Object Relationships Survey

LINK TO SURVEY

In a world filled with manufactured, or human-made, things, we are bound to develop relationships with these things. Almost all of us have patted the hood of our car after a long trip or lovingly hand-washed a favorite sweater. Without awareness, we have developed affection for these objects.

Some people have object relationships that go further than the norm. They feel deep, abiding love for an object. They often give this object a name and they experience lasting benefits from the relationship. Because of my own personal connection with an object, I'm interested in learning more about the phenomenon.

Objectum sexuality takes this relationship a step further, into the zone of the erotic. Objektophiles have sexual feelings towards their objects, and consider this their sexual orientation. Eija-Riitta Eklöf, a Swedish "OS" in love with the Berlin Wall, braved considerable ridicule to start Objectum Sexuality International in the 1990s. Their website has not been updated for several years, but may be a good starting place if you are an OS, looking to connect with others.

LINK TO SURVEY

This is the link to a survey about human-object relationships. While Objectum Sexuality focuses on the erotic, my particular interest is in deep, abiding friendships with objects, rather than sexual relationships. Please, add your voice to the survey if you have an object relationship or share the link with someone you know who has an object relationship.

I have 55 responses so far, on the way to 100. The results of the survey will be published here, and perhaps elsewhere, but all responses are confidential. I'm already finding patterns, including a surprising number of folks who are comfortably "out" to their friends and families. In every one of my responses for far, participants have experienced nothing but joy and benefit from their object relationship.

LINK TO SURVEY

Animist Reality

Mongolian Shaman, 1909

Animism is humanity’s oldest system of belief and it’s still the most elegant and successful of our attempts to understand what is real. Based on sensory experience, animism describes a reality which is both wholly material and wholly spiritual. All of material creation is intelligent and ensouled. All spirit is embodied. 

Anthropologist Edward B. Tyler first defined animism in this particular way 1871, and said that all the religions of the world arose out of this fundamental belief in the spiritual nature of material being. Tyler was a cultural evolutionist, however, so he was convinced that animism existed along a progressive continuum: from the most primitive, focusing on “inanimate” objects, through classical polytheism to the “advanced” abstract monotheism of his day. I disagree with him on this point. Our spiritual development as a species has taken place in fits and starts. We still have a whole lot to learn, and how many gods we follow is not an indication of our level of spiritual maturity.

Spiritual maturity? What a laugh! Look around you and tell me—with a straight face—that humans are spiritually mature! The fruits of the ripening spirit are sweet and nourishing, but we seem to have grown some sour grapes, like anger and hate. Humans have stunningly sophisticated technologies. We are now the most powerful creatures on earth and we have an overflowing storehouse of factual information, yet the species is spiritually weaker than we were in our kinship days, and we’re pitifully vulnerable to the forces of cruelty and greed. We'd do well to be open to an animist alternative. 

Traditional animists held to their spiritually advanced worldview in the face of vigorous evangelizing by Christians and Capitalists, but they're being overwhelmed and may soon die out. Their systems of belief encompassed the whole of what is real, rather than being set apart as an institutionalized religion within a larger reality. Like contemporary science, traditional animism simply describes what is. This animist reality is not experienced as supernatural or ritualistic, or as a substitute for real (scientific) understanding. It is real understanding. This is also true of contemporary animism. It’s not a religion, per se. It’s a cultural reality.

Polytheistic Animism is a contemporary expression
 of the ancient animist cultural reality.

Traditional animism still lives on in isolated pockets, and indigenous cultures in developed nations, like those of the American Indians, also keep the flame of traditional animism alive. This traditional animism, however, belongs to other times and peoples, not to me. I practice a new animism, one that arises out of the direct, personal experiences of contemporary animists.

The new animist is a 21st century person who believes that all that exists is both material and nonmaterial (or spiritual), fully integrated and inseparable. All material being is conscious, intelligent and ensouled, each existent thing in its own way. Contemporary animists are not looking to fit into a traditional animist schema. We belong to the contemporary world. The animal totems and three-tiered worlds of traditional animism are not relevant to us. We live in a world of plastic food and digital devices, and since animism is always realistic and experiential, animist mythologies will change as material realities change.

An authentic animism is one that reflects the reality of ensouled matter in the here and now. 

We are surrounded by manufactured objects and live in a manufactured world, so our animism includes these things. We may have intimate relationships with trees, rocks, animals and other natural beings, but also with manufactured objects like cars and computers. Polytheistic Animists, like the folks in the Sacred Green Church, also have relationships with greater-than-human beings, commonly called angels or gods. We are contemporary animists who believe in the Gods of Love.

Polytheistic Animism: Our View of Sex in a Nutshell

From an animist point of view, all material being is imbued with spirit. 

Spirit, or the nonmaterial aspect of all things, includes intelligence, emotion, creativity and soul, soul being the sacred life force. Like all that exists, then, humans are material beings imbued with spirit. We are both body and soul, and as an expression of soul, our flesh-and-blood bodies are sacred. Our body’s natural acts are sacred. Sex is sacred.

From a polytheistic point of view, our Creator made our human bodies on purpose, whether through evolution or by other mysterious means, and what the Creator has made is good. He made our genitals on purpose. He gave us the sexual act on purpose. We understand these things as gifts from our Creator.

From an ordinary, scientific-rational point of view, we find that sex enables humans to easily and pleasantly procreate as well as offering us pleasure, comfort, fun, adventure, improved health and other marvelous benefits.

Finally, Polytheistic Animism supports a social structure based on kinship and a morality of loving kindness.

Putting this all together, Polytheistic Animism views sex as sacred, good, useful and righteous. Moral sex is loving and kind, not violent or hurtful, and within this moral limitation, many expressions of human sexuality are acceptable.

What is Polytheistic Animism?

Hello Kinfolk!

Let's begin by defining the religion I practice: Polytheistic Animism.

Animism in itself is not a religion. It’s a cultural, or experienced, reality in which all that exists is both matter and spirit. 

By matter, I mean all that has physical form. By spirit, I mean everything that is not matter, such as soul, light, energy, intelligence, consciousness and so on. Matter cannot exist without spirit. Spirit cannot exist without matter. To the best of my knowledge, animism was the reality of all pre-historic humans, and is still the reality of the remnant of tribal peoples today.

Various religions and cultures may develop within an animist reality. I don't claim to belong to any of the animistic tribal religions or cultures. I was born in New Jersey in 1953, grew up a white girl on the streets of Philadelphia, collected a number of college degrees and now live in a small New England town. I’m not a tribal anything.

But I know that matter and spirit arise together and cannot be separated, and everything else that I know and live flows from this essential fact.

My reality is animist, and therefore, I believe that everything that exists materially also exists spiritually, including trees and dogs and oceans and mountains and the chicken somebody else killed for me to eat for dinner tonight. The sun has soul (essence, spirit) and the galaxies have soul. All things have soul, all being is intelligent, each being with its own kind of intelligence, all being is consciousness, each with its own kind of consciousness. 

All the beings and existences that we commonly understand to be nonmaterial, then, must also be material, albeit in ways we might not be able to experience with our human senses. Gods, angels, demons, devas, light and so on, each have a material existence. I believe that there are many greater-than-human (GTH) beings whose material form we can’t see, but who exist nevertheless. They may be as much greater then we are as a galaxy is greater than an ant, or as much greater than we are as angels are greater than humans.

Billions of galaxies. Billions of stars. Billions of grains of sand and blades of grass. Billions of ants and humans and chickens. And, what, only one intelligent life form that’s greater-than-human? One “G”od? Give me a break! The very idea is absurd!

Billions of GTH beings must exist in the multiverse. And a number of them are clustered here, around our planet earth. My culture is animist, my religion is polytheistic. I believe in many gods.

A typical definition of religion is, "a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of human life and the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency, usually involving practices and observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs." My religion, Polytheistic Animism, is a set of beliefs and practices, a moral code, a cosmology and a polytheistic theology, grounded in an animistic cultural reality.

I’ve tried to define Polytheistic Animism in a nutshell. I know it’s a lot to take in all at once, and my vocabulary may be hard to understand at first, because there are so many new or differently defined words I’ve had to develop. Bear with me. It will all make sense in time.

All the best to you,

Lilly