Something I talk about a lot in all spaces I tend is that everything is alive. When we sit with that initially, most folx think of meadows, birds, sunsets, and that is comfortable for them. It is also accurate.

Everything we engage has consciousness. It has a story that when we honor it, becomes lore. The land we live on, the food we eat, the car we ride in. It all came from somewhere before it ever encountered us. What do we bring to its experience of being? How often do we think of the life of our mailbox before it came to sit at the edge of our home? What was its exeperience before that? How does that previous experience affect our relationship with it now? Because it does, we’re just not cognisant that it does.

This way of examining lore and relationship matters across all walks of life, whether we’re talking forests, human-person communities, or unquiet dead. Where it really matters in ways we don’t often consider is systems, beliefs, mindsets, attitudes–and not just those that we hold individually, but those we all hold or live in proximity to, as a collective. These things are also alive, and they have agency. They have humans breathing life into them willingly or without realizing that they are. Well-intending folx like to say politics isn’t spiritual, but that would mean that these people are not animists. They can’t be, because to be an animist means holding the awareness that everything is alive, in relationship, and has agency and impact.

This is animism. It isn’t just ancient and in the rearview—it’s alive and breathing in our world today. 🌿And to accept that about honeybees and nightingale song means we also accept it about poverty, transphobia, and classism. These states of being are very much alive. They are beings with agency, and they don’t want to die. And we all know that they also have humans breathing life into them, stoking them to grow and consume more power. This is spiritual warafare. The truth is, we can’t make those states of being die, or even concede power. But what we can do is realize how we’re in relationship with them and stop giving them our life force, money, and energy. We can use our agency in a way that diminishes their life force. In this way, animism is natural spiritual protection from harmful life force. Animism is interdependence. It is belonging. It is no one left behind.

For this reason, it is inherently the antidote to anything that sows division and tension.

If you want to learn how to foster animistic awareness, get on the waitlist for The Quest Series starting January 2026. 🌱

@kelleysoularts

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S. Kelley Harrell, M. Div.

Kelley Harrell is an animist, author, deathwalker, and death doula held by Tuscarora, Woccon, and Sissipihaw land. For the last 30 years, through Soul Intent Arts she’s helped others ethically build thriving spiritual paths. Her work is Nature-based, and centers soul tending through the Elder Futhark runes, animism, ancestral tending, and deathwork. She hosts the podcast, What in the Wyrd, and also writes The Weekly Rune as a celebration of the Elder Futhark in season. Work with her in the Runes for Change community or in her intensive soul tending training, The Spirited Path.  Full bio.

#beyourcommunity ~ #youareecosystem

elder well, die well, ancestor well

@kelleysoularts