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92-621: Rainmaking is a weather modification ritual that attempts to invoke rain . It is based on the belief that humans can influence nature, spirits , or the ancestors who withhold or bring rain. Among the best known examples of weather modification rituals are North American rain dances , historically performed by many Native American tribes, particularly in the Southwestern United States . Some of these weather modification rituals are still implemented today. Julia M. Buttree (the wife of Ernest Thompson Seton ) describes

184-487: A Hindu text , has a Sanskrit language shloka (hymn), which explains the importance of reverence of ecology. It states: "A pond equals ten wells , a reservoir equals ten ponds, while a son equals ten reservoirs, and a tree equals ten sons." Indian religions worship trees such as the Bodhi Tree and numerous superlative banyan trees , conserve the sacred groves of India , revere the rivers as sacred , and worship

276-521: A human sacrifice to appease the wrath of the goddess Artemis , who had becalmed the Achaean fleet at Aulis at the beginning of the Trojan War . In Homer 's Odyssey , Aeolus , keeper of the winds, bestowed Odysseus and his crew with a gift of the four winds in a bag. However, the sailors opened the bag while Odysseus slept, looking for booty (money), and as a result, were blown off course by

368-511: A tropical storm to cool the sea surface skin temperature could be a technique used to fight hurricanes in the Atlantic before they develop into major hurricanes . It is purely speculative and difficult to realize since placing such pumps in the path of a hurricane would be difficult. Furthermore, any such project would need a large number of them to upwell enough water to cool a large enough sea surface area to have any effectiveness. That

460-418: A Weather Modification Operations and Research Board, and implemented a national weather modification policy. Neither was made into law. Senate Bill 1807 and House Bill 3445, identical bills introduced July 17, 2007, proposed to established a Weather Mitigation Advisory and Research Board to fund weather modification research Tennessee bill HB 2063/SB 2691 was signed into law on April 11, 2024. This bill bans

552-484: A belief that natural objects other than humans have souls. This formulation was little different from that proposed by Auguste Comte as " fetishism ", but the terms now have distinct meanings. For Tylor, animism represented the earliest form of religion, being situated within an evolutionary framework of religion that has developed in stages and which will ultimately lead to humanity rejecting religion altogether in favor of scientific rationality. Thus, for Tylor, animism

644-420: A controversy regarding the ethical claims animism may or may not make: whether animism ignores questions of ethics altogether; or, by endowing various non-human elements of nature with spirituality or personhood, it in fact promotes a complex ecological ethics . Animism is not the same as pantheism , although the two are sometimes confused. Moreover, some religions are both pantheistic and animistic. One of

736-569: A hurricane or significantly reduce its strength by depriving it of heat energy. Other proposals for hurricane modification include the construction of a large array of offshore wind turbines along the East Coast of the United States . Such turbines would have the dual purpose of generating plentiful energy whilst also reducing the power of oncoming hurricanes before they make landfall . Pumping up colder deep ocean water in front of

828-446: A hurricane" explored various ideas such as: Researchers from NOAA's hurricane research division addressed hurricane control based ideas. Later ideas (2017) include laser inversion along the same lines as laser cooling (normally used at cryogenic temperatures) but intended to cool the top 1mm of water. If enough power were to be used then it may be enough, combined with computer modelling, to form an interference pattern able to inhibit

920-501: A means of being constantly on guard against potential threats. His suggested explanation, however, did not deal with the question of why such a belief became central to the religion. In 2000, Guthrie suggested that the "most widespread" concept of animism was that it was the "attribution of spirits to natural phenomena such as stones and trees." Many anthropologists ceased using the term animism , deeming it to be too close to early anthropological theory and religious polemic . However,

1012-423: A person". Hallowell's approach to the understanding of Ojibwe personhood differed strongly from prior anthropological concepts of animism. He emphasized the need to challenge the modernist, Western perspectives of what a person is, by entering into a dialogue with different worldwide views. Hallowell's approach influenced the work of anthropologist Nurit Bird-David , who produced a scholarly article reassessing

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1104-534: A precondition of religion now, in all its variants." Tylor's definition of animism was part of a growing international debate on the nature of " primitive society " by lawyers, theologians, and philologists. The debate defined the field of research of a new science: anthropology . By the end of the 19th century, an orthodoxy on "primitive society" had emerged, but few anthropologists still would accept that definition. The "19th-century armchair anthropologists" argued that "primitive society" (an evolutionary category)

1196-690: A rain dance for settlers in return for trade items. This is best documented among the Osage and Quapaw tribes of Missouri and Arkansas. In April 2011, Texas governor Rick Perry called the Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas , asking that Texans pray for "the healing of our land [Texas]" and for an end to the drought . In the Ozarks, multiple methods of attempting to call rain have been documented: Other hillmen try to produce rain by burning brush along

1288-409: A ring of fire until, sweating profusely, the falling drops of perspirations produced the desired rain." Roman religion had a ceremony called the aquaelicium (Latin: "calling the waters") which sought to produce rain in times of drought. During the ceremony, the pontifices had the lapis manalis ("Water-flowing stone". Festus distinguishes it from another lapis manalis , "stone of

1380-449: 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 and practice. Rane Willerslev extends the argument by noting that animists reject this Cartesian dualism and that the animist self identifies with the world, "feeling at once within and apart from it so that the two glide ceaselessly in and out of each other in

1472-476: A sealed circuit". The animist hunter is thus aware of himself as a human hunter, but, through mimicry, is able to assume the viewpoint, senses, and sensibilities of his prey, to be one with it. Shamanism , in this view, is an everyday attempt to influence spirits of ancestors and animals, by mirroring their behaviors, as the hunter does its prey. Cultural ecologist and philosopher David Abram proposed an ethical and ecological understanding of animism, grounded in

1564-690: A tactic of military or economic warfare like Operation Popeye , where clouds were seeded to prolong the monsoon in Vietnam. Weather modification in warfare has been banned by the United Nations under the Environmental Modification Convention . A popular belief in Northern Europe was that shooting prevents hail, which thus caused many agricultural towns to fire cannons without ammunition. Veterans of

1656-466: Is a central concern of African societies which depend on it for their sustenance and that of their animals. The power to make rain is usually attributed to African kings. In a number of African societies, kings who failed to produce the expected rain ran the risk of being blamed as scapegoats and killed by their people. Among the San , shamans enter a trance and go into the spirit world themselves to capture

1748-528: Is a recurring theme in conspiracy theories . The chemtrail conspiracy theory supposes that jet contrails are chemically altered to modify the weather and other phenomena. Other theories attempt to implicate scientific infrastructure such as the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP). Frank Herbert 's Dune series features weather control technology, mainly on two planets: Arrakis , where

1840-822: Is a strong suspicion it is used to "wash the air" in dry and heavily polluted places, such as Beijing. In mountainous areas of the United States such as the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, cloud seeding has been employed since the 1950s. Project Cirrus was an attempt by General Electric to modify the weather which ran from 1947-1952. During that time, under the supervision of the United States Air Force , attempts were made to create snowstorms and seed hurricanes by using silver iodide . While General Electric reported positive results, they also acknowledged that their experiments were controversial. The United Arab Emirates has been cloud seeding since

1932-624: Is considered holy in several religious traditions of India. The Ficus benghalensis is the national tree of India. Vat Purnima is a Hindu festival related to the banyan tree, and is observed by married women in North India and in the Western Indian states of Maharashtra , Goa , Gujarat . For three days of the month of Jyeshtha in the Hindu calendar (which falls in May–June in

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2024-422: Is further recorded that the ensuing drought lasted for a period of 3.5 years at which time Elijah called the rains to come again and the land was restored. The New Testament records Jesus Christ controlling a storm by speaking to it. In Islam , Salat Al-Istisqa’ (Prayer for Rain) is taken as a recourse when seeking rain from God during times of drought. Weather modification, along with climate engineering ,

2116-484: Is inherently animistic in that it discloses a material field that is animate and self-organizing from the beginning. David Abram used contemporary cognitive and natural science , as well as the perspectival worldviews of diverse indigenous oral cultures, to propose a richly pluralist and story-based cosmology in which matter is alive. He suggested that such a relational ontology is in close accord with humanity's spontaneous perceptual experience by drawing attention to

2208-403: Is no reliable scientific evidence to confirm their effectiveness. Another new anti-hurricane technology is a method for the reduction of tropical cyclones' destructive force – pumping sea water into and diffusing it in the wind at the bottom of such tropical cyclones in its eye wall. NOAA published a page addressing various ideas in regard to tropical cyclone manipulation. In 2007, "How to stop

2300-494: Is probably the procession of Lady Cat, during which a cat is carried around in procession through the streets of villages while villagers splash water at the cat, in hope that as water has come on the cat, water will fall on humans as well. Wu Shamans in ancient China performed sacrificial rain dance ceremonies in times of drought. Wu anciently served as intermediaries with nature spirits believed to control rainfall and flooding. "Shamans had to carry out an exhausting dance within

2392-537: Is reportedly dissolved. Peter Cordani teamed up with Mark Daniels and Victor Miller, the owners of a government contracting aviation firm AeroGroup which operated ex-military aircraft commercially. Using a high altitude B-57 Bomber, AeroGroup tested the substance dropping 9,000 pounds from the B-57 aircraft's large bomb bay and dispersing it into a large thunderstorm cell just off the east coast of Florida. The tests were documented on film and made international news showing

2484-556: Is said to describe the most common, foundational thread of indigenous peoples' "spiritual" or "supernatural" perspectives. The animistic perspective is so widely held and inherent to most indigenous peoples that they often do not even have a word in their languages that corresponds to "animism" (or even "religion"). The term "animism" is an anthropological construct . Largely due to such ethnolinguistic and cultural discrepancies, opinions differ on whether animism refers to an ancestral mode of experience common to indigenous peoples around

2576-498: Is sustained only by intensely animistic participation between human beings and their own written signs. For instance, as soon as someone reads letters on a page or screen, they can "see what it says"—the letters speak as much as nature spoke to pre-literate peoples. Reading can usefully be understood as an intensely concentrated form of animism, one that effectively eclipses all of the other, older, more spontaneous forms of animistic participation in which humans were once engaged. To tell

2668-415: Is the act of intentionally manipulating or altering the weather . The most common form of weather modification is cloud seeding , which increases rainfall or snowfall, usually for the purpose of increasing the local water supply . Weather modification can also have the goal of preventing damaging weather , such as hail or hurricanes , from occurring; or of provoking damaging weather against an enemy, as

2760-407: Is the inverse of scientism , and hence, is deemed inherently invalid by some anthropologists. Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour , some anthropologists question modernist assumptions and theorize that all societies continue to "animate" the world around them. In contrast to Tylor's reasoning, however, this "animism" is considered to be more than just a remnant of primitive thought. More specifically,

2852-570: Is without counting the ridiculous amount of energy needed to power those pumps and its effects on marine life. Operation Popeye was a highly classified operation run by the US military from 1967-1972. The purpose was to prolong the monsoon in Southeast Asia. The overwhelming precipitation successfully disrupted the tactical logistics of the Vietnamese army. Operation Popeye is believed as

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2944-592: The Bhagavat Gita , Krishna said, "There is a banyan tree which has its roots upward and its branches down, and the Vedic hymns are its leaves. One who knows this tree is the knower of the Vedas." (Bg 15.1) In Buddhism's Pali canon , the banyan (Pali: nigrodha ) is referenced numerous times. Typical metaphors allude to the banyan's epiphytic nature, likening the banyan's supplanting of a host tree as comparable to

3036-547: The Gregorian calendar ) married women observe a fast, tie threads around a banyan tree, and pray for the well-being of their husbands. Thimmamma Marrimanu , sacred to Indian religions, has branches spread over five acres and was listed as the world's largest banyan tree in the Guinness World Records in 1989. In Hinduism, the leaf of the banyan tree is said to be the resting place for the god Krishna . In

3128-598: The Kerma culture display Animistic elements similar to other Traditional African religions . In contrast, the later polytheistic Napatan and Meroitic periods, with displays of animals in Amulets and the esteemed antiques of Lions, appear to be an Animistic culture rather than a polytheistic culture. The Kermans likely treated Jebel Barkal as a special sacred site, and passed it on to the Kushites and Egyptians who venerated

3220-724: The Manes ") brought from its usual resting place, the Temple of Mars in Clivo near the Porta Capena , into the Senate . Offerings were made to Jupiter petitioning for rain, and water was ceremonially poured over the stone. Caloian , Dodola and Perperuna , among other terms, refer to a family of Slavic and Romanian rainmaking rituals, some of which survived into the 20th century. Weather modification Weather modification

3312-804: The Seven Years' War , Napoleonic wars , and the American Civil War reported that rain fell after every large battle. After their stories were collected in War and Weather , the United States Department of War in the late 19th century purchased $ 9,000 of gunpowder and explosives to detonate them in Texas, in hopes of condensing water vapor into rain . The results of the test, supervised by Robert Dyrenforth , were inconclusive. Wilhelm Reich performed cloudbusting experiments in

3404-519: The mesa . In North Africa , the traditional Berber religion includes the traditional polytheistic, animist, and in some rare cases, shamanistic, religions of the Berber people. In the Indian-origin religions , namely Hinduism , Buddhism , Jainism , and Sikhism , the animistic aspects of nature worship and ecological conservation are part of the core belief system. Matsya Purana ,

3496-515: The phenomenology of sensory experience. In his books The Spell of the Sensuous and Becoming Animal, Abram suggests that material things are never entirely passive in our direct perceptual experience, holding rather that perceived things actively "solicit our attention" or "call our focus", coaxing the perceiving body into an ongoing participation with those things. In the absence of intervening technologies, he suggests that sensory experience

3588-440: The "animism" of modernity is characterized by humanity's "professional subcultures", as in the ability to treat the world as a detached entity within a delimited sphere of activity. Human beings continue to create personal relationships with elements of the aforementioned objective world, such as pets, cars, or teddy bears, which are recognized as subjects. As such, these entities are "approached as communicative subjects rather than

3680-480: The "intentional injection, release, or dispersion" of chemicals within Tennessee "with the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight." The text of the bill doesn't explicitly reference the chemtrail conspiracy theory, but the sponsor of the bill, Sen. Steve Southerland said that it is one of the intended targets of the bill. Magical and religious practices to control

3772-473: The "old animist" definition had been problematic, the term animism was nevertheless "of considerable value as a critical, academic term for a style of religious and cultural relating to the world." The new animism emerged largely from the publications of anthropologist Irving Hallowell , produced on the basis of his ethnographic research among the Ojibwe communities of Canada in the mid-20th century. For

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3864-634: The "self". Instead of focusing on the essentialized, modernist self (the "individual"), persons are viewed as bundles of social relationships ("dividuals"), some of which include "superpersons" (i.e. non-humans). Stewart Guthrie expressed criticism of Bird-David's attitude towards animism, believing that it promulgated the view that "the world is in large measure whatever our local imagination makes it." This, he felt, would result in anthropology abandoning "the scientific project." Like Bird-David, Tim Ingold argues that animists do not see themselves as separate from their environment: Hunter-gatherers do not, as

3956-568: The 1950s, the results of which are controversial and were not widely accepted by mainstream science. In November 1954 the Thailand Royal Rainmaking Project (Thai: โครงการฝนหลวง) was initiated by King Bhumibol Adulyadej . He discovered that many areas faced the problem of drought. Over 82 percent of Thai agricultural land relied on rainfall. Thai farmers were not able to grow crops for lack of water. The royal rainmaking project debuted on 20 July 1969 at his behest, when

4048-584: The 2000s and aims to increase rainfall by 15-30% per year. The materials used are potassium chloride, sodium chloride, magnesium, and other materials. Not having adequate systems to handle weather modification may have disastrous consequences. "In the city of Jeddah in Western Saudi Arabia was damaged by floods in 2009 that reportedly killed more than 100 people; igniting questions of why the country doesn't have effective drainage systems in place." The U.S. National Library of Medicine notes that

4140-744: The Balobedu and therefore also have rainmaking abilities. Queen Modjadji is believed to have come from the Shona. The Shona have some of the most powerful rainmaking abilities of the Southern Bantu as it was mainly practiced there until the late 1500s The Hambukushu are renowned for their rain-making abilities in the Okavango Delta , earning them the title "The Rain-makers of Okavango." In Thailand and Cambodia, various rites exist to obtain rain in times of drought. The most peculiar of these

4232-469: The Ojibwe encountered by Hallowell, personhood did not require human-likeness, but rather humans were perceived as being like other persons, who for instance included rock persons and bear persons. For the Ojibwe, these persons were each willful beings, who gained meaning and power through their interactions with others; through respectfully interacting with other persons, they themselves learned to "act as

4324-628: The U.S. ratification deposited in New York on January 17, 1980. In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeps records of weather modification projects on behalf of the Secretary of Commerce, under the authority of Public Law 92-205, 15 USC § 330B, enacted in 1971. U.S. Senate Bill 517 and U.S. House Bill 2995 were two bills proposed in 2005 that would have expanded experimental weather modification, to establish

4416-586: The abnormal phenomena of disease could be traced to spiritual causes. The origin of the word comes from the Latin word anima , which means life or soul. The first known usage in English appeared in 1819. Earlier anthropological perspectives , which have since been termed the old animism, were concerned with knowledge on what is alive and what factors make something alive. The old animism assumed that animists were individuals who were unable to understand

4508-541: The ancestors, who provide the basis to life. Certain indigenous religious groups such as the Australian Aboriginals are more typically totemic in their worldview, whereas others like the Inuit are more typically animistic. From his studies into child development, Jean Piaget suggested that children were born with an innate animist worldview in which they anthropomorphized inanimate objects and that it

4600-681: The animals associated with rain. A famous rain making monarch is the Rain Queen of Balobedu , South Africa . Queen Modjadji , or the Rain Queen , is the hereditary queen of Balobedu , a people of the Limpopo Province of South Africa . The Rain Queen is believed to have special powers, including the ability to control the clouds and rainfall. She is known as a mystical and historic figure who brought rain to her allies and drought to her enemies. The Lozi people are closely related to

4692-573: The animist perspective in line with Martin Buber 's " I-thou " as opposed to "I-it". In such, Harvey says, the animist takes an I-thou approach to relating to the world, whereby objects and animals are treated as a "thou", rather than as an "it". There is ongoing disagreement (and no general consensus) as to whether animism is merely a singular, broadly encompassing religious belief or a worldview in and of itself, comprising many diverse mythologies found worldwide in many diverse cultures. This also raises

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4784-464: The animistic thinking evident in fetishism gave rise to a religion he named totemism . Primitive people believed, he argued, that they were descended from the same species as their totemic animal. Subsequent debate by the "armchair anthropologists" (including J. J. Bachofen , Émile Durkheim , and Sigmund Freud ) remained focused on totemism rather than animism, with few directly challenging Tylor's definition. Anthropologists "have commonly avoided

4876-487: The children's book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs , the fictional town of Chewandswallow has weather that rains down food instead of actual rain or snow, which becomes so extreme it forces its citizens to move to a different town. This was adapted into a movie where Flint Lockwood, the town's outcast and scientist, has created a machine that converts water from the clouds into food. Nature spirits Although each culture has its own mythologies and rituals, animism

4968-449: The corporeal, sensuous world that sustains it. Religious studies scholar Graham Harvey defined animism as the belief "that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others." He added that it is therefore "concerned with learning how to be a good person in respectful relationships with other persons." In his Handbook of Contemporary Animism (2013), Harvey identifies

5060-458: The creeks, or hanging dead snakes belly-up on fences, or killing frogs and leaving them in the dry road, or putting salt on gravel bars, or suspending live turtles above the water. [..] In some localities people imagine that they can cause a rain by submerging a cat in sulphur water —they don't drown the animal, but make sure that it is completely under water for a moment at least. I once saw this tried at Noel, Missouri, but without any success. Rain

5152-467: The difference between persons and things . Critics of the old animism have accused it of preserving "colonialist and dualistic worldviews and rhetoric." The idea of animism was developed by anthropologist Sir Edward Tylor through his 1871 book Primitive Culture , in which he defined it as "the general doctrine of souls and other spiritual beings in general." According to Tylor, animism often includes "an idea of pervading life and will in nature;"

5244-591: The exchange of information on weather modification activity. Weather modification, particularly hostile weather warfare , was addressed by the "United Nations General Assembly Resolution 31/72, TIAS 9614 Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques." The Convention was signed in Geneva on May 18, 1977; entered into force on October 5, 1978; ratified by U.S. President Jimmy Carter on December 13, 1979; and

5336-640: The first rainmaking attempt was made at Khao Yai National Park. Dry ice flakes were scattered over clouds. Reportedly, some rainfall resulted. In 1971, the government established the Artificial Rainmaking Research and Development Project within the Thai Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives. In January 2011, several newspapers and magazines, including the UK's Sunday Times and Arabian Business , reported that scientists backed by

5428-477: The first successful practice of weather modification technology in warfare. After it was unveiled, weather modification in warfare was banned by the Environmental Modification Convention (ENMOD). In "Benign Weather Modification" published in March 1997, Air Force Major Barry B. Coble superficially documents the existence of weather modification science where he traces the developments that have occurred, notably, in

5520-495: The goal of increasing precipitation. Cloud seeding only works to the extent that there is already water vapor present in the air. Critics generally contend that claimed successes occur in conditions which were going to lead to rain anyway. It is used in a variety of drought-prone countries, including the United States , China , India , and Russia . In China , there is a perceived dependency upon it in dry regions, and there

5612-540: The government of Abu Dhabi , the capital of the United Arab Emirates , had created over 50 artificial rainstorms between July and August 2010 near Al Ain , a city which lies close to the country's border with Oman and is the second-largest city in the Abu Dhabi Emirate . The artificial rainstorms were said to have sometimes caused hail, gales and thunderstorms, baffling local residents. In

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5704-598: The hands of the Pentagon and CIA's staunchest ideological enemies. In the 1990s a directive from the chief of staff of the Air Force Ronald R. Fogleman was issued to examine the concepts, capabilities, and technologies the United States would require to remain the dominant air and space force in the future. In 1975, the US and Canada entered into an agreement under the auspices of the United Nations for

5796-584: The harmful effects of hurricanes. Moshe Alamaro of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology proposed using barges with upward-pointing jet engines to trigger smaller storms to disrupt the progress of an incoming hurricane; critics doubt the jets would be powerful enough to make any noticeable difference. Alexandre Chorin the 3rd of the University of California, Berkeley , proposed dropping large amounts of environmentally friendly oils on

5888-399: The idea of animism in 1999. Seven comments from other academics were provided in the journal, debating Bird-David's ideas. More recently, postmodern anthropologists are increasingly engaging with the concept of animism. Modernism is characterized by a Cartesian subject-object dualism that divides the subjective from the objective, and culture from nature. In the modernist view, animism

5980-448: The inert objects perceived by modernists." These approaches aim to avoid the modernist assumption that the environment consists of a physical world distinct from the world of humans, as well as the modernist conception of the person being composed dualistically of a body and a soul. Nurit Bird-David argues that: Positivistic ideas about the meaning of 'nature', 'life', and 'personhood' misdirected these previous attempts to understand

6072-405: The issue of animism and even the term itself, rather than revisit this prevalent notion in light of their new and rich ethnographies ." According to anthropologist Tim Ingold , animism shares similarities with totemism but differs in its focus on individual spirit beings which help to perpetuate life, whereas totemism more typically holds that there is a primary source, such as the land itself or

6164-437: The local concepts. Classical theoreticians (it is argued) attributed their own modernist ideas of self to 'primitive peoples' while asserting that the 'primitive peoples' read their idea of self into others! She explains that animism is a "relational epistemology " rather than a failure of primitive reasoning. That is, self-identity among animists is based on their relationships with others, rather than any distinctive features of

6256-444: The main differences is that while animists believe everything to be spiritual in nature, they do not necessarily see the spiritual nature of everything in existence as being united ( monism ) the way pantheists do. As a result, animism puts more emphasis on the uniqueness of each individual soul. In pantheism, everything shares the same spiritual essence, rather than having distinct spirits or souls. For example, Giordano Bruno equated

6348-653: The mountains and their ecology. Panchavati are the sacred trees in Indic religions, which are sacred groves containing five type of trees, usually chosen from among the Vata ( Ficus benghalensis , Banyan), Ashvattha ( Ficus religiosa , Peepal), Bilva ( Aegle marmelos , Bengal Quince), Amalaki ( Phyllanthus emblica , Indian Gooseberry, Amla), Ashoka ( Saraca asoca , Ashok), Udumbara ( Ficus racemosa , Cluster Fig, Gular), Nimba ( Azadirachta indica , Neem) and Shami ( Prosopis spicigera , Indian Mesquite). The banyan

6440-471: The natural environment. Examples include water sprites , vegetation deities , and tree spirits , among others. Animism may further attribute a life force to abstract concepts such as words, true names , or metaphors in mythology . Some members of the non-tribal world also consider themselves animists, such as author Daniel Quinn , sculptor Lawson Oyekan , and many contemporary Pagans . English anthropologist Sir Edward Tylor initially wanted to describe

6532-404: The original animism of early humanity. The term ["animism"] clearly began as an expression of a nest of insulting approaches to indigenous peoples and the earliest putatively religious humans. It was and sometimes remains, a colonialist slur. — Graham Harvey , 2005. In 1869 (three years after Tylor proposed his definition of animism), Edinburgh lawyer John Ferguson McLennan , argued that

6624-419: The phenomenon as spiritualism, but he realized that it would cause confusion with the modern religion of spiritualism , which was then prevalent across Western nations. He adopted the term animism from the writings of German scientist Georg Ernst Stahl , who had developed the term animismus in 1708 as a biological theory that souls formed the vital principle , and that the normal phenomena of life and

6716-656: The rain dance of the Zuni , along with other Native American dances, in her book The Rhythm of the Redman . Feathers and turquoise , or other blue items, are worn during the ceremony to symbolize wind and rain respectively. Details on how best to perform the Rain Dance have been passed down by oral tradition. In an early sort of meteorology , Native Americans in the midwestern parts of the modern United States often tracked and followed known weather patterns while offering to perform

6808-436: The resulting gale. In ancient Rome, the lapis manalis was a sacred stone kept outside the walls of Rome in a temple of Mars . When Rome suffered from drought, the stone was dragged into the city. The Berwick witches of Scotland were found guilty of using black magic to summon storms to murder King James VI of Scotland by seeking to sink the ship upon which he travelled. Scandinavian witches allegedly claimed to sell

6900-762: The run up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games , the Chinese Government said they could control precipitation to some extent and that the Games would not be hampered by bad weather conditions. For this purpose they established a government office called the Beijing Weather Modification Office, which is under the national weather control office. Cloud seeding is a common technique to enhance precipitation. Cloud seeding entails spraying small particles, such as silver iodide , onto clouds to attempt to affect their development, usually with

6992-422: The sea surface to prevent droplet formation. Experiments by Kerry Emanuel of MIT in 2002 suggested that hurricane-force winds would disrupt the oil slick, making it ineffective. Other scientists disputed the factual basis of the theoretical mechanism assumed by this approach. The Florida company Dyn-O-Mat and its CEO, Peter Cordani, proposed the use of a patented product it developed, called Dyn-O-Gel, to reduce

7084-521: The senses, and to the primacy of sensuous terrain, enjoining a more respectful and ethical relation to the more-than-human community of animals, plants, soils, mountains, waters, and weather-patterns that materially sustains humanity. In contrast to a long-standing tendency in the Western social sciences, which commonly provide rational explanations of animistic experience, Abram develops an animistic account of reason itself. He holds that civilised reason

7176-557: The silver iodide has no known "ill effects" on people, although people's "hands may have remained yellowed for weeks" after being exposed to it. Project Stormfury was an attempt to weaken tropical cyclones by flying aircraft into storms and seeding the eyewall with silver iodide. The project was run by the United States Government from 1962 to 1983. A similar project using soot was run in 1958, with inconclusive results. Various methods have been proposed to reduce

7268-404: The storms were successfully removed on monitored Doppler radar. In 2003, the program was shut down because of political pressure through NOAA . Numerical simulations performed by NOAA showed however that it would not be a practical solution for large systems like a tropical cyclone. Hail cannons have been used by some farmers since the 19th century in an attempt to ward off hail , but there

7360-480: The story in this manner—to provide an animistic account of reason, rather than the other way around—is to imply that animism is the wider and more inclusive term and that oral, mimetic modes of experience still underlie, and support, all our literate and technological modes of reflection. When reflection's rootedness in such bodily, participatory modes of experience is entirely unacknowledged or unconscious, reflective reason becomes dysfunctional, unintentionally destroying

7452-416: The strength of hurricanes. The substance is a polymer in powder form (a polyacrylic acid derivative) which reportedly has the ability to absorb 1,500 times its own weight in water. The theory is that the polymer is dropped into clouds to remove their moisture and force the storm to use more energy to move the heavier water drops, thus helping to dissipate the storm. When the gel reaches the ocean surface, it

7544-647: The technology is used by the Fremen to assure privacy from observation and hide their true population and their plans to terraform the planet from the Imperium ; and, Chapterhouse , where the Bene Gesserit intend to turn the planet into a desert. The ability to manipulate the weather has become a common superpower in superhero fiction . A notable example is the Marvel Comics character Storm . In

7636-455: The term had also been claimed by religious groups—namely, Indigenous communities and nature worshippers —who felt that it aptly described their own beliefs, and who in some cases actively identified as "animists." It was thus readopted by various scholars, who began using the term in a different way, placing the focus on knowing how to behave toward other beings, some of whom are not human. As religious studies scholar Graham Harvey stated, while

7728-418: The weather are attested in a variety of cultures. In ancient India , it is said that yajna or Vedic rituals of chanting mantras and offerings were performed by rishis to bring sudden bursts of rainfall in rain starved regions. Some Indigenous Americans , like some Europeans, had rituals which they believed could induce rain. The Finnish people , on the other hand, were believed by others to be able to control

7820-401: The weather. As a result, Vikings refused to take Finns on their oceangoing raids. Remnants of this superstition lasted into the twentieth century, with some ship crews being reluctant to accept Finnish sailors. The early modern era saw people observe that during battles the firing of cannons and other firearms often initiated precipitation. In Greek mythology , Iphigenia was offered as

7912-555: The wind in bags or magically confined into wooden staves; they sold the bags to seamen who could release them when becalmed. In various towns of Navarre , prayers petitioned Saint Peter to grant rain in times of drought. If the rain was not forthcoming, the statue of St Peter was removed from the church and tossed into a river. In the Hebrew Bible , it is recorded that Elijah in the way of judgement, told King Ahab that neither dew nor rain would fall until Elijah called for it. It

8004-584: The world or to a full-fledged religion in its own right. The currently accepted definition of animism was only developed in the late 19th century (1871) by Edward Tylor . It is "one of anthropology 's earliest concepts, if not the first." Animism encompasses beliefs that all material phenomena have agency, that there exists no categorical distinction between the spiritual and physical world, and that soul , spirit, or sentience exists not only in humans but also in other animals, plants, rocks, geographic features (such as mountains and rivers), and other entities of

8096-417: The world soul with God and espoused a pantheistic animism. In many animistic world views, the human being is often regarded as on a roughly equal footing with other animals, plants, and natural forces. Traditional African religions : most religious traditions of Sub-Saharan Africa are basically a complex form of animism with polytheistic and shamanistic elements and ancestor worship . In East Africa

8188-499: Was far more sympathetic in regard to "primitive" populations than many of his contemporaries and that Tylor expressed no belief that there was any difference between the intellectual capabilities of "savage" people and Westerners. The idea that there had once been "one universal form of primitive religion" (whether labelled animism , totemism , or shamanism ) has been dismissed as "unsophisticated" and "erroneous" by archaeologist Timothy Insoll , who stated that "it removes complexity,

8280-418: Was fundamentally seen as a mistake, a basic error from which all religions grew. He did not believe that animism was inherently illogical, but he suggested that it arose from early humans' dreams and visions and thus was a rational system. However, it was based on erroneous, unscientific observations about the nature of reality. Stringer notes that his reading of Primitive Culture led him to believe that Tylor

8372-496: Was only later that they grew out of this belief. Conversely, from her ethnographic research, Margaret Mead argued the opposite, believing that children were not born with an animist worldview but that they became acculturated to such beliefs as they were educated by their society. Stewart Guthrie saw animism—or "attribution" as he preferred it—as an evolutionary strategy to aid survival. He argued that both humans and other animal species view inanimate objects as potentially alive as

8464-628: Was ordered by kinship and divided into exogamous descent groups related by a series of marriage exchanges. Their religion was animism, the belief that natural species and objects had souls. With the development of private property, the descent groups were displaced by the emergence of the territorial state. These rituals and beliefs eventually evolved over time into the vast array of "developed" religions. According to Tylor, as society became more scientifically advanced, fewer members of that society would believe in animism. However, any remnant ideologies of souls or spirits, to Tylor, represented "survivals" of

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