Dr. Jones gives a curious example on page 19 of early religion “worship of the sky — that is, man’s ultimate anchorage of his consciousness in the dependable vault of heaven — is the most significant aspect in religious history. It is the historical beginning of horoscopy.”¹
Marc admits that this is a primitive form of animism, probably basing his ideas on Dr. Edward B. Tylor’s seminal work, Primitive Anthropology, and Animism.² Dr. Tylor in Primitive Culture (c. 1871) states “the origins of religions has been pursued with utmost zeal in the attempt of classifying it into easy-to-understand groups since the Roman times.”
Tylor and polymorphism
Polyzoism, pantheism or panvitalism derive from a Latin word, anima, meaning the “spirit of the thing.” In astrology this is akin to the Part of Daemon (Daemon is Greek while anima is Latin but are equivalent in meaning., highlighting the idea that this spirit within animates all that we touch, and and does not exist without us.
In the Bible Jacob, who later himself becomes Israel, has a similar thought. He believes that a deity lives within the stone he slept upon & is worried that he desecrated it.
10, And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran. 11, And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep.
12, And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.
13, And, behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; 14, and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
15, And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee whithersoever thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.
16, And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not. 17, And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
Holy Bible, Book of Genesis chapter 28 versus 10-17, Revised Standard Version (1888).What happened to Jacob is typical of how animism works — in its early stages, when the person is first awakened to an inanimate thing, he personifies it and gives it a soul and a will like his own. So the mountains, rivers, streams, rocks, trees, stones, and heavenly bodies, and the earth and sky all are waking & thinking entities. As primitive man does not yet have the concept of”ego” and self, he does not see that these things are any different from himself and so must have what he has. Later on, as his awareness grows, a tree, a post, a pillar, develop into separate being and the hollow of the rock is worn out from being the throne of invisible spirits, and finally these inanimate beings take on animal form, and ultimately become actual humans.
” A spring was . . . Pegasus, Apollo’s horse bubbling from the mountains white and frothy … A river is a bull with a human face. . .The laurel was Daphne, whom Apollo had pursued; the oak was Zeus himself, before being the tree of Zeus, and Dionysus was supposed to live in the tree, after he had ceased to be himself the tree. The earth was Gaea, emerging from the soil in the shape of a woman who implores the sky to water her gardens.”
the myth of Orpheus
Footnotes:
- Jones, Marc Edmund, Astrology: How and Why it works, pg.14
- Dr. Tylor’s work was of great interest not only to psychologists like Dr. Sigmund Freud and fellow anthropologists like Sir James Fraser, but I must imagine to Dr. Jones too, as he was a well-read man.