Animism

Animism, belief in innumerable

spiritual beings concerned with TABLE OF CONTENTS
human affairs and capable of helping
Introduction
or harming human interests.
Animistic beliefs were first Importance in the study of culture and
religion
competently surveyed by Sir Edward
Burnett Tylor in his work Primitive Theoretical issues
Culture (1871), to which is owed the Animistic phenomena in their social
continued currency of the term. While contexts
none of the major world religions are The animistic worldview
animistic (though they may contain
animistic elements), most other
religions—e.g., those of tribal peoples—are. For this reason, an ethnographic
understanding of animism, based on field studies of tribal peoples, is no less
important than a theoretical one, concerned with the nature or origin of religion.

Importance in the study of culture and religion

The term animism denotes not a single creed or doctrine but a view of the world
consistent with a certain range of religious beliefs and practices, many of which
may survive in more complex and hierarchical religions. Modern scholarship’s
concern with animism is coeval with the problem of rational or scientific
understanding of religion itself. After the age of exploration, Europe’s best
information on the newly discovered peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia, and
Oceania often came from Christian missionaries. While generally unsympathetic
to what was regarded as “primitive superstition,” some missionaries in the 19th
century developed a scholarly interest in beliefs that seemed to represent an
early type of religious creed, inferior but ancestral to their own. It is this interest
that was crystallized by Tylor in Primitive Culture, the greater part of which is
given over to the description of exotic religious behaviour. To the intellectuals of
that time, profoundly affected by Charles Darwin’s new biology, animism
seemed a key to the so-called primitive mind—to human intellect at the earliest
knowable stage of cultural evolution. Present-day thinkers consider this view to
be rooted in a profoundly mistaken premise. Since at least the mid-20th century,
all contemporary cultures and religions have been regarded by anthropologists
as comparable in the sense of reflecting a fully evolved human intelligence
capable of learning the arts of the most advanced society. The religious ideas of
the “Stone Age” hunters interviewed during the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries
have been far from simple.

Since the “great” religions of the world have all evolved in historic times, it may
be assumed that animistic emphases dominated the globe in the prehistoric era.
In societies lacking any doctrinal establishment, a closed system of beliefs was
less likely to flourish than an open one. There is, however, no ground for
supposing that polytheistic and monotheistic ideas were excluded. But what is
plain today—that no historically given creed has an inevitable appeal to the
educated mind—had scarcely gained a place in scholarly argument more than
100 years ago.

Theoretical issues
Tylor’s theory of animism
For Tylor, the concept of animism was an answer to the question, “What is the
most rudimentary form of religion which may yet bear that name?” He had
learned to doubt scattered reports of peoples “so low in culture as to have no
religious conceptions whatever.” He thought religion was present in all cultures,
properly observed, and might turn out to be present everywhere. Far from
supposing religion of some kind to be a cornerstone of all culture, however, he
entertained the idea of a pre-religious stage in the evolution of cultures and
believed that a tribe in that stage might be found. To proceed in a systematic
study of the problem, he required a “minimum definition of religion” and found
it in “the Belief in Spiritual Beings.” If it could be shown that no people was
devoid of such minimal belief, then it would be known that all of humanity
already had passed the threshold into “the religious state of culture.”

But, if animism was ushered in as a “minimum definition,” it became the

springboard for a broad survey. Although anthropology in Tylor’s day was mainly
an armchair science, through field excursions and wide and critical reading he
developed a good sense for what was credible in the ethnographic sources of his
day. He assembled an array of cases and arranged them in series from what
seemed to him the simplest or earliest stage of development to the most
complex or recent stage. In this way he taught that religion had evolved from a
“doctrine of souls,” arising from spontaneous reflection upon death, dreams, and
apparitions, to a wider “doctrine of spirits,” which eventually expanded to
embrace powerful demons and gods. A fundamental premise was
 that the idea of souls, demons, deities, and any other classes of
spiritual beings, are conceptions of similar nature throughout, the
conceptions of souls being the original ones of the series.

Tylor asserted that people everywhere would be impressed by the vividness of

dream images and would reason that dreams of dead kin or of distant friends
were proof of the existence of souls. The simple belief in these spiritual beings,
independent of natural bodies, would, he thought, expand to include more
elaborate religious doctrines, accompanied by rites designed to influence
powerful spirits and so control important natural events.

While Tylor offered no special theory for this expansion and so avoided most of
the traps of early social evolutionism, he taught that cultures moved, though not
along any single path, from simpler to more complex forms. The direction of
movement was shown by the survival of animism in muted but recognizable
forms (including most “superstitions” and many expressions such as “a spirit of
disobedience” or common words such as genius) in the advanced civilization of
his own day. This “development theory” he championed against the so-called
degradation theory, which held that the religion of remote peoples could only
have spread to them from centres of high culture, such as early Egypt, becoming
“degraded” in the process of transfer. Tylor showed that animistic beliefs exhibit
great variety and often are uniquely suited to the cultures and natural settings in
which they are found.

In retrospect, Tylor seems more balanced in his judgments than later writers
who constructed the problem of “minimal religion” in a narrower frame. Tylor’s
greatest limitation was self-imposed, since he narrowed his attention to what
may be called the cognitive aspects of animism, leaving aside “the religion of
vision and passion.” Tylor took animism in its simplest manifestation to be a
“crude childlike natural philosophy” that led people to a “doctrine of universal
vitality” whereby “sun and stars, trees and rivers, winds and clouds, become
personal animate creatures.” But his cognitive emphasis led him to understate
the urgent practicality of the believer’s concern with the supernatural. Tylor’s
believers are “armchair primitives” (the creatures of armchair anthropologists),
not real individuals caught in the toils of discord, disease, and fear of perdition.

Counter theories
Tylor thought the idea of the human soul must have been the elementary
religious idea and the model for all other supernatural beings. Later scholars,
responding to evidence of simpler beliefs that yet entailed a properly religious
awe toward the sacred, began to debate the probability of a “pre-animistic stage”
of theological evolution. Corresponding to this turn in religious studies was a
shift in anthropology toward a concern with “primitive thought” and, in
particular, the explanation of religion as intellectual error. French sociologist
Émile Durkheim, in his The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915), held
that religion originated in totemism, conceiving that identification with a totem
animal could result from an irrational projection of individuals’ expectations of
security in the bosom of society. He thought such collective projections were
more solidly based in the human condition than the “hallucinations” (dreams)
that Tylor had supposed must lead to the ideas of soul and supernatural being.
Durkheim has been criticized for not seeing totemism as only one animistic cult
among many, with special implications as an organizational schema but not
“elementary.”

English and German theorists conceived the invention of religion in more

pragmatic terms: in attempting to extend the control of nature beyond the limits
imposed by observation and science, people had invented supernatural power—
magic. The most prolific scholar of this persuasion was Sir James G. Frazer, who
argued in his massive work The Golden Bough (1890–1915) that “the magic art”
had arisen as a pseudo-science, probably had achieved universality before the
emergence of religion, and was a more firmly rooted belief system than religion.
He thought intelligent individuals had become disillusioned with earthly
magicians and had invented infallible ones—gods. Frazer’s work ranged over
Classical mythology and so-called savage custom without distinction. Finding
parallel traditions everywhere, he compiled a massive testament to the psychic
unity of humankind. The myriad structures of both magic and religion that he
surveyed all could be reduced to transparent intellectual error. The apparent
mystery of religion was virtually explained away, for, if magic had become
human-centred religion and religion god-centred magic, there was little
difference between them.

Since Frazer accepted the common notion that the sign of religion is humility
before the gods and held that magic put people in the ascendancy, it followed
that wherever the supernatural beings could be tricked, bribed, or otherwise
mastered the system of beliefs was by definition magical. This obscured Tylor’s
clear “minimum definition of religion” and threw an odd light on what he had
called “lower animism,” the belief in spirits that a person with ritual knowledge
can master. Any self-confident ritual act—for example, the Eskimo hunter’s ritual
control of game spirits or the shaman’s cure of a grave affliction—had become
magical and, so, transparently egoistic. The result for an ensuing generation of
anthropologists was loss of focus upon the religions encountered in the field.
Tylor had found animistic beliefs generally devoid of ethical content even when
centred in humanity’s urgent needs. Frazer, interjecting the image of the
primitive magician with illusions of unlimited power, made it difficult to grant
animistic religion even Tylor’s minimum of dignity.

Frazer had identified Melanesia as an area in

which, by his terms, magic dominated over
religion. Pioneering anthropologist
Bronisław Malinowski was able to
accomplish a thorough ethnographic study
of the Trobriand Islanders in Melanesia
during World War I, and it was Malinowski
who dominated European ideas about the
intimate life of “primitive man” in the
following decades. Viewing the islanders
within the frame of ideas Frazer had
provided, Malinowski pictured them as
secular in outlook. In numerous works on the
Trobriand Islanders, published in the 1920s
and ’30s, there was scarcely a mention of
Mongol shaman wearing a ritual gown
and holding a drum with the image of a religion as such. The belief in spirits
spirit helper, c. 1909. appeared only as mythical background to
National Museum of Finland
magical practices connected with gardening
and seafaring and with a ceremonial cycle in
which the competition for prestige was dominant. The effect was to reduce
religion to its pragmatic and social aspects, thus de-emphasizing the very
peculiarities of human belief and experience that first attracted individuals such
as Tylor to the study of “primitives.”

Animistic phenomena in their social contexts

While it is futile to seek cases of animism in “pure,” “minimal,” or “elementary”
form, some social contexts are undeniably simpler than others, and it may be
tempting to suppose that the religions found in those contexts would follow suit.
On that principle, however, nomads such as the Australian Aborigines might be
supposed (as they were supposed by Durkheim) to enjoy an uncomplicated
religious life, but this is emphatically not the case. What complicates Australian
religions is an elaborate ceremonialism not usually found in nomadic societies.
Ceremonialism generally can be treated as an emphasis in the area of expressive
behaviour, usually consistent with the animistic worldview and unlikely to
displace it. While it is an emphasis most common among agriculturists, its
presence among nomads is by no means confined to Australia. Though there is
no reason to suppose that ceremony is of any more recent origin than any other
way of expressing society’s relation to the spirit world, animistic religions
(religious systems in which animism plays an essential role) can be sorted into
those with and those without a ceremonial emphasis, and, in this formal sense,
the latter are the simpler. The salient characteristic of all animistic religions is
their particularism, a quality opposite to the universalism of the “great religions,”
which conceive the individual as subject to global powers and personal destiny.

Particularism
Particularism is evident in the number and variety of spirits recognized and in
the peculiar scope attributed to each. The pre-Christian Sami of Scandinavia
have sometimes been called fetishists because they propitiated nature spirits as
well as personally named gods and demons. The nature spirits were generally
benevolent and always localized. They could be addressed in particular objects,
such as stones or posts, which the Sami would set up in likely places. The few
personally venerated spirits (or gods) were identified with thunder, sun, moon,
hunting, childbirth, and the winds. Evil spirits might be incarnate in animal or
monstrous forms and could cause disease or other misfortune. The world of the
Ojibwa tribe of North America was animated by a great number of eternal spirits
(manitous), all of about equal rank, represented in trees, food plants, birds,
animals, celestial bodies, winds, and wonders of every description. Beside these
esteemed spirits were other categories, which were dreaded: ghosts, monsters,
and the windigo, a crazed man-eating ogre who brought madness (a
cannibalistic psychosis). The list of creatures, places, attributes, and events that
are treated as totems by Australian Aborigines is similarly extensive. The Buryat
of Lake Baikal in Siberia, living on the fringes of empire (Mongolian and Chinese),
developed an elaborate social order and viewed the spirit world as the twin of
their own, organized in the same way into noble, commoner, and slave ranks. At
death an individual passed over to the other world, assuming his proper rank
and acquiring fresh power over others, which he might exercise well or ill in
accordance with his character in life. Evil individuals, as it were, became devils
and great individuals became gods.
In particularistic religions there is a range of spirits, from sojourning ghosts and
mortal witches to perennial beings, whose natures and dispositions are
attributed by categories (e.g., mermaids and leprechauns are both usually
pictured as irresponsible), but in action individual spirits are independent of one
another. If some spirits may be called gods, they do not constitute a ruling
pantheon, for people do not conceive that any supernaturals enjoy
comprehensive control of events. In animism, spirits represent particularistic
powers and must be handled accordingly. Typically, a belief system’s primary
emphasis is on avoidance of trouble, and this is the meaning of the many taboos
and propitiatory observances of an almost mechanical nature that abound in
some societies. When trouble is at last encountered, the responsible witch,
demon, or disgruntled spirit must be identified, and this is the task of the diviner.
The cure may rely upon ritual cleansing, propitiation, or even the overpowering
of the malevolent force through supernatural counteragency—the specialty of
the shaman. Judging that an animal will not mind being killed if it is not
offended ritually, Eskimos take various precautions before, during, and after the
hunt. The rationale lies in the belief that animal spirits exist independent of
bodies and are reborn: an offended animal will later lead its companions away so
that the hunter may starve. If, in spite of their precautions, game becomes
scarce, a shaman may be called to discover the transgression that has offended
an animal spirit—and, perhaps, to do battle with a malevolent being controlled
by a rival shaman willing the community harm.

Ceremonialism
Ceremonialism, when its emphasis is upon
feasting, exchange, and display, may be
secular, as is the case in much of Melanesia
and New Guinea; or, if religious, it may be
associated with totemic or ancestral cults, as
in Australia or Africa, the expressive
emphasis of which is on social ties rather
than on the quality of relations between
people and the supernaturals. Finally,
ceremony may be used to directly dramatize
the role of the spirits in society, as it is by the
Pueblo peoples of North America. At their
Hupa Female Shaman, photograph by height, the Pueblo ceremonial cycles were as
Edward S. Curtis, c. 1923. rich as any in the world. Supernaturals were
 Edward S. Curtis Collection/Library of elaborately impersonated by kachina
Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-
USZ62-101261)
(katsina) dancers, and the human condition
was portrayed as one of dependency. But, for
all this, particularism was not greatly compromised. The supernaturals were
many and were represented in a realistic manner emphasizing their differences
from ordinary people. The style was that of mummery and conjuring, consciously
put on by grown-ups as a sort of morality play. There was no sense of incongruity
in the fact that neighbouring pueblos cultivated other sets of spirits. In some
pueblos, separate clan societies had complete charge of the ceremonial calendar
and formally controlled communication with the supernatural, even selecting
the member who might be curer in case of an illness. But such a step toward
ecclesiasticism in a very small community could not greatly affect its animistic
premises, and witchcraft prevailed without the blessing of the ceremonial
societies.

When the fullness and versatility of all these

religions is considered, without any need to
press them into simplified categories or
evolutionary stages, it can be seen that
openness, not narrowness, of doctrine is a
general feature of animism. Wherever it is
found, it is a grassroots religion, not a
doctrinaire one imposed from above.
Ecclesiasticism may coexist with animism, as
in China or Burma, where there are no
preeminent gods whose universal claims
presuppose mastery of the whole
supernatural world. But the most likely
Hopi kachina of Laqán, the squirrel spirit,
c. 1950; in the National Museum of the context of animism is an uncentralized social
American Indian, New York, N.Y. order in which secular power is not
Courtesy of the Museum of the American
developed and each local settlement is at
Indian, Heye Foundation, New York
the focus of its own world.

The animistic worldview

Part of the conceptual difficulty experienced both in anthropology and in the
history of religions, when animism is to be placed among other systems of belief,
springs not from the early association of animism with a speculative theory of
religious evolution but directly from the huge variety of animistic cults. As a
category, Tylor’s concept is more general than either polytheism or monotheism,
and its meaning is harder to delimit—the word applies broadly to most of the
“little religions” but suggests nothing of their varieties. For this reason, much use
is made of subordinate labels, such as shamanism, totemism, or ancestor
propitiation. These cults do not, in any case, constitute the whole religion of a
people. They are, however, institutions that are not bound to one culture area—
an Australian totemic cult does bear a “family resemblance” to an African one,
though their differences also are many. Shamanism, with its reliance on ecstasy,
is found from Greenland to India, and the propitiation of ancestors is not
restricted to Africa and East Asia. It has long been recognized that the frequent
recurrence of institutions fitting a certain pattern implies that there is a radically
limited number of possible patterns, and, in this case, the premises of animism
evidently have imposed the limitation. Animism attributes importance to
categories of supernatural beings whose individual members are attached to
particular places and persons or resident in particular creatures and are
autonomous in their dealings. In such a system, each human encounter with the
supernatural must work itself out as a distinct episode. Even where
ceremonialism emphasizes an enduring moral relationship to certain
supernaturals, people are likely to conceive of alternative powers whom they
might seek in times of need. In a crisis, loyalties may shift: in West Africa gods
have been sold to neighbouring villages, and in Melanesia a vision of European
trade goods has inspired a series of new millenarian cults. The quality of
openness lends itself to change and eclecticism, hardly ever to religious
chauvinism.

Animistic creeds have in common an undertaking on the part of people to

communicate with supernatural beings, not about metaphysics or the dilemmas
of the moral life but about urgent practicalities: about securing food, curing
illness, and averting danger. It is characteristic that genuine worship of a
supernatural hardly is found. Creator gods often appear in myth but not in cult.
In ancestor cults the most recently dead are the most vividly conceived—the
original clan ancestor, for all his symbolic importance, is remote both from
society and from the godhead. If animistic spirits anywhere exercise authority,
they do so in particularistic, even egoistic, fashion, sanctioning individuals for
ritual neglect or breaking taboos, not for acts of moral neglect or secular offense.

Animistic religions do not readily coalesce with systems of political authority and
probably do not favour their development. When it is asked whether the
association of animism with smaller and simpler societies proves it the natural
(original) religion, the answer can only be that it is not known (and perhaps not
knowable) what a prehuman or panhuman religion would be like. The problem is
as difficult as reconstructing protohuman speech. If religion is taken as a pattern
of serious relations between humans and supernaturals, then societies devoid of
religion have not been found, and it may perhaps be concluded that religion is
usually close to the vital centre of a culture, where the credibility of institutions is
determined. The view of all nature as animated by invisible spirits—be they
shades, demons, fairies, or fates—with which people could interact in meaningful
ways may belong to the past, but philosophies that attribute powers of initiative
and responsiveness to nature have not gone out of currency. The lesson of the
study of animism is perhaps that religion did not arise, as some of Tylor’s
successors believed, out of Urdummheit (“primal ignorance”) or delusions of
magical power but out of humanity’s ironic awareness of a good life that cannot,
by earthly means, be grasped and held. Animistic beliefs have everywhere
engaged individuals’ susceptibility to private vision and enabled them to cope
with it at the level of accepted meaning.

George Kerlin Park The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

CITATION INFORMATION
ARTICLE TITLE: Animism
WEBSITE NAME: Encyclopaedia Britannica
PUBLISHER: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
DATE PUBLISHED: 15 October 2018
URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/animism
ACCESS DATE: March 08, 2020