Entertainment / Literature / Animism: The belief that animals, plants, and objects have their own souls or spirits inhabiting them, as in modern Japanese religions like Shinto or in many older hunter-gatherer societies in Africa, Polynesia, and Australia. Many plant spirits in classical Greek mythology probably originate in earlier animistic belief, such as dryads and hamadryads (tree-spirits), Oreiads (mountain pine-tree spirits), Meliades (fruit-trees), and Meliai (ash tree and honey-hive spirits). Other animistic spirits in Greek myth include the Oeneads and Krinaiai (wells and fountains), Nephelai (cloud-spirits), Naiads (water-spirits), and Ithakiai (cave-spring spirits). See also Solar Myth and vegetationsd???¤mon.
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