Why I call myself an animist; Part 1 — Welsh Giants, Maori Mountains and Shinto kami
The Mountain of Cadair Idris sits in the south of Gwwynedd, a few miles from my family home. The Welsh name literally means “chair of Idris” — Idris being Idris Gawr (Idris the Giant) a Welsh king who lived in the 6th and 7th century’s, and was said to be so large he sat on the mountain as a throne from which he could survey his entire kingdom. The historical Idris died in 623 according to the Welsh annals, and his grave is commonly believed to be on the mountain. I remember being told as a child, that if one spent the night on the summit, you would either go mad or receive poetic genius.
Have you ever been captured by a place, struck by a sense of reverence and even awe, and cannot explain why? In the following two posts, I will argue for a place-based spirituality, using my own experience with the mountain of Cadair Idris as an example.
Before we go any further though, I want to say that these posts will touch on a number of topics (Shinto, Welsh history, Indigenous beliefs of Australasia) which I am by no means an expert on. This is simply my attempt to synthesise what I have learned from various people who do know quite a bit on these topics, to try and make sense of my own experience of the mountain, the world, and why I call myself an animist.
With that being said, perhaps a definition of animism is needed. Is it in fact a meaningful word at all? Like “shamanism” it is not used by indigenous peoples themselves to describe their way of life, but a term that comes from 19th century, European scholars. Maori academic Dr John Reid of the University of Canterbury’s Ngai Tahu Research Centre, while acknowledging the problems of the term does believe that it is still useful, powerful even. He gave the following three point definition
- non-humans are people too
- a “haunted” universe
- communication between humans and non-humans
The key point for the purposes of this essay is the first. It feels like the hardest to grasp, but is in fact more a matter of perception than anything else, or as Reid put it in his TEDx talk from 2014 “there is a big difference between experience and belief” and identifying a mountain, for example, as a person is not a belief but an experience.
To start with a very domestic example, pretty much anyone who has ever owned a dog or cat will think of that animal as in some ways a “person.” A non-human person, but a person nevertheless. This isn’t about a metaphysical belief in a dog having a “soul” (though this way of thinking doesn’t foreclose that possibility either). It’s that you know that dog as an individual, with a personality, in a relation with you, etc. You might have seen them kick their legs while sleeping and know that they’re dreaming.
We can extend that out to a broader and broader circle of beings. To the point where we see a river, a mountain, and yes even the entire biosphere as a (non-human) being. At no point in this do we need to have a mystical experience where the heavens open, there is a flash of lightning and suddenly we see a human face in the mountain/tree etc. Not to say that can’t and doesn’t happen, but to be dependent on it would take away from the idea that there isn’t a dead material world and a “higher” spiritual one, but one existence that is full of life and meaning right here.
To return to Cadair Idris, in the Summer of 2019, I was living in the family home just south of the mountain, writing my dissertation that compared the Shinto shrine of Yasakuni War memorial with European war memorials.
Earlier in the year, I had been lucky enough to travel to Japan. I was in a moment where I was reconsidering my teenage interest in “paganism”, Wicca, nature religion etc. I had lost interest in it around late-teens. Like so many others though, I was searching once again for a magic escape from the World — you don’t go to the witch except as a last resort, but we live in last resort times (does anyone else feel, looking at what they did in 2019, that they had some premonition of what was coming?).
Even if I did not have as full an intellectual understanding of it then, (and I am aware that there is still much, much for me to learn about the various different traditions which make up what is called Shintoism) the shrines I visited in Japan then made a huge impression on me. To echo Dr. Reid’s distinction between believing and experiencing something, I could not say what exactly I believed about kami or spirits, then or now. But I know I experienced a kami when the bell was rung, and somewhat self-consciously I made a bow in the direction of the shrine.
The problem of course is that I could not practice Shintoism in Wales, and indeed there is arguably no such thing as Shintoism. It is a place-based way of life, like all indigenous ways of life. It can’t be a product in a global, spiritual supermarket that can be transplanted anywhere. It’s not “plug and play” spiritual technology. That isn’t to say though that the experience couldn’t be explored in a different context though. Authors Joseph Cali and John Dougill have written that if there is one “broad definition” of Shinto, it is “a belief in kami.” Something like that, can be found in other landscapes surely, even if it won’t be called kami.
As I mentioned, I had known the mountain of Cadair Idris and the legends associated with it all my life. I had known the river I lived next to all my life. So did anything change? Yes, and no. It was not necessarily a new belief, but it was a new experience. One which I will explain, in part 2…
