Animism and Personification - Term Paper Example

These religions are given the term primal because of the animistic belief embodied in it (Super and Turley, p.18). Primal religions have a strong belief in animism and personification. Primal religions believe in the connection of all existence, whether it be humans, animals or even nature. In fact, nature is on the focal points of primal religion. Each being, each place, each object was reasoned to have a spirit, which is called anima. In such a manner, everything has a purpose, a reason for its existence.

This is closely related to how people have lived centuries ago, in the time where hunting and gathering were the primary means of living. In primal religions, the distinction between good and bad is associated with misfortune and fortune. Long ago, people do not have the technology and knowledge that we have today that can explain illness, death and suffering. Although primal religions believe in a greater or supreme being, it also brings forth the belief in entities, deities and spirits that dwell among people and nature who can and may interfere with people’s lives when they desire to or when they are disturbed.

With limited knowledge and the belief in animism and personification, the people do not have an explanation to the misfortunes they are experiencing except to use their primal religion as a way to understand their lives. With this, primal religion do not relate good and bad to natural or unnatural rather they relate good and bad to how they view their relation with the spirits and deities around them through their relation with other people and with nature. Nature has a very big impact in the way people lived.

By taking care of their environment and essentially nature, people believed that they will be blessed by being given back plants, trees, fruits, crops and animals that will serve as their food, shelter and clothing. Good and bad became a distinction between taking care of the things around them versus destroying their environment. When something bad happens, such as a plague, people generally believe that they are being punished because they disturbed the balance or they believe that there was something they have done that offended the spirits, deities and other beings.

With this, they try to turn things around through offerings and sacrifices, which are quite different from how we do it today. Another perspective of good and bad in the primal religion is the distinction between suffering and good fortune. When a person experiences suffering, it is related to something bad or evil. And when people, with this limited knowledge, no modern technology and with a belief in animism, look for a reason behind this suffering, they associate it with something bad or evil, which is related to the idea of the unknown.

Anything that is unknown to them that causes misfortune, suffering or death is equated to bad or evil. But not all unknown is related to evil and not all known is related to good. The relation is based on their experience. For example, when there is an eclipse and something bad happens to them, like crops dying, they automatically associate this with something evil. When there is a shooting star, or in our knowledge now a meteor shower, and something good happens after it like animals migrating to their area, they automatically think that the meteor showers are something good.

This association comes from the primal belief that all things are interrelated or intertwined. And this is because of the communitarian way the people of those ages lived (Sharma, p.4). The primal belief has another important characteristic, and that is the belief that people, animals and other things are held together by an ultimate nature and