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๐งต Thread (24 tweets)
"Let's talk about the word 'belief' for a bit. That's a word you don't find a lot in indigenous cultures. The word 'belief' assumes that there's an empirical material world, and then everything else exists as a set of abstract principles that you either consider valid or don't.
You 'believe' that chi or prana exist, even though you haven't felt it. You 'believe' that a nymph inhabits that spring, even though you haven't seen her. You 'believe' through some set of inferences and abstractions, in unseen forces, even though you haven't seen them.
Of course, this view can only arise in an era already steeped in abstract thought - in what Henry Corbin called 'the dead body of an angel'. It assumes a pre-existing separation between human beings and the natural world.
Anthropologist David Lewis Williams spent his career demonstrating that the nature of religious or spiritual experience is not based on thinking things up, but on direct experience felt in heightened states of awareness.
The Siberian people who watch a man grow horns as he's shamanising - that's not an idea or a thought. It's not a belief. The Tonga shaman climbing the World Tree and suckling from the reindeer mother isn't a belief. It's something he experienced in trance.
The energy that rises in the Khoisan dancer isn't something they believe in - it's something that rises so tangibly that they have names for all of its stages. They've described all the auditory phenomena that come along with it.
They understand the dangers that come with it. They understand the safeguards that need to be put in place in order to access it in a healthy way. They understand how to treat it respectfully. They understand what rhythms call it.
Animism isn't an abstract belief. It's not an idea. It's something you experience. It's you on the camping trip, humming in tune with the waters. It's the convulsions of the village trance medium, and I've seen those convulsions - you tell me that's some abstract idea.
The scientists might say yes, but that's just endorphins from dancing. Yes. Holy endorphins, holy nectars of the skull. These things aren't separate. They aren't material over here, abstract belief over here. They are seamless experience. The body of the angel, alive & humming.
Anthropologist Tim Ingold says hunter gatherers do not, as a rule, approach their environment as an external world of nature that has to be grasped intellectually. Indeed, the separation of mind and nature has no place in their thought or practice.
This abstraction, this extraction, this 'slaying of the angel', as Corbin puts it, is the exception rather than the rule. Because animism is normative consciousness." - quoth Josh Schrei, here https://t.co/RQT43tbHTC
@relic_radiation I am into what you're talking about here, tho I sorta chafe at calling it "animism" since isms are usually associated with belief systems. > Animism isn't an abstract belief. It's not an idea. It's something you experience.
@relic_radiation I started listening to this and ragequit after 15 minutes because I couldn't stand how he kept just repeating the phrase "animism is normative consciousness" he didn't have the courage to drop the -ism, despite decrying it and "normative" means the opposite of what he wants
@relic_radiation "normative" implies that it's right via some codified rule, some cultural convention *normal* consciousness is better insofar as "normal" means "typical" and he's saying "99.9% of humans ever", though it still means "conforming" which is the OPPOSITE of saying it's natural! https://t.co/iiSxkUOBnR
@relic_radiation I resonate with pretty much everything you're saying in this thread, to be clear, and I'm glad you're saying it! ...but that podcast was awful. did not like the guy's vibe at all. (it wasn't just the line he kept repeating; the rest of it rubbed me the wrong way too)
@Malcolm_Ocean hmm weird about the dictionary deftn of normative - that feels off to me too, and I may ask about what happend there. the 'repeating phrases' is an artistic choice to put the listener in a trance, to put the listener in a trance. I found it weird too but now I'm used to it lol
@Malcolm_Ocean perhaps more context - in my personal journey I listened to the podcast and was intrigued but, not so captivated until my roommate invited me to a class w him where I found his teaching & answers to all my left-brain Qs totally great. now I like the pod https://t.co/ekjxKqIEF1
also inspired bc: my ritual study group walked me through a few such expanded modes of โdoing nothingโ and now I can sensorially listen through rocks in a forest and, hooo boyyyy ๐๐ฟ appreciation to our dear teacher for stewarding and transmitting lost wisdom. ๐