Photo by @Christopher
What would you say if someone came to you with a bad cough and demanded medicine for the heart? In the language of the Chuuk Islanders the words for ‘breath’ and ‘heart’ are related, thus creating a concept of reality and of anatomy which suggests that breath enters the heart rather than the lungs. This is just one of the many fascinating and relevant insights that the ethnologist Lothar Käser gives in his book on animism.
Käser’s strength in explaining the animist worldview lies in the fact that he tries to do it from an insider’s perspective. He does so very systematically and with clear explanations. When reading other publications on animism one realizes that there is a confusion of terms for the various spirit beings that are part of the animist worldview, in particular with regard to what he calls the ‘spirit double’ (rather than ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’) of a person or of objects.
A person has one or more spirit doubles of which one is the ‘dream ego’ which leaves the sleeping person, and experiences ‘in reality’ in the spirit world what the person dreams. The reality aspect can be so strong that a woman may divorce her husband if she dreamt that he was unfaithful to her.
There are other spirit beings that have an influence on people’s lives. There are malevolent (and rather stupid) spirits and benevolent (very intelligent) spirits to which the supreme being (creator god, but far away) and the ancestral spirits belong. The spirit world is the area of knowledge. This can be obtained in dreams or especially through certain experts. For societies that do not venerate ancestors this will be the shaman (in nomadic, hunter-gatherer societies). In agricultural societies the dream ego is believed to become an ancestral benevolent spirit being after death that can be contacted through a medium.
Another important concept of animism is ‘mana’ which is defined as ‘the agent of extraordinary effects’. Mana can be obtained through rituals, but it can also be lost. People can have mana, and it can be inherent to objects or places; it can be positive or negative. Objects with positive mana can be used as talismans to bring good luck or as amulets to ward off evil. In the Muslim world the concept of mana is hidden in ‘baraka’, the blessing. Anything holy would contain ‘baraka’ (mana), its absence marks the profane. Negative mana would be feared in the evil eye, caused by jealousy, against which many precautions will be taken by, for instance, the use of amulets.
These are just a few snippets from this fascinating book. One of our African students found it helpful to understand the worldview and practices of his non-Christian compatriots. Missionaries, medical personnel and Bible translators will need these insights when working in an animistic or folk religious context.
On a sideline: Robert Badenberg wrote a compendium to Käser’s book, The concept of man in non-Western cultures, which provides tools for exploring the particular features of an animistic culture in regard to their concept of man.
Details: Käser, Lothar. 2014. Animism: A cognitive approach. An introduction to the basic notions. Nürnberg: VTR.
H.T.