Not to be confused withAnimalism, an ideology concerning the farm animal proletariat.
Also not to be confused withAnimeism, an ideology concerning the standards and power of Japanese anime.
Animist Theocracy is a theocracy for the spirituality of animism, the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence.
The term was coined by Sir Edward Tylor who had initially wanted to describe the phenomenon as spiritualism, but realized that such would cause confusion with the modern religion of Spiritualism, which was then prevalent across Western nations. He adopted the term animism from the writings of German scientist Georg Ernst Stahl, who had developed the term animismus in 1708 as a biological theory that souls formed the vital principle and that the normal phenomena of life and the abnormal phenomena of disease could be traced to spiritual causes.
Earlier anthropological perspectives, which have since been termed the old animism, were concerned with knowledge on what is alive and what factors make something alive. The old animism assumed that animists were individuals who were unable to understand the difference between persons and things. Critics of the old animism have accused it of preserving "colonialist and dualist worldviews and rhetoric."
In many animistic world views, the human being is often regarded as on a roughly equal footing with other animals, plants, and natural forces.
Further Information
Wikipedia
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