religion

Atheistic Animism

June 11, 2018

Animism has a radically different relationship with deities than most religions.

Many of the living animistic traditions include tales of Gods and Goddesses, and other non-human deities that can be honoured, worked with or relied up by the practitioner.

Ancient records of animist practice show a deep reverence for a variety of spiritual beings from animals to volcanoes, ancestral humans to creator beings. And many modern Western animists now consider themselves pagan, centring their practice around ancestral deities from the Celtic and Norse pantheons.

But animism doesn’t require the belief in or worship of a deity; there are no rules about what or how to worship, or even that worship must be performed. There are vast numbers of animists that work with no supreme being or deity, but rather consider the spirits of the land to be equal to humans, or simply different.

The Western idea of theism and worship is deeply informed by our religious heritage, which frames all spiritual or non-human beings as ‘Gods’ (competing the with ‘one true God’ of the monotheistic faith) or their servants.

It is a strictly hierarchical view of the spiritual realm, with humans at the bottom in terms of power, value and wisdom. Worship is something that is demanded or required, and the relationship is usually formal, un-equal and placative.

But in animism, this conception of deities and worship becomes untenable; the Gods of a land or a people may or may not be pertinent to a particular animist. The deities are often approachable, fallible, flawed or uninterested. They can be equals to us, and we can relate with them as kin rather than authoritative or punitive figures.

This is a completely different view of theism, one that is more spacious and that rapidly dissolves into something incomparable to theism.

Once we apply the practical, experiential values of animism, it’s relationship to the Gods becomes even more distinct from the theistic traditions. Animists aren’t required to believe, but rather to explore; through the various tools and principles of animism, we can develop our own, uniquely individual, experiences of the spiritual world – including the deities we want to work with.

These experiences bring the deities out of the realms of story and myth, and into our lives in a concrete, helpful ways. It is in these experiences that animism is most closely aligned with the mystical traditions various religions.

While many modern people want to engage with maps of their world from a new perspective, the requirement to believe in a deity can be an enourmous hurdle for people raised in our secular, rational society.

Animism provides an approach to the spiritual and the mystical that we can engage with completely free from theistic dogma, and completely free of Gods if we want. While the Gods are the heart and fuel of theistic religions, animism values our relationships with our ancestors, land and community.

Our relationships to these sources is what creates the path and effectiveness of animist methods, leaving us free to engage with deities, or not, as we see fit.

Animism Doesn’t Conflict With Science

June 4, 2018

Religion and spirituality on the one hand, science and rationality on the other.

For a long time, these two facets of human experience have been on opposing sides, clashing over everything from big, universal questions – why are we here? – to intimate, personal ones – is my sexuality ok?

Animism might seem to conflict with science too, at first glance. But animism isn’t a religion, nor a New Age spiritual movement, and it’s relationship with science can be surprising.

Animism & Witchcraft

May 28, 2018

Witchcraft is a part of my personal spiritual identity as a practitioner of Northern European animism. But is witchcraft animism?

The word witch traces back to the Old English wicce/wicca meaning wise person, magician or sorceress, and possibly futher back into Proto-Germanic and Proto-Indo_European with a relation to words meaning sacred, to divide, to divine or to wake.

In the modern world, witchcraft encompasses a vast array of practices, beliefs and traditions. Many of these have roots in ancient Northern European paths, while others are rooted in other lands and cultures. It’s relationship with animist is fluid and complex; these are areas of living experience that aren’t easily defined into tidy boxes, and they vary between people, place and time.

But for me, witchcraft is a part of animism and also a religion that grew out of animism. It’s a part of animism because much of non-religious witchcraft in the UK and other European countries is a continuation of deeply animistic folk magic, mysticism and reverance for the land and ancestors. These are practices that our ancestors have held and worked with for millenia, and while in witchcraft they take on a particular aesthetic, structure or intent, they are still deeply concerned with the relationships between people, their land and their community.

In this way witchcraft is a branch of the tree of animism, a particularly Northern European branch with rich modern resources.

But witchcraft can also be a religion, when it becomes hierarchical and organised around specific rules, such as which deities to honour and which ceremonies to practice at certain times. As we’ve talk about, animism is not a religion; and while our animistic ancestors would certainly have recognised the deities and ceremonies used in modern religious witchcraft, the highly ordered practice between separate communities would be alien to them.

And neither is all animism witchcraft; many people who practice animism use no folk magic at all. They work with angels or ancestors but no pantheistic deities or land spirits, and their ceremonies draw from completely different animistic roots and lands.

When we’re talking about deeply personal spiritual experiences and concepts like this, it’s important to remember that we can’t – and dont need to – define the experiences of others for them. While I call my spiritual practices animism, others who have the same viewpoints and methods use different words, like witchcraft. While shared language is helpful, so that we can share and learn from each other, we have to remember that these words are simply viewfinders that help us work within a vast and ambiguous field of experience.

What matters more is our own personal understanding of the terms we use and the methods we apply, and our ability to work with them is a way that’s helpful for ourselves and for others.

Animism is not New Age

May 14, 2018

The New Age is “an eclectic group of cultural attitudes … that are adapted from those of a variety of ancient and modern cultures, that emphasize beliefs outside the mainstream“.*

It is rooted in the Western counter-culture movement of the 1960s, and began as a search for alternative approaches to spirituality and health. As such, it shares some features of animism and is often confused with animism by both animist practitioners and followers of the New Age.

The New Age has no universal rules, hierarchy or source texts, just like animism. It also recognises the value of nature and intuition, and it can’t be defined as a religion, philosophy or life style, again like animism.

But animism is not the New Age.

Animism is ancient and inherent to humanity. We know that our most ancient ancestors behaved in ways that we now call animistic, and that children will create animist practices of their own volition when given space to do so.

Whereas the New Age is modern, only a few decades old, and derived from Western European rejection of monotheistic laws and mores; not so much reclaimed as created.

Animism is practical and experiential.

It’s focus is on finding the methods and ideas that help in a specific situation, rather than on following a particular belief. It embraces experiences, even when they challenge previous ideas, and is therefore flexible.

The New Age is focused on belief or aesthetic over practicality, as can be seen in the anti-vaccine movement and the proliferation of New Age marketing. It also often requires ongoing access to teachers, equipment and events in order to engage with it’s practices, in contrast to animism which can be practiced in isolation without external teaching or certification.

And animism belongs to everyone, regardless of ancestry.

The New Age has been commodified into an exclusive product for a select few. Participation in the New Age movement is highly segregated by class, language and race, because of it’s roots within collonialism, racism, appropriation, capitalism and the romanticisation of non-Western cultures.

Animism, on the other hand, is far older than collonialism; and it requires that we examine our prejudices in order to be effective. It is available to all people, without needing them to appropriate from other cultures, because it’s ancient enough that everyone has their own, local heritage of animism. And because of how personal and inherent animism is, it has so far escaped commodification.

In a way, the New Age is a modern, Western approximation of animism.

Born of a yearning for spiritual sovereignty, nature and freedom, it speaks of our need for the methods and maps that help us navigate the web of our relationships. But animism goes far deeper, and is much more accessible, than the New Age movement. When we reclaim animism for ourselves, we can step beyond the need for it’s facsimile.