ABSTRACT
Every so often the media of the western world register a surge of excitement about the imminent prospect of discovering life on the planet Mars. People who have such an understanding of life – and they include many among whom anthropologists have worked, in regions as diverse as Amazonia, Southeast Asia and the circumpolar North – are often described in the literature as animists. This chapter describes two points about this animic perception of the world. One concerns the relational constitution of being; the other concerns the primacy of movement. Once people recognise the primacy of movement in the animic cosmos, the inclusion in the pantheon of beings of what modern science would classify as meteorological phenomena – not just the winds but commonly also thunder – becomes readily comprehensible. There is rather more to be said about the prominence accorded to these weather-related manifestations of being, and this brings the relation between earth and sky.
