“Freud’s speculations about the origins of religion”
Hello Will , I am not an Animist specialist either. Most of what I know comes from my Nanny : she was animist. Later, as a teen, I went hunting with dad : every time a week in the bush, sleeping within a village with locals. Some of the wise old men fought during the war. We used to talk in evenings.
They explained that a powerful entity created everything, and went to rest in some remote place, without interfering anymore with the world anymore. At that time, the children death rate was high in the bush. But each dead child’s spirit was living around in the village and within the family “hut”.
Therefore, the spirit of dead people always remain within the village (provided that the proper rituals had been performed) They always are around. No need to celebrate spirits who are “living” among us !
That is why my intuition is that the cult of ancestors probably appeared in a second stage, maybe when people started to live within stable villages.
That is : the spirits (and the specificity/ character of each one) helps to better “understand/ comprehend” the world around. That is essential for survival. Cult of ancestors looks like something which comes “in top”.
As I say “in top”, it reminds me that many Animists ALSO are Christian or Muslim. Indeed, this kind of “God” is another “layer” of belief which comes “in top” of animist beliefs.
I am not a Freud reader. A few decades ago, I discovered that most french Court-Appointed “experts” in psychology are using the Freud hypothesis/ explanations. Their conclusions sometimes look quite weird/ alien to me. From my investigations, I understand that the logics of Freudian experts probably is an extrapolation of Freud’s personal experience. i.e. his theories could well be a sand castle.
