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Animism Quotes

Browse 36 quotes about Animism.

Animism Quotes

“There are Tantrics who deliberately break taboos and social norms and then there are other Tantrics who, by means of their practices and the way that they practice, that to society in general, it may have the appearance of breaking social norms but in fact that is just the manifestation of the progress of their practice.”

InspirationSpiritualityFreedomMagicSelf EsteemIndependenceSexualityRevolutionaryEcstasyAutonomySpiritual JourneyTantraSpiritual TransformationArtists QuotesInitiationShamanismSubversionBhaktiShapeshifterSelf ExaminationAnimismOutcastsTaboosZeena SchreckTaboo BreakingWomen WarriorsDissidentLeft Hand PathTantric BuddhismJivanmuktiVamamarga
Author:Zeena Schreck
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“Zeena Schreck is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist, author, musician/composer, tantric teacher, mystic, animal rights activist, and counter-culture icon known by her mononymous artist name, ZEENA. Her work stems from her experience within the esoteric, shamanistic and magical traditions of which she's practiced, taught and been initiated. She is a practicing Tibetan Buddhist yogini, teaches at the Buddhistische Gesellschaft Berlin and is the spiritual leader of the Sethian Liberation Movement (SLM).”

ArtInspirationArtistSpiritualityNatureMagicIndependenceSexualityAnimal RightsAnimalsArtistsEnvironmentalismMagickSpiritual JourneyTantraSpiritual TransformationAnimal LiberationInitiationShamanismMusiciansBhaktiAnimismOutcastsTaboosZeena SchreckTaboo BreakingWomen WarriorsAnimal ActivismComposersLeft Hand PathTantric BuddhismMagick And FaithJivanmuktiVamamargaTotemism
Author:Zeena Schreck
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“The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.”

NatureLossSolitudeModernityExhaustionAnimism
Book:The Major Works
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“Any human companionship, even the dearest and most perfect, would have been alien to her then. She was sufficient unto herself, needing not love nor comradeship nor any human emotion to round out her felicity. Such moments come rarely in any life, but when they do come they are inexpressibly wonderful - as if the finite were for a second infinity - as if humanity were for a space uplifted into divinity - as if all ugliness had vanished, leaving only flawless beauty.”

SolitudeQuietIntroversionAnimism
Book:Emily Climbs
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“There are Tantrics who deliberately seek to do more active forms of renunciation, so transgression of social norms and breaking of taboo, and breaking of social taboos especially, is a form of renunciation.”

InspirationSpiritualityFreedomMagicSelf EsteemFemaleIndependenceSexualityRevolutionaryEcstasyAutonomySpiritual JourneyTantraSpiritual TransformationInitiationShamanismSubversionBhaktiShapeshifterSelf ExaminationAnimismOutcastsTaboosZeena SchreckTaboo BreakingWomen WarriorsDissidentLeft Hand PathTantric BuddhismJivanmuktiVamamarga
Author:Zeena Schreck
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“Before discussing the 'relinking' of people and forests through community forestry, it is important to understand where the 'delinking' paradigm, superimposed onto Tanzania and elsewhere during colonial times originated. The separation of people and nature has deep-rooted conceptual origins, for example early Judeo-Christian texts explicitly framed humans as exceptional and separate from nature as opposed to many animist religions that placed humans within nature. The conceptual separation is particularly strong in Europe, as reflected in the origins of certain words, with the Latin word foestis originating from a meaning 'outside', as in a wild place outside human control. Such 'wild places' later became the hunting reserves of elites in Europe in the form of exclusionary Royal Forests, 'commoners' were kept out. A few centuries later, during the period of Enlightenment and into industrialisation and urbanisation, livelihoods in countries like Britain are further delinked from nature, The division between [eople and nature has become so heavily engrained in modern industrialised society that 'wilderness' has attained a romantic idealisation.”

HumansNatureEuropeForestsWildernessHuntingElitesJudeo Christian PhilosophyAnimismForestry
Book:Reforesting Scotland 71, Spring/Summer 2025
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“To the Hindu mind there was no real gap between animals and men; animals as well as men had souls, and souls were perpetually passing from men into animals, and back again; all these species were woven into one infinite web of Karma and reincarnation. The elephant, for example, became the god Ganesha, and was recognized as Shiva’s son; he personified man’s animal nature, and at the same time his image served as a charm against evil fortune. Monkeys and snakes were terrible, and therefore divine. The cobra or naga, whose bite causes almost immediate death, received especial veneration; annually the people of many parts of India celebrated a religious feast in honor of snakes, and made offerings of milk and plantains to the cobras at the entrance to their holes. Temples have been erected in honor of snakes, as in eastern Mysore; great numbers of reptiles take up their residence in these buildings, and are fed and cared for by the priests.”

ReligionIndiaHinduismIndian CultureHinduAnimismVedic Tradition
Book:Our Oriental Heritage
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“As all things come from and are imbued with the quintessence of Spirit, all things are holy and alive in their own right—and anything that has a physical existence contains within it a unique personality, energy, and expression of Spirit.”

SpiritualSpiritWitchcraftPaganismQuintessenceWiccaAnimismPsychic Witch
Book:Psychic Witch: A Metaphysical Guide to Meditation, Magick & Manifestation
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“Understanding the physiological and neurological features of spiritual experiences should not be interpreted as an attempt to discredit their reality or explain them away. Rather, it demonstrates their physical existence as a fundamental, shared part of human nature. Spiritual experiences cannot be considered irrational, since we have seen that, given their physiological basis, experiencers' descriptions of them are perfectly rational... All human perceptions of material reality can ultimately be documented as chemical reactions in our neurobiology; all our sensations, thoughts, and memories are ultimately reducible to chemistry, yet we feel no need to deny the existence of the material world; it is not less real because our perceptions of it are biologically based... It is not rational to assume that the spiritual reality of core experiences is any less real than the more scientifically documentable material reality.”

NeuroscienceAnimismAnthropology Of ReligionPhenomonologyNeo PaganismThe Paranormal
Book:Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America
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“This does not mean (as is so often thought) that primitive man, in order to explain natural phenomena, imparts human characteristics to an inanimate world. Primitive man simply does not know an inanimate world. For this very reason he does not 'personify' inanimate phenomena nor does he fill an empty world with the ghosts of the dead, as 'animism' would have us believe. The world appears to primitive man neither inanimate nor empty but redundant with life; and life has individuality, in man and beast and plant, and in every phenomenon which confronts man — the thunderclap, the sudden shadow, the eerie and unknown clearing in the wood, the stone which suddenly hurts him when he stumbles while on a hunting trip. Any phenomenon may at any time face him, not as 'It', but as 'Thou'. In this confrontation, 'Thou' reveals its individuality, its qualities, its will. 'Thou' is not contemplated with intellectual detachment; it is experienced as life confronting life, involving every faculty of man in a reciprocal relationship. Thoughts, no less than acts and feelings, are subordinated to this experience.”

RealityScienceExperiencePrimitiveAnimism
Book:Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man
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“Twentieth-century developments in science support a new animism. Developments in physics have led to a world of energetic events which seem to be self-moving and to behave in unpredictable ways. And recent studies in biology seem to demonstrate that bacteria and macromolecules have elemental forms of perception, memory, choice, and self-motion.”

WorldWaySelfSeemsMovingFormChoicesMemoriesSupportStudyCenturyEventsDevelopmentPerceptionPhysicsBehaveBiologyUnpredictableTwentieth CenturyEnergeticElementalsBacteriaAnimism
Book:God and Religion in the Postmodern World: Essays in Postmodern Theology
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“There is no transcendent creator in animism, no god who set the clocks ticking and decides which ones to fix when they falter; nothing exists outside of nature. In other words, my philosophy does not require that I believe in something I cannot experience directly.”

BelieveDoePhilosophyI BelieveCreatorI Believe InClockTranscendentAnimismClock Ticking
Book:The Wakeful World: Animism, Mind and the Self in Nature
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“If it were possible to transfer the methods of physical or of biological science directly to the study of man, the transfer would long ago have been made ... We have failed not for lack of hypotheses which equate man with the rest of the universe, but for lack of a hypothesis (short of animism) which provides for the peculiar divergence of man ... Let me now state my belief that the peculiar factor in man which forbids our explaining his actions upon the ordinary plane of biology is a highly specialized and unstable biological complex, and that this factor is none other than language.”

IfsMenLongHas BeensMadeStatesActionUniverseBeliefLanguageStudyOrdinaryLet MeMethodComplexesFactorsPlanesBiologyPeculiarLong AgoHypothesisExplainingTransfersUnstableDivergenceAnimismBiological Science
Author:Leonard Bloomfield
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“Animism is not a belief system, but a worldview: The world is a sacred place and we are part of it. The factuality of this statement is not the issue. To say that the world is a sacred place is to make a statement about values, not facts. It’s a statement about what you mean by ‘sacred,’ just as ‘Money can’t buy happiness’ is a statement about what you mean by ‘happiness.’ To put it all very simply, animism isn’t a belief system, it’s a value system.”

WorldMeanFactsValuesBeliefIssuesSacredStatementsWorldviewBelief SystemsValue SystemsMoney Can't Buy HappinessSacred PlacesAnimism
Author:Daniel Quinn
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