20 - The new fetishism: Western statue devotion and a matter of power

Summary

This discussion of the power of matter begins with a brief description of animism. Animism is dependent on three things: relationships, performances and the moment. It is a practice, a co-inspired form of active, mutual relating that emerges from the unique, personal, even intimate relationships that take place between persons (human and other-than-human) rather than a religious label, an ethic, or a worldview. According to Graham Harvey, animism is a relational activity that is discerned through treatment, behaviour, time and space, and relationships with “the living world” (2005a). Unlike Tylorian animism (Tylor 1871), it is not restricted to the theoretical confines of spirit and matter, subjects and objects, or other commonly accepted dualistic constructs. However, in its potential theoretical flexibility, it is capable of including these distinctions and more.

For several years I have been conducting qualitative research in two European statue-centred religious communities, namely those devoted to a Catholic statue of the Virgin of Alcala de los Gazules, Spain, and Pagan statues of the Glastonbury Goddess, England. In both of these contexts, devotees regularly commit to relational encounters with so-called “artefacts”. Yet with time it became clear that these “artefacts” are not treated as artefacts at all: they are relational participants in ceremony, rites and venerative performances. The Virgin and the Goddess are addressed, petitioned, touched, negotiated with, and given gifts (coded as offerings). They are treated with such respect that they are housed, assigned guardians, protected, ritually bathed, dressed and offered food, gold and other valuable objects.