Humans universally seek connection to something larger than themselves, and new explorations suggest animals may share this very impulse. Researchers are increasingly finding evidence that animals experience wonder and even spirituality, challenging long-held beliefs about human uniqueness.
Teh Spiritual Lives of Animals
A growing body of work explores the possibility that animals, like humans, possess a sense of the divine and engage in practices that acknowledge something beyond the material world.
- Chimpanzees exhibit behaviors resembling ritualistic dance, prompting questions about their emotional and spiritual lives.
- Many cultures throughout history have revered animals as gods, recognizing a sacredness within the natural world.
- The experience of transcendence-a sense of the divine-isn’t limited to humans; it can be evoked by observing nature, including animals.
- Acknowledging the spirituality of animals could foster a deeper connection to the natural world and a renewed sense of reverence for life.
In How Animals Heal Us, Jay Griffiths describes a chimpanzee captivated by a waterfall, writing, “His enthusiasm (from en-theos, the god within) jubilantly collides with the thundering waterfall and he shakes the branches to rattling, getting everything going, struck by his primordial imperative: dance.” Griffiths notes that after these dances, the chimpanzee often enters a reflective state. Primatologist Jane Goodall has pondered whether these performances are “stimulated by feelings akin to wonder and awe,” and asks, “why wouldn’t they have feelings of some kind of spirituality, which is really being amazed at things outside yourself. I think chimpanzees are as spiritual as we are.”
The feeling of awe isn’t exclusive to humankind. Griffiths writes that observing stars, mountains, or animals can evoke transcendence-a sense of the divine. she adds that animals themselves might potentially be spiritual beings,and have long been considered messengers of the gods. “A skylark transposes my soul into a higher key,” she observes. “It rises helical as it sings, spiralling in an ellipsis of space until its distilled song becomes brightness, magnetized to heaven’s quintessence, pinpointing god. The dance of two mating cranes is a symmetry of pure, divine, grace. their pas de deux is a no god.”
Griffiths, along with Joanna Scanlan and John Mitchinson, discuss the historical reverence for animals across cultures. Monkeys, mice, rats, cows, goats, foxes, crocodiles, ravens, and bears have all been worshipped as deities. As Griffiths asks, “Why wouldn’t all these be gods?”
“Animals ensoul the world, giving the collective psyche limitless dimensions of sacredness,” Griffiths states.
She suggests that recognizing divinity in the living world could be profoundly healing. “We could, with relief, acknowledge divinity again in the real and living world, knowing it as the truth that has so far vouchsafed humanity’s time on earth. Then the collective psyche could come to its senses and the individual soul come home to itself, letting the soul-medicine that has always surrounded us work its ordinary miracles, in the holy and reckless plurality of the animals, each one an iteration of life’s deepest prayer: let there be life.”
Books by Jay Griffiths are available for purchase at Bookshop.org.
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