Animism: Encyclopedia II - Animism - Origins

Animism - Origins

Early ideas on the subject of the soul, and at the same time the origin of them, can be illustrated by analysis of the terms applied to them. Readers of Dante know the idea that the dead have no shadows. This was no invention of the poet's but a piece of traditional lore.

Among the Basutus it is held that a man walking by the brink of a river may lose his life if his shadow falls on the water, for a crocodile may seize it and draw him in.

In Tasmania, North and South America and classical Europe is found the conception that the soul — σκιά, umbra — is identical with the shadow of a person. More familiar to Europeans is the connection between the soul and the breath. This identification is found both in Indo-European and Semitic languages. In Latin we have spiritus, in Greek pneuma, in Hebrew ruach. The idea is found extending other planes of culture in Australia, America and Asia.

For some of the Native Americans and First Nations the Roman custom of receiving the breath of a dying man was no mere pious duty but a means of ensuring that his soul was transferred to a new body. Other familiar conceptions identify the soul with the liver (see omen) or the heart, with the reflected figure seen in the pupil of the eye, and with the blood.

Although the soul is often distinguished from the vital principle, there are many cases in which a state of unconsciousness is explained as due to the absence of the soul. In South Australia wilyamarraba (without soul) is the word used for insensible. So too the autohypnotic trance of the magician or shaman is regarded as due to their visit to distant regions or the netherworld, of which they bring back an account. Telepathy or clairvoyance, with or without trance, may have operated to produce a conviction of the dual nature of man, for it seems possible that facts unknown to the automatist are sometimes discovered by means of crystal gazing.

Sickness is often explained as due to the absence of the soul and means are sometimes taken to lure back the wandering soul. In Chinese tradition, when a person is at the point of death and their soul believed to have left their body, the patient's coat is held up on a long bamboo pole while a priest endeavours to bring the departed spirit back into the coat by means of incantations. If the bamboo begins to turn round in the hands of the relative who is deputed to hold it, it is regarded as a sign that the soul of the moribund has returned (see automatism).

More important perhaps than all these phenomena, because more regular and normal, was the daily period of sleep with its frequent fitful and incoherent ideas and images. The mere immobility of the body was sufficient to show that its state was not identical with that of waking. When, in addition, the sleeper awoke to give an account of visits to distant lands, from which, as modern psychical investigations suggest, they may even have brought back veridical details, the conclusion must have been irresistible that in sleep something journeyed forth, which was not the body (see astral travel). In a minor degree, revival of memory during sleep and similar phenomena of the sub-conscious life may have contributed to the same result. Dreams are sometimes explained in animist cultures as journeys performed by the sleeper, sometimes as visits paid by other persons, by animals or objects to the sleeper. Hallucinations, possibly more frequent in the lower stages of culture, must have contributed to fortify this interpretation, and the animistic theory in general. Seeing the phantasmic figures of friends at the moment when they were, whether at the point of death or in good health, many miles distant, must have led people irresistibly to the dualistic theory. But hallucinatory figures, both in dreams and waking life, are not necessarily those of the living. From the reappearance of dead friends or enemies, primitive man was inevitably led to the belief that there existed an incorporeal part of man, which survived the dissolution of the body. The soul was conceived to be a facsimile of the body, sometimes no less material, sometimes more subtle but yet material, sometimes altogether impalpable and intangible.

If the phenomena of dreams were, as suggested above, of great importance for the development of animism, the belief, which must originally have been a doctrine of human psychology, cannot have failed to expand speedily into a general philosophy of nature. Not only human beings but animals and objects are seen in dreams and the conclusion would be that they too have souls. The same conclusion may have been reached by another line of argument.

Folk psychology posited a spirit in a person to account, amongst other things, for their actions. A natural explanation of the changes in the external world would be that they are due to the operations and volitions of spirits.

But apart from considerations of this sort, it is probable that animals must have been regarded as possessing souls, early in the history of animistic beliefs. We may assume that man attributed a soul to the beasts of the field almost as soon as he claimed one for himself.

The animist may attribute to animals the same sorts of ideas, the same soul, the same mental processes as himself, which may also be associated with greater power, cunning, or magical abilities. Dead animals are sometimes credited with a knowledge of how their remains are treated, potentially with the power to take vengeance on the hunter if he is disrespectful.

It is not surprising to find that many peoples respect and even worship animals (see totem or animal worship), often regarding them as relatives. It is clear that widespread respect was paid to animals as the abode of dead ancestors, and much of the cults to dangerous animals is traceable to this principle; though we need not attribute an animistic origin to it.

With the rise of species, deities and the cult of individual animals, the path towards anthropomorphization and polytheism is opened and the respect paid to animals tended to be reduced or lost entirely, especially in its strict animistic character.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Origins", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki