Animism is used generally today to describe the belief that everything in nature is more than just a material existence.

It can be broken down as you will see.

Animism:

There are basically 2 forms:
1) A belief that natural objects are inhabited by spirits.
Each rock, tree, and cloud may have its own unique spirit. Individuality in spirit as well as in the material world.

2) All things in nature may be thought of as having the same spirit. The belief here is a ‘part of the whole’ ideals. All are a part of one divine entity. This version of animism was characteristic of many Native American cultures.

In both forms of animism, the spirits are thought of as having identifiable personalities and other characteristics such as gender. A belief in a powerful, mature, protective "mother nature" is an example. The spirits may be benevolent, malevolent, or neutral. They can be lovable, terrifying, or even mischievous. They can interact with humans and can be pleased or irritated by human actions. As such, people must be concerned about them and will likely try to avoid displeasing them.

The second type of Animism is Animatism:

A belief in a super natural power not that of a particular being, is referred to as Animatism. For those who hold this belief, the power is usually impersonal, unseen, and potentially everywhere. It is neither good nor evil, but it is powerful and dangerous if misused.

Among the Polynesian cultures of the Southern Pacific Ocean, this power is called "mana". For them it is a force that is in all objects, plants, and animals (including people). Some things or people have more of it than others and can be potentially dangerous. For example, a chief may have so much of it that he must be carried around all of the time. If he were to walk on the ground, some residual amounts of his mana may remain in his footprints to harm ordinary people if they later stepped on them. Volcanoes were thought to have varying amounts of mana and thus they had different levels of the threat as to their ability to destroy.

Both….
Animatism and Animism may seem to be the same thing. In fact both beliefs are often found in the same culture. The difference, however, is that the "power" of Animatism does not have a personality--it is an impersonal "it" rather than a "he" or "she". Animism can have gender and/or personality characteristics similar to people.

Edward Tylor
1832 - 1917
Known as the father of anthropology in the English-speaking world. He gave the term Animism to the scientific and philosophical world.

There have been divisions of thought as to the original concept of animism held by primitive peoples. A British anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor in his book, "Primitive Culture" (1871) defined animism "as a general belief in spiritual beings and considered it 'a minimum definition of religion.'" He stated all religions from the simplest to the most complex shared some sort of animistic belief.

According to him, primitive peoples believed the spirits or souls caused life in human beings. They pictured these souls as vapors or shadows going from one body to another. The souls not only passed between human beings but into, plants, animals and inanimate objects as well.

Tylor reasoned primitive man originally arrived at his animistic belief to help him explain the causes of sleep, dreams, and death. There was a need to give a reason for the pictures some people saw when they slept and had dreams. The spirits were the early man's explanations.

Tylor was criticized by another British anthropologist Robert Ranulph Marett (1866-1943) who was convinced that primitive man had not developed the intellectual to form even such simplistic explanations as Tylor proposed.

Marett suggested early religion was more emotional and intuitional in origin. He theorized that early man recognized some inanimate objects because they had some particular characteristic or behaved in some unusual way which mysteriously made them seem alive. He believed early man treated all animate objects as having a life and will of their own, but they never distinguished the soul as separate from the body, and could enter or leave the body.