Rune XLIVd

The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.

The passage depicts trees and plants as possessing spirit and personality, welcoming and bowing to the magician, which aligns with the doctrine that natural phenomena have inherent divine agents.

Attributing human characteristics, emotions, or form to the divine; embodied divine imagery.

Natural elements like pine, birch, and ferns are attributed human actions such as bidding welcome, bending obeisance, and laughing, projecting human characteristics onto the divine agents of nature.

The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.

The text describes the forest and hills resonating with and attuning their voices to the musician's performance, reflecting a hidden affinity where movement in one part of the cosmos affects the whole.

The doctrine and practice that spoken or sung word carries causal-magical force — that uttering names, formulas, songs, or incantations alters reality directly rather than merely communicating about it. Vainamoinen's runo-songs that move mountains and command iron, Norse galdr, Vedic mantra, Shinto kotodama, the magician's barbarous names in the Greek Magical Papyri, Iamblichean arcane signatures and inexplicable symbols, biblical creation-by-word. Distinct from sacred_names (the ontological power of names themselves) and prayer (address to the divine); word_power_incantation is the magical-causal efficacy of the spoken word as such.

The minstrel's songs and harp-playing directly cause physical reactions in nature, such as trees bowing and flowers laughing, demonstrating the causal-magical force of spoken or sung words.