Animistic

Animistic is an adjective used to describe beliefs, practices, or worldviews in which living spirit or agency is attributed to beings and objects in the natural world. The term derives from Latin anima, meaning soul or breath, and entered scholarly usage in the 19th century to categorize certain religious and cultural systems.

In animistic worldviews, natural features such as rivers, mountains, animals, plants, winds, weather, rocks, and celestial bodies may be perceived as inhabited by spirits or as possessing personal essence. People may communicate with these spirits through rituals, offerings, divination, or shamanic practice, and there can be a sense of relational obligation to non-human agents. Animism does not imply a single creed; it encompasses a broad spectrum of beliefs and practices across diverse cultures.

Geographically and culturally, elements of animism appear in many Indigenous religions of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania, as well as in traditional belief systems such as Shinto in Japan and various Arctic and Amazonian traditions. In academic discourse, animism is often treated as an analytic category rather than a universal label for a single religion, with attention to variation and interpretation. Critics caution against essentializing diverse practices under a single term and emphasize the importance of context.

In contemporary usage, animism is also invoked in discussions of ecological spirituality, relational ontologies, and debates about personhood and agency in nature. Related concepts include animatism (impersonal forces) and panpsychist or nature-centered perspectives that attribute some form of mind or life to the world.