In denouncing animism altogether, Christians chip away at foundational principles of their own beliefs.

“Animism” is a spectrum. Let’s take an example. A tree can be a deity. A tree can have a deity residing within it. These deities may have agency. They may just be essences. These essences can be thought of as souls or energy. Importantly, nuanced spiritual notions such as “diety” and “essence” are often lost in translation. They are often erroneously equated.

Within the herbal Christian community, “animism” is almost never defined as it is being denounced. This is symptomatic of a kind of hyper-vigilance against paganism that discourages discernment of slight variations in practices and their spiritual import. The thinking is like this: Animism is embraced by pagans. Out of puritan zeal, all things that might possibly fall within the umbrella of animism is swept into a category that is off-limits to Christians. Spiritual purity and safety are the goal. It is too dangerous to discern nuances and slight shifts in meaning.

From what I can tell, this hyper-vigilance springs from a modern secular view point. Atheists would approach herbalism with as much caution as anti-animist Christians. Herbalism devoid of spirituality is all together unappealing. Why choose herbal medicine over pharmaceuticals? Why go to an herbalist instead of a doctor? The mystery is gone. The incense of St. John’s Wort is just smoke, a psychoactive carcinogen. It has no spiritual import. It does not ward off evil spirits as past generations believed.

There are consequences for this way of thinking. Christians believe the human body is ensouled. We have immortal souls, in fact. Catholics believe the body and soul is a unity. If we believe these things, and if we exist in this world surrounded by and in need of plants, there are some questions we should think about carefully. The answers have serious implication for our faith and how we think of ourselves.

Consider the following.

1. Humans have spiritual significance. At what point does plant material ingested by the human take on some spiritual significance?
2. When plants are taken by humans, at what point does it become part of the unity that is body and soul?
3. While it is just a plant, does it hold within itself some potentiality allowing it to become part of the human body and therefore part of the body soul unity?
4. If there is some kind of potentiality within plants enabling them to take on spiritual qualities once taken by a person, would this potentiality have some sort of spiritual significance in and of itself?
5. How can people with immortal souls be embedded in an inanimate world?

I think the most honest answer to these questions is that these things are mysterious. We simply cannot have concrete answers, and that is okay. Mystery is beautiful. A sense of wonder is sacred. However it is important to realize that there are some answers to the above questions that would undermine the foundation of what we believe. For example, it is quite hard to affirm the spiritual reality of the human and to completely deny the spiritual reality of the rest of the universe surrounding us and of which we are a part. While there are forms of animism that are not compatible with Christianity, we must acknowledge that there are some forms of animism that are not only compatible with but essential to our faith.