A view from our patio. Storm on the Palouse

 

Animism
Grove of Two Coasts

 

One of my earliest “issues” with organized religion was the idea that humans alone had a soul and that other living things were somehow dormant and Earth bound.  Souls, after all, go to Heaven when we die.

I recall at age six or so thinking – “Well, that is just stupid and wrong.”  Forty-four years later, my thoughts have not changed any.  The Grove SEA guidelines said that psychologists have said that we start our lives thinking this but lose that as we get older, not unlike believing in Santa or the Tooth Fairy. Society pressure drills it out of us.  Sorry, but believing that beings other than humans have a soul is not quite the same thing as Santa.  I don’t give a hoot what society might think.  If I’ve learned anything as I’ve “grown up” I’ve learned to be who and what I am and if others don’t like it, well, so be it.  I don’t succeed on this all the time, I can fall to peer pressure now and again, but not for the things I truly hold most dear.

I hold Animism dear.

I find this topic so fundamental to my being that I was rather surprised to find it on the list of things we needed to discuss.  Of course I believe in Animism.  I didn’t know it was call that for a long time, but the belief has never varied.

Where does the soul live? Where does it go when we die?  Far greater minds than mine have been battling those questions for years, but the question of whether or not something that isn’t human might have a soul is so obvious to me that I can’t see why others don’t believe it!

One need only look into the eyes of a dog to see the soul lurking there. Any animal will do the same thing. But what about non-animal? The flora of the world, does it have a soul, what about minerals?  This one is harder because it isn’t as obvious. One can’t see a tree breath, but science has shown it does breath and it has “blood” and it has a life cycle just as important and productive, if not more so, than a human.   I heard once that lettuce screams when it is harvested.  I know, sounds silly, and I wish I could remember the source, but it was a Nova episode or something like it.  Scientists showed a marked change in vegetation when it was cut.  It could recover (usually). If one prunes a tree, it will be fine, even healthier. But you are putting that tree through surgery and it must now heal itself.  That’s why we ask the tree for permission before we take a branch.

Rocks?  Seriously, rocks have a soul?  Yes, I think they do.  Rocks and minerals are at the base end of this chain, they are the Earth itself.  The Earth might not be alive like you and me, but it is a dynamic being all its own.  It has an internal heart, blood, skin, lungs. It cleans up after itself. It has a voice too.  Science can hear the sounds of the Earth systems.  It’s alive in its own way and in its own way, it has a soul.

Animism is as real as the air I breathe. I can’t see that either.

Does anyone remember an old Twilight Zone with the man and his dog at the gates of heaven? St. Peter would not let the dog in because it “had no soul” and the man said he would forego heaven to stay with his dog.  Then he discovered he wasn’t talking to St. Peter, but to the Devil who was trying to tempt him into Hell.  That’s my heaven too, if dogs can’t be there, I don’t want to go either.