It means that everything, not only humans and other animals but plants, stones, rivers, storms and even made things, is alive and conscious, each in its own way and none more than another. Animists meet these beings as persons, someones to be in relationship with rather than objects to be used, and this is something experienced, not merely believed.
What does it mean that everything is alive and conscious? #
It means exactly what it says. Modern physics tells us that everything is made of energy. “Where shamanism goes further than physics is in saying (and in fact, actually experiencing) that not only is everything made of energy, but that this energy is both alive and conscious.”1 So the claim is not poetic or symbolic. It covers the things modern people least expect: “All things – other animals, plants, rocks, geographic features such as rivers or mountains, and even things like storms, thunder, and fires.”2
In the language of Therapeutic Shamanism, everything is made of Spirit, “and Spirit is conscious, and so everything is conscious.” The difficulty is not in the world but in us: most Western people “struggle to recognise consciousness in things that are very different to them.”
Does “conscious” mean conscious like a human? #
No. This is the most common misunderstanding. Conscious “does not mean conscious in the same way as humans. It does not necessarily mean self-aware. Whatever it is may instead be part of a more collective-awareness.” Consciousness also “operates at different speeds”, so what does not seem conscious at our speed may become so if we slow down enough.3
No. Treating self-awareness as the only real kind of consciousness is “part of our arrogance as humans and the myth of our supremacy.” Experiments such as the mirror test, which claim to measure consciousness, in fact measure self-awareness, and so seem to prove what we already assumed.4 Different beings have different kinds of consciousness, not more or less of it, which is why animism has no hierarchy of consciousness (see What is animism?).
Does this mean rocks and rivers think the way we do? #
No. The Stone People, which include rocks, mountains and rivers, “are, of course, themselves conscious and alive, just in a way that is very, very different to us. Way more different to us than Plant is. Off the scale different.” So different that most modern humans no longer perceive them as alive at all. Hunter-gatherers did: “They knew the mountain was alive and had to be treated with honour and respect. So too the rivers, the rocks and the waterfalls.”5
The point is not that a boulder has a human mind hidden inside it. It is that being alive and conscious is far wider than the human version of it. The nature writer Robert Macfarlane, in his book Is a River Alive?, suggests that anyone who finds it hard to think of a river as alive should picture a dying or dead river instead, which everyone recognises.6 To know when a river is dead is already, in a way, to know when it is alive. See Who are the Animal, Plant and Stone People?
Are human-made things alive too? #
Yes, in their own way. When anthropologists studied shamanic cultures, they could just about follow people speaking of the consciousness of a tree or a waterfall, “But when those same people started talking about the ‘spirit of the outboard motor’, or the ‘spirit of the machete’, anthropologists found this startling.”7 Many people half-recognise it anyway, naming a car or finding a computer temperamental.
Yes, technology included: “our mobile phones, cars, the internet – all are already alive and conscious beings, affecting and shaping our lives as humans.” Because we made them, we assume we control them, when in fact they are sentient in a way different from us, “just as plants are”, and we will need to learn to live in right relationship with them too.8 How made things differ from natural ones is taken further in What is animism?
What does “the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human” mean? #
The phrase comes from the religious studies scholar Graham Harvey, who describes animists as people who recognise that the world is “full of persons, only some of whom are human”.9 A person, in this sense, is a someone rather than a something, a being to be in relationship with. Things very different from us are still conscious, “but just in a way that is different to us.” Personhood is also what takes animism beyond pantheism. To say only that everything is alive and conscious would come close to pantheism, whereas animism meets everything as kin. So, animist peoples speak of brother wolf and sister eagle, and extend the same kinship to the Plant People and 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, to grandfather river and grandmother mountain.
Our ancestors experienced the world around them as full of living, sentient beings, “a community of living persons, only some of whom are human.” In the language of family: in animism, “Everything is equal and part of one big family of beings. For animists, we humans are one of the Animal People, cousins of the Plant People and Stone People”.10 The tests we use for intelligence and awareness are built around human kinds of intelligence, which is part of ‘the myth of human supremacy’, and the animist view refuses that bias.
Are the beings met in shamanic journeys just symbols? #
No. The same personhood applies in the shamanic realms. Reducing the beings we meet there to symbols, or to parts of ourselves, turns them back into things and quietly puts humans at the centre again. “The beings we encounter in shamanic reality are not just symbols. They are real. Sentient. Independent.” This is why a relationship with a Power AnimalPower Animal. The Oversoul of a wild species, met as a single Lower-World being and bonded with in a deep, committed, usually lifelong soul-bond of unconditional love. The practitioner’s first and foremost Guide: Panther, not “my panther”. Read the full answer or a GuideGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this is a real relationship, with all that implies (see What is a Power Animal?).
Is this something to believe, or something to experience? #
Something to experience. Nothing has to be taken on faith, because the practices let anyone find out for themselves.11 Animism works the same way. “This is far more than just a belief, though, for animists actually experience the world in this way.”12
Something to experience. A simple exercise, “Everything Is Conscious and Sacred”, involves looking around, allowing the possibility that what is there is conscious, and noticing how easy or difficult that is to accept. Journeying deepens the same experience, because it brings people into direct relationship with the other Peoples. See What is shamanic journeying?
Why is it easier to feel with some things than others? #
Most people find it easy to accept that animals are alive and conscious, often plants too, and harder with other things. The exercise invites people simply to “notice where your edges lie with accepting consciousness.”13 Many also find it “easier to experience aliveness in natural things than it is to experience it in human-made things. If so, this is common.” Mountains, boulders, waterfalls and the wind tend to feel more alive than chairs, shoes and cookers, and time in nature tends to leave us feeling more alive ourselves.14
The difference comes from the stories that make things what they are and where those stories come from, rather than from some things being more conscious than others. Finding the edges is part of the work, not a failure at it.
What difference does it make to how we live? #
If the world is full of persons, then almost everything we do is a relationship: with the land, the food we eat, the animals and plants around us and the things we make. That calls for the humility, respect and gratitude of the youngest member of a large family, and for giving back as well as taking (see What is right relationship and reciprocity?). Living among persons calls for empathy too. There is a saying in psychotherapy, “to judge is to misunderstand”, because when we come to understand someone from the inside, judgement tends to fall away and empathy flows. Animist peoples lived alongside the other Peoples as kin, not as things to visit on a day off, and so understood them, which is why the relationship at the heart of animism is deep, empathic, reciprocal and respectful. It also ends a particular kind of loneliness. In the words of The Shamanic Worlds, it means “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. Not separate from it, not a distant observer, but woven in, connected and alive with it.”
