Sarahannelawless:
True witches and shamans have familiar spirits – we just do – whether we like it or not. Totemism stems from Animism which every culture’s spiritual beliefs evolved from at some point in time. Animism is the belief that everything has a spirit and a consciousness — a soul– from the tiniest microorganism on earth to the planets in the heavens. Animists usually believe in rebirth & reincarnation either as another human, or an animal, tree, or star. Anything or one can be an ancestor and in a way this is true as even scientists will tell you every single thing in the Universe is created from the same dust resulting from the explosion of the “big bang”. Spirits of place (genus loci) are thought to be a soul who has come to reside in a hill, stream, or grove as its guardian and benefactor. Animism is usually viewed as more primitive with Polytheism being seen as more advanced (think Stone Age vs. the Roman Empire). But as many modern religious scholars have discovered there is more natural harmony and more earthly wisdom within animism than almost any other world religion. You can easily have one without the other, however, in some cultures the two did go hand in hand: the Norse had their pantheon as well as strong beliefs in land spirits and even the ancient Greeks had spirits of springs, rivers, hills, forests, etc which were worshipped almost at the same level of devotion if not more as their pantheon of deities with sacrifices, offerings and festivals in their honour. Anthropologists call these divisions the “low cult” (animism) and the “high cult” (polytheism)
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