A History of Animism and Its

Contemporary Examples
Posted on March 31, 2019

Creative Commons
 While the term “animism” refers to a broad range of
spiritual beliefs (many of which are still extant within
human cultures today), it does not denote any particular
religious creed or doctrine.

Edited by Matthew A. McIntosh

Public Historian
Brewminate Editor-in-Chief

Introduction
Animism (from the Latin: animus or anima, meaning mind
or soul) refers to a belief in numerous personalized,
supernatural beings endowed with reason, intelligence
and/or volition, that inhabit both objects and living beings
and govern their existences. More simply, it is the belief
that “everything is conscious” or that “everything has a
soul.” The term has been further extended to refer to a
belief that the natural world is a community of living
personas, only some of whom are human. As a term,
“animism” has also been used in academic circles to refer
to the types of cultures in which these animists live.
While the term “animism” refers to a broad range of
spiritual beliefs (many of which are still extant within
human cultures today), it does not denote any particular
religious creed or doctrine. The most common feature of
animist religions is their attention to particulars, as
evidenced by the number and variety of spirits they
recognize. This can be strongly contrasted with the all-
inclusive universalism of monotheistic, pantheistic and
panentheistic traditions. Furthermore, animist spirituality
is more focused on addressing practical exigencies (such
as health, nourishment and safety needs) than on solving
abstract metaphysical quandaries. Animism recognizes
that the universe is alive with spirits and that humans are
interrelated with them.

Animism as a Category
of Religion
Animist shrine near the Heavenly Kitchen Pagodam
northern Vietnam / Photo by Richard Mortel, Wikimedia
Commons

The term “animism” first entered academic discourse

through  anthropologist  Sir  Edward Burnett Tylor’s 1871
book, Primitive Culture. In it, Tylor used the term to refer to
any belief in mystical, supernatural, or non-empirical spirit
beings. Animist thought, Tylor proposed, was religion in its
most inchoate form, serving as a starting point for human
religious development. Thus, so-called “primitive” cultures
(such as  hunter-gatherers  upholding these beliefs) were
merely expressing a reduced form of religiosity
compatible with their supposedly low level of
technological and spiritual development. In
this evolutionary model, these societies relied on animism
to explain the occurrence of certain events and processes.
However, he argued that as a people’s technological
thought progressed, so too did their explanations for
events in the physical world. As societies advanced from
“savagery” to stages of “barbarism” and eventually to
modern civilization, Tylor believed that they subsequently
inherited (or developed) more complex beliefs, such
as  polytheism, eventually culminating in the supposed
pinnacle of religious thought, monotheism.

At the time that Tylor wrote, his theory was politically

radical because it made the claim that non-Western
peoples (that is, non-Christian “heathens”) do in fact have
religion. Despite this progressive conclusion, Tylor’s use of
the term “animism” was indubitably pejorative, as it
referred to what he conceived to be an inferior form
of religion. As a result, his usage of the term has since been
widely rejected. Today, the term animism is used with
more respect and sensitivity to the obvious viability of
tribal peoples and their spiritual beliefs. It is now
commonly accepted that religious beliefs function
emotionally and socially, rather than purely for the
purpose of intellectual explanation—an assumption that is
far more illustrative of Tylor’s Western biases than of any
truths concerning the tribal peoples he studied.

Still, many thinkers do not categorize animism as a form of

religion at all. They argue that animism is, in the first
instance, an explanation of phenomena rather than an
attitude of mind toward the cause of those phenomena.
Thus, animistic thought is more philosophical than strictly
religious. For these thinkers, the term is most conveniently
used to describe a quasi-religious practice in which people
endeavor to set up relations between themselves and the
unseen powers, conceived as spirits, but differing in many
particulars from the gods of  polytheism. While “full-
fledged” religion implies a sense of humility within humans
before the gods, anthropologist Sir  James G.
Frazer  claimed that animism involved an attempt to gain
temporary ascendancy over spiritual forces through the
use of magic. Animism could hardly be categorized as
religion, then, since it was primarily a utilitarian act for
personal and societal gain. Further, unlike the polytheistic
gods, animistic spiritual entities were seen to be more
general and functional in their character, as they generally
lack a deeply developed mythology. Thinkers holding that
animism is not a religion claim that with the belief in more
“departmental” gods comes the development of
polytheism, and henceforth what is considered to be full-
fledged religious thought. For these theorists, polytheist
beliefs supercede the elemental spirits of the animist
worldview.

In contrast, those who argue that animism  is  a religion

focus upon the fact that, even in  magical  rites, a form of
worship is directed toward the spirits identified by the
animist. Even after the acceptance of polytheist religious
beliefs, the elemental spirits that were the focus of magic
rites are often reinterpreted as “lesser gods.” Their help
and intervention is sought, sacrifices are made, and their
instructions (often received through divination) are
obeyed. Thus, these thinkers proceed to claim that
animism embodies the ritualistic features of religion, and
so should be considered as such. Also, many argue that
utilitarian and ritualistic elements are present
in  most  forms of religion (especially in prayers or
supplications), a fact that does much to negate the
argument posited above.

Common Features of
Animism
Existence of Souls or Spirits
Stencil art at Carnarvon Gorge (Tasmania), which may be
memorials, signs from or appeals to totemic ancestors or
records of Dreaming stories. / Photo by Shiftchange,
Wikimedia Commons

The cornerstone of animistic thought is the affirmation of

the existence of some kind of metaphysical entities (such
as souls or spirits) that are seen as the life-source (or life-
force) of  human beings,  animals,  plants  and even non-
living objects and phenomena. For animistic cultures, the
existence of these entities (with their respective
operational and volitional qualities) provides explanations
for the innumerable changes witnessed in both the natural
world and the human world.

In animistic thought, the human spirit or soul is often

identified with the shadow or the breath. This
identification between the soul and the shadow can be
seen in  Tasmania, North and  South America, as well as
classical Europe. Similarly, the Basutus of  Lesotho  hold
that a man walking by the brink of a river may lose his life
if his shadow falls on the water, since a crocodile may seize
his soul and draw him into the current.

More familiar to Europeans is the connection between the

soul and the breath. This identification is found both in
Indo-European and within the linguistic roots of the words
in Semitic languages: In Latin, breath is  spiritus, in
Greek pneuma, in Hebrew ruach, and in Sanskrit prana, all
words which also have spiritual connotations. This idea
extends to many other cultures in Australia, America and
Asia. Other common conceptions identify the  soul  with
the liver, the heart, the blood or even with the reflected
figure outwardly visible in the pupil of the eye.

As the soul is often understood as a metaphysical,

indwelling presence, it is not surprising that, for many
animist cultures, unconsciousness is explained as being
due to the absence of the soul. In South
Australia,  wilyamarraba, a term that refers to the state of
being without a soul, is also the term used for that which
cannot be perceived with the senses. Similarly, the auto-
hypnotic trance of the magician or  shaman  is causally
attributed to their visit to distant regions of the
netherworld: they are in a senseless trance because their
souls are literally  elsewhere. Similarly, sickness is often
explained as occurring due to the absence of the soul,
requiring a healer to take measures to lure back this
vagrant spirit. In Chinese tradition, when a person is at the
point of death, their soul is believed to have left their body.
Typically, the dying individual’s coat is held up on a
long  bamboo  pole while a priest endeavors to bring the
departed spirit back into the coat by means of
incantations. If the bamboo begins to turn round in the
hands of the relative who is responsible for holding it, it is
regarded as a sign that the soul of the patient has
returned.

More common than these aforementioned phenomena is

the importance placed upon the daily period of sleep in
animistic traditions. The frequent images included within
dreams are interpreted in many cultures to illustrate the
fact that the soul journeys while the body
rests. Dreams and hallucinations were likely central to the
development of animistic theory in general. Seeing the
phantasmic figures of friends and other chimaeric, night-
time apparitions may have led people to the dualistic
separation of soul and body that is common within
animistic traditions. Of course, hallucinatory figures, both
in dreams and waking life, are not necessarily those of the
living. From the reappearance of friends or enemies, dead
or living alike, primitive man was likely led to the belief
that there existed an incorporeal part of man, which
existed apart from the body. Furthermore, if the
phenomena of dreams were of such great importance for
the development of a theory of human souls, this belief
was also expanded into an overall  philosophy  of  nature.
Not only human beings but animals and objects are seen in
dreams, and therefore it is possible that animists
concluded that these entities also had souls.

Souls or Spirits in the Natural Realm

 Totem pole, Saxman Totem Park /
Photo by Jerzy Strzelecki,
Wikimedia Commons

In many animistic cultures, peoples respect and even

worship animals, often regarding them as relatives. In
some cases, animals were seen as the spiritual abodes of
dead ancestors. It is probable that animals were regarded
as possessing souls early in the history of animistic beliefs.
The animist may attribute to animals the same sorts of
ideas and the same mental processes as himself or they
may also be associated with even greater power, cunning,
or magical abilities. Dead animals are sometimes credited
with knowledge of how their remains are treated, and
potentially with the power to take vengeance on the
hunter if he is disrespectful. Among the Inuit people of
Northern  Canada, for example, various precautions are
taken in all stages of a hunt so as not to offend the hunted
animal. Such an offense could lead to bad luck in the
future of the hunter who carried out the improprietous
kill, furthering the notion that—at least in some animistic
cultures—animals may possess spirits independent of
their bodies, comparable to those attributed to humans.

Just as souls are assigned to animals, so too are trees and

plants often credited with souls, both human and animal in
form. All over the world, agricultural peoples practice
elaborate ceremonies explicable within the framework of
animistic principles. In  medieval  Europe, for example, the
corn spirit was sometimes viewed as immanent within a
crop, while other times seen as a presiding deity whose life
did not depend on that of the growing corn. Further, this
spirit was often conceived in some districts as taking the
form of an ox, hare or cock, while in others taking that of
an old man or woman. In the East Indies and Americas, the
rice or maize mother is a corresponding figure; in classical
Europe and the East we have in Ceres
and  Demeter,  Adonis  and  Dionysus, and other deities
linked to vegetation whose origin is most likely similar to
that of the corn spirit. Forest trees, no less than cereals,
were also seen, by some cultures, as having their own
indwelling spirits. In Bengal and the East Indies
woodcutters endeavor to propitiate the spirit of any tree
which they have cut down. As well, in many parts of the
world trees are regarded as the abode of the spirits of the
dead. Just as a process of syncretism has given rise to cults
of animal gods, tree spirits tend to become detached from
the trees, which are thenceforth only considered to be
their abodes. Here again it is evident that animism has
begun to pass into forms of polytheism.

Some cultures do not make a distinction between animate

and inanimate objects. Natural phenomenon, geographic
features, everyday objects, and manufactured articles may
also be seen as possessing souls. In the north of Europe,
in ancient Greece, and in China, the water or river spirit is
horse or bull-shaped. The water monster in serpent shape
is an even more pervasive image of the spirit of the water.
The spirit of syncretism manifests itself in this department
of animism too, turning the spirit immanent within natural
forces into the presiding djinn or local gods which arose at
later times.

The Spirit World

 The Naguals, shapeshifting creatures /
Wikimedia Commons

Beside the doctrine of separable souls with which we have

so far been concerned, there also exists the animist belief
in a great host of unattached spirits. These are not
transient souls that have become detached from their
abodes; they are, instead, concrete realities with their
own independent existences. These spirits are often
considered malevolent, and, in this fashion, take on
monstrous or animalistic forms. For example, among the
Ojibwa people of Minnesota and Ontario, the spirit world
was populated with a great number of evil spirits that
existed among the esteemed ones: monsters, ghosts, and
most notably the Wendigo, an ogre which consumed
human flesh and was said to cause psychosis. Typically,
spirits of these types manifested themselves in the
phenomena of possession, disease, and so forth. Along
with such conceptions of spiritual evil we also find the idea
that spirits of the deceased can also be hostile beings, at
least at first. After extended durations of time, the spirits
of dead kinsmen are no longer seen as unfriendly. As
fetishes, naguals, familiar spirits, gods or demi-gods, they
may even come to enter into relations with man. The fear
of evil spirits has given rise to ceremonies of expulsion of
evils, designed to banish these entities from the
community.

Shamanism

An illustration of a shaman in Siberia, produced by the

Dutch explorer Nicolaes Witsen in the late 17th century.
It is the earliest known pictorial depiction of a Siberian
shaman to have appeared in Europe, where Witsen’s
account first popularised the term “shaman”. /
Wikimedia Commons
Because of the often-malevolent nature of such spirits, as
well as the various ills that can befall the individual soul or
the community at large, the animist community almost
always develops a system of spiritual technology—
Shamanism. Shamanism refers to a range of traditional
beliefs and practices that are united around a common
method: the use and control of spirits. While shamanism is
often seen as a healing tradition, in some societies,
shamanic teachings also include the ability to inflict
suffering on others. Shamans have been credited with the
ability to heal illnesses, control the weather, curse
enemies, divine the future, interpret dreams, and project
themselves astrally (including the ability to travel to upper
and lower spiritual worlds). Regardless, shamanism and
animism are intimately inter-related: animism provides
the religio-philosophical framework and shamanism
provides the techniques and technology for controlling (or
at least harnessing) these forces.

Survival of the Dead

Most animistic belief systems hold that this spirit survives

physical death. In some instances, the spirit is believed to
pass into a more leisurely world of abundant game and
ever-ripe crops, while in other systems, such as that of
the Navajo religion, the spirit remains on earth as a ghost,
often becoming malignant in the process. Still other
systems combine these two beliefs, holding that the
afterlife involves a journey to the spirit world upon which
the soul must not become lost. This journey entails much
wandering as a ghost. The correct performance of
funerary rites, mourning rituals, and ancestor worship
were often considered necessary for expediting the
deceased soul’s completion of this journey.

Further, in many parts of the world it is held that the

human body is the seat of more than one soul, some of
which allow a person to survive after death. Among the
peoples of the island of Nias, for example, four are
distinguished: 1) the shadow and 2) the intelligence, (each
of which die with the body), as well as 3) a tutelary spirit,
termed begoe, and 4) a spirit which is carried on the head.
These latter spirits survive even after death. Similar ideas
are found among the Euahlayi of southeast Australia, the
Dakotas of North America, as well as many other tribes.
Just as in Europe the ghost of a dead person is held to
haunt the churchyard or the place of death, other cultures
also assign different abodes to some of the multiple souls.
Of the four souls of a Dakota, one is held to stay with the
corpse after death and another in the village, while a third
goes into the air and the fourth goes to the land of souls. In
the land of souls, the fourth spirit’s subsistence may
depend on its social rank in its worldly life, its sex, or its
mode of death or sepulture. Numerous other factors from
its worldly life, such as whether or not its funerary rite was
properly observed, also affect its status in the spirit realm.

From the belief in the survival of the dead arose the

practice of graveside rituals such as the offering of food or
lighting of fires in honor of the dead. While this may have
occurred at first as an act of friendship or filial piety, it
later became an act of full-fledged ancestor worship. Even
where ancestor worship is not found, the desire to provide
the dead with comforts in the future life may have lead to
the sacrifice of wives, slaves, animals, or other living
beings, as well as the breaking or burning of objects at the
grave or even to such provisions as the ferryman’s toll,
where a coin or coins are put in the mouth or eyes of a
corpse to pay the traveling expenses of the soul. In animist
societies, the reverence for the dead is not finished with
the successful passage of the soul to the land of the dead.
On the contrary, the soul may return to avenge its death
by helping to uncover injustices or identify murderers, or
simply to wreak vengeance for itself. There is a
widespread belief that those who died a violent death
become malignant spirits and endanger the lives of those
who come near the spot where they died. For example, in
the  Malaysian  culture, the stillborn child or the woman
who dies in childbirth becomes a  pontianak, a spirit who
threatens the life of human beings. As a result of such
spiritual threats, people resort to magical or religious
precautions in order to repel their spiritual dangers. In the
case of the  pontianak, Malaysians put glass beads in
corpse’s mouths, precluding the baneful cries of their
spirit.

Contemporary Examples
of Animism in Human
Culture
Tribal Animism

The number of cultures that have upheld animist beliefs is

almost impossible to report accurately, as the belief
system has been held in its various iterations by
innumerable cultures throughout history. Despite Tylor’s
description of animism as a mere “stage” that all religious
belief must pass through, numerous cultures have held on
to animist beliefs and practices, often for many thousands
of years and despite considerable technological advances.
Numerous tribal and hunter-gatherer cultures
maintaining ancient lifestyles have also maintained
animistic beliefs, and many still exist in the contemporary
world. Today, animists still live in significant numbers
among tribal peoples in countries such as Zambia, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, the Republic of
Guinea Bissau, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Papua New
Guinea, the Philippines, Russia, Sweden, and Thailand, as
well as the United States and Canada. Although the
religious beliefs vary immensely between each of these
cultures, they all hold to the basic tenet of animism—that
there is a plurality of souls, spirits or consciousnesses.
Modern Neopaganism

Druids’ ritual at Stonehenge / Photo by SandyRaidy,

Wikimedia Commons

Modern Neopagans, especially Eco-Pagans, sometimes

describe themselves as animists, meaning that they
respect the diverse community of living beings with whom
humans share the cosmos. Modern Neopagans are
commonly concerned with the relationship between
human beings and the environment, as is typical in
animistic cultures. Not only is the relationship with nature
a part of their spiritual awareness, but Neopagan activist
groups often also take action in the political sphere in
order to uphold environmentalism. Many Neopagans
combine this social activism with their ritual magic in an
attempt to put their environmental goals into action.
There are currently many Neopgagan activist groups
around the world, dedicated to various causes.

More generally, Neopagan ritual shares many features

with the shamanistic rites of the classic animist cultures.
For example, rites of passage, like most forms of Neopagan
ritual, take place within a sacred circle. While different
variations on circle casting exist, most circles are oriented
with the cardinal directions that are commonly associated
with forces of nature: fire, water, air, and earth. Some
Neopagans address the specific spiritual powers of a
particular direction, while others address animistic forces
such as the “winds.” Much like the contacts made between
the shaman and the many spirits, Neopagans commonly
invoke specific gods and goddesses, who are invited to be
present in the circle or else embodied within participants.
During the ritual, participants are often led on an “astral
journey,” during which they visualize another realm of
existence, not unlike the spirit realm discussed within
numerous animist cultures. The presence of deities,
journeys through other worlds, and the resulting shifts in
consciousness all contribute to participants’ experience of
the rite.

The New Animism

Animist thought has also been philosophically developed

in modern times by animistic thinkers in order to promote
its continued survival. In an article entitled “Animism
Revisited,” Nurit Bird-David builds on the work of Irving
Hallowell by discussing the animist worldview and
lifeways of the Nayaka people of India. Hallowell had
learnt from the Ojibwa of southern central Canada that
the humans are only one kind of ‘person’ among many, as
there are also ‘rock persons,’ ‘eagle persons’ and so forth.
Hallowell and Bird-David discuss the ways in which
particular indigenous cultures know how to relate to
particular persons in nature. There is no need to talk of
metaphysics or to impute non-empirical ‘beliefs’ in
discussing animism, they claim. Rather, what is required is
an openness to consider that humans are neither separate
from the world nor distinct from other kinds of being in
most significant ways. The new animism also makes
considerably more sense of attempts to comprehend
totemism as an understanding that humans are not only
closely related to other humans but also to particular
animals, plants, and inanimate objects. It also helps by
providing a term for the communities among whom
shamans work. That is, they are now considered to be
animists rather than shamanists. Shamans are employed
among animist communities to engage or mediate with
other-than-human persons in situations which could
potentially prove dangerous for un-initiated or untrained
people. The highly academic classification of “animism”
should not suggest an overly systematic approach. Rather,
it is preferable to the term shamanism which has led many
commentators to hastily construct an elaborate system
out of the everyday practices employed by animists to
engage with other-than-human persons.

Significance of Animism
Animism is an important category of religious
classification. Not only has the term helped in the
understanding of human cultures, but also provides
insights into the current world. While animism is present
in tribal cultures of Africa, Asia, Australia and the
Americas, it is also subtly a part of the greater span of
human consciousness. Although the belief that invisible
spirits—such as demons, fairies and fates—animate nature
has largely subsided in modernity, religious and
philosophical systems that attribute powers of
responsiveness to the surrounding world have not
disappeared. In fact, the core beliefs of animism outlined
above persist in decidedly non-animistic religions today.
Even monotheist religions such as Christianity and Islam,
among others, proclaim the existence of human souls as
well as spirits (in the case of angels). Virtually all religions
believe in some sort of survival of the dead beyond earthly
life, whether it be the judgment so important in the
doctrines of the Abrahamic religions, or the doctrine of
reincarnation so popular in the east. That said, the honor
provided for the dead found in all faiths no doubt also
arose out of animism. Finally, the sense of human
relatedness with nature is becoming increasingly popular
in contemporary religion as the importance of ecology
becomes more and more of a political and spiritual issue.
Thus, the tenets of animism can be said to have, at least in
part, formed the bedrock of religion as we know it today.

References
• Bird-David, Nurit. 1991. “Animism Revisited:
Personhood, environment, and relational
epistemology”, Current Anthropology 40, pp. 67-91.
Reprinted in Harvey Graham (ed.). 2002. Readings
in Indigenous Religions (London and New York:
Continuum) pp. 72-105.
 • Hallowell, A. Irving. “Ojibwa ontology, behavior, and
world view” in Stanley Diamond (ed.). 1960. Culture
in History (New York: Columbia University Press).
Reprinted in Harvey Graham (ed.) 2002. Readings in
Indigenous Religions. London and New York:
Continuum. pp. 17-49.
• Harvey, Graham. 2005. Animism: Respecting the
Living World London: Hurst and co.; New York:
Columbia University Press; Adelaide: Wakefield
Press.
• “Systems of Religious and Spiritual Belief.” The New
Encyclopedia Britannica: Volume 26
Macropaedia. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Inc.,
2002. 530-577.

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