Across animist traditions, rituals and offerings flow from a deep sense of kinship with rivers, trees, mountains and all the unseen forces around us. Smudging ceremonies—burning sage, cedar or sweetgrass—often kick things off, cleansing both people and place. In Japan’s Shinto shrines, visitors leave tiny wooden plaques called “ema,” painted with wishes for health or a bountiful harvest, while libations of rice wine honor mountain and river kami.

Harvest festivals brim with gratitude: the Ifugao in the Philippines still perform prayers and pig sacrifices during rice planting and harvesting, inviting ancestral spirits to bless the terraces. On Canada’s Pacific Northwest Coast, potlatches once gathered clans in whirlwind feasts, where masks, drumming and blanket giveaways sustained relationships with guardian spirits—and these ceremonies are experiencing a revival as indigenous communities reclaim their cultural heartbeat.

Across West Africa, vodun practitioners offer palms of cornmeal, rum and cowrie shells to water spirits at riverbanks; the rhythmic call of drums mirrors the pulse of the unseen world. In Australia, Aboriginal smoking ceremonies—where fragrant eucalyptus smoke spirals skyward—serve as both purification and a bridge to Dreamtime custodians of the land. Over in the Amazon, ayahuasca rituals weave plant medicines and song into night-long journeys, guided by shamans who treat forest creatures and plant spirits as fellow travelers.

Modern gatherings borrow from these roots, too. Earth Day events increasingly include prayers to Mother Earth, song circles and tree-planting offerings held in community forests. In Peru, the annual Pago a la Tierra (“Offering to the Earth”) sees farmers leave coca leaves, flowers and chicha in fields, a tradition just listed by UNESCO to safeguard intangible heritage. Even coastal surfers have begun dropping seashells or stems of kelp into waves, thanking the ocean for its gifts before catching the next swell.

Whether through a handful of rice, a libation of water or a fire-lit dance under the full moon, animist ceremonies turn every gesture into a love letter to the living world—proof that a simple offering can speak volumes to the spirits that surround us.