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Old 20-06-2018, 11:49 PM
Northern Seeker Northern Seeker is offline
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Animism Deficit Disorder

Greetings all,

I’m a little surprised to find a whopping ZERO threads that contain the term “animism”. Even searching for “animism” in message bodies turns up a scant list of fairly tangential references.

So, in the spirit of completeness, are there any self-prescribed animists out there that would like to share their beliefs or experiences?

From my perspective it’s hard to escape what seems to be a “prime directive” that all life, all beings have an element of the sacred in them and shouldn’t be needlessly killed, harmed or impeded. Or that all beings - a toad, a fern, an ant, your dog - shouldn’t be considered persons and sure, while they may vary in their degree of consciousness* and their potential to act, the world and the interactions of its inhabitants isn’t a more enriched place when we enchant it with this belief.

Thoughts?

Northern Seeker

—-

* I’m assuming here that we might never truly know what it means to be an ant, or a bat, or whether a fern has any kind of consciousness. But I would suggest that it costs nothing to give them the benefit of the doubt, and we have much to gain in perceiving, for example, a forest as a wondrous glade full of incredible beings shaping their collective destinies rather than as a soulless geography of bio-machines simply executing their mechanistic programming.
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Old 21-06-2018, 07:35 AM
Skogsdotter Skogsdotter is offline
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Is soul same as consciousness?

But anyway. I do believe everything has a soul, or how could I phrase it "folk" / "might". Its something I learned as a child so I dont analyze it much, it just is. On the other hand I also do believe, (or should I say know there is,) in fair folk so it is kind of intertwining (something that has always been, so I dont analyze that too much either).

Animism is a huge subject, possible to be viewed from several angles, so I would also like to hear peoples thoughts on the matter.

Daughter of the Forest
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  #3  
Old 22-06-2018, 04:03 AM
sentient sentient is offline
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Hi Northern Seeker,
It has been said that Shamanism is applied Animism, so as Skogsdotter said - it is a huge subject matter to discuss.
(And with Shamanism I mean the historical, traditional and cultural spirituality of Ural-Altaic peoples).

Animism (from Latin anima "soul, life") is the awareness that natural phenomena, including animals, plants, even inanimate objects, possess spiritual essence.

Since I identify Shamen with Non-Dual Awakening to the Source Essence and shamanic ‘power’ with the Spirit one receives during the shamanic initiation/empowerment (i.e. Shamanic ‘Death’ Experience) this Spirit then acts as a kind of go-between - between the Shaman and the Source Power.

How to express this “Shamanic hocus-pocus" to the modern Western mind.
Just recently, I came across this video, which to my mind introduces/expresses the Source concept very well as a “Unified Field” and the “Hidden Sector World” acting as a conduit or assistance in interfacing with the Unified Field – is an idea which could be likened to the Shaman’s Source Power Spirit Helper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqdcdky9wR4

The animistic worldview is the result of that awakening (into the ‘Unified Field’ if you like), when one realizes All is One (or None rather).


Quote:
Originally Posted by Skogsdotter
Is soul same as consciousness?

But anyway. I do believe everything has a soul, or how could I phrase it "folk" / "might". Its something I learned as a child so I dont analyze it much, it just is. On the other hand I also do believe, (or should I say know there is,) in fair folk so it is kind of intertwining (something that has always been, so I dont analyze that too much either).
With "folk" / "might" words do you mean ‘styrka, kraft, magt’ qualities of a Shaman when he or she is able to summon his/her "folk" / "might" - what in Finnic, we call “Väki”?

In Mongolian terms I trust - the personal psychic power is called Hiimori.
I had already mentioned this in one of my posts that if the Thunderbird initiates/empowers you to become a Shaman and the Holy Spirit (like Holy Ghost) comes upon you – you now have the Spirit Animal – Hiimori - as an extra soul that acts like a Guardian Spirit, Teacher-Guide and Protection for the Shaman. (Hiimori is the go-between – between the Source Power and the Shaman).

In Shamanistic/Animistic worldview ‘Spirit’ is sensed as energy vibration or as auric radiance, and everything in nature has “Väki” - everything has Guardian Spirit Power.
Skogsdotter, when you find a Sacred Site in Nature – would you say that the Site has a strong felt "folk" / "might" (“väki”) feeling i.e. the Guardian Spirit Power presence?
Are we talking about the same or similar thing?
(“Väki” or "folk" / "might"? - as dynamic strength, power or force.
Space, air, earth, water, fire are endowed with their own “Väki” and “Väki” is communicated to us through Guardian Spirits.
Something like that).


Australian Aboriginal Spirituality is not Siberian Shamanism, but time and time again I find overlapping ‘concepts’:
Quote:
Aboriginal spirituality is the belief that all objects are living and share the same soul or spirit that Aboriginals share.
—Eddie Kneebone, Aboriginal Reconciliation campaigner and painter

This is a very fundamental statement about Aboriginal spirituality. It implies that besides animals and plants even rocks have a soul.
https://www.creativespirits.info/abo...l-spirituality


Northern Seeker,
Quote:
* I’m assuming here that we might never truly know what it means to be an ant, or a bat, or whether a fern has any kind of consciousness.
I would disagree here, though I am not too sure how to express this. When you experience the energy or the auric radiance of a tree (within yourself) – you will know its ‘heart’.
Whenever you experience something Non-Dually (through the recognition of the same Spirit Essence) it will communicate its nature to you ……………

Last edited by sentient : 22-06-2018 at 07:56 AM.
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  #4  
Old 23-06-2018, 11:38 PM
sentient sentient is offline
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Imo. Animism cannot be separated from the awareness of underlying ‘Unified Field’, that everything shares the same Spiritual Source Essence.

The video I posted above about the Unified Field recommends Meditation, which is beneficial, but I don't know of any such specific practice in Shamanism/Animism.

A few Aboriginal Elders have used the technique of “Deep Listening” on me, that is humble, reverent and soooo respectful that it draws you right out of your ‘me-ness’ into the shared space (or field) of ‘ours-ness’, and before I knew, I had already shifted into (what I would call) a non-dual – all-inclusive, expanding, shared space awareness (field of silent inner knowing).
https://www.creativespirits.info/abo...tening-dadirri


And in shamanism there is no need for a specific meditation practice, because the shamanic worldview in itself is ‘meditative’.
As a hunter-gatherer, when you enter the forest, you empty your mind, you let go of all your mental chatter and tune into the totality of the forest (i.e. experience Forest as a ‘Unified Field’).
Now being part of that totality, you open up and let the ‘Unified Field’ itself tell you “What Is” happening in the forest and take your cues from there how to act.
To my mind, this is akin to “Morphic Field” behaviour and a way of knowing – it is attuning yourself to the field.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JydjryhEl5o


If you are fishing or hunting, the Master of the Sea or the Master of the Forest (ruler of that collective field and as if ‘at the centre’ of it) - decides whether there will be game to be hunted that day and the game itself decides whether they are willing to sacrifice their lives to be food for humans and if so, when.
And of course, as if at the Centre of All That Is, (Unified Field) there is the World Pole, and “The Eagle” sits on the top of it, hence The Eagle created/initiated Shamen.


About Meditation.
Eckhart Tolle I think said something like this:
“Spiritual people fall into the trap of striving towards some mentally created ideal sense of self – or ‘perfection” and sometimes, as hugely valuable as meditation is, I think meditators can also fall into this same trap, striving towards some ‘perfected self’, which is still about ‘me-ness’, what Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche called ‘Spiritual Materialism’:
https://upliftconnect.com/the-trap-o...l-materialism/


In the ‘Unified Field’ perfection already exists.
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Old 24-06-2018, 03:48 PM
Northern Seeker Northern Seeker is offline
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Thanks Sentient for your thoughtful responses.

I watched your posted John Hagelin discussion on Unified Field and, truth be told, it just didn’t resonate with me. Maybe I’m in a reductive kind-of-place right now - and hence the dismantling of my beliefs down to what I believe is their animistic core - so I’m hesitant to layer explanatory structures on top of the foundation. And there’s a part of me that feels like Hagelin ultimately amounts to a distraction - probably the same part that responds to scientific cosmology with an eye-rolling “okay, so what? So we came from a Big Bang, so the universe is going to crunch, or metric expansion itself into nothingness, how does this inform us in Middle Space, grappling with finding meaning in our lives and searching for functional truths?”.

I believe that animism, at least as extended to living beings, is essentially self-evident (and would love to hear if anyone feels to the contrary). I’m still working on the moral guidance that might derive from this claim (e.g. you can believe the squirrel is a person, but does it necessarily follow that you shouldn’t kill that person?). As a vegan to me the answer is pretty clear, but I’d like to subject that to at least some kind of logical exploration.

Your mention of the “World Pole” with the Eagle on top makes me think of Norse Mythology’s Yggdrasil, spanning the nine worlds, with an eagle at the top and the serpent Nidhogg gnawing on the roots underneath. Most charming to me is Ratatoskr, the squirrel that runs between the two, carrying gossip and insults from one to another. In my opinion there should definitely be more books out there about this squirrel

Finally, in your first response you said “when you experience the energy or the auric radiance of a tree (within yourself) - you will know its ‘heart’.” There’s a lot here to unpack and I’m a bit vague on what is actually meant by “auric radiance” or “energy”. I’d be hesitant to suppose that anyone could know the tree’s “heart”. Especially for that matter that we don’t even understand our own selves.

Take, for example, patients with brain hemispheral separation or trauma. My understanding of the current state of neurophysical/behavioral research is that when tested these patients can express two totally contradictory opinions or choices, one coming from each hemisphere. For example, the left hemisphere answers that apple is the subject’s favorite fruit, and the right hemisphere answers orange. The dawning sense, apparently, is that there may be MANY seats of conscious agency within our own brains, and perhaps something is acting as “executive decider” to corral these voices into a final answer which, wrongly, we all perceive as one-and-only-one answer that came from the tiny person sitting behind our eyes operating our gears and levers.

My point here is that we do not understand ourselves.
Isn’t it entirely possible that we cannot understand a tree? No matter how much we hug it?
Isn’t that the humble, respectful position to take?

Best regards and Happy Sunday,

Northern Seeker
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Old 24-06-2018, 10:55 PM
sentient sentient is offline
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Where I disagreed with John Hagelin, was when he said that: “Light is not self-aware. Light is not aware of light, but the Unified Field is aware of its own existence”.

Being experientially attuned to the ‘Non-Dual’ or the ‘Unified’ Field brings about an awareness or realization of “Clear Light” - the Light which sustains all life.
In the Animistic world where everything is Energy, everything has Spirit, everything also, right down to the cellular level emanates, thus bathes in Light (or call it ‘luminosity’, ‘singing’ or ‘radiance’).
And I suppose, this is where the subtle bodies come in:
https://drakebearstephen.files.wordp...14/07/em71.jpg
In the Animist worldview the Middle World is egalitarian, because of the same Spirit Source Essence, but the Spirit World is seen as hierarchical.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Northern Seeker
Finally, in your first response you said “when you experience the energy or the auric radiance of a tree (within yourself) - you will know its ‘heart’.” There’s a lot here to unpack and I’m a bit vague on what is actually meant by “auric radiance” or “energy”. I’d be hesitant to suppose that anyone could know the tree’s “heart”. Especially for that matter that we don’t even understand our own selves.

My point here is that we do not understand ourselves.

I am quite excited about these TED-talks and the one relating to understanding our own selves (posted earlier on in another thread) – I find exceptionally good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyu7v7nWzfo

This theme of knowing one’s self has been a very personal issue and a problem of mine throughout my life.
Coming from the “Russian” side of Finnic/Saami/Siberian totemic/animistic/shamanic hunter-gatherers – yet having a Swedish (origin) Western Finn grandfather – it became very clear early on in my childhood (3-4 years of age) that his perception of ‘Reality’ i.e. his controlled or collective dream/hallucination or his ‘morphic field/resonance’, was nothing like ‘ours’ (his wife, some of his descendants, so he could not relate to ‘us’), yet he saw his version of ‘controlled hallucination’ as the only Reality there is, hence he also saw it as his mission to teach us the “Western thought model”, which he deemed superior without even seeing nor understanding our ‘collective dream’, or even recognizing that other models exist.
https://static-sls.smf.aws.sanomaclo...?itok=X2DaScbx

I talk so much about Australian Aboriginals in my posts, that even to my mind, I start to sound like a ‘wannabee’, yet there is a deeper reason for this, and it is that the ‘controlled hallucination’ or the ‘collective dream’ of their Reality is more akin to ‘our’ old hunter-gatherer version than the Western model of my many genetic relatives. Within the Aboriginal ‘collective dream’, its resonance, I find my “morphic field’ –type functionality, whereas within the Western model, I am supposed to function within a blueprint that still doesn’t make much sense to me.

So in summary. Imo. to know yourself is - to first and foremost - know what your ‘collective controlled hallucination’ is.

Northern Seeker, you also mentioned Norse mythology.
People from Lithuania up to FennoScandia harbour the most amount of the original European (Eastern or Western) hunter-gatherer genes. Yet when agricultural change & Indo-European invasions took place, the ‘collective dream’ changed – how, what happened?
The modern Western model sees the Middle World as hierarchical, hence competitive and the multidimensional worlds/fields experienced by our Spirit or ‘subtle bodies’ as non-existent – why?
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Old 26-06-2018, 01:15 PM
sentient sentient is offline
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Perhaps it is time to re-examine and redirect the collective Western dream:

Inspiring Findhorn:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqK4nB29wWs

John Moriarty:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeCTdXLSE4Q
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Old 27-06-2018, 01:19 AM
Northern Seeker Northern Seeker is offline
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Thanks as always Sentient for your insightful commentary.

Ironically, when I spoke of “Middle Space” I was in that context talking about the notion in the physical sciences where we humans are really quite bad at conceptualizing landscapes smaller or larger than our visual optics. So, for example, understanding that what appears to be a solid wooden table in front of us is actually a loose binding of enormously spaced particles just isn’t something that we easily grasp. Solid feels solid, ants seem small, mountains seem big. This all seems correct to simians in middle space.

Regards,

Northern Seeker
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Old 27-06-2018, 09:18 PM
sentient sentient is offline
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Northern Seeker,
Quote:
Take, for example, patients with brain hemispheral separation or trauma. My understanding of the current state of neurophysical/behavioral research is that when tested these patients can express two totally contradictory opinions or choices, one coming from each hemisphere. For example, the left hemisphere answers that apple is the subject’s favorite fruit, and the right hemisphere answers orange. The dawning sense, apparently, is that there may be MANY seats of conscious agency within our own brains, and perhaps something is acting as “executive decider” to corral these voices into a final answer which, wrongly, we all perceive as one-and-only-one answer that came from the tiny person sitting behind our eyes operating our gears and levers.

Ironically, when I spoke of “Middle Space” I was in that context talking about the notion in the physical sciences where we humans are really quite bad at conceptualizing landscapes smaller or larger than our visual optics. So, for example, understanding that what appears to be a solid wooden table in front of us is actually a loose binding of enormously spaced particles just isn’t something that we easily grasp. Solid feels solid, ants seem small, mountains seem big. This all seems correct to simians in middle space.
About the subject of Energy and our different Hemispheres – (and I seem to be peddling a lot of videos here), but Northern Seeker, have you seen this?:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU

The good old New Age Fraud, Carlos Castaneda invented an excellent expression: “The Assemblage Point of Awareness”. Can’t remember what he wrote about it though, but in a nutshell, the Reality we perceive is dependent on where our “awareness is assembled”, what you perhaps were pointing to - with: “there may be MANY seats of conscious agency within our own brains” ?

And I don’t know where it started, from sheer necessity perhaps - living as small clans in the wilderness, that ‘our’ ‘Assemblage Point of Awareness’ primarily became lodged/centered/assembled in the all-inclusive Collective Space rather than in the separate self-identity.
That is what I learned anyways. And when that ‘collective dream’ expands to living like in a Divine Grace of the Cosmic Womb, it is very hard to give that up.

Cornelius AD 98 writing about 'us'.
Quote:
“In wonderful savageness live the nation of the Fenni, and in beastly poverty, destitute of arms, of horses, and of homes; their food, the common herbs; their apparel, skins; their bed, the earth; their only hope in their arrows, which for want of iron they point with bones. Their common support they have from the chase, women as well as men; for with these the former wander up and down, and crave a portion of the prey. Nor other shelter have they even for their babes, against the violence of tempests and ravening beasts, than to cover them with the branches of trees twisted together; this a reception for the old men, and hither resort the young. Such a condition they judge more happy than the painful occupation of cultivating the ground, than the labour of rearing houses, than the agitations of hope and fear attending the defense of their own property or the seizing that of others. Secure against the designs of men, secure against the malignity of the Gods, they have accomplished a thing of infinite difficulty; that to them nothing remains even to be wished."
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ohjannaula.jpg

‘Big Bang’ understood as the ‘Cosmic Egg’ hatching can still recall its origins as the whole, and the egg shaped drums are reminder of it, summoning the Eagle.

And I don’t know of any “subtle body” charts in animism/shamanism, but ascension on the Word Pole or Axis Mundi creates more subtle energy worlds, from 6 to 9 depending on the culture.
http://shamans-of-rock-and-roll.com/...amans-drum.jpg

Of course those times are now gone, “the perfume bottle is empty – but the scent still lingers on” – so to speak - as some Buddhist teacher had once said.
And I have been very reluctant to let go of that ‘scent’ (dream), hoping for a bridge of understanding between the old Shamanic and the modern Western worlds.
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Old 28-06-2018, 05:30 AM
Chrysalis Chrysalis is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Northern Seeker
Greetings all,

I’m a little surprised to find a whopping ZERO threads that contain the term “animism”. Even searching for “animism” in message bodies turns up a scant list of fairly tangential references.

So, in the spirit of completeness, are there any self-prescribed animists out there that would like to share their beliefs or experiences?

From my perspective it’s hard to escape what seems to be a “prime directive” that all life, all beings have an element of the sacred in them and shouldn’t be needlessly killed, harmed or impeded. Or that all beings - a toad, a fern, an ant, your dog - shouldn’t be considered persons and sure, while they may vary in their degree of consciousness* and their potential to act, the world and the interactions of its inhabitants isn’t a more enriched place when we enchant it with this belief.

Thoughts?

Northern Seeker

—-

* I’m assuming here that we might never truly know what it means to be an ant, or a bat, or whether a fern has any kind of consciousness. But I would suggest that it costs nothing to give them the benefit of the doubt, and we have much to gain in perceiving, for example, a forest as a wondrous glade full of incredible beings shaping their collective destinies rather than as a soulless geography of bio-machines simply executing their mechanistic programming.

Hello,

I'd just like to say that I practically grew up believing that everything has a spirit in it. This belief became enriched when I had an experience or two communicating with trees. By communication, I mean a telepathic short conversation with them.

Another experience I'd like to share is one that happened during meditation. I had a twig that was gifted to me by a larch tree. I took the twig, held it in my left hand, and began meditating. My intention was to discover if I could connect with the tree. When I got deep enough, I kept hearing, "wait for it", in my mind repeating over and over. I wondered what was the lesson and as soon as I thought 'patience' I felt my energy withdrawing from the direction of the tree. I didn't realize at the time that my energy had gone down into the earth and reached out towards the tree. I only realized that as soon as the lesson finished.

I don't know if you want to call that animism or not but I believe that such connections would not happen at all if everything had no spirit. I don't know what the mechanism is and to me it isn't important. What I do know is that it works and opens a way to learn directly from trees.
__________________
"The Children of God were moulded by the Hand of God which is called Awen..."
The Kolbrin Bible, chapter 5, vs 1

"But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee:

Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee."
Job 12: 7 and 8 (KJV)
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