It Is a trendy phrase nowadays in witchy communities, but very few people know what animism means. Some combine it with shamanism, but it is a wrong idea too.
Animists think that every single being around us has a soul, a spirit, no matter it is a living or a non-living being. The spirit is different from the corpus, and after the corpus dies it will live on. Some people say that dreaming is one of the out-of-body experiences, and believe in that spirits can live without corpus. Spirits have the same desire and fear what living creatures have and can interfere the living beings’ life, however, moving into the body and inducing diseases or contrariwise, helping the body and improving stamina. These spirits can be influenced by rituals, and the communication with them or the magic work with it is the animists’ toolkit.
Animists may worship trees, maybe that’s why some people think the animism is the same like shamanism. Shamanism contains some animism but not unconditionally. Shamanism has not any unitary ideology or doctrine or theology, so we just cannot pronounce that all the shamans worship trees. Some animists profess totemism, which is not a religion, but it presumes that every living being is in contact with another physical being, and it can be animals, plants or other.
(Image source: Google)
Animism is often scary to witches who use magic for reaching their own personal goals only. Animism requires honor for those spirits who are around us. For example, let me cite from one of my favorite books: “An animist will never fell a tree just because it covers the sight, or kill a spider which warps its net in the house, because the animist respects the spirits in them and thinks they are equal or higher than him/herself.” (1) Most of people were raised in that belief that everything around us exist just for our well-being, thanks for the badly and false preaching priests in Christian religions. The sun is shining for us, the flowers bloom for us etc. Animism demolishes these thoughts because as I said upwards, spirits have their own desire and fear and maybe they will ask a favor of us for their help.
The possible offerings and favors will be discussed in another post.
It is a bullcrap to think that someone could be on a higher level than all of the living beings and could control anything, and those who follow the animism already know it.
(1) Dr. Crow: Untamed witchcraft - original title:: Hollódoktor: Szelídítetlen boszorkányság
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