Core Animist Values

These values, which I have adapted from Tom Cowan, are core values, found in many societies and practices, worldwide.

§  The animist knows all things are alive and spirit-filled, and related to her through the divine structure of creation. All things are, therefore, responsive to heartfelt prayer, petition, and pleasing.

§  The animist asks animals, plants, and natural features to help her live more respectfully of their lives and the life of the earth itself. She meets some of these fellow creatures in her dreams, visions, and daily life, and they have become friends.

§  The animist does not look “out there” for the Sacred. She finds its presence and the highest of spiritual values upon the Earth, beneath the shining stars, in the cycles of the sun, moon and seasons, in the woods behind her house, in the creeks and streams, lakes and rivers just outside, in the birds at the feeders in the backyard, in the shadowy movements in the forest.

§  The animist does what the seasons are doing and lives in harmony with each moon and season’s unique rhythms of light, weather, temperature, growth, movement, decay, stillness, and darkness.

§  The animist uses gifts from nature, such as feathers, antlers, bone, stones, branches, flowers, leaves, firelight, water, clay, soil, the wind, and shadows for spiritual work and play.

§  The animist loves the land that birthed her and nurtured her and continues to hold part of her soul, calling her to return now and then to walk it, hear its voices, and breath its many fragrances. She also knows and loves the land where she currently lives, and she honors and respects its features, wildlife, and spirits with whom she shares this land.

§  The animist stands humbly at the end of a long line of ancestors who have gone before her and without whom she would not be here. She has met some of them. They take an interest in what she is doing with her life, for it is also theirs. It is a sacred trust.