hecastotheism

Updated: May 21, 2025

We find fragments of philosophy everywhere which seem to assume that all inanimate nature is animate; that mountains and hills, and rivers and springs, that trees and grasses, that stones, and all fragments of things are endowed with life and with will, and act for a purpose. These fragments of philosophy lead to the discovery of hecastotheism.

John Wesley Powell - Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians: First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the: Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-80,: Government Printing Office, Washington, 1881, pages 17-56

Thus we see that out of mythologic philosophy, as branches of the great tree itself, there grow ancientism, theistic society, spiritism, thaumaturgics, mythic tales, and religion. I shall now give a summary characterization of zoötheism, then call attention to some of the relics of hecastotheism found therein, and proceed with a brief statement of the higher stages of theism.

John Wesley Powell - Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians: First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the: Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-80,: Government Printing Office, Washington, 1881, pages 17-56

Philology also leads us back to that state when the animate and the inanimate were confounded, for the holophrastic roots into which words are finally resolved show us that all inanimate things were represented in language as actors. Such is the evidence on which we predicate the existence of hecastotheism as a veritable stage of philosophy.

John Wesley Powell - Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians: First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the: Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-80,: Government Printing Office, Washington, 1881, pages 17-56

In this stage of philosophy everything is a god. Let us call it hecastotheism. In the second stage men no longer attribute life indiscriminately to inanimate things; but the same powers and attributes recognized by subjective vision in man are attributed to the animals by which he is surrounded.

John Wesley Powell - Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians: First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the: Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-80,: Government Printing Office, Washington, 1881, pages 17-56

I have divided it into two parts, hecastotheism and zoötheism. The verity of zoötheism as a stage of philosophy rests on abundant evidence. In psychotheism it appears as devilism in obedience to a well-known law of comparative theology, viz, that the gods of a lower and superseded stage of culture oftentimes become the devils of a higher stage.

John Wesley Powell - Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians: First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the: Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-80,: Government Printing Office, Washington, 1881, pages 17-56

Unlike the three higher stages, it has no people extant on the face of the globe, known to be in this stage of culture. The philosophies of many of the lowest tribes of mankind are yet unknown, and hecastotheism may be discovered; but at the present time we are not warranted in saying that any tribe entertains this philosophy as its highest wisdom.

John Wesley Powell - Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians: First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the: Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-80,: Government Printing Office, Washington, 1881, pages 17-56

Sometimes a particular mountain, or hill, or some great rock, some waterfall, some lake, or some spring receives special worship, and is itself believed to be a deity. This seems to be a relic of hecastotheism.

John Wesley Powell - Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians: First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the: Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-80,: Government Printing Office, Washington, 1881, pages 17-56