Animism - Topics

Spirit houses in Thailand: propitiating phi before a building goes up What personhood means once it extends to land and animals How masks and effigies come to carry a spirit in ritual Is animism a religion or a way of describing relations with a landscape Do animist traditions give trees and stones souls or only a presence people address Where animist reverence for objects survives in modern Japan Why labels like pagan and animist survive in classification schemes long after scholars dropped them What happens to animist practice when the forest around it is logged What it means to say a river has a spirit rather than merely being sacred Can animism be reconciled with a scientific account of nature How do you punish a spirit that fails to bring rain Shinto kami inhabit rocks and waterfalls — how does that shape land use? Is animism the same as pantheism in everyday practice How a shaman moves between human and non-human persons Do animist traditions grant animals an afterlife Why animism is often misread as the worship of objects Why Christian missions classified local spirits as demons How animist hunters negotiate with the animals they kill