Quotes About Animism

The true shaman, the true naturalist, works to reconnect conscious human life with Nature and Spirit through totems and ritual.

Fetishism and idolatry are the gateway to polytheism. Certain spirits are elevated in esteem and power so that they are now considered gods. Rituals develop; superstitions give way to prayers and sacrifices; relationships among the deities are recognized and get complicated. Nevertheless, polytheism is still just animism on a bigger scale.

In many cultures that are primarily animistic but also recognize a supreme god, the mythologies usually refer to a time when the relationship between the high god and human beings was closer than it is today, so that the notion of the anticipation of a future development does not fit at all.

Animists are not so much people with a religion as people with a fundamentally religious way of looking at things.

During the Agricultural Revolution humankind silenced animals and plants, and turned the animist grand opera into a dialogue between man and gods. During the Scientific Revolution humankind silenced the gods too.

In fact, monotheism, as it has played out in history, is a kaleidoscope of monotheist, dualist, polytheist and animist legacies, jumbling together under a single divine umbrella. The average Christian believes in the monotheist God, but also in the dualist Devil, in polytheist saints, and in animist ghosts.

Less fortunate members of the old animist system lost their stature and became either extras or silent decor in the great drama of man's relationship with the gods

Modern materialists and religious extremists alike lack the spiritual animistic reverence for non-human beings that every culture once understood as a given.

Shinto is nature. Perhaps animism—and Shinto is the only formal animistic religion left—is the true religion. It has roots deep in all of us. One recognizes this. It is the only religion that can inspire the feeling children know when the wind or a rock is made god for a week or a day. Its essence is unknown and unknowable, yet this unknown does not exclude us because we too are unknown. This religion speaks to us, to something in us which is deep and permanent.

The Animist is, in other words, all those who see an equivalence between all forms of life or who can see life where others would see the lack of life. The theoretical

The demons of animism were usually hostile to man, but it seems as though man had more confidence in himself in those days than later on.

Otherwise Na'vi religion contains elements of many forms of religion on Earth, from monotheism, worship of one true god, to animism. the idea that the gods are immanent in every aspects of the world.

A hint of - dare I say? - animism has entered into the scientific worldview. The physical world is no longer either dead or passively obedient to the laws.

But I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name.

Japan used to be an animistic society before Shinto imperialism was established. But most of us still have an animistic sense.

The Indians believe all things have spirit - even the hail that comes from the sky is spirit. If you believe that, which I implicitly do, everything is alive.

Cuando hablamos de la ira del cielo, la agitación del mar, la resistencia de los diamantes a ser tallados, la atracción que ejerce la Tierra sobre un asteroide cercano o la excitación de un átomo, de nuevo pensamos en una especie de visión animista del mundo. Estamos atribuyendo existencia real a objetos inertes. Algún nivel primitivo de nuestro pensamiento dota a la Naturaleza inanimada de vida, pasiones y premeditación.

In the Land of Ire, the belief in fairies, gnomes, ogres and monsters is all but dead; in the Land of Ind, it still flourishes in all the vigour of animism.

The true shaman, the true naturalist, works to reconnect conscious human life with Nature and Spirit through totems and ritual.

Religion in Chinatown, as in most places, is based less on a cogent theology and more on a collection of random fears, superstitions, prejudices, forgotten customs, vestigial animism, and social control. Mrs. Ling, while a professed Buddhist of the Pure Land tradition, also kept waving cat charms, lucky coins, and put great faith in the good fortune of the color red...and was very much in favor of any tradition, superstition, or ritual that involved fireworks...

many adults continue to do animistic things even in cultures that do not vigorously encourage them to do so. Naming cars and swearing at recalcitrant computers are common examples of the personalizing of the world – even if, when pressed, people insist they do not really expect a positive response from inanimate machines

All humans, indeed all animals, have the propensity to respond to events as if they were intentional and personal. For some analysts this is animism. It seems likely that all humans are tempted to personalize even the artefacts with which they live: if they do not ask "fetishes" to guide them or amulets to protect them, they are likely to name their vehicles or weapons (from spears to atomic bombs).

It was safe to talk to yourself because of the roar you were subsumed in, besides being alone. I fragmented. One sense I had was that I was going to die sometime anyway. Another was that the falls were something you could never apply the term fake or stupid to. This has to be animism, was another feeling.

Animists are not so much people with a religion as people with a fundamentally religious way of looking at things.