This document discusses animism, polytheism, and shamanism. It explains that in animist worldviews, souls exist in all things including animals, plants, and objects. Shamans act as intermediaries between humans and spirits and have abilities like healing, divination, and astral projection. Polytheism involves belief in multiple gods with individual personalities and powers, rather than one omnipotent god. Ethics in polytheism see the world and everything in it as sacred manifestations of the gods, rather than a dichotomy of sacred and profane as in monotheism. Moral rules in polytheism depend on one's social role and recognize moral complexity and ambiguity.

1. Animism and Polytheism

2. Existence of Souls or
Spirits
 There is a plurality of spirits
 Dreams clearly show the division of body and soul
 Animals, plants, inanimate objects have souls
 Animals: relatives, abodes of dead ancestors, sources of
power, knowledge and influence
 Trees, plants, water, wind: Abodes of spirits
 Unattached malevolent spirits: possession, disease
 Soul or souls survive death (sacrificial rites)

3. Shamanism
 Shaman as the conduit for the various spirits
 Because of various evils animist cultures
developed a form of Shamanism-a system of
spiritual technology
 Shaman as healer
 A Shaman can: control the weather, curse enemies,
divine the future, interpret dreams, and project
themselves astrally (including the ability to travel to
upper and lower spiritual worlds)

4. Polytheisim
 The gods of polytheism have independent and
individual personalities with specific skills, needs and
desires. (division of labor
 Anthropomorphic, but Immortal
 Mirrors the Universe: birth, death, and rebirth of the
cosmos and all of its gods and goddesses
 Gods Can intervene in human life (sometimes through
rituals)
 Gods Have supernatural powers, but are not
omnipotent

5. Ethics in Polytheism
 Monotheistic religions: the sacred and the profane
are typically dichotomous (Good - Evil, Body-Soul,
) “The world is entirely distinct from God, its creator,”
the first Vatican Council of 1870 reminds us.
 This explains why monotheists worship only one
god. One God as absolute
 Monotheistic theology: God and the world are
absolutely distinct, and God is absolutely sacred,
whereas the world is absolutely profane.
 Monotheism “rejects” the world

6. Ethics in Polytheism
 Polytheism: Everything in the physical world –
wind, sunlight, trees, wolves, buildings, humanity –
is a manifestation of some god or goddess or other
invisible, divine being.
 The world in its entirety is ultimately sacred. The
sacred encompasses the profane and sacralizes it,
rather than merely negating it.
 “Pagans [polytheists] are all those who say Yes to
life, for whom ‘god’ is the word for the great Yes to
all things.” Nietzsche

7. Ethics in Polytheism
 Monotheism- Single set of laws for all people
 Polytheism-One was permitted to behold a plurality of
norms; one god was not considered a denial of another
god, nor blasphemy against him.
 Not the “anything goes” of moral relativism. Your
rules depended on your station in life
 Moral Ambiguity-the recognition that one’s values
often conflict with each other, and that one often
finds oneself in situations where one is forced to
sacrifice a cherished value in favor of another