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Chapter 3. Midgard 84
animism considering it to be the most primitive of all religious beliefs and believing it
to be the main reason why so-called primitive societies such as tribes in the Amazon
or the East Indies have such a difficult time moving into the industrialized world.
There is also something frightening about animism for 20th century man resulting
in an overall distrust of animistic religions such as Voudoun, Santería, and some of
the African tribal religions to the extent that an entire genre of “horror literature”
has been created around the practices and practitioners.
Such opinions are ill-founded and represent an egocentric human resistance to
changing one’s point of view rather than any real threat to progress. The early
settlers of Iceland, for example, sought to live in harmony with their new environment
by seeking the assistance the local genii of the prospective settlement through
the ritualized custom of gift-giving (offerings, sacrifices). Such an approach actually
facilitated progress rather than hinder it. Animism has little, if anything, to do with
progress; it has much more to do with acting out of an attitude of respect and honor
for those things outside of oneself, and a general sensitivity to the fact that no act is
ever committed in isolation of anything else. In 1992, a funeral service was held on
the rooftop of a large Japanese microchip firm. The services were conducted by a
Buddhist monk and were performed for the benefit of the souls of all the microchips
which were sacrificed over the past year through experimentation and through the
destruction of inferior products. The funeral was considered ”normal” by most of
the Japanese population, including the administrators of the firm, but was “bizarre”
enough in a western sense that it rated 10 minutes of airtime on National Public
Radio. Japan is considered to be a very progressive country, although many western
people feel that its sense of tradition is somewhat ”backwards,” “out- of-date,” or
at least somewhat unnecessarily “old-fashioned.” These same western people also
notice what seems to be a paradox between the practice of ancient tradition and
the development of high technology with its concomitant domination of the world
economy in Japan. Paradoxes only exist, though, for philosophically rigid people
who are unable to readjust their world view so that it reflects reality.
The early Germanic peoples, at least during the Viking Age and shortly thereafter,
ranged greatly from being “highly superstitious” as is recorded in Tacitus’
Germania to devout atheists such as the Dane, Hrolf Kráki. Turville-Peter devotes
an entire chapter to ”the Godless Men” in his Myth and Religion of the North but
concludes the chapter with a discussion about the need even for these men to subscribe
to the cultural, moral philosophy of the day which is best represented in the
Hávamál (discussed in Chap. 1). Animism, land-spirits, and polytheism are thought
by many to be incompatible with many philosophies of the 20th century, but the
idea that the world or Midgard is composed of a highly complex set of relationships,
and that any act that is committed is never done in complete isolation, is not.