ABSTRACT
We often see a phase of religion among nature peoples which tells us that in that stage of religious development the object of their worship is one that directly appeals to our senses: for instance, they worship the sun, i.e., not the spirit of the sun, but the sun itself, visible to the naked eye; they worship the wind, i.e., the wind palpable to our senses, and not the invisible mysterious power residing in the wind. Thus also the visible Heaven itself, the high awe-inspiring mountain itself, the roaring sea itself, the tremendous cataract itself, and so on, are all worshipped as divine. This is what we call simple or original nature worship or animatism, or pre-polydemonism in general, in contradistinction to animism or polydemonism, because in the stage of animism or polydemonism people believe in spiritual powers, either incorporated or disembodied, i.e., the crude philosophy of animism or polydemonism presupposes the existence of a spirit or invisible divine power inherent in the visible object of Nature; they worship the former by and through the latter, and not the latter itself. In ancient Egypt, for instance, the Sun-Gods Ra and Aten in origin were in the stage of pre-animism or animatism, and by degrees they passed on to the stage of animism; in Babylonia, the Sun-God Shamash has the same history; this is the case with Zeus, the Heavenly God of ancient Greece, and the Greek Hermes, originally an upright stone itself on the boundary, as the very name of the God shows. In Vedic India the Wind-God Vātā represents a wind-god in the stage of animatism, while Vāyū, God of the wind, is produced in the animistic stage of Indian religion. The case is the same with the deities of Shintō. We can discover a trace or remnant of simple nature worship once existing in Shintō, the most primitive form of religious belief among the Japanese. In the Hishizume-no-Matsurino-Norito or Ritual of the Festival of Appeasing the Fire-God, the physically visible fire and the God residing in the fire are indiscriminately and interchangeably referred to, there having been no distinction at all between the God of Fire and the physical fire itself, visible to our naked eyes. The history of the development of the Vedic Fire-God Agni tells the same thing. In ancient Japan the God of Fire was called Kagutsuchi, the Radiant (Shining) One, or Homusubi, the Fire-Producer, and there was little or no distinction between the
God of Fire and the physical fire itself. So we read in the Hishizumeno-Matsuri-no-Norito or Ritual of the Festival of Appeasing the Fire-God:—
“When Izanami’s last son Homusubi, God of Fire, was born, her pudenda were burnt and she passed away And lo! giving birth to Fire, her pudenda were burnt.”
