Written by Before there were gods, before there were temples or texts or traditions, before there was any organized religion at all, there was a way of being in the world that understood the world to be alive.
Not alive in the way a potted plant is alive – passively, vegetatively, as background scenery to human events. Alive in the way you are alive. Inhabited. Intentional. Speaking. Responsive to being spoken to. Carrying its own form of awareness and its own form of purpose.
This way of being is called animism, and it is not a primitive error that sophisticated modern people have left behind. It is the oldest and, many would argue, the most honest metaphysical position available to anyone who pays careful attention to the actual texture of their experience.
It is also, whether they use the word or not, the implicit metaphysics of most practitioners of earth-based spirituality. When you speak to the land, you are an animist.