Kestrel's Nest

What is Animism?

It is difficult to define such a concept as Animism because a definition always restricts and the universal nature of consciousness cannot be restricted and universal at the same time. For the first couplet of the Tao Te Ching may be rendered in English as follows:

The Way that can be told is not the true, the eternal Way.
The Name that can be named is not the true, the eternal Name.

Somehow, accurate though that may be, you need something to grasp, to secure your understanding. In the forums of the Society of Animists a number of us came up with the following definition, which is offered in the spirit in which it was composed, one of shared enquiry into the truth behind all things:

"Animists see the world as full of people to interact with, only a very few of which are human, rather than as a world full of resources to be exploited. *Every* person, human and other than human, is fully a part of every other person's world, forming a web of interconnection that in its completeness *is* the world, within which no one person stands in greater importance or intrinsic worth than another. Every person, human and other than human, is intimately related to every other.
A person is any being within the Universe, whether it be animal, plant, material object, or abstraction, that interacts in relationship with any other being in the Universe."

I hope that helps. Of course that is not the end of the story. The seeker after truth needs to know exactly what that means in practice. That is what I intend to explore in these pages. The exploration is an intensely personal one and ranges over subjects which may not, at first, be considered to be in the realm of spiritual discussions, but I would disagree for, as all things are part of Universal Consciousness, so all matters need to be considered from their relationships with the persons that make up that Consciousness. Others may, of course, not agree with my analyses. So be it. If I can make those others think about the challenges that face this world then I feel I will have contributed something. Welcome and explore!

My Spiritual Journey
Two Modern Myths
On the Nature of Money
On Bread and Circuses

Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional