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Belief that things have souls
Answer for the clue "Belief that things have souls ", 7 letters:
animism
Alternative clues for the word animism
Word definitions for animism in dictionaries
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Word definitions in The Collaborative International Dictionary
Animism \An"i*mism\, n. [Cf. F. animisme, fr. L. anima soul. See Animate .] The doctrine, taught by Stahl, that the soul is the proper principle of life and development in the body. The belief that inanimate objects and the phenomena of nature are endowed ...
Wikipedia
Word definitions in Wikipedia
Animism is the worldview that non-human entities possess a spiritual essence. Animism may also refer to:
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Word definitions in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
noun EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS ▪ They still retain large elements of animism , a belief which assigns a divine spark or spirit to every material thing. ▪ This is the basis of animism , and animism is the basis of religion.
Wiktionary
Word definitions in Wiktionary
n. 1 A belief that spirits inhabit some or all classes of natural objects or phenomena. 2 A belief that an immaterial force animates the universe. 3 (context dated English) A doctrine that animal life is produced by an immaterial spirit.
Usage examples of animism.
To the extent that either attempts to escape the flatland interlocking order at all, they do so by regression to agrarian alchemy, magico-mythic animism, astrology, horticultural planting mythology, or foraging human-nature indissociationall of which is based, of course, on the new physics.
Even as it is not the specialist in biology that still maintains the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection, but the non-professional and the amateur, even so the specialist acquainted with the original sources, and the explorer, possessing first hand knowledge, asserts a decline, through history, from purer to less spiritual faiths, while the bias of the evolutionist, who has no first hand knowledge of the sources constrains him to begin his scheme of religion with animism and fetish-worship.
To the extent that either attempts to escape the flatland interlocking order at all, they do so by regression to agrarian alchemy, magico-mythic animism, astrology, horticultural planting mythology, or foraging human-nature indissociationall of which is based, of course, on the new physics.
Roszak wants to take, from primals and from infants, the parts of animism that he likes and then jettison the rest (which he concedes are merely "superstitious").
Like communalism and animism, non-nuclear family structures provide a poor defense against the corrosive effects of cities, where African culture is being redefined as deforestation tied to overpopulation drives peasants out of the countryside.
Animism and tribal pantheons are inadequate to explain a varied and complex world.
Necromancy, geomancy, ritual sacrifice, divination by means of the study of entrails, omens, crystals, dreams, or pools of ink, animism, fetishism, social Darwinism, psychohistory, continuous creation, Lamarckian genetics, psionics, and more.
The staying power of animism, in competition with these two major world religions, might be traced to the survival of large tracts of forest here into the twentieth century.