What Is Animism?

Honestly wasn’t a word I heard or thought of often before my spiritual journey into witchcraft. But the concept was something I often thought about. I inherently understood Earth and Nature as a living entity. Between being raised by Xichana gardeners, sitting in trees as a kid, and, of course, Disney’s Pocahontas (don’t cancel me for liking Pocahontas as a kid… and now too…), I knew very matter-of-factly that I was in a relationship with nature. To this day, I will talk to anyone who will listen about the consciousness of ants, bees, and trees. I think there is scientific evidence. They are sad when their kin dies. They show observable sadness. But I digress. I did not know that this belief had a name, and was called animism. 

Animism, from the Latin anima (soul, breath, life), is the worldview that all things possess a spiritual essence: animals, plants, rivers, stones, weather, and the dead. It's not a religion so much as a foundational orientation toward reality, and is arguably the natural and instinctive worldview of humans. 

Prehistoric Origins (100,000–10,000 BCE)

We can’t confirm the beliefs of our ancient ancestors, but we can infer beliefs and attitudes from artifacts that demonstrate behavior. 

Burial practices are the earliest evidence. Neanderthal burials ( around 100,000 BCE) at sites like Shanidar Cave show deliberate placement of bodies. I remember watching the documentary about the discovery of these burials, and they noted the possible use of flowers. This particular burial ritual, which includes a natural element like flowers, suggests something pretty amazing. That, this early in human evolution, there was an understanding of death, a fear of it, and maybe a belief in some form of afterlife or continued spiritual presence. If this is true, we have found the earliest evidence of animism or belief in a soul. 

Then we have the art. 

Cave Art in Europe (roughly 40,000–10,000 BCE) at Lascaux, Altamira, and Chauvet depicts animals with a reverence that goes beyond mere hunting guides. Many figures are therianthropic (new word I learned),  half-human, half-animal, suggesting shamanic identity-blending with animal spirits. The famous "Sorcerer" figure at Les Trois-Frères (France) depicts a human figure with antlers and animal features, likely a ritual specialist in communion with animal powers.

Archaeologists widely interpret this era as proto-animistic. We see early humans who understood themselves as part of nature, in a deep relationship with it, not separate from or above it.

Ancient Civilizations: Animism Institutionalized (10,000–500 BCE)

As humans settled into agricultural societies, nature worship became more structured and formalized into early religion.

Mesopotamia: Every natural force had a “me”, a divine essence. Rivers, storms, and grain weren't just things; they were beings with personalities and wills. 

Ancient Egypt: The ka and ba were components of the soul; the heka was a magical life-force present in all things. Certain animals, like crocodiles and cats, were understood as living expressions of divine essences. They were not symbolic representations of the divine but actual manifestations of gods. 

Ancient China: Qi (pronounced Chi) is believed to be the vital force that flows through all living and non-living things and is foundational to Daoism and Chinese cosmology. Mountains, rivers, and ancestral spirits were actively consulted in governance. Oracle bones (Shang Dynasty,  roughly, 1200 BCE) record dialogues with spiritual forces about harvests and battles.

Art in the Americas (6,000 BCE to 1,000 CE), Sego Canyon, Utah, sandstone cliffs with over 80 imposing, life-sized figures painted and carved over roughly 8,000 years by Archaic, Anasazi, Fremont, and Ute peoples. The figures have hollowed or missing eyes and often lack arms and legs. Scholars read them as shamanic vision art. Depicting spirit figures frequently shown holding snake forms, with torsos incorporating water and life-giving symbols, is considered evidence of a living shamanic tradition among these Western Archaic people. 

Indigenous Americas, African cultures- Across every continent, complex animistic traditions developed independently, demonstrating that this isn't one culture's idea, but a recurring human discovery. In fact, indigenity, not a racial construct in this context, but rather a cultural belief.  A belief system that touched all of our human ancestors before imperialism and colonization. It is built around maintaining a sacred relationship with nature. That is to say, the belief system understands our relational role in protecting and living in community with nature. 

The Axial Age (800–200 BCE)

Around 800–200 BCE, we see a shift happen across Eurasia at the same time, which the philosopher Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age. Abstract, transcendent religions emerged (along with patriarchal systems). 

• Greek philosophy began separating logos (rational principle) from mythos (story/spirit)

• Hebrew monotheism actively suppressed animistic practices as idolatry 

• Buddhism and Jainism in India focused on liberation from the material world and the pursuit of enlightenment. 

• Confucianism prioritized human social ethics over spiritual nature-relations

So nature worship started to go underground, become more associated with feminine gendered roles and relationships, and was dismissed as “unenlightened” or removed from power. 

Survival and Resistance (1500–1900 CE)

Despite colonial suppression, animistic traditions survived globally through:

Syncretism, which is the blending of dominant religions. Neopaganism, Witchcraft, Brujeria, Curanderismo, and Hoodoo have elements of this. In Japanese Shinto, animistic kami (spiritual essences in nature) survived alongside Buddhist influence.

Geographic refuge - remote communities in Siberia, the Amazon, Central Africa, and the Pacific maintained living traditions. 

Oral tradition - stories, songs, and ceremonies. We see much of this among American First Nations peoples, who carried knowledge that colonizers couldn't easily access or recognize as "knowledge."

Colonialism and the Invention of "Animism" as a Word 

Here's an interesting fact: the word animism is surprisingly recent.

In 1871, British anthropologist E.B. Tylor (it's always a British dude… you know?) coined and defined animism in Primitive Culture. He argued that animism was the earliest stage of human religious evolution, a childlike belief in souls that "primitive" peoples had and that "civilized" peoples had transcended through science and monotheism.

 Tylor's framework and the appeal it held with the colonization mindset would set a stage for racist philosophy, justification of genocide, and excessive hoarding of resources for the rest of our existence moving forward. This framework was created: 

• Hierarchy: animism → polytheism → monotheism → science

• Justified colonial attitudes toward indigenous peoples as spiritually and intellectually primitive

• Treated animism as an error to be corrected, not a valid way of knowing

For nearly a century, "animism" was an insult. It would be used to dismiss indigenous knowledge systems as superstition, which served colonial land seizure, forced conversion, and cultural erasure. Colonial suppression of nature-based traditions predates the word animism itself, and Tylor's framework gave that suppression a veneer of intellectual legitimacy.

The 20th Century: Anthropology Pushes Back (1960s–1990s)

The colonial frame for animism began to crack mid-century, and indigenous scholars began to gain a voice in the academic arena on the topic. 

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1960s) argued that so-called "primitive" thought was not pre-logical but operated on its own sophisticated logic. He understood that this system held a structural analysis of the world through relations between nature and culture.

Marshall Sahlins challenged the idea that hunter-gatherers were in constant struggle for survival, and argued that many were "the original affluent societies," with time, balance, and deep relational knowledge of their environments.

Vine Deloria Jr. was a Standing Rock Sioux scholar who wrote God Is Red in 1973. He made the case that indigenous relationships with land weren't superstition; they were a complete and ecologically necessary way of knowing. He said it before it was academically fashionable to say it.

Animism and Global Change Crisis (2000s–Present)

As the climate change crisis deepened, Western culture began to recognize that its “man dominates nature” philosophy, which treats the natural world as an inert resource rather than a living relation, had consequences.

Animism became newly relevant as:

• Rights of nature movements emerged globally. The Whanganui River in New Zealand was granted legal personhood in 2017. Rooted in their indigenous cultural belief systems, they recognized the river as an ancestor.

• Indigenous land protections were reframed as ecological wisdom, not primitive sentiment

• Deep ecology and eco-grief movements began articulating the psychological damage of living in a world stripped of spirit.

Present Day Animism

Animism today exists on several levels simultaneously:

As a living tradition, hundreds of millions of people worldwide practice forms of animism embedded in Shinto, indigenous religions, African traditional religions, folk Catholicism, Siberian shamanism, and countless local traditions.

As a philosophical position, seriously engaged by anthropologists, philosophers, ecologists, and legal theorists as an alternative to Western subject/object dualisms.

As personal spirituality,  the contemporary witchcraft revival, neo-paganism, and folk magic exist in this space: recovering animistic sensibilities (plant spirits, elemental forces, ancestral presence) outside institutional religion.

As ecological politics, the recognition that treating the world and our resources as inanimate, holding the view that humans are dominant over nature,  is not just spiritually impoverished but incredibly harmful.

These systems and views are varied and intertwined, and intuitive for many of us in the craft. I learned most of this while writing this blog. So it’s understandable that these concepts may get mixed or conflated with the power of our tools or inanimate sacred objects, especially for those of us who practice spellcrafting. I wanted to show the difference between Animism and empowered or consecrated objects in this blog post, but Animism turned out to be a long and rich history worth exploring on its own. In the next blog, I will expand on the difference between energetically powerful tools and calling on spirits. For now, we sit with this and take a moment to recognize our own relationship with the natural world and the spirits that surround us.