animism a belief system? #
No. Animism is often described as a belief, but “animism is not a belief so much as an experience.”3 Animism is not a religion. It has no priests, no hierarchies, no sacred texts, no dogma, no sects and no sacred buildings, and nothing has to be taken on faith. Hunter-gatherers “not only believed, but experienced the world around them being alive and conscious”, and anyone today can try the practices and find out for themselves.
Is animism hierarchical? #
No. Animism is “a spiritual ‘round table’ where all beings are equal and treated with respect”. Humans are not superior to other animals, animals are not superior to plants and stones, and the Upper-World is not better than the Lower-World. Different beings have different kinds of consciousness, not more or less of it. A plant’s awareness is collective where ours is self-aware, and arguably a greater sentience for that.
Hunter-gatherers do describe an order of age, with the Stone PeopleStone People. All physical matter: mountains, sea, rivers, clouds, sun and stars: the oldest and widest of the Peoples. As some animist cultures put it, ‘we are just the Stone People, dancing for a while’. Read the full answer the oldest and wisest, then the Plant People, then the Animal People, and humans last. “We are the youngest and least wise of the Peoples,” and “This is not about hierarchy, but about family.”4 Being the children calls for humility and for turning to the older Peoples for guidance.
Is there a hierarchy of consciousness? #
No. Non-hierarchy, the round table, reaches all the way down to consciousness itself. Nothing is more conscious than anything else, and any system that grades consciousness, from the various theisms to panpsychism, is not animist. This sets animism apart both from the scientific view that consciousness only emerges above a certain level of complexity, and from philosophies that spread consciousness through everything but then rebuild the pyramid, with humans back at the top. Amongst the un-animist ideas that came in with the Fall is the idea that self-awareness and consciousness are the same thing.
What is reciprocity in animism? #
Reciprocity is giving back for what we receive, and it is part of living in right relationship with all beings, human and other-than-human. It may be the most important thing shamanism can contribute: “the very thing that our society most needs: the knowledge of how to live in right-relationship.” Hunter-gatherers hunted and gathered with respect and gratitude, honouring the land as the body of Mother Earth. In shamanic practice the obligation is direct, because “We simply cannot ask an OversoulOversoul. A branch of Mother Earth representing the whole of a species: the single being all the individuals arise from. Lower-World work is always with the Oversoul, never an individual; environments are composite Oversouls, wheels within wheels. More about this like Panther or Wolf to teach us and heal us, and then ignore the plight of physical panthers and wolves in the middle-world.”5 Part of the shaman’s role was to be the champion and voice of the other Peoples, and gratitude, offered to anything from the weather to a ball-point pen, is the everyday form of the same relationship.
What is the relationship between animism and shamanism? #
Shamanism is a branch of animism, “essentially the practical application of animist beliefs”. A shaman experiences the world as alive and kin, as every animist does, and in addition can enter trance at will, leave the body, travel the shamanic realms and communicate with the spirits there.6 So, on that narrower definition, all shamans are animists, but only some animists are shamans; what sets the shaman apart is that ability to enter trance at will. Where animism ends and shamanism begins is blurry and far from agreed. So Therapeutic Shamanism uses “shamanism” in its broad modern sense, for any practice that leads to the experience that the world is alive and can be communicated with. See What is shamanism?
Can you practise shamanism without animism? #
People do, but cut off from its roots. Most Westerners “bolt on” shamanism to Taker cult thinking, learning to journey, find a Power Animal and do healing work without ever questioning the hierarchical, human-centred assumptions they were raised in. To really understand shamanism, we need to experience the world as an animist does, not just believe that everything is alive and interconnected.7
What is original animism? #
Original animism is the animism of our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors before agriculture. “All of our human hunter-gatherer ancestors were animists. All of them.” That was how humans lived for hundreds of thousands of years. The break from it began with domestication and the Neolithic, from around 11,000 to 10,000 BC, and accelerated with the Fall, the rise of the first city-states, from around 4000 BC.
Very little survives intact. Virtually all existing shamanic societies are agricultural, and the few nomadic animist peoples left are usually herders, not hunter-gatherers. Being animist does not by itself free a culture of Taker thinking; the Inca, Aztec and Toltec, sometimes called shamanic, were city-based, deeply hierarchical and violent empires. None of this criticises present-day animist peoples, who kept animist knowledge alive through very dark times and are owed an incalculable debt.8
What is Core Animism? #
Core AnimismCore Animism. The culture-neutral core of animism: the aspects of animist teaching that are (near-)universal rather than specific to any one culture: the Original Instructions, fierce egalitarianism, respectful right relationship with the other-than-human people, equal respect for the masculine and the feminine, treating all as sacred, living as a Leaver rather than a Taker. The parallel of Michael Harner’s ‘core shamanism’, and its necessary root: shamanism is a branch of animism, so a culture-neutral shamanism has to be grounded in a culture-neutral animism, with no borrowed regalia required. More about this is the animist parallel to the anthropologist Michael Harner’s “core shamanism”, the culture-neutral core without the regalia of any one culture. Because shamanism is a branch of animism, core shamanism has to be rooted in Core Animism. It gathers the near-universal aspects of animist teaching, such as: – the Original InstructionsOriginal Instructions. The animist roadmap: the stories, principles and templates for living in right, reciprocal, non-hierarchical relationship with self, others and the more-than-human world. A template to be translated to the present, never commandments. More about this, the animist template for living in right relationship; – fierce egalitarianism; – respectful relationship with the other-than-human Peoples; – honouring the masculine and the feminine equally; – treating everything as sacred; – being a Leaver rather than a Taker.
See What is Therapeutic Shamanism?
Is animism the same as worshipping nature? #
No. Animism is a nature-based spirituality, but its relationship with nature is kinship, and worship would set one being above another. Hunter-gatherers knew of gods and goddesses. “They were to be respected and honoured, but there was no need to worship them.”9 Such vast beings had no more interest in humans than a mountain has. Gods who demand worship, obedience and sacrifice arrive with the Fall, made in the image of the humans who invented them. For hunter-gatherers, “Everything was alive. Everything was sacred. Everything was Spirit.”
How is animism different from pantheism and panpsychism? #
Animism is often mistaken for philosophies that sit near it, and it is refused by each of them for the same reason, hierarchy. Pantheism is “the idea that God and the universe are identical”; there is an experience of oneness at the very top of the Upper-World that might look like this, but animism understands it as situational, not as a doctrine. Panpsychism finds consciousness in all matter, but graded, from primitive to complex, and “That hierarchy alone makes it profoundly non-animist.” The same goes for pan-spiritism, hylozoism and the rest, because “Animism is not a philosophical theory about consciousness. It’s a lived, relational experience.”
Why does it matter whether everything is sacred? #
Whether everything is sacred cannot be settled by logic, and it does not need to be. When original animist cultures say everything is sacred, the point is treating everything as if it is sacred, as an underlying and guiding principle, not living that way minute by minute. The useful question is what kind of society each principle grows: everything is sacred, some things are sacred, or nothing is sacred. “Which grows the best corn?” Dividing things into sacred and not sacred produces a wildly different culture, as the history of domestication and the Fall shows, and treating hardly anything as sacred produces an even more different one, as the last few hundred years of materialism show.
Is animism about escaping the world or seeing it as an illusion? #
No. Animism is about taking your place in the world. On one level everything is one, and on another, separation and physical matter are just as real. “They are two different levels of reality; one does not cancel the other out.” Believing the world is an illusion does not stop a moving bus from running you over.10 Dismissing the middle-world is spiritual bypassing, and it suits Taker cultureTaker culture. Daniel Quinn’s term for the totalitarian agricultural, owning, surplus-driven way of life that takes everything and leaves nothing, and calls itself ‘civilisation’. Cultural, not innate, which is why it can be changed. Used interchangeably with ‘Fallen culture’. Read the full answer, which is then free to plunder it. Even the Upper-World is no escape route, since “We rise not to leave the world behind, but to return to it refreshed, with clearer eyes.”
What does animism say about the body, Soul and Spirit? #
None of them is ranked above another. Therapeutic Shamanism works with four parts of the selfParts of the self. There are four parts of the self, the realm-corresponding members of the Inner Tribe: the Body and the middle-world self (both of the middle-world), the Soul (of the Lower-World) and the Spirit (of the Upper-World). The Aware Self, also called the Witness, is not a fifth part but a capacity: the awareness that can watch all four, with compassion and equanimity. Read the full answer, each belonging to a realm, which are the Body and the middle-world selfMiddle-world self. The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer (both of the middle-world), the Soul (Lower-World) and the Spirit (Upper-World). “Animists knew that the body never lies and knows the truth”; the body is sacred, with its own intelligence, and deeply connected to Soul and Mother Earth. Fallen culture elevates Spirit as pure and looks down on Soul as heavy or primitive, whereas “animism holds them as two movements of one life”. See What are the four parts of the self?
Is animism primitive? #
“Primitive” is part of the story Taker culture tells about itself. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes described life before centralised government as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”, and picturing hunter-gatherers as savages has long served to justify conquering them.11 The “noble savage” is a myth too, for hunter-gatherers “were just people. Human beings with flaws like us.” Yet hunter-gathering, guided by shamanism, was by far the most sustainable and long-lasting culture humans have ever had, and its central knowledge, that everything is alive, conscious and due equal respect, is what we lost.
Is everything humans make alive in the same way as the natural world? #
Alive, yes; in the same way, no. In animism the things humans make are alive too, even “our mobile phones, cars, the internet – all are already alive and conscious beings”. What they lack is a Lower-World Soul. A mobile phone is made of the Stone People, the chemical elements, and those come from the Lower-World and from Mother Earth, but its make and model are human-made stories of the middle-world: “In the Lower-World, there is no ‘Mobile Phone’ Story.” “They are not soul-less, but they are Soul-less. Natural things, however, the things created by Mother Earth, are full of Soul.” This is why a human-made thing moves us more the closer it is to Mother Earth’s Stories, so that a phone does not move the Soul but great art can.12
Can modern people become animists? #
Yes, to a degree. Domestication and the Fall have changed how our brains are wired, so most of us probably cannot fully experience the world as our animist ancestors did. Nevertheless, “we can train ourselves to perceive the world in a more animist way”, through journeying, gratitude practice, thought experiments such as imagining every being as equal in status to humans, and noticing the Taker assumptions we were raised in. For many people it feels like a homecoming, remembering something half-known, as the world around them becomes more vibrant and alive.13
What is the purpose of animism? #
Animism is how humans lived in right relationship with each other and with the other-than-human world for most of our history, and it shows us how to do so again; “Animist thinking is the cure for the sickness that is the Taker cult.” For a person, it heals the separation most modern people carry, so that we come “to know the world as a living, breathing being, full of others who are alive, and to know deeply that you are part of it.” For the world, it means taking up our responsibilities to the other Peoples at a time when so many of them are disappearing.
