"New" Animism, "Old" Animism and Ceremonial Magic
I belong to a group of blogs brought together in an online community called the New Animism. The New Animism is essentially, in my view anyways, an effort to create rapprochement, from the French word rapprocher: "to bring together", a re-establishment of cordial relations, between the old gut-level Paleo-thought we all have as kids that everything is alive (in some sense at least: our favorite stuffed animal, the sun, etc.) and the scientific materialist paradigm. The New Animism's prophet is Graham Harvey.
This rapprochement of stone age and science is found through a postmodern intellectual deconstructivism which synthesizes compatible aspects of humanity's old myths and systems science. Thus a sort of comfort zone is created that builds consensus between the various parts of one's soul: the part that offers the tree a drink of cider at wassailing time, and the part that likes the benefits of modern technological society.
What is the underlying theology/philosophy? It is a marriage of Monism (the Universe is One made up of innumerable parts, the Universe IS Deity) with Systems Theory (every part interacts to create that which is greater than the sum of its parts). The New Animism is based on the foundational idea of systems theory (the old Native American idea that we are all related is applicable here) but that a greater God/Reality emerges from this interaction. That the Personhood of a Stone is not biological life or soul/spirit per se, but emerges from a pattern of relationships, and this pattern is the meaning behind everything having life. This is what Animystic (great name!) and Glen discuss over at Animystic's blog.
I was scratching my head because this all sounded very familiar in some way, and then I recalled what the New Animism reminds me of. When I was interested in ceremonial magic and ddi a bunch of reading up on Golden Dawn and the history of modern ceremonial magic, I came to the same kind of paradigm shift there, between the "medieval"/premodern model of magic and that followed by most of the Golden Dawn's adherents and most magicians today.
In the older model, when dealing with entities in the Goetia, these were conceived of as distinct and existing demons and devils in the old Catholic/Christian worldview, or as deities and spirits in the old Romantic worldview. However, the decline and fissioning of the Golden Dawn system coincided with the rise of Freudian and Jungian psychological models, and those Goetic entities, through still spoken of as demons, were transformed into aspects of one's own inner levels of consciousness. A sorceror no longer thought of himself as evoking Asmodeus, demon of lust, from hell, but Asmodeus as a symbol of his own inner lusts. Thus in the Abramelin Operation, one did not really subdue distinct evil spirits created by God, but instead subdued distinct "spirits" as aspects of one's shadow self or Id. Through "demonic" evocation, one is not making a pact with a Devil but dealing with one's most innermost levels of Self in a dark sense.
Today -most- knowledgeable ceremonial magicians still hold the underlying psychological model, though some express ambivalence as to whether these entities/aspects of self are actually internal or external (and really, in this respect, many ask what IS the nature of reality anyway?) And some very few ceremonialists seem to be returning to the OLD "medieval" model of "yes, there are distinct entities outside one's conceptions of such, and some are good and some are definitely NOT good. Imperialarts and Joseph Lisiewski seem to be among these latter.
The psychological model is in effect what I am hearing as underlying the New Animism model of Nonhuman Personhood.
To me, this is very similar to what is going on in the New Animism. People have a hard time believing that big Rock, or Tree, or Mountain has a spirit in it. Some barely believe human beings have a spirit. Deer already move around, breathe, reproduce, so it isn't a big leap to believe they have spirits like us. Even trees and flowers are alive in the scientific sense of reproduction etc. So if you believe deer and trees have spirits (as in "spiros", to breathe), you really aren't an animist, you are just logical ;-)
It is a much bigger leap to conceive of mountains, boulders, valleys, rivers, as having spirits as denizens or being alive themselves --UNLESS you conceive of them, as with Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, as being alive mainly because they are SYSTEMS composed at least partially of living things. When you talk to a Glacier as a Person, but that the Personhood is an expression as an element of a larger relational (monistic) system, and in effect you are self-talking-to-self with the Glacier as an external system, that sounds like what I am hearing the New Animism is all about.
Yet, when you know that glacier or spring is alive just as you yourself are alive, and you talk to it and you expect to hear IT reply to you, not from your own depths or as a mediator of self-talking-to-self, but because the Glacier is its own distinct Person, THEN you are really an Old Animist.
I certainly respect the New Animism as a way to heal the rift between the modern human being and our ancient soul. It is much more compatible with the postmodern view of contemporary society and indeed with the systems theory of science. But I was myself brought up as an Old Animist in tribal community, and Old Animism is much closer to my own personal experiences --before I was "tainted" by the intellectualism of university "rationality". Yes, I have physically talked to animals and they understood and responded: bear and deer and more. I have seen spirits and people in rivers and the Little People; I have had direct experience of the Old Animism known by our Paleolithic ancestors.
I grok my New Animist brothers and sisters in their not wishing to feel false in unlearning something they know is Reality (materialist science), to believe something they don’t resonate with as modern people of our day and age. They don't want to feel primitive or infantile or ridiculed. They want "to eat" both their logic and mystery too- BUT I myself remain, and will always remain, an Old Animist :-)
This rapprochement of stone age and science is found through a postmodern intellectual deconstructivism which synthesizes compatible aspects of humanity's old myths and systems science. Thus a sort of comfort zone is created that builds consensus between the various parts of one's soul: the part that offers the tree a drink of cider at wassailing time, and the part that likes the benefits of modern technological society.
What is the underlying theology/philosophy? It is a marriage of Monism (the Universe is One made up of innumerable parts, the Universe IS Deity) with Systems Theory (every part interacts to create that which is greater than the sum of its parts). The New Animism is based on the foundational idea of systems theory (the old Native American idea that we are all related is applicable here) but that a greater God/Reality emerges from this interaction. That the Personhood of a Stone is not biological life or soul/spirit per se, but emerges from a pattern of relationships, and this pattern is the meaning behind everything having life. This is what Animystic (great name!) and Glen discuss over at Animystic's blog.
I was scratching my head because this all sounded very familiar in some way, and then I recalled what the New Animism reminds me of. When I was interested in ceremonial magic and ddi a bunch of reading up on Golden Dawn and the history of modern ceremonial magic, I came to the same kind of paradigm shift there, between the "medieval"/premodern model of magic and that followed by most of the Golden Dawn's adherents and most magicians today.
In the older model, when dealing with entities in the Goetia, these were conceived of as distinct and existing demons and devils in the old Catholic/Christian worldview, or as deities and spirits in the old Romantic worldview. However, the decline and fissioning of the Golden Dawn system coincided with the rise of Freudian and Jungian psychological models, and those Goetic entities, through still spoken of as demons, were transformed into aspects of one's own inner levels of consciousness. A sorceror no longer thought of himself as evoking Asmodeus, demon of lust, from hell, but Asmodeus as a symbol of his own inner lusts. Thus in the Abramelin Operation, one did not really subdue distinct evil spirits created by God, but instead subdued distinct "spirits" as aspects of one's shadow self or Id. Through "demonic" evocation, one is not making a pact with a Devil but dealing with one's most innermost levels of Self in a dark sense.
Today -most- knowledgeable ceremonial magicians still hold the underlying psychological model, though some express ambivalence as to whether these entities/aspects of self are actually internal or external (and really, in this respect, many ask what IS the nature of reality anyway?) And some very few ceremonialists seem to be returning to the OLD "medieval" model of "yes, there are distinct entities outside one's conceptions of such, and some are good and some are definitely NOT good. Imperialarts and Joseph Lisiewski seem to be among these latter.
The psychological model is in effect what I am hearing as underlying the New Animism model of Nonhuman Personhood.
To me, this is very similar to what is going on in the New Animism. People have a hard time believing that big Rock, or Tree, or Mountain has a spirit in it. Some barely believe human beings have a spirit. Deer already move around, breathe, reproduce, so it isn't a big leap to believe they have spirits like us. Even trees and flowers are alive in the scientific sense of reproduction etc. So if you believe deer and trees have spirits (as in "spiros", to breathe), you really aren't an animist, you are just logical ;-)
It is a much bigger leap to conceive of mountains, boulders, valleys, rivers, as having spirits as denizens or being alive themselves --UNLESS you conceive of them, as with Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, as being alive mainly because they are SYSTEMS composed at least partially of living things. When you talk to a Glacier as a Person, but that the Personhood is an expression as an element of a larger relational (monistic) system, and in effect you are self-talking-to-self with the Glacier as an external system, that sounds like what I am hearing the New Animism is all about.
Yet, when you know that glacier or spring is alive just as you yourself are alive, and you talk to it and you expect to hear IT reply to you, not from your own depths or as a mediator of self-talking-to-self, but because the Glacier is its own distinct Person, THEN you are really an Old Animist.
I certainly respect the New Animism as a way to heal the rift between the modern human being and our ancient soul. It is much more compatible with the postmodern view of contemporary society and indeed with the systems theory of science. But I was myself brought up as an Old Animist in tribal community, and Old Animism is much closer to my own personal experiences --before I was "tainted" by the intellectualism of university "rationality". Yes, I have physically talked to animals and they understood and responded: bear and deer and more. I have seen spirits and people in rivers and the Little People; I have had direct experience of the Old Animism known by our Paleolithic ancestors.
I grok my New Animist brothers and sisters in their not wishing to feel false in unlearning something they know is Reality (materialist science), to believe something they don’t resonate with as modern people of our day and age. They don't want to feel primitive or infantile or ridiculed. They want "to eat" both their logic and mystery too- BUT I myself remain, and will always remain, an Old Animist :-)