Animism

A belief that everything is living or alive.

This belief is based on the concept that everything that makes up the earth has it’s own vibrational energy to it. Even the smallest of rocks has a vibrational force put forth by the molecular structure.

These vibrations are made up of active and integral elements which the foundation of life is put together. The energy forces that allow everything to be living also enable that thing to have it’s own spirit and life force of existence. These living things have specific attributes that are purely their own.

For example, a river being alive will have it’s own attributes that make up something similar to a personality for it. The personality of the river would then be respected and one would not intentionally try to make it go another way as well as respect what it can do with a region.

Animism is at the source of many native American beliefs as well as hunter gatherers across the world. The belief that something is alive and has it’s own spirit traditionally creates a relationship with the environment rather than modern views of ownership and resource gathering. Animism in different variations can be found throughout paganism and neo-paganism but also has roots in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Shinto.

This is focused on the thought that everything in the world has a spiritual meaning. Not only living things but also material things such as trees, rivers, plants, rocks. Initially  this form of thinking was created by the anthropologist known as Sir Edward Tyler  In 1871.  He wrote a book called primitive culture. 

Within this book he described spiritual beings include everything in nature. Things aren’t human also have a soul. He wanted to term this as Spiritualism,  could not however because there was much theory round spirits at the time so we named this as animism. Animism is  present in many different religions, these include Hinduism and paganism. If we look at the Bible itself it is focused on having one God.

It does state in the Bible to not believe in tanimism - it warns against animism.