quotations about animism
Under animism, the idea of what is sacred is sought in places, objects, and actions believed to house a god or spirit. Thus animist religion is inextricably tied to nature. Traditional Native American indigenous religions fall under the umbrella of animism. Although different tribes have different religious mythologies, the tribal mythologies share similarities in terms of their views on the importance of connections not only among tribal members but also within the larger universe.
YORUBA T. MUTAKABBIR & TARIQAH A. NURIDDIN
Religious Minority Students in Higher Education
Children arrive animists. They learn about life, themselves, and empathy by imagining the liveliness of everything they come into contact with.
S. KELLEY HARRELL
Teen Spirit Guide to Modern Shamanism
Increasing numbers of Pagans are identifying themselves as animists or naming their worldview as animism. Some Pagans use the term animism to refer to one strand within their Paganism, while others identify it as the most appropriate label for everything they do.
GRAHAM HARVEY
"Animist Paganism", Handbook of Contemporary Paganism
Animism is the only way. Doing not reasoning. Reasoning changes with the wind. Doing is solid.
AVI SHAFRAN
"Yes, Orthodoxy Changes. No, That's Not 'Rewriting History.'", Forward, July 20, 2015
Animism characterizes tribes very low in the scale of humanity, and thence ascends, deeply modified in its transmission, but from first to last preserving an unbroken continuity, into the midst of high modern culture.
EDWARD B. TYLOR
Primitive Culture
As a Zuñi elder focuses her eyes upon a cactus and hears the cactus begin to speak, so we focus our eyes upon these printed marks and immediately hear voices. We hear spoken words, witness strange scenes or visions, even experience other lives. As nonhuman animals, plants, and even "inanimate" rivers once spoke to our tribal ancestors, so the "inert" letters on the page now speak to us! This is a form of animism that we take for granted, but it is animism nonetheless--as mysterious as a talking stone.
DAVID ABRAM
The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World
Animism is not a belief but a world-view: The world is a sacred place and we are part of it. The factuality of this statement is not the issue. To say that the world is a sacred place is to make a statement about values, not facts. It's a statement about what you mean by "sacred," just as "money can't buy happiness" is a statement about what you mean by "happiness." To put it all very simply, Animism isn't a belief system, it's a value system.
DANIEL QUINN
Ishmael
While many claim regal Animism as a primitive philosophy appealing to people unexposed to science and progress, there are physicists who have formed a bridge between science and Animism. American physicist and author, Nick Herbert, argues that consciousness is not just a property of biological and computational systems but is an integral aspect of the physical world.
DEBANJAN DHAR
"8 Interesting Philosophies You Probably Believe In But May Not Know Of Yet", Storypick, February 12, 2016
Once the idea of a supernaturalistic creation is fully overcome, the idea returns that the universe must be self-organizing and therefore composed of self-moving parts. Also, insofar as dualistic assumptions are fully overcome and human experience is accepted as fully natural, it begins to seem probable that something analogous to our experience and self-movement is a feature of every level of nature.
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN
God and Religion in the Postmodern World: Essays in Postmodern Theology
The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.
CARL SAGAN
Cosmos
Animism is a monist metaphysical stance, based upon the idea that mind and matter are not distinct and separate substances but an integrated reality, rooted in nature.
EMMA RESTALL ORR
The Wakeful World: Animism, Mind and the Self in Nature
All paths lie together in the hand of god like a web endlessly woven, and yours and mine are no greater or less than the beetle's or the squirrel's or the sparrow's. All are held together.
DANIEL QUINN
Tales of Adam
Remember that your tracks are one strand of the web woven endlessly in the hand of god. They're tied to those of the mouse in the field, the eagle on the mountain, the crab in its hold, the lizard beneath its rock. The leaf that falls to the ground a thousand miles away touches your life. The impress of your foot in the soil is felt through a thousand generations.
DANIEL QUINN
Tales of Adam
The oldest religion ... is, of course, animism, with its belief in souls and spirits that live in both animate and inanimate objects and that are believed to account for and control the mysteries and major processes of nature, life, and death. In fairly pure form, the elements of animism are today practiced by rather primitive tribal people.... However, the influence of animism is much wider than might be assumed from the numbers of its professed present-day practitioners. This is because many animistic beliefs and practices continue among those indigenous peoples who, at one time or another, became converted to other religious traditions. This is particularly true of converts of Islam but also to a lesser extent of those who, in the past half century, have been converted from animism to Christianity.
GORDON P. MEANS
"Malaysia: Islam in a Pluralistic Society", Religions and Societies, Asia and the Middle East
We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.
CARL SAGAN
Cosmos
Animism is worth considering (a) because it exists, (b) because it addresses contemporary issues and debates, and (c) because it clarifies, in various ways, the argument that the project of modernity is ill-conceived and dangerously performed.
GRAHAM HARVEY
preface, Animism: Respecting the Living World
There is no transcendent creator in animism, no god who set the clocks ticking and decides which ones to fix when they falter; nothing exists outside of nature. In other words, my philosophy does not require that I believe in something I cannot experience directly.
EMMA RESTALL ORR
The Wakeful World: Animism, Mind and the Self in Nature
All life is a circle. The atom is a circle, orbits are circles, the earth, moon, and sun are circles. The seasons are circles. The cycle of life is a circle: baby, youth, adult, elder. The sun gives life to the earth who feeds life to the trees whose seeds fall to the earth to grow new trees. We need to practice seeing the cycles that the Great Spirit gave us because this will help us more in our understanding of how things operate. We need to respect these cycles and live in harmony with them.
ROLLING THUNDER
attributed, The Voice of Rolling Thunder
We belong to the community of life on this planet -- it doesn't belong to us. We got confused about that, now it's time to set the record straight.
DANIEL QUINN
Providence
Animism apparently cannot be defined within modern terminology without applying to it a set of unquestioned assumptions that are the fundaments of modernity, and in whose matrix we necessarily operate as long as we assume that the question is one of determining the "correct" distinction between life and non-life, self and world. These assumptions are already manifest when it is described, in a seemingly neutral terms, as the belief of some cultures that nature is populated by spirits or souls. The very meaning these terms carry within modernity imply that such belief is at worst mistaken--that is, failing to account for how things really are--or at best symbolic representations of social relations projected onto a natural environment that is indifferent to them.
ANSELM FRANKE
"Animism: Notes on an Exhibition", e-flux, summer 2012