Such a way of looking at things can be called ‘animism’ without objection, if that word is held to imply nothing more or other than the affirmation that there are ‘animic’ elements in all things; it is clear that this kind of animism is directly opposed to mechanism, just as reality itself is opposed to mere outward appearance. It is equally clear that this conception is ‘primitive’, but it is so quite simply because it is true, which is almost exactly the opposite of what the evolutionists mean when they qualify it in that way. At the same time, and for the same reasons, this conception is necessarily common to all the traditional doctrines; it can therefore be said to be ‘normal’, whereas the opposite idea, that of ‘inanimate’ things (of which one of the most extreme expressions is found in the Cartesian theory of ‘animal-machines’) represents a real anomaly, but then so do all specifically modern and profane ideas. But it must be clearly understood that the traditional conception in no way implies any ‘personification’ of the natural forces that are studied by the physicists after their own fashion, and still less any ‘adoration’ of those forces, as is made out to be the case by those for whom ‘animism’ is something they think they can call ‘primitive religion’; in actual fact the only considerations involved are such as belong exclusively to the domain of cosmology, and they can find their applications in various traditional sciences. It should be superfluous to point out that the question of the ‘psychic’ elements inherent in things, or of forces of that order expressed or manifested through things, has nothing whatever to do with the ‘spiritual’; the confusion of these two domains is yet another purely modern phenomenon, and is doubtless not unconnected with the idea of making a ‘religion’ out of what is really science in the most precise sense of the word; our contemporaries, despite their pretensions to ‘clear ideas’ (evidently a direct inheritance from the mechanism and ‘universal materialism’ of Descartes) mix up in a very curious way the most heterogeneous things and those that are the most essentially distinct!
It is important to note at this point, in view of what is to follow, that the ethnologists habitually treat as ‘primitive’ forms that are only degenerate to a greater or less extent; and these forms are in any case very often not really on as low a level as might be supposed from the accounts that are given of them; however that may be, this explains how ‘animism’, which is in itself only a particular feature of a doctrine, has come to be taken as characterizing a doctrine in its entirety. Indeed, where there is degeneration, it is naturally the superior part of the doctrine, its metaphysical or spiritual side, that disappears more or less completely, so that something that was originally only secondary, and in particular the cosmological and ‘psychic’ side — to which ‘animism’ and its applications properly belong — inevitably assumes a preponderant importance. The remainder, even if it still persists to some extent, may easily elude the observer from outside, all the more so because that observer, being ignorant of the profound significance of rites and symbols, is unable to recognize in them any elements belonging to a superior order (any more than he can recognize them in the vestiges of completely extinct civilizations) and thinks that everything can be explained indifferently in terms of magic, or even sometimes of mere ‘sorcery’.
A very clear example of this sort of thing can be found in a case such as that of ‘shamanism’, which is generally regarded as one of the typical forms of ‘animism’; the derivation of the word is rather uncertain, but it is generally used to denote the aggregate of the traditional doctrines and practices of certain Mongol peoples of Siberia, though a few people extend its meaning to cover anything that may present similar features in any country. Many people regard ‘shamanism’ as almost synonymous with sorcery, but it certainly should not be so, for the two things are quite distinct; the word has undergone a deviation opposite to that of ‘fetishism’, which really has etymologically the meaning of ‘sorcery’, but has been applied to things that include nothing of the kind. It may be noted in this connection that the distinction some people have tried to establish between ‘shamanism’ and ‘fetishism’, regarded as being two varieties of ‘animism’, is neither as clear nor as important as they think: whether human beings, as in the first case, or various objects, as in the second, chiefly serve as ‘supports’ or ‘condensers’, if that is the right word, for certain subtle influences, the difference is only one of ‘technical’ modalities involving in themselves no truly essential differences.[121]
If we consider ‘shamanism’ properly so called, the existence of a highly developed cosmology becomes apparent, of a kind that might suggest concordances with other traditions in many respects, and first with respect to a separation of the ‘three worlds’, which seems to be its very foundation. ‘Shamanism’ will also be found to include rites comparable to some that belong to traditions of the highest order: some of them, for example, recall in a striking way the Vedic rites, and particularly those that are most clearly derived from the primordial tradition, such as those in which the symbols of the tree and of the swan predominate. There can therefore be no doubt that ‘shamanism’ is derived from some form that was, at least originally, a regular and normal traditional form; moreover it has retained up to the present day a certain ‘transmission’ of the powers necessary for the exercise of the functions of the ‘shaman’; but as soon as it becomes clear that the ‘shaman’ directs his activity particularly toward the most inferior traditional sciences, such as magic and divination, a very real degeneration must be suspected, such as may sometimes amount to a real deviation, as can happen all too easily to such sciences whenever they become over-developed. There are indeed some rather disquieting indications in that direction, one of them being the connection established between the ‘shaman’ and an animal, a connection restricted to a single individual and so in no way assimilable to the collective connection rightly or wrongly called ‘totemism’. It should be added that all this could in itself receive a perfectly legitimate explanation quite unconnected with sorcery; what gives it a suspicious character is the fact that among some peoples, if not among all, the animal is considered as being more or less a form of the ‘shaman’ himself; and there may be no great distance between an identification of that kind, and ‘lycanthropy’ as it exists more particularly among the black races.[122]
121
In what follows, a certain amount of information about ‘shamanism’ is drawn from an exposition called ‘Shamanism of the Natives of Siberia’ by I. M. Casanowicz (taken from the
122
There is evidence worthy of belief to the effect that there exists in a distant part of the Sudan a whole population of at least twenty thousand people who are ‘lycanthropic’; there are also, in other African countries, secret organizations, such as that to which the name of ‘Society of the Leopard’ was given, in which certain forms of lycanthropy play a predominant part.