This page groups religions by the era in which they first emerged, from ancient antiquity to movements founded within the last two centuries. Wikipedia dates the BaháΚΌí Faith's founding to "19th-century Iran," while describing Judaism as "the oldest Abrahamic religion." Browsing by origin era lets a visitor see which traditions are recent arrivals and which reach back into the ancient world.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingTraditions that honour many deities and hold that spirit is distributed through the world itself - in rivers, mountains, animals, ancestors and made objects - so that the sacred is met in the landscape and not only in temples. 2 Peoples and Traditions CoveredUnrelated traditions grouped by resemblance, not by descent: Akan, Dogon, Yoruba and Zulu in Africa; Inuit and Sami in the Arctic; Lakota, Dine and other Native American nations; Aboriginal Australian and Polynesian traditions; Shinto, Korean Muism, Bon, Tengrism and Siberian traditions in Asia. Each names its own world in its own terms. 2 Status
Status TodayLiving: the traditions grouped here are practised today, several of them after long periods of suppression, and are described in the present tense. 2 Standing as a Comparative CategoryContested: the evolutionary scheme the word was coined to serve has been abandoned. It survives in current work as a description of relational ways of being in the world, not as a class of religions. 2 Origins
Whose Classification This IsAnimism as a comparative category is E. B. Tylor's, set out in Primitive Culture in 1871 as the earliest stage of religion in an evolutionary scheme. It is an analytic coinage: no tradition grouped here calls itself animist. 3 Learn More
Polytheistic and Animist Religions
This group holds religions of a polytheistic-animist character, traditions that recognise many deities and also a world densely inhabited by spirits present in nature, place, ancestor and object. This is the largest classification among the religions covered here and spans many cultures.
The browser will find indigenous and traditional religions from across the world grouped by this shared outlook. The entries describe each in its own terms; the atlas presents these as living or historically living traditions, not as a single system.
3rd century BCE
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Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. AnimismView the Source 3. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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