Animism is a belief that everything contains a distinct spiritual essence or soul

• Animism (from Latin anima, “breath, spirit, life”) is the belief that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence.[ Potentially, animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork and perhaps even words—as animated and alive. Oxford Dictionary
• Animism entails the belief that “all living things have a soul”, and thus a central concern of animist thought surrounds how animals can be eaten or otherwise used for humans’ subsistence needs. Graham Harvey
• Animism is the belief that every living thing in nature – including trees, plants and even rocks or streams – has its own spirit or divinity. In primitive societies animism often requires that before anyone can kill an animal or fell a tree, its natural spirit must be placated. Paul Harrison
• Animism had its origins in two universal human experiences: (1) the sense that something invisible yet all-important leaves the body at the moment of death, and (2) the suspicion that dreams and visions make contact with a higher reality. Once the belief in a spiritual realm was established, it was only a few short steps to positing the existence of spiritual beings that stand behind nature, and behind the world as a whole. Bradley L. Herling
• Animism is the belief that it’s not only humans that possess a spiritual entity but everything around us. And I’ve felt that often. The earth is a grid; we’re just part of it. If we plug back into ourselves, it seems to work out in the best possible ways. If you follow your gut instincts and try to really look at any situation you’re in for what it is, and peel back layers of what you’re supposed to think and what you’re supposed to be, you can guide yourself through life in a positive way. Tonya Tagaq
• Animists are people who recognize that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always loved in relationship with others. Animism is lived out in various ways that are all about learning to act respectfully (carefully and constructively) toward and among other persons. Graham Harvey

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Animism believes in impersonal spiritual forces in nature

• Animism strongly involves necrolatry, which is the worship of the souls of the dead. Tribal people tend to regard the departed ancestors as part of the clan and fear the harm that the departed can do to the living. They especially fear that those who died unnaturally will come back to haunt them. Animism involves spirit worship, believing in the existence of personal spirits or demons, as well as impersonal spiritual forces in nature, which inhabit the earth, the air, fire, water, trees, mountains, and animal life. Life for the animist is dominated by a host of taboos and rituals to placate the spirits. Peter Hammond
• 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

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Everything in nature has a spirit…

• But I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name. Pocahontas
• Every seed is awakened, and all animal life. Sitting Bull
• Every tree, every plant, has a spirit. People may say that the plant has no mind. I tell them that the plant is alive and conscious. A plant may not talk, but there is a spirit in it that is conscious, that sees everything, which is the soul of the plant, its essence, what makes it alive. The channels through which the water & sap move are the veins of the spirit. Pablo Amaringo
• From the colour the nature And by the nature the sign! Beatific spirits welding together As in one ash-tree in Ygdrasail. Ezra Pound
• I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. E. E. Cummings
• The evocative power of the drum can be compared to the Trinity. The drum’s frame comes from the trunk of a tree, and that tree has a spirit. It is not dead wood. There is also spirit in the animal skin. If there wasn’t, it would not produce sound. Those, plus the spirit of the person playing become an irresistible force. Babatunde Olatunji
• To bare our souls is all we ask, to give all we have to life and the beings surrounding us. Here the nature spirits are intense and we appreciate them, make offerings to them – these nature spirits who call us here – sealing our fate with each other, celebrating our love. Alex Grey

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…including trees…

• Trees are extraordinary revelations of the spirit in nature. And, given the multitude of ways that trees and their products benefit and enrich human culture, they are an especially appropriate symbol of the interdependence of spirit and nature. Steven Clark Rockefeller
• In a tree there is a spirit of life, a spirit of growth and a spirit of holding its head up. Robert Henri

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…and animals of every kind…

• Animals of every kind live on the Other Side, .. you are not crazy if you feel the spirit of your cat rubbing against your legs, hear the sound of your dog’s toenails clicking on the wood floor, or hear the familiar song your bird used to sing. Our pets do come back to visit us. Sylvia Browne
• I just always felt like animals are spirit guides. I really like animals, I’ve always felt really drawn to them; they have this energy and magnetism. Sarah Gerard
• I’ve always felt that animals are the purest spirits in the world. They don’t fake or hide their feelings, and they are the most loyal creatures on Earth. And somehow we humans think we’re smarter-what a joke. Pink
• The animals possess a soul and men must love and feel solidarity with our smaller brethren. All animals are fruit of the creative action of the Holy Spirit and merit respect and they are as near to God as men are. Pope John Paul II
• The deer aren’t our prey or our possessions — they’re us. They’re us at one point in the cycle of life and we’re them at another point in the cycle. The deer are twice your parents, for your mother and father are deer, and the deer that gave you its life today was mother and father to you as well, since you wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for that deer. Daniel Quinn
• We humans should never forget our capacity to connect with the collective spirit of animals. Their energy is essential to our future growth. Shirley MacLaine

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…including ourselves…

• Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. C. S. Lewis
• Just as the ancients danced to call upon the spirits in nature, we too can dance to find the spirits within ourselves that have been long buried and forgotten. Anna Halprin
• The world of gods and spirits is truly ‘nothing but’ the collective unconscious inside me. Carl Jung

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…all flowing back to their source, united in the one Grandfather Spirit (or God)

• Nothing is so small and unimportant but it has a spirit given to it by Wakan Tanka. Tunkan is what you might call a stone god, but he is also part of the Great Spirit. The gods are separate beings, but they are all united in Wakan Tanka. It is hard to understand — something like the Holy Trinity. You can’t explain it except by going back to the “circles within circles” idea, the spirit splitting itself up into stones, trees, tiny insects even, making them all wakan by his ever-presence. And in turn all these myriad of things which make up the universe flowing back to their source, united in the one Grandfather Spirit. John Lame Deer
• Look at the animals roaming the forest: God’s spirit dwells within them. Look at the birds flying across the sky: God’s spirit dwells within them. Look at the tiny insects crawling in the grass: God’s spirit dwells within them. Look at the fish in the river and sea….There is no creature on earth in whom God is absent… his breath had brought every creature to life… God’s spirit is present within plant as well. The presence of God’s spirit in all living things is what makes them beautiful; and if we look with God’s eyes, nothing on earth is ugly. Pelagius
• If it be true that spirit is involved in Matter and apparent Nature is secret God, then the manifestation in the divine in himself and the realization of God within and without are the highest and most legitimate aim possible to man on earth. Sri Aurobindo
• All about us, in earth and air, wherever the eye or ear can reach, there is a power ever breathing itself forth in signs, now in daisy, now in a wind-waft, a cloud, a sunset; a power that holds constant and sweetest relation with the dark and silent world within us. The same God who is in us, and upon whose tree we are the buds, if not yet the flowers, also is all about us- inside, the Spirit; outside, the Word. And the two are ever trying to meet in us. George MacDonald

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God is the Great Spirit that is everywhere…

• Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows. Now we are poor but we are free. No white man controls our footsteps. If we must die, we die defending our rights. Sitting Bull
• The Great Spirit is everywhere; He hears whatever is in our minds and our hearts, and it is not necessary to speak to Him in a loud voice. Black Elk

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… in nature and ourselves

• We should understand well that all things are the work of the Great Spirit. We should know the Great Spirit is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and the four-legged and winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand that the Great Spirit is also above all these things and peoples. When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as the Spirit intends. Black Elk
• 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
• At the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit. And that center is really everywhere. It is within each of us. Black Elk
• I know Great Spirit is looking down upon me from above, and will hear what I say. Sitting Bull
• Perhaps you have noticed that even in the very lightest breeze you can hear the voice of the cottonwood tree; this we understand is its prayer to the Great Spirit, for not only men, but all things and all beings pray to Him continually in differing ways. Black Elk
• All nature … is a respiration Of the Spirit of God, who, in breathing hereafter Will inhale it into his bosom again, So that nothing but God alone will remain. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers,  and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit,  and that this center is really everywhere,  it is within each of us. Black Elk
• Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated. Auguste Rodin

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Nature, herself, is a spirit

• Nature is not matter only. She is also a spirit. Carl Jung
• Nature is visible Spirit; Spirit is invisible Nature. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
• Spirit slumbers in nature, awakens in mind, and finally recognizes itself as Spirit in the transpersonal domains. Ken Wilber
• The soul of a landscape, the spirits of the elements, the genius of every place will be revealed to a loving view of nature. Karl Jaspers
• The source of nature is spirit. Larry Gates
• The spirits of the air live on the smells Of fruit; and joy, with pinions light, roves round The gardens, or sits singing in the trees. William Blake
• There is a beautiful spirit breathing now Its mellowed richness on the clustered trees, And, from a beaker full of richest dyes, Pouring new glory on the autumn woods, And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds. Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird, Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer, Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned, And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved, Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down By the wayside a-weary. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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The spirits in nature speak to us

• 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
• As nonhuman animals, plants, and even ‘inanimate’ rivers once spoke to our oral ancestors, so the ostensibly “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
• But speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance. Speak the truth, and all things alive are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there do seem to stir and move to bear you witness. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The nomadic gatherer-hunters live in an entirely sacred world. Their spirituality reaches as far as all of their relations. They know the animals and plants that surround them and not only the ones of immediate importance. They speak with what we would call “inanimate objects,” but they can speak the same language. They know how to see beyond themselves and are not limited to the human languages that we hold so dearly. Their existence is grounded in place, they wander freely, but they are always home, welcome and fearless. Kevin Tucker
• The song and the drumming were like this: Behold, a sacred voice is calling you; All over the sky a sacred voice is calling. Black Elk

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Through the spirit in all things, all things are interwoven into a unity…

• All over the sky a sacred voice is calling your name. Black Elk
• 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
• All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One. Black Elk
• All men were made by the Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. Chief Joseph
• All things share the same breath – the beast, the tree, the man… the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. Chief Seattle
• Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. Black Elk
• Give me strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is. Black Elk
• I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. Look at the sun: If there is no sun, then we cannot exist. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. Mikhail Gorbachev
• I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy. Black Elk
• It is not just contemporary industrial society that is dysfunctional; it is civilization itself. We humans are born to be creatures of the land and the sea and the stars; we are relations to the animals, cohorts to the plants. Our well being, and the well-being of the very planet depend on our pursuance of our given place within the natural world. Chellis Glendinning
• The Universe is circles within circles, and everything is one circle, and all the circles are connected to each other. Each family is a circle, and those family circles connect together and make a community, and the community makes its circle where it lives on the Earth. It (the community) cares for that part (of the Earth) but cares for it as a circle – which is to say in a cooperative and egalitarian way, where everybody is cared for, and everybody is respected. Black Elk
• It is on the acceptance or rejection of the theory of the Unity of all in Nature, in its ultimate Essence, that mainly rests the belief or unbelief in the existence around us of other conscious beings besides the Spirits of the Dead. Helena Blavatsky
• Only by affirming the animateness of perceived things do we allow our words to emerge directly from the depths of our ongoing reciprocity with the world. David Abram
• Peace will come to the hearts of men when they realize their oneness with the universe, It is every where. Black Elk
• 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
• The great lesson is, that unity is behind all. Call it God, Love, Spirit. Allah, Jehovah – it is the same unity that animates all life from the lowest animal to the noblest man. Swami Vivekananda
• There must be a union between the spirit in wood and the spirit in man. George Nakashima
• We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human. David Abram
• 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

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…while also remaining individual and unique

• While animists believe everything to be spiritual in nature, they do not necessarily see the spiritual nature of everything in existence as being united (monism), the way pantheists do. As a result, animism puts more emphasis on the uniqueness of each individual soul. In pantheism, everything shares the same spiritual essence, rather than having distinct spirits and/or souls. Paul A. Harrison

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Animism is a view that the world is sacred and we are part of it…

• 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
• 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
• Animists are not so much people with a religion as people with a fundamentally religious way of looking at things. Daniel Quinn
• Animistic savages prostrating themselves before a painted stone have always seemed to me to be nearer the truth than any Einstein or Bertrand Russell. Malcolm Muggeridge
• As nonhuman animals, plants, and even ‘inanimate’ rivers once spoke to our oral ancestors, so the ostensibly “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
• Everywhere is the center of the world. Everything is sacred. Black Elk
• From the animist point of view, humans belong in a sacred place because they themselves are sacred. Not sacred in a special way, not more sacred than anything else, but merely as sacred as anything else — as sacred as bison or salmon or crows or crickets or bears or sunflowers. Daniel Quinn
• Let every step you take upon the earth be as a prayer. Black Elk
• Modern materialists and religious extremists alike lack the spiritual animistic reverence for non-human beings that every culture once understood as a given. Zeena Schreck
• The Holy Land is everywhere. Black Elk

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…a belief that all things in nature should be respected and revered

• In my grandparents’ time, it was believed that spirits existed everywhere – in trees, rivers, insects, wells, anything. My generation does not believe this, but I like the idea that we should all treasure everything because spirits might exist there, and we should treasure everything because there is a kind of life to everything. Hayao Miyazaki
• It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even to our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves to inhabit this vast land. Sitting Bull
• Neo-animism posits that the world is full of other-than-human “persons”, including “salmon persons”, “tree person”, and even “rock persons”. The concept of personhood implies relationality and reciprocity, as well as rights. Neo-animists want to see the rights of all “persons” respected. The term “other-than-human” persons was coined in 1960 by A. Irving Hallowell to describe the understanding by the Ojibwa people he studied that many more things could be a person than Westerners realize. The phrase was later adopted by many neo-animists. It is difficult for Westerners to understand the concept of “other-than-human” persons, especially when talking about (seemingly) inanimate objects like rocks. But for the animist, there is no such thing as inanimate matter. All matter is animate, and thus alive, at least in the sense that it is part of a complex self-regulating living system. John Halstead
• One should pay attention to even the smallest crawling creature for these too may have a valuable lesson to teach us. Black Elk
• The old Indian teaching was that is is wrong to tear loose from its place on the earth anything that may be growing there. It may be cut off, but it should not be uprooted. The trees and the grass have spirits. Whatever one of such growth may be destroyed by some good Indian, his act is done in sadness and with a prayer for forgiveness because of his necessities. Wooden Leg

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Everything has its own beingness and should be honored

• We need to honor the world of things, not despise it. Each thing has Beingness, is a temporary form that has its origin within the formless one Life, the source of all things, all bodies, all forms. In most ancient cultures, people believed that everything, even so­called inanimate objects, had an indwelling spirit, and in this respect they were closer to the truth than we are today. When you live in a world deadened by mental abstraction, you don’t sense the aliveness of the universe anymore. Most people don’t inhabit a living reality, but a conceptualized one. Eckhart Tolle

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Animism has nothing to say about a transcendent creator

• 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
• 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

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Animism existed long before the traditional religions were formed and helped inspire them

• Animism in itself was not yet a religion but contained the prerequisites from which religions were later formed. Sigmund Freud
• Animism is by many regarded as the earliest form which religion took, and as the root from which was derived all religious beliefs which the world has known, and was also the earliest basis of all that is dignified by the name of culture. George William Gilmore
• If you look through all the different cultures. Right from the earliest, earliest days with the animistic religions, we have sought to have some kind of explanation for our life, for our being, that is outside of our humanity. Jane Goodall
• 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

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Animism is dismissed by some as superstitious

• For most of the history of our species we were helpless to understand how nature works. We took every storm, drought, illness and comet personally. We created myths and spirits in an attempt to explain the patterns of nature. Ann Druyan
• Our forefathers looked upon nature with more reverence and horror, before the world was enlightened by learning and philosophy, and loved to astonish themselves with the apprehensions of witchcraft, prodigies, charms, and inchantments. There was not a village in England that had not a ghost in it, the church-yards were all haunted, every large common had a circle of fairies belonging to it, and there was scarce a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit. Joseph Addison
• Why, we have invented the whole machinery of the supernatural, with its unseen spirits and powers, good and bad, to account for things, because we found the universal everyday nature too cheap, too common, too vulgar. John Burroughs

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The materialism of modern science has blasted away the ethical premises of animism to the impoverishment of all…

• Modern societies accepted the treasures and the power offered them by science. But they have not accepted – they have scarcely even heard – its profounder message: the defining of a new and unique source of truth, and the demand for a thorough revision of ethical premises, for a complete break with the animist tradition, the definitive abandonment of the ‘old covenant’, the necessity of forging a new one. Armed with all the powers, enjoying all the riches they owe to science, our societies are still trying to live by and to teach systems of values already blasted at the root by science itself. Jacques Monod
• The chief difficulty which prevents men of science from believing in divine as well as in nature Spirits is their materialism. Helena Blavatsky

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…and this partly explains why it is so easy it is for us to destroy the natural world

• Nature and the spirit of our ancestors are giving you loud warnings. Today you see increasing floods, more damaging hurricanes, hail storms, climate changes and earthquakes as our prophecies said would come. Why do animals act like they know about the earth’s problems and most humans act like they know nothing? If we humans do not wake up to the warnings, the great purification will come to destroy this world just as the previous worlds were destroyed. Thomas Banyacya

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The irony is that some in science are now reviving the premises of animism by theorising that all matter is conscious with its own inner experience…

• The quantum consciousness assumption, which amounts to a kind of “quantum animism” likewise asserts that consciousness is an integral part of the physical world, not an emergent property of special biological or computational systems. Since everything in the world is on some level a quantum system, this assumption requires that everything be conscious on that level. If the world is truly quantum animated, then there is an immense amount of invisible inner experience going on all around us that is presently inaccessible to humans, because our own inner lives are imprisoned inside a small quantum system, isolated deep in the meat of an animal brain. Nick Herbert
• Twentieth-century developments in science support a new animism. Developments in physics have led to a world of energetic events which seem to be self-moving and to behave in unpredictable ways. And recent studies in biology seem to demonstrate that bacteria and macromolecules have elemental forms of perception, memory, choice, and self-motion. David Ray Griffin
• 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

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…thereby integrating mind and matter

• 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 earth and myself are of one mind. The measure of the land and the neasure of our bodies are the same Chief Joseph

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Some argue traditional religion is a step back from animism in several respects…

• Animist religions had previously depicted the universe as a grand Chinese opera with a limitless cast of colourful actors. Elephants and oak trees, crocodiles and rivers, mountains and frogs, ghosts and fairies, angels and demons – each had a role in the cosmic opera. Theist religions rewrote the script, turning the universe into a bleak Ibsen drama with just two main characters: man and God. The angels and demons somehow survived the transition, becoming the messengers and servants of the great gods. Yet the rest of the animist cast – all the animals, plants and other natural phenomena – were transformed into silent decor. Yuval Noah Harari
• In the animistic cosmos, everyone talked with everyone directly. If you needed something from the caribou, the fig trees, the clouds or the rocks, you addressed them yourself. In the theist cosmos, all non-human entities were silenced. Consequently you could no longer talk with trees and animals. What to do, then, when you wanted the trees to give more fruits, the cows to give more milk, the clouds to bring more rain and the locusts to stay away from your crops? That’s where the gods entered the picture. They promised to supply rain, fertility and protection, provided humans did something in return. Yuval Noah Harari

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…especially the fact that it favours humans so much (who have souls) at the expense of other living beings (who do not)

• We normally think that theist religions sanctified the great gods. We tend to forget that they sanctified humans, too. [According to animism] Homo sapiens had been just one actor in a cast of thousands. In the new theist drama Sapiens became the central hero around whom the entire universe revolved. Yuval Noah Harari
• According to Christianity, God gave an eternal soul only to humans. Since the fate of this eternal soul is the point of the whole Christian cosmos, and since animals have no soul, they are mere extras. Yuval Noah Harari
• Noah was instructed to save the whole ecosystem in order to protect the common interests of gods and humans rather than the interests of the animals. Non-human organisms have no intrinsic value; they exist solely for our sake…  The Bible thinks it is perfectly all right to destroy all animals as punishment for the crimes of Homo sapiens, as if the existence of giraffes, pelicans and ladybirds has lost all purpose if humans misbehave.  Yuval Noah Harari
• Sapiens love telling ourselves that we enjoy some magical quality that not only accounts for our immense power, but also gives moral justification for our privileged status. What is this unique human spark? The traditional monotheist answer is that only Sapiens have eternal souls. Whereas the body decays and rots, the soul journeys on towards salvation or damnation, and will experience either everlasting joy in paradise or an eternity of misery in hell. Since pigs and other animals have no soul, they don’t take part in this cosmic drama. They live only for a few years, and then die and fade into nothingness. We should therefore care far more about eternal human souls than about ephemeral pigs. Yuval Noah
• The belief that humans have eternal souls whereas animals are just evanescent bodies is a central pillar of our legal, political and economic system. It explains why, for example, it is perfectly okay for humans to kill animals for food, or even just for the fun of it. Yuval Noah Harari

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Animism is far from primitive and far from dead

• 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 Burnett Tylor
• Animism is far from primitive, nor is it about pre-modernity because animism does not serve as a precursor to modernity. Rather animism is one of the many vitally present and contemporary other-than-modern ways of being human. Graham Harvey
• 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
• It is a well known fact that even among highly cultured peoples the belief in animism prevails generally. Even the scholar may kick the chair against which he accidentally stumbles, and derive great satisfaction from thus “getting even” with the perverse chair. Holly Estil Cunningham
• The animistic perspective has a long and distinguished philosophical pedigree. For some eminent philosophers such as Spinoza and Leibniz, and more recently Alfred North Whitehead, it was inconceivable that sentience (subjective consciousness) could ever emerge or evolve from wholly insentient (objective, physical) matter, for to propose this would be to believe in a fundamental division or inconsistency within the very fabric of reality itself. Therefore each of these philosophers considered matter to be intrinsically sentient. The new animism that they espoused simply recognizes that the material world around us has always been a dimension of sensation and feelings–albeit sensations that may be very different from our own–and that each entity must be treated with respect for its own kind of experience. Stephan Harding
• The true shaman, the true naturalist, works to reconnect conscious human life with Nature and Spirit through totems and ritual. Ted Andrews

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Children arrive animists

• Children arrive animists. They learn about life, themselves, and empathy by imagining the liveliness of everything they come into contact with. S. Kelley Harrell
• Play, Incorporating Animistic and Magical Thinking Is Important Because It: Fosters the healthy, creative and emotional growth of a child; Forms the best foundation for later intellectual growth. Provides a way in which children get to know the world and creates possibilities for different ways of responding to it. Fosters empathy and wonder. Rachel Carson

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Animism removes our sense of separation from nature, especially the illusion that we are above it

• If we speak of matter as essentially inanimate, or inert, we establish the need for a graded hierarchy of beings: stones have no agency or experience whatsoever; bacteria have a minimal degree of life; plants have a bit more life, with a rudimentary degree of sensitivity; ‘lower’ animals are more sentient, yet still stuck in their instincts; ‘higher’ animals are more aware; while humans alone are really awake and intelligent. In this manner we continually isolate human awareness above, and apart from, the sensuous world. It takes us out of relationship with the things around us. If, however, we assume that matter is alive and self-organizing from the get-go, then hierarchies vanish, and we are left with a wildly differentiated field of animate beings, each of which has its gifts relative to the others. And we find ourselves not above, but in the very midst of this web, our own sentience part and parcel of the sensuous landscape. David Abram
• In solitude we are in the presence of mere matter (even the sky, the stars, the moon, trees in blossom), things of less value (perhaps) than a human spirit. Its value lies in the greater possibility of attention. Simone Weil

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…as posited by traditional religion

• The world of pure spirits stretches between the divine nature and the world of human beings; because divine wisdom has ordained that the higher should look after the lower, angels execute the divine plan for human salvation: they are our guardians, who free us when hindered and help to bring us home. Thomas Aquinas

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When we are aware of the spirits in nature, we treat it with more respect

• Does anyone pray before they cut a tree? I haven’t seen anyone do that yet in the timber industry. But my vision is that that day is coming. I have a vision of a world in which we relate to each other as souls – not as personalities – not as bodies and minds and capabilities to accomplish things in this domain of the five sense, but as immortal spirits learning together how to co-create this world. Gary Zukav

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When our spirit connects to the spirit in nature, we are uplifted and refreshed

• And rural nature is full of the same quickening spirit-it is, in fact, the exhaustless mine from which the poet and the painter have brought such wondrous treasures-an unfailing fountain of intellectual enjoyment, where all may drink, and be awakened to a deeper feeling of the works of genius, and a keener perception of the beauty of our existence. Thomas Cole
• In the desert a fountain is springing, In the wide waste there still is a tree, And a bird in the solitude singing, Which speaks to my spirit of thee. Lord Byron
• It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. Robert Louis Stevenson
• Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean. John Muir
• Nearness to nature… keeps the spirit sensitive to impressions not commonly felt and in touch with the unseen powers. Charles Alexander Eastman
• Overall, rocks, wood and water, brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its innermost depths. Thomas Cole
• Pine trees with low limbs spread over fresh snow made a stronger vault for the spirit than pews and pulpits ever could. Daniel Woodrell
• Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary. Henry David Thoreau
• There is new life in the soil for every man. There is healing in the trees for tired minds and for our overburdened spirits, there is strength in the hills, if only we will lift up our eyes. Remember that nature is your great restorer. Calvin Coolidge
• When you drink in nature through your senses, you deepen your awareness of the great silent intelligence flowing through all things. You nourish your mind, body, and spirit as you connect to the divine love of Being. Deepak Chopra