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Home , Animism, Polytheism, Spiritualism, Spiritualism (beliefs)

A sample entry from the

Encyclopedia of and Nature (London & New York: Continuum, 2005)

Edited by

Bron Taylor

© 2005 All Rights Reserved 78 slaughter. Although killing a cock is allowed, the religious originated in the primordial mistake of forbade reviling this fowl because it served the faithful by attributing , , or to inanimate objects. awakening them to perform their religious duty; the same Although it has generally been dismissed in the academic rule applies to fleas “who awakened a prophet.” study of religion as an obsolete term for describing the All three scriptures further condemn any manifestation belief systems of indigenous people who hold that natural of cruelty per se toward animals, which are recognized phenomena have or spirits, animism has neverthe- as creatures of ; however, , , and less persisted in popular usage and academic theory to also encourage an instrumental approach to raise problems about the meaning and value of materiality animals, at best, while allowing their arbitrary killing, at in religion. worst. Perhaps this was the natural sequence in the process Tylor’s theory of animism was premised on a kind of of turning the human race into the apex of divine creation, , since he assumed that materiality by defini- a creed that does not allow any partners of equal status at tion was “dead” , but his theory was also framed in the side of human beings. Furthermore, teachers from terms of an ideology of European progress, underwritten these traditions condemn the practice of pet keeping, by evolutionary science, which bore a strange contra- relegating the most favorite among the pets, especially diction. Although Europeans supposedly represented the dogs, to the status of unclean or maligned animals. Such pinnacle of evolutionary development, they could only antagonism may result from the apprehension of ecclesi- know that by comparing themselves to a baseline repre- astical that attachment to pets – which bestows on sented by others who had supposedly not evolved. Like human beings a complete mastery over these creatures other social evolutionists, Tylor found his evolutionary and, in consequence, may bring about higher self-esteem baseline, the “primitive,” in reports submitted by European – might have detrimental consequences for the submission travelers, , and colonial agents about of the faithful to an almighty God. No less important, the indigenous people, the “savage,” on the periphery of emotional linkage between a and his/her pet may empire. While Europeans according to Tylor’s - weaken human dependence on God’s representatives on ary scheme had progressed along a developmental trajec- Earth, the . tory through animism, , and to reach the highest achievements of science, evolving from Sophia Menache primitive to civilized, indigenous people of the , , Asia, , and the Pacific had supposedly Further Reading been left behind by evolution, standing over as savage Houston, Walter. Purity and Monotheism: Clean and “survivals” of the primitive. Unclean Animals in Biblical Law. Sheffield: J.S.O.T. Although Tylor was only interested in contemporary Press, 1993. indigenous as data for building a theory of the Isaacs, Ronald H. Animals in Jewish Thought and Tradi- original, primordial, or primitive animism, his term tion. Northvale: Jason Aronson, 2000. caught on to such an extent that it became commonplace Maccoby, Hyam. and : The Ritual Purity in European inventories of the religions of the to System and Its Place. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- identify contemporary adherents of indigenous religions versity Press, 1999. as animists. A recent guidebook for Christian missionaries, Menache, Sophia. “Dogs: A Story of Friendship.” Society for example, asserts that 40 percent of the world’s popu- and Animals 6:1 (1998), 67–86. lation is animistic (Van Rheenan 1991: 30). While this Menache, Sophia. “Dogs: God’s Worst Enemies?” Society characterization has often been experienced by indigen- and Animals 5:1 (1997), 23–44. ous people as denigrating, it has occasionally been See also: in the Jewish Tradition; adopted as a term of self-identification. In and Animals; Christianity and Animals; Dogs in the Abra- Nigeria, for example, representatives of indigenous reli- hamic Traditions; Dogs in the Islamic Tradition; gions, struggling in a political arena dominated by Muslim Elephants; Francis of Assisi; Hunting and the Origins of and Christian interests, have sought formal recognition as Religion; Hyenas – Spotted; Islam, Animals, and Vege- animists. At the same time, animism has sometimes been tarianism; Primate ; Serpents and Dragons. adopted as a term of self-identification in , neo-pagan, or environmentalist movements. Without addressing those appropriations of the term, this entry Animism concentrates on the , rationale, and consequences of animism as a theory of religion. Coined by the anthropologist E.B. Tylor (1832–1917), the term “animism” refers not to a type of religion but to a History of Animism theory of religion. Asserting a minimal definition of During the nineteenth century, European social scientists religion as “belief in spiritual beings,” Tylor argued that developed different terms – , totemism, and Animism 79 animism – for the original religion of humanity, but even if it was a “childish ” enveloped in each term carried the same allegation that “primitives” or “intense and inveterate ignorance” (Tylor 1871: I, 22–3). “savages” were incapable of assessing the meaning and Where did Tylor get his evidence to support this find- value of material objects. ing? Instead of observing dogs, Tylor collected accounts The term, “fetish,” for example, emerged out of about indigenous people, the “savages” who appeared intercultural trading relations in West Africa in which in reports from European travelers, missionaries, and European traders argued that Africans, unlike European colonial agents. Arguably, Tylor’s most important source , had no stable system of value in which they was an account of Zulu religion from South Africa, could evaluate objects. Overvaluing apparently trifling The Religious System of the Amazulu, which had been pub- objects such as feathers, bones, and cloth used in lished under the authorship of the Anglican ritual, Africans undervalued the trade goods brought by Henry Callaway, although the Zulu Christian convert, Europeans. In this context, European Christians referred to Mpengula Mbande, actually provided most of the reports African ritual objects as “fetishes,” a term derived from the collected in the book. Tylor praised The Religious System Portuguese feitiço, referring to nefarious instruments of of the Amazulu for providing “the best knowledge of the and (Pietz 1985). The term, “totemism,” lower phases of religious belief” (1871: I, 380). according to John Ferguson M’Lennan, referred to com- Certainly, Tylor found evidence of an active munal alliances under the sign of an animal or an life among Callaway’s Zulus. Zulus often saw the shade that combined fetishism with exogamy, mixing the or shadow of deceased ancestors in . However, inability to evaluate materiality with regulations govern- Callaway’s volume included a detailed account about ing sexuality (M’Lennan 1870). Arguably, the term, one Zulu man, an apprenticed diviner, who had become “animism,” mixed fetishism not with human sexuality but so overwhelmed with visions of spirits that he had with animal psychology. The psychology of dogs, in described his own body as “a house of dreams” (Callaway particular, provided the key to a theory of religion based 1868–1870: 228, 260, 316). According to Tylor, all on attributing animation to inanimate objects. Zulus, as “savage” survivals of the “primitive,” were In his popular survey of human evolution, The Origin of subject to dream visions, but “as for the man who is Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man, John passing into the morbid condition of the professional Lubbock explained that religion originated as the result of seer, phantoms are continually coming to talk to him the primitive tendency to attribute animation to inanimate in his sleep, till he becomes as the expressive native objects. To illustrate this primitive “frame of ,” phrase is, ‘a house of dreams’ ” (1871: I, 443). Although Lubbock cited evidence from southern Africa, relying on Tylor appropriated him as an of the the early nineteenth-century report from the traveler “primitive,” this particular Zulu man, who served Tylor as Henry Lichtenstein that the Xhosa in the Eastern Cape a “savage” survival of the original “house of dreams” assumed that an anchor cast ashore from a shipwreck was from which religion originated, was James Mbande, actually alive. In a footnote, Lubbock observed, “Dogs the brother of the Christian convert, Mpengula Mbande. appear to do the same” (Lubbock 1889: 287). As Lubbock’s Like his brother, James was torn between the Christian friend and mentor, , maintained, religion mission and indigenous tradition. While Mpengula went could be explained in terms of dog behavior. Like one way, becoming a catechist for the mission, James Lubbock, Darwin observed that dogs characteristically struggled in the other direction, striving to keep an attributed life to inanimate objects. His dog’s attention to a ancestral dream alive under increasingly difficult parasol blowing in the wind, for example, suggested to colonial conditions. In this case, therefore, the “house Darwin that the animal assumed that objects were alive. of dreams” was not a “primitive,” but a colonial In this animal psychology, therefore, nineteenth-century situation, the product of contemporary conflicts in theorists had a basis for understanding animism as the southern Africa. “primitive” or “savage” propensity to attribute animation The analysis of dreams, however, did not provide the to inanimate objects. only evidence for Tylor’s theory of animism. In addition, the involuntary physical phenomenon of sneezing Evidence of Animism was central to Tylor’s argument. Here again Callaway’s In standard accounts, E.B. Tylor’s theory of animism is Zulu evidence was definitive. As Tylor observed, sneezing derived from the “primitive” inability to distinguish was between dreams and waking . When the “primitive” ancestors of humanity dreamed about not originally an arbitrary and meaningless custom, deceased friends or relatives, they assumed that the dead but the working out of a principle. The plain state- were still alive in some spiritual form. Out of dreams, ment by the modern Zulus fits with the hints to be therefore, evolved “the doctrine of souls and other gained from the and of other spiritual beings in general,” a doctrine that was “rational,” races, to connect the notions and practices as to 80 Animism

sneezing with the ancient and savage doctrine of (Tylor 1892: 283). Any trace of more advanced religious pervading and invading spirits, considered as good concepts, such as ideas of , morality, or retribution in or evil, and treated accordingly (1871: I, 104). an , could only have entered “savage” religion, Tylor argued, through such foreign intercourse with From Callaway’s account, Tylor derived the ethnographic “higher” races. Factoring out colonial contacts, relations, facts that Zulus thought their deceased ancestors caused and exchanges, he argued, “leaves untouched in the sneezing; that sneezing reminded Zulus to name and religions of the lower races the lower developments of praise their ancestors; that the ancestors entered the animism” (Tylor 1892: 298). According to this method, bodies of their descendants when they sneezed; and that therefore, animism appeared as the original religion – the ritual specialists, such as Zulu diviners, regularly sneezed earliest, the lowest – only by erasing the actual colonial as a ritual technique for invoking the spiritual power of situations in which indigenous people lived. As a result, the ancestors. These Zulu concepts and practices, Tylor the theory of animism provided an ideological supplement concluded, were remnants of a prehistoric era in which to the imperial project. sneezing was not merely a “physiological” phenomenon, Although it was posed as a scientific explanation of the “but was still in the ‘theological stage’ ” (1871: I, 104). origin and development of religion, the theory of animism Much has been made of Tylor’s “intellectualist” theory also addressed nineteenth-century European dilemmas of religion. Although primitives suffered from primordial about the meaning of materiality. Despite the expansion stupidity, Tylor argued that they nevertheless exercised of scientific materialism, with its implicit challenge to their limited intellectual powers to develop explanations religious belief, the séances of were gaining of the world in which they lived. Unfortunately, Tylor popularity in Europe, promising material proof of spiritual cited a Zulu source in support of this proposition, survival of death. Initially, E.B. Tylor considered using the Callaway’s catechist, Mpengula Mbande, who observed term “spiritualism” for his theory of religion, regarding that “we are told all things, and assent without seeing contemporary spiritualist practices in Europe as a clearly whether they are true or not” (1871: II, 387). “survival” of . Like the religious beliefs Although cited by Tylor as evidence of savage ignorance, and practices of indigenous people on the colonized per- Mbande’s point in this statement was that most Zulus had iphery of empire, the spiritualist séance represented an not been exposed to Callaway’s new Christian gospel. unwarranted persistence in attributing life to dead matter. Rather than offering evidence of primordial stupidity, As a European intellectual problem, therefore, the theory therefore, Mbande was announcing his recently acquired of animism can be situated in the context of nineteenth- Christian commitment. In any , Tylor’s theoretical century distress about the religious implications of work, and his use of Zulu evidence, demonstrated that his scientific materialism and the scientific implications of a theory of the origin of religion was based on an analysis of new religious practice such as spiritualism. the body as well as the mind. More animal than human, in At the same time, this theory of the animation of “dead” this respect, “primitive” religion, as revealed according to matter was developed in the midst of the consolidation of Tylor by its survival among contemporary Zulu “savages,” commodity capitalism in Europe and North America. The had evolved out of a bodily process that was as simple, commodity, as provocatively proposed, was not basic, and involuntary as sneezing. However much it might dead matter because it was animated by a “fetishism have been theologized, sneezing marked the physiological of commodities,” similar to “primitive” religion, which origin of religion as animism, the belief in pervading and attributed life to objects “abounding in metaphysical invading spirits. subtleties and theological niceties” (1974: I, 81). While supplementing the colonization of indigenous people, Consequences of Animism therefore, the theory of animism was also entangled in In building his theory of animism, E.B. Tylor intentionally European struggles to understand the animation of matter disguised the colonial conditions that provided his in capitalism. evidence. Ignoring the social, political, intercultural, and In the of religion, some theorists have interreligious contexts in which his evidence was embed- recently attempted to rehabilitate the theory of animism, ded was not an oversight. It was a method. According restating the argument that religion originated in the basic to Tylor, “savage religion” had to be abstracted from its animistic propensity to project human characteristics living contexts in order to be used in an evolutionary his- of life, thought, and feeling onto the natural world, or tory of human culture that began with primitive animism. redefining animism as a “relational ” “In defining the religious systems of the lower races, so as through which indigenous people gain knowledge by to place them correctly in the history of culture,” Tylor entering into humanizing relations with the natural world. observed in 1892, “careful examination is necessary to The history of the theory of animism, however, suggests separate the genuine developments of native that this theoretical project has inevitably been entangled from the effects of intercourse with civilized foreigners” in local and global negotiations over the meaning of Animism – A Contemporary Perspective 81 materiality. As a point of entry into the study of religion SP Animism – A Contemporary Perspective and nature, the theory of animism presents a problem, bearing traces of nineteenth-century European imperial- Animism is a term coined to serve in an argument about ism, colonialism, and capitalism, rather than a solution the origins of religion, but it has survived the widespread for our understanding of religious engagements with the rejection of that theory and now thrives as a label for a natural world. particular kind of religion. For E.B. Tylor (1871), the term “animism” summarizes his definition of religion as “belief David Chidester in spiritual beings.” In its new application, animism now labels a type of religion comparable to other types (e.g., Further Reading monotheism and polytheism). It is typically applied to Bird-David, Nurit. “ ‘Animism’ Revisited: , religions that engage with a wide community of living Environment, and Relational Epistemology.” Current beings with whom humans share this world or particular Anthropology 40 Supplement (1999), 67–92. locations within it. It might be summed up by the phrase Callaway, Henry. The Religious System of the Amazulu. “all that exists ” and, sometimes, the additional Springvale: Springvale Mission, 1868–1870; Cape understanding that “all that lives is holy.” As such the term Town: Struik, 1970. animism is sometimes applied to particular indigenous Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man. Chicago: Encyclo- religions in comparison to Christianity or Islam, for pedia Britannica, 1952 (original edition, 1871). example. It is also used as a self-definition by some Guthrie, Stewart Elliot. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory indigenous people and some eco-pagans. of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, The application of the term animism no longer depends 1993. on notions about “spirits” or “” entities. It Lubbock, John. The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive has been found helpful in drawing attention to Condition of Man. London: Longmans, Green, 1889 and in which life is encountered in a wide (orig. edn, 1870). community of persons only some of whom are human. Marx, Karl. Capital, 2 vols. Samuel Moore and Edward Certainly this new usage shares with Tylor’s discussion a Aveling, trs. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1974 concern with materiality and, in this, links animism to (original edition, 1867). wider contestations, for example, about environmentalism Masuzawa, Tomoko. “Troubles with Materiality: The and the dichotomous opposition of culture and nature. of Fetishism in the Nineteenth Century.” Comparative In the language of classical European philosophy “per- Studies in Society and History 42 (2000), 242–67. son” refers principally to humans and deity. At various M’Lennan, John Ferguson. “The of Animals and times, the question of the personhood of particular groups Plants.” Fortnightly Review 6 (1868), 407–27, 562–82; of humans (Africans and women in particular) has been 7 (1870), 194–216. problematic (e.g., in debates about the recognition and Pietz, William. “The Problem of the Fetish, I.” Res: increasing application of human rights). Other beings Anthropology and 9 (1985), 5–17. (animals especially) are problematic in as much as some Tylor, E.B. “The Limits of Savage Religion.” Journal might be more or less like humans in particular ways (e.g., of the Royal Anthropological Institute 21 (1892), the feeling of , the use of language, or some indicator 283–301. of intellect or agency) that seem to some theorists to Tylor, E.B. Primitive Culture, 2 vols. London: John Murray, justify the recognition of personhood and thus the exten- 1871. sion or recognition of rights. Similarly, Piaget’s approach Van Rheenan, Gailyn. Communicating Christ in Animistic to childhood development (1933) seems to assume that Contexts. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1991. is accurately described in English language’s use of See also: Animism – A Contemporary Perspective; Anthro- gendered pronouns (“he” or “she”) for persons, in contrast pologists; Bioregionalism and the North American Bio- to a wider range of inanimate objects (“it”). In this theory, regional Congress; Ecology and Religion; Evolutionary children “naturally” project life onto inanimate objects , Religion, and Stewardship; Hunting Spirituality until they reach a more advanced stage of development. and Animism; Magic; Magic, Animism and the Shaman’s Reference to European languages in which personal Craft; Noble Savage; Radical Environmentalism; Snyder, pronouns are applied to what native speakers of those Gary; Zulu (amaZulu) Ancestors and Ritual Exchange; languages also consider inanimate (e.g., chairs) may not Zulu (amaZulu) Culture, Plants and Spirit (South necessarily falsify these notions, especially because the Africa). concomitant imputation of gender is neither considered nor meaningful. In these and similar ways, animism is problematic in European-rooted worldviews and dis- course. It simultaneously insists on the veracity of Western notions about personhood and materiality, while deni-