Animism

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Chapter three: Animism, Magic, and the Omnipotence of Thought.

Section one.

It is a necessary defect of studies which seek to apply the point of view of psychoanalysis to the mental sciences that they cannot do justice to either subject.

The independence of the author can manifest itself only in the choice of the material and of opinions.

End footnote.

Animism in the narrower sense is the theory of psychic concepts and in the wider sense of spiritual beings in general.

Animatism, the animation theory of seemingly inanimate nature, is a further subdivision which also includes animatism and animism.

Now, Kenya at the time, at that time, she's discussing, was a Christian country.

And most of my classmates were Christians or animists.

Animists, some people believe that sort of all creation has a soul, rocks, animals, humans.

Anyway, some of them are my friends whom I walked home with after school and shared food and confidence with, as was normal among teenage girls, regardless of sectarian influences.

When I protested to my teachers that I can't see my friend as an enemy, I was told, no, you have the duty to convert her.

In my understanding, it's not.

Animism is not a religion, it's a way of looking at the world.

It's a worldview, like materialism.

Materialism would pretty much be the opposite of animism.

Was it Fischinger who told John Cage that everything had a spirit and that to evoke it, you just had to make it sound, tap it or slap it or scratch it or make it vibrate in some way? I think that's what the animist moniker is all about.

is the idea that everything's alive.

And then science is now beginning to open up to the idea that consciousness does not arise from the human brain.

They weren't just one tribe, but a loose confederation of Swahili-speaking communities stretching from the northern tip down to the Tropic of Capricorn.

Their language, Malagasy Swahili Creoles, was peppered with Arabic loanwords, and their religion was predominantly Islam, making them distinct from the Animist and Christian Highlanders.

So they were already connected to the broader Islamic world before Europeans arrived?

Long before.

But I do know that they separated themselves from...

There was a rural animism that was happening in Japan where they believed everything had a spirit.

Animism is like, the table has a spirit, and the sky has a spirit, and the river has a spirit, and this has a spirit.

And then Buddhism was basically like, we're going to be Buddhist now, says the emperor.

That convoluted into a weird Buddhist rural religion.

... that don't agree with you.

Okay, so, so this is confusing because Neo-Paganism, the modern Pagan world, um, it embraces many different ancient trad- traditions, including Judaism, Animism.

But throughout most of human history, you're a Pagan, what idea or what thing were you most concerned with? What were you really concerned with as a Pagan? Yes.

That you don't upset the gods.

Yeah.

Animism is essential.

Like you have to know, not believe, but know that Earth is a living being.

And, and that's a truth.