In anthropological usage, animism refers to a way of understanding the world in which it is filled with spiritual beings, souls, or spiritual essences that permeate humans, animals, plants, natural phenomena, and even inanimate objects. The term was first formally defined by the British anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor, who described it as the belief in spiritual beings and the attribution of souls to animals, plants, inanimate objects, and natural forces. For Tylor, this represented one of humanity’s earliest and most widespread religious concepts, a foundational form from which more complex religious systems evolved. Although his evolutionary framework is no longer followed, his core insight—that many cultures perceive a spiritually animated universe—remains central to the definition.

At the heart of animism lies the conviction that non-human entities possess consciousness, will, or personhood, and that spiritual essence can exist independently of physical form. Natural forces such as wind, rivers, or mountains are not merely background scenery but are experienced as agents with their own capacities to act and to influence human affairs. These spirits or spiritual beings are often understood as requiring recognition, respect, or propitiation, and relationships with them carry moral and social weight. In this sense, humans are not set apart from the rest of existence but participate in an interconnected web of life with other beings, all of whom are regarded as worthy of consideration.

Contemporary anthropological perspectives describe animism as a sophisticated worldview rather than a “primitive” stage to be surpassed. This outlook is often characterized as a relational ontology: reality is apprehended through networks of relationships among humans, animals, plants, places, and spirits, rather than through a strict division between mind and matter or nature and culture. Consciousness is not confined to human beings but is seen as extending across many forms of life and even into what other worldviews might call “inanimate” things. Across diverse societies—such as various Indigenous traditions in the Americas, Africa, Australia, and practices like Shinto in Japan—animistic understandings express themselves in culturally specific ways, yet share this underlying sense of a world alive with spiritual presence.