Animism

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You had to take great care not to be possessed by an evil spirit, which could be prevented by presenting offerings, including animals, bits of cloth, or food, to the spirit. Likewise, offerings could be made to benevolent spirits to obtain their goodwill.

Still today, at several locations around the world, offerings are brought to stone cairns, sacred trees, prominent rocks, etc., indicating remnants of animism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today, traces of this ancient practice may still be seen, especially in Ladakh, northern India, where horns of cows, yaks, and wild goats are placed as offerings on stone cairns. The horns and stones are often painted red, in which case they are called Lato Marpo (‘Red Gods’). The red dye probably symbolizes blood from sacrificed animals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The mentioned plants are all described on the page Plants: Himalayan flora.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the vast forests, certain trees, especially hollow ones, supposedly possessed enormous powers, and for the hunter it was wise to be on good terms with the tree women. He would bring offerings to them, having a mysterious mythical-erotic relationship with them.

When humans began building villages, a tree would often be planted on the founder’s grave, around which the village was centered. This sacred tree, which was believed to be endowed with the spirits of the deceased village members, could be birch (Betula), oak (Quercus), ash (Fraxinus excelsior), linden (Tilia), Norway spruce (Picea abies), Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris), or yew (Taxus baccata). During festivals, mead was presented as an offering, and also blood, when animals were slaughtered.

Until about a hundred years ago, among certain African tribes in Liberia, a tree would be planted, when a village was founded, and a beautiful maiden would be buried alive under the tree. By this act, the tree would be endowed with the spirits of the forefathers. The surroundings of the tree were protected, and if weaver birds (which are usually regarded as serious pests, because they eat crops), founded a colony in the tree, nobody dared to harm them. If they were pursued, the village had to be burned down, and a new one established far away.

When the various religions arose, it was only natural that parts of the old animism would be incorporated in the new beliefs. Sanctity of trees has lingered up to the present day. Many cultures and religions still have sacred groves, often situated around temples or graveyards. The trees in these groves are believed to contain supernatural powers, and they are never cut down, even during periods of starvation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Traditionally, Yggdrasil is considered to be an ash (Fraxinus excelsior), but many scholars now believe that it was a yew (Taxus baccata), as the sacred tree in the shrine of Uppsala, Sweden, according to several sources, was an evergreen.

The Norsemen had sacred groves, in which sacrifices were presented to Odin (Wodin), the Sky God. Around 1070, historian Adam of Bremen describes one such shrine in Uppsala: “Of every kind of living beings, nine males are sacrificed, their blood believed to reconcile the gods. The bodies themselves are strung up in the trees of a grove next to the shrine. This grove is so sacred to the heathens that each and every tree in it is considered to be divine through the death and decay of the victims. Here are the corpses of dogs and horses, and also of humans, and a Christian has told me that he observed 72 such corpses, hanging close to one another.”

Other names of Odin was ’God of the Hanged’ or ’Lord of the Gallows’, and also Yggr (‘The Terrible One’). Yggdrasil is sometimes translated as ’Odin’s Steed’, and according to Hávamál (’Words of the High One’, from the Old Norse Edda), Odin hung nine days in Yggdrasil, sacrificed by himself to himself, in his eternal quest for knowledge. (Nine was a sacred number to the Norsemen.)

In the Nordic countries, far into the 1800s, the so-called eye trees supposedly possessed supernatural healing powers. On such trees, two branches had joined to form a circular or oval opening, through which sick persons, notably children with rickets, were pushed, naked. This ceremony had to be performed at night, and, preferably, on a Thursday night – presumably a remnant of the Norse religion, as Thursday means ‘Day of Thor’. By undergoing this ritual, the sick one would be reborn, healed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the evening, the shaman, the sick man, and several older women circumambulated the scaffold, while three girls beat drums of various size. The shaman, wearing a special headgear with numerous hornbill feathers attached, then performed a dance to urge the evil spirit to leave the sick man’s body.

 

 

 

 

During the healing ceremony, an Ifugao shaman thrusted a sharpened bamboo stick deep into the lungs of a pig, twisting it several times. The pig screamed horribly for a couple of minutes, and then died of suffocation. Its screams were a signal to the evil spirit that the offering was meant for him, and he would leave the body of the sick person.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the shrine, we encountered a dongba (shaman) of the local Nakhi people. In the bottom picture, he places juniper foliage on the head of a pilgrim. Incidentally, juniper foliage is widely used as incense in Asia.

 

 

 

 

 

John, who was convinced that magnetic anomalies in the ground were mind-altering, at once began measuring the magnetic field at these spots, and he measured a magnetic anomaly at every single one of them. The shaman, who had decorated these sites, had been able to detect them by sheer physical sensitivity.

The top of Bear Butte is flat, but only about 100 m long and 10 m wide. Where the trail ended, two dead trees, lavishly festooned, were framing a stunning panorama of the plains to the north, at the edge of a 300-metre vertical cliff. At this spot, John measured the most powerful magnetic anomaly he had ever encountered.

At various locations on the top, he found five magnetic anomalies, four of which had been marked by a ring of stones around the spot. The fifth, which had the strongest anomaly, was marked in an entirely different way, with a complex set of colored flags that marked out four corners, with strings of knotted cloth connecting them, while tiny ‘flagpoles’ and Y-shaped vertical sticks held a horizontal stick. The poles and sticks were from willow, which does not grow on top of the butte.

Later, in the nearby Crazy Horse Monument book store, we found a book, in which it was described how a Lakota man had asked for and was granted a night vision quest. He was brought to the top of a butte and lead to a spot, which was similar to the one we had seen on Bear Butte, complete with colored flags at each compass point, strings, and willow sticks and poles. In the hours around dawn (when telluric currents there would have been strongest), the man reported extremely dramatic visions and came down the mountain, forever cured of his alcoholism, which was the cause of requesting the vision quest.

Vision quests, and many other subjects connected with magnetic anomalies and telluric ground currents, are described in detail elsewhere on this website, on the page Book: Seed of Knowledge, Stone of Plenty: Understanding the Lost Technology of the Ancient Megalith-Builders. Other aspects of John’s extensive work are also described, whereas his interesting and multifarious life is related on the page People: John Andrew Burke (1951-2010).