# Lawless, ‘Everything You Need to Know About Animism’, 2017 > [!cite] > Lawless, Sarah Anne. ‘Everything You Need to Know About Animism’. *Ecological Consciousness*. 23 April 2017, https://lawless665.rssing.com/chan-56195748/article12.html. --- ‘Animism is the belief that everything has a spirit and a consciousness, a soul, from the tiniest microorganism on earth to the great planets in the heavens to the whole of the universe itself.’ [[Lawless, ‘Everything You Need to Know About Animism’, 2017|(Lawless 2017, n.p.)]] ^984541 ‘Animistic faiths usually contain a belief in rebirth & reincarnation either as another human, or an animal, tree, or star. Anything or one can be an ancestor and in a way this is true as even scientists will tell you every single thing in the universe is created from the same space dust — all matter gets recycled and reused.’ [[Lawless, ‘Everything You Need to Know About Animism’, 2017|(Lawless 2017, n.p.)]] ^bb578e ‘Spirits of place (*genus loci*) are thought to be either the actual soul of the land or a soul who has come to reside in a hill, stream, or grove as its guardian and benefactor.’ [[Lawless, ‘Everything You Need to Know About Animism’, 2017|(Lawless 2017, n.p.)]] ^2c1922 Polytheism and animism often went hand-in-hand (e.g. the Norse with their pantheon of deities plus nature spirits, trolls, etc.). [[Lawless, ‘Everything You Need to Know About Animism’, 2017|(Lawless 2017, n.p.)]] ^d85f2c ‘Anthropologists call these divisions the “low cult” (animism) and the “high cult” (polytheism), but in truth they were not divided at all. You’d be hard pressed to find a pre-Christian religion without a fully integrated combination of deities, fairy-like beings, and an ancestor cult.’ [[Lawless, ‘Everything You Need to Know About Animism’, 2017|(Lawless 2017, n.p.)]] ^6f71e0