Another simple thing that gets explained by animism. It answers the question of reality. Simply put, you can’t see anything that isn’t there.
The only form of seeing things in animism is literally seeing things. When you see your socks in the morning, you are seeing things. You can’t imagine things, not in the sense of make up things. You only see things. Why you can get confused or be deceived is the same as why a bug can hide from you. Things can seem to you to be something other than they are, camouflage, but they often don’t even need to do that. People don’t look or listen very well. Spiritually, they have a serious case of attention deficit disorder (ADD).
Now fixed forms is another matter. Humans think of themselves as the most changeable thing. The most capable of change, but this is very far from the truth. It’s sort of the opposite. The rocks can change more than you.
Because the rocks have no preset ideas? That’s part of it, but a rock carved into a brick is still the rock it was. Carve a human into a brick and they will instead become dirt.
If we change too much, we die. The rocks have a more stable lifespan. Yes. Even in the case of wood, which is close to us spiritually, often in the right climates being cut down doesn’t kill the wood. It will continue to sprout, and they have to trim the walls. It is something like an air fern in that regard perhaps, but yes, even plants can change more than us. We are not the most powerful spirits in our world. We are perhaps the least.
Excuse me, I have to prune my door. If you lived in the Mediterranean rain forest, you might indeed have to.
They are developing homes that you grow. Out of both plants and meat. They are, and wood will like that much better than being cut, and it backs up animism even more. Meat walls will still live.
Power in animism is much like power in politics. You have a group of allies, a team, and by working with your spirit ally, or allies, you can persuade the world to change, but that also involves you changing. It’s a mutual arrangement. Now spirit allies work much like what we consider normal allies. A guard dog protects the land it guards because of its alliance with it’s human. A spirit acts to exclude a malignant influence because it’s in its best interest to do so. A spirit works to bring you prosperity because it gains from you being stronger and wiser, calmer and possessed of more free time. If you have more free time, then you are more available to help them.
Symbiosis. Exactly. So a body is a nation just as the land is a nation and the sea is. They are formed of alliances, agreements. Animism in healing means speaking with those spirits that form the alliance of your body, which would include your mind also.
Is each chakra a spirit? Yes, and you can even find reference to that in the tradition the concept of chakras comes from. But the spirits of the chakras aren’t “human” so they describe unusual desires and motivations for those spirits.
Our chakras have motivations? Yes, and so do your organs, and your thoughts. You can even watch your thoughts motivations, and your thoughts relationship to other thoughts. Some fight, some mingle, some avoid each other. So any act of animistic magick is simply an act of listening or persuading, not always in a positive light. Just as it is with people, sometimes persuasion has to be coercion. An example of that is exorcism. When earth won’t listen, you get the help of the wind. When fire won’t listen, you get the help of water.
The idea of living in a living and listening world sounds like it could be a lot more functional. Shamans and their type say that is so. Using it’s power instead of fighting it. Yes, and helping it instead of killing it.
I suspect shamans don’t get lonely. No, they don’t. They do get uneasy though, and their primary relationship is still with their kin. They live in a world of spirits but they are “married” to humanity.
If you were in solitary confinement, it would help if you could commune with the lint. You could indeed commune with the lint, but lint is crazy and will make you crazy. It’s mixed up of too many things. The iron bars aren’t crazy though, and the sky in the yard isn’t crazy either.
I used to do that when I was young. Just stare at things and try to understand them and the adults thought I was out of my mind. You were in it. You are out of it now, but we all are. We all live in a yellow loony bin, and it really is yellow. That’s the color of warnings and is what makes us crazy.
Warnings? Yes. Yield signs. Caution lights.
A lot of insane people have strange relationships with dust. They either live in it or obsessively get rid of it. Dust is crazy. It doesn’t know how many people it is, but earth is not crazy. Earth has a good sense of history.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~