0. Introduction: Radical Animism
This Place is Full of Spirits. In fact, underneath the genius loci present within the spaces humanity resides is a palpable Fullness (more below), a Life Force accessible to anyone who takes the time to encounter it. Most cultures have recognized this as fact, for most of human history. Although currently de rigour in many circles to deny this statement, as someone who has spent the last few years immersed in the study of holistic living systems, I cannot help but come to the conclusion that it is, in fact, the case.
Within this time of changes (and the author will not insult his readers’ intelligence by acknowledging so-called “climate critics”), it is essential for humans who feel so called or inclined to reground ourselves within this paradigm. As a proponent of participatory ecology, a student of “spirituality,” a gardener, “forager,” and parent, I’ve come to conclude that our best way of interacting with our world may be described as a Radical Animism.
Why Animism Now?
A fundamental observation of many paths is that the world in which we live is imperfect. If the world in which we live is imperfect and subject to imperfection, then the fact that humanity is subject to increasing difficulties makes sense. Sure, it may not be a complete given, but it makes more sense to assume that things are going to become more difficult for us than the opposite.
If things become more difficult for us, it’s likely due to the Control Systems of the Rulers of this place, both those who are transcendent, and those who are interested in maintaining the status quo. Since the status quo is radical capitalism and environmental degradation, the best way to counter the Rulers is to act against radical, toxic capitalism and environmental ecocide.
We can best do this through participation. Participatory ecology is: an awakening to our current state as free entities trapped within control systems; learning the “word,” or methods used to understand these control systems (be it plant lore, activism, or communion with spirits); and becoming wise enough to use these methods to help humanity escape the status quo by becoming sufficient (into which we will go further later in the series).
And, outside of the control systems, to recognize the Fullness of the spirits who reside in our ecosystems.
Recognizing these entities can help get you unstuck. It can help you make sense of the world. And, it’s really cool to establish connections with tree spirits and the like. You don’t need to move to the woods, or start an urban farm, or deal with insane checklists of gardening skills or canning abilities. You can contribute in your own way; even growing one head of lettuce in a pot outside of your front door makes a little scrape in the prison wall, and enough scrapes in the wall equals a hole.
There’s more to this approach than gardening. This is a way of looking at the world that’s just as feasible if you get all of your food at Burger King, and only drink Coca-cola. It’s just as much how you interact with things as it is what you do.
My hope isn’t to start any “movements” or schools of thought. My hope is to describe, in some detail, an appealing and, in many ways, new view of Animism for those interested. It may get a little spooky, and a little weirder than you’re used to, but I hope you’ll come along and join in the conversation, because it also may be fun.
So, let’s start with three Principles, and see where they take us.
I. The Fullness
Rather than “Life Force,” “Force,” “Tao,” “Chi,” etc., or the vast and utilitarian catalog of definitions of life proffered by biologists, philosophers, and phenomenologists, I’ve lately found myself returning to a concept referred to in Platonic (and later Gnostic) thought as “Pleroma,” meaning “Fullness.” Without going into too much theology, it’s a really interesting way to think of what makes something ‘alive,’ and doesn’t have so many connotations or cultural contexts (as opposed to “Chi,” “Tao,” and so on).
The Fullness is an abstract quality that’s impossible to describe. It could be understood as “chi” or energy, but in a way it’s more generic. It’s like an “emergence,” but also, I think, it’s the potential for a thing here in sensate Reality (whatever THAT is) to host life and to host non-corporeal entities. I think it’s something that can be tapped into as a location within non-physical “realms,” and it’s something that, once you’ve experienced it, you can learn to recognize and participate in.
Thanks to the systems of the world we’ve created, many of us have lost the ability to recognize the Fullness. However, cultivating an animist worldview, growing and harvesting plants, participating in ecology, and understanding the relationship between the knowledge and wisdom these things entail can spark an “Awakening” to the Fullness. When this happens, you start to notice the realms of the Fullness within the systems in which, and with which, you participate.
In fact, this is the next quality of the Fullness I think bears mentioning:
The Fullness invites participation.
This is what makes radical animism “RADICAL.” According to one worldview, in many modern spiritual systems, only “nature” and people contain the spirits. Man-made objects are… well, man-made, and unable to house or manifest spiritual qualities. However, I believe that the Fullness can be recognized in EVERYTHING, and once you have the capacity to recognize it, that Fullness can increase the value of your interactions.
This isn’t a totally outlandish idea — some cultures manifest this in different ways. For example, there was a story a few years ago about a trend in Thailand where people are having priests invite spirits into dolls. Here’s a typically dismissive materialist example:
Superstitious Travelers in Thailand Have Started Bringing Haunted Dolls on Flights
I’ll admit, when I first read the article, I thought it was a little unusual. But, then, why? Why not? If it gives people a connection, a way to increase their participation with the Fullness, what’s the problem?
There are vestiges of this idea present in our culture as well. Anybody recognize this?:
To go even further, every crafts-person, laborer, or worker worth his or her ‘cup of tea’ has had a tool that he or she favored, possibly even named, and in some way considered “alive.” To me, this indicates a recognition, no matter how tenuous, of the Fullness present in that object.
This is one of my favorite tools:
It’s a cheap pair of Fiskars brand gardening snips. It’s perfect for foraging expeditions because it’s small, sharp, and easy to hold. I’ve had my current pair for a few years now, and I’ve started to think of it like this:
Say what you will, but thinking of my snips as “alive” deepens my participation with them. I take better care of them, treat them with more respect, and this, to me, convinces me that they are Full of Spirit.
Whether it’s my trusty hori-hori, my favorite pen, even my phone, I’ve started trying to treat everything around me in the same way: as a Living Participant in the Fullness.
I’m not recommending everybody go around gluing googly eyes on favorite tools (actually I am), but there’s a certain incontrovertible increase in efficacy when you start seeing the world this way. It allows you to find Allies in even the most unexpected places.
Here’s an old “cinnamon broom” we picked up at Trader Joe’s this winter. My son and I spent an evening transforming it into a spirit that now hangs on our front door, protecting us from malevolent influences:
Now, before I get too carried away, there’s another, deeper aspect of the Fullness that I want to mention because it will become relevant in later discussions. The Fullness, as I understand it, isn’t just a “force” or a presence: it’s also a place. It’s both the spirit, and the House of Spirits. It’s a liminal realm that exists over, under, within, and between the sensory world. When you start recognizing the Fullness in things, you start to see it.
It’s spooky shit, man.
But, it can be learned (one of the best ways is via wild plant identification, believe it or not), and this is a subject I’m interested in pursuing.
II. Mother Night, Mother Soil
Our first Mother is Night, or Darkness. In certain Greek and Orphic myths, Nyx is the first daimon to emerge from Chaos. She’s also the only goddess who, canonically, Zeus is afraid of. She’s a badass.
It’s been related that the ancient Pythagoreans (a mystical cult devoted to the worship of numbers, believe it or not) were commanded to abstain from eating beans. Indeed, this prohibition was of such import that the philosopher is said to have perished when he refused to cross a field of beans and was cut down by his Sicilian pursuers.
Nobody’s REALLY sure why Pythagoras prohibited his disciples from eating legumes, but one of the more popular theories has something to do with this:
Crops rushing forth from the deep
A babe rushing forth from the womb
Perhaps our fear of, and attraction to, Darkness, to Nyx, to Night, is a vestigial memory of a life that began as a seed.
Darkness is our Mother, and the terror we experience in Darkness is the terror of incarnation — instantiation — prior to birth. This is why Zeus was afraid of Nyx; she could force him into embodiment. She could make him vulnerable in the same way all mortal things are vulnerable. Consider the Darkness experienced by the seed while buried in the ground, the darkness necessary not for germination — which, with exception, requires the light — but for support, substance, a “ground” in which to stand and extend tendrils of sensation downwards.
Mother Night is the soil, the non-visual sensation of the roots as they extend away from the Light and receive nourishment from the telluric current. Mother Darkness is, to the seed, what the Mother’s womb is to the embryo within.
Sensual differentiation exists only as potential for the infant in the womb, or the seed in the ground, just as differentiation exists only as potential within the realm of Mother Darkness. The embryo in the womb can’t describe the environment in which she grows in terms understandable to humanity, nor does she need to. There can be no “Image” or “Icon” of Mother Darkness, only sensation.
The babe feels love, can sense and experience aspects of the world that exists beyond the womb, but only through the medium of the Mother, of which she is still part. So can the embryo within the seed only experience the world through the mediation of the soil, and the web of life that exists around it.
III. Brightness, or We Worship the Sun
Light! Light is also PHANES, Brightness, born from the Cosmic Seed or Egg at the beginning of time. Phanes emerges from Night like the cotyledon, the first proto-leaves which allow a baby plant to begin the process of photosynthesis. The plant with its cotyledons is also a manifestation of the Cosmic Serpent which surrounds the Egg and opens its jaws to try to swallow the sun.
Sunlight drives away the terror of the darkness, inviting us to emerge from the cave and harvest the spring greens, also beginning to emerge from the darkness of the soil, and to prepare the fields for planting. The arrival of the longer days in mid-winter are a time of celebration, a demarcation of the end of the cold times of austerity. It’s no wonder the Sun has been worshiped in so many forms by so many cultures around the world.
But, there’s another aspect of Solar Worship worth considering, which, to me, has interesting implications. The function of plants, generally, is the conversion of sun-light through photosynthesis into matter (and energy) which is then usable throughout an ecosystem. Plants are self-assembling, automatically reproducing and generate biomass which can be used in a billion different ways through life’s kingdoms.
So plants, taking in the sunlight, make it available to all of the members of a biosphere. They transform it into pollen for other plants and bees, into nectar for birds and insects, into dietary fiber and nutrients for animals, into nitrogen as they decay and incorporate themselves into the soil. Even plants that don’t photosynthesize live by feeding off of organisms that do.
When you think about it, even crude oil is a concentrated, plant-based distillation of stored sunlight.
Without a plant’s ability to convert light to energy and matter, we’d still be stuck in a pre-cyanobacteriological world, single-celled organisms bumping around in the darkness of a vast, primordial sea.
So maybe there’s more to Solar Worship than just being happy that you can finally get a tan and stay outside past five.
Maybe Solar Worship is actually a vestigial memory of plant consciousness, a recognition that all of life is transformed sunlight distributed through a biosystem.
Perhaps our acknowledgement of the need for solar energy and our dependence upon plants to make it available to us manifested as deities like Phanes.
They stretch forward towards it like humans doing yoga, taking in the light, eating it in a kind of pure sensatory experience.
Is there any wonder that we’re sometimes advised to “raise our hands to heaven” when we pray?
These three fundamental principles really do contain the sum total of everything that emerges after, and, mythically and philosophically, are reflected within the sensate world as a series of extended reflections, or fractals. Nyx becomes Rhea becomes Hera, Phanes becomes Apollo becomes Dionysus. The cycle continues as generative extensions within a kind of mythological Mandelbrot set, and the more one embraces an animist worldview, the easier it is to trace “reality” back to its sources.
TO BE CONTINUED….