Animism

Introduction
Importance in the study of culture and religion
Theoretical issues
- Tylor’s theory of animism
- Counter theories
Animistic phenomena in their social contexts
- Particularism
- Ceremonialism
The animistic worldview

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animism summary

Related Questions

How can animistic elements survive within more complex religions?
How did Amazonian shamans explain and treat illness caused by lost souls or harmful spirits?
How did Apache ceremonies address powerful animals, plants, mountains, and other beings?
How did Edward Burnett Tylor influence the study of animism?
How did Guaraní beliefs distinguish between an animal soul and a spiritual soul?
How did Inuit hunting rituals express respect for animal spirits?
How did Navajo sings seek to cure illness and restore harmony?
How did Pueblo ceremonies seek to maintain rain, crop growth, and cosmic order?
How did Southeastern Native American peoples believe spiritual power could enter objects?
How did Tylor connect dreams, death, and apparitions to beliefs about souls?
How did animistic beliefs shape the use of masks, body paint, and feather ornaments in tropical South America?
How did beliefs about multiple souls explain personality among the Apapocuva-Guaraní?
How did shamanic contests between shamans take animal forms?
How did shamans in the Malay Peninsula use spirits and quartz crystals for healing?
How did the Buryat of Siberia imagine the social organization of the spirit world?
How did the Ojibwa understand manitous in animals, plants, and natural phenomena?
How did the pre-Christian Sami communicate with localized nature spirits?
How did tropical forest peoples of South America use magical precautions for hunting and fishing?
How do animistic beliefs describe relationships between people and natural forces?
How do diviners identify the spirit, witch, or demon believed to be causing trouble?
How do propitiatory rituals seek to prevent misfortune in animistic traditions?
How do shamans use trance to communicate with spirits?
How does the idea of soul-stuff connect humans, animals, and plants in some Indonesian traditions?
How is animism related to shamanism?
How is animism related to totemism?
How was tobacco used in the religious practices of some tropical forest peoples?
How were shamans believed to receive their calling in classic northern Asian shamanism?
What happened during the Green Corn ceremony among Southeastern Native American peoples?
What kinds of practical concerns do people address to spirits in animistic traditions?
What objects are used by northern Asian shamans during ceremonies?
Which natural forces were associated with personally venerated Sami spirits?
Why are taboos important in many animistic religious practices?
Why did Inuit hunters fear offending the spirits of animals they killed?
Why did Pueblo communities make small kachina figures for children?
Why did funerary rites and death taboos protect the living in some Southeastern Native American traditions?
Why do modern anthropologists reject the idea that animism represents an inferior stage of human thought?
Why do some Indigenous North American worldviews not separate the sacred from the natural world?
Why does the presence of a healer or sorcerer not necessarily mean that a culture is shamanistic?
Why is animism described as an open and eclectic religious worldview?
Why is it difficult to determine whether animism was humanity's earliest religion?
Why were guardian spirits important to shamans?
What do Rastafarians believe?
Where does Confucianism come from?
How did Confucianism spread?
What are the basic teachings of Daoism?
Who were the great teachers of Daoism?
How does Daoism differ from Confucianism?
How was Zoroastrianism founded?
What are the major beliefs of Zoroastrianism?

Philosophy & Religion Religious Beliefs

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External Websites

National Center for Biotechnology Information - PubMed Central - Beyond Buddhism and animism : A psychometric test of the structure of Burmese Theravada Buddhism
Learn Religions - What is Animism?
Swarthmore College - Works - When God Was A Bird: Christianity, Animism, And The Re- Enchantment Of The WorldEnchantment Of The World
Digital Commons at Andrews University - Animism, the Occult, and Mission (PDF)
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Animism
The Ohio State University - Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures - Animism
ABC listen - The Spirit of Things - The New Animism
UCL Discovery - The Social Agency of Things? Animism and Materiality in the Andes (PDF)
The Open University - Open Research Online - Animism rather than Shamanism: new approaches to what shamans do (for other animists) (PDF)
BBC - The Digital Human - Series 18 - Animism

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animism - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Animism

religion

Written by

George Kerlin Park

Former Professor of Anthropology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's. Author of The Idea of Social Structure, An Afterpiece to Peasantry, and others.

George Kerlin Park

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Britannica Editors

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

Britannica Editors

Last updated

Nov. 6, 2026 •History

Animism, belief in innumerable spiritual beings concerned with human affairs and capable of helping or harming human interests. Animistic beliefs were first competently surveyed by Sir Edward Burnett Tylor in his work Primitive Culture (1871), to which is owed the continued currency of the term. While none of the major world religions are animistic (though they may contain animistic elements), most other religions—e.g., those of tribal peoples—are. For this reason, an ethnographic understanding of animism,...

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