Animism, where does it end?

Animism is the belief that that trees, rocks, natural phenomena, are alive.

But that makes me ask the question?
Wat is de grens van bezieling?

Where does this having a soul buisness end?
Does a piece of plastic have a soul?
& do superhere comics have a soul?

Join me as i go in search of the awnsers to these questions & more… on today’s episode…

[Reini_le_Renard]

Renee that was the most violent video you made, it shakes countless things and gives birth to multiple questions!
Thank you very much!

[Meike]

Great video! Keep up the good work 💪
Also congratulations about your wife being pregnant. That's wonderful news!

[thekeeperofreal]

Great video! After meditating in my garden over approximately a six week period, I began to acknowledge a connection with a personality emerging from my garden and even the fence somehow...? Shortly afterwards I read Six Ways by Aiden Wachter and there is a great chapter about animism in it. I began to wonder about the spiritual energy from the proteins and bacteria within us that we can potentially tap into. It also struck me how animism lives on so vividly in cartoons and children's programs...

[johannb]

Hello from California. Behind You, there is an infinite amount of Faces of all shapes. I can see Them in the Trees, face on face. The same with rocks, numbers and symbols. Stay Strong! We have the Eye of Odin, Tyr, Horus. Sn 50 Tin, Johann B

[peterszeug]

5:00 I can't help but feel reminded of the book "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley, I never thought of it being connected to Animism, but now it's so bloody obvious...
Man the last 250 years has been so full of prophets, it truly puts anything Abrahamic to shame.

[vikingfromzeeland]

Mooie video. Het zet je wel aan het denken en maakt je ook meer bewust van je omgeving wanneer je er op een andere manier tegen aan kijkt. Bedankt voor het maken van deze video

[ElinedeMand]

Very interesting topic and you've given me a lot to think about (again). I definately believe that all natural things/beings have a soul. I also know that everything is energy. And that there are people amongst us that are indeed without a soul. Gonna contemplate on this some more .. Thank you for this video and congratulations on becoming a father again 👍🏻😉

[kitzxu]

It's makes me think of an egregore. An idea or thing which takes on a "life of its own" when focused intent gathers enough.

[howling.wilderness.alaska]

Thinking this is one of many things that brought me to my pagan path. It didn't happen the other way around..

[TheDutchGame]

Coming from atheism, it was so difficult to understand the concept of animism. I believe I have a better understanding of it now but I had to learn to feel the energy rather than thinking it.

I was in the forest this monday. Contemplating animism while looking around myself. I saw every tree, every plant, every blade of grass. I heard every bird, saw every insect and contemplated all the fungi and all the other living things around me. While acknowledging the spirit within all living things I came to the observation that the forest is a very busy place. Which is funny since we go there to have some peace and quiet, but the forests are anything but quiet haha.

So where does animism end? I guess it might end at things that are inanimate. Or things that are animate but according to precise and predictable natural laws. Like clouds. They don't make choices, they just are.

But things that choose, like all living things, seem to be animate regardless of their surroundings. I have found that only contemplating the animistic perspective could I find this understanding.

Absolutely fascinatinf subject!

[psztyla]

There is also one possibility not mentioned: nothing has a soul, but we just can psychologically engage in relationship with any object as mentioned god figure made of plastic. I used to had this lego wizard figure, who according to my inner narrative helped me magically endure hard time and to cure me.

Though I like the animism, I like to explore possibilitily that certain things have a spirit. In ancient Slavic beliefs there were for example house spirits. I don't feel like my modern appartment has a soul, but some places do feel like this.
I also feel drawned to certain natural objects or places, like large oaks or swamps.
In conclusion I don't know what can possibly have s soul or spirit. But we can explore that, found it by chance or make an effort to from relationships with certain object. In any case as in our society no one will be liked by everyone, so probably the same applies to spiritual world.

[Aftenstorm]

Great video! I can often see that hand crafted instruments kinda have their souls of their own. You can hear it in their sound, (Or should I call it voice?). Thanks for your insight.

[DaanSnqn]

Mooie video, Reny. Waar ligt de grens van bezieling?
(quick switch to English)
Note, I will use the word 'soul' a lot for lack of a better term, but I don't think it's actually the correct way to look at it, because the word 'soul' has a lot of connotations from Abrahamic religions. I will also use the word 'thing' a lot, this can literally be anything. Also, apologies if these ideas seem a bit crude. They are. I have been thinking about this for a long time, but I have never properly written it down.

So, the way I see it, everything has some kind of 'soul'. However, not every soul is the same kind of thing or has the same level of "depth" to it. To me, a 'soul' of any thing (thing can literally be anything) is the way in which such a thing acts in relation to itself, or in the relation to other souls. So a soul in isolation will be different to a soul accompanied by other souls. Also, I believe that a soul can be made up out of many more smaller souls, that can be made up of even smaller souls as well.
For example, we all know that humans are made up out of many different types of biological cells (among other things). Each of these cells has its own soul. Even then, each of these cells is made up out of different parts (the complexity of this is just too much for a youtube comment, even though my understanding of cell biology is just barely enough to know how complex it actually is.) and then each of these parts is eventually made up out of molecules, that also have a soul, and so on. That being said, a thing doesn't have to be alive in the scientific sense to still have a soul.

It doesn't stop there. A thing doesn't even have to be physical to still have a soul. Even things like societies and cultures have a soul of their own. It might seem strange at first, but we all know that societies and cultures can live and die and we all acknowledge that they do all the time.

Different types of souls:
There are many different types of souls. Among other things we have the hugr, the hamr and the fylgia as some of the more common ones. The hugr of a thing is the thought (the name 'Huginn' means 'the thought', the -inn suffix is a definite article) of that thing. The hugr is how a thing knows how to act in relation to itself and in relation to other things. The hugr of a thing is something that can sometimes travel away from a thing as well. However, humans can do this better than rocks or pieces of plastic, but keep in mind that if a rock moves in one place, this can trigger the movement of other rocks in another place. Humans do this everyday through speech, and recently also through the internet. We send out our hugr to another person's hugr to give them information and hopefully they do it to us as well.
Next I mentioned the hamr of a thing. This is the physical part of a thing, the body for lack of a better term. Of course, strongly involved in love and making children (congrats by the way), also strongly involved in war, destruction and death. Hence the duality of Freyja being a godess of love and war at the same time. It might be better to call her a godess of the hamr. The hamr of a thing is also capable of change, and in fact will change. If you don't believe me, look at a picture of yourself from a couple of years ago, and tell me that's the same guy/girl you see in the mirror. Also the hamr is involved in more direct forms of shapeshifting as was used by the berserkir, and is still being used by many strength athletes (among others) today, even when they don't realize it. For example, look at Brian Shaw (4x WSM) when he's competing versus when he's just relaxing with friends. Two different hamir (hamir is plural of hamr) that are capable of vastly different things. Just like that, you need a different hamr when dealing with an angry wolf than you need when dealing with your wife. In small detail, you still need a different hamr when dealing with your wife as compared to your children or your pet dog. Even though you love all of them, you always show that in a different way, compared to who it is you're dealing with.
So many different types, each of them add to the total soul of a thing.

Now that I've shown some of the complexity of the soul. Where does it actually end? To tell you the truth, it doesn't. The soul varies in complexity, but at the end of the day, a "stupid piece of plastic from China", still needs to know how to act as a "stupid piece of plastic from China", before it can be a "stupid piece of plastic from China". Then once again, the soul of this thing can change, because you make offerings to it, or add value to it in another way. Its soul starts to interact with yours and through that interaction will become more than what it was. Even after you die, some of your soul will be left inside this piece of plastic. Your children will look at it, and say "that was my dad's piece of plastic". Your reputation outlives you in the form of the many souls that you connected to over the course of your life. Many souls that otherwise wouldn't connect, will connect after your passing, because of the part of you that they have in common.

That's it for now. I hope you got enjoyment from my ideas. See you next time. Skál.

[Evenfallmusic]

Very insightful video. Thank you.
And in the mean time I would like to offer you my unofficial congratulations.

[sonjafountain]

Enjoying the deep concepts expressed on this...

[gingerdeladis]

It's not Pagan.
Paganism was an agricultural, farmer's religion.
Animism pre-dated Paganism and is different in various ways.

There is speculation that Animism is a perception of the world based upon hunting & gathering tribes that saw themselves as merely another animate entity in a living landscape also equally alive in all respects, other animals being no less sentient and willful.

Whereas Paganism was more based upon seasons and the weather and Gods relating to the crops, because it grew up around arable societies whose sustenance was centered around planting and crop cycles, with greater significance given to the sun and moon as a result.