Immanence in the Axial Age

In The New Science of the Enchanted Universe, anthropologist Marshal Sahlins explains how divinity was fundamentally transformed across ancient Greece. Near East, India and China in the Axial Age between 800-300 BC.

Divinity had been an immanent, worldly presence that was part of human experience before it transcended the natural world to be supernatural and other worldly in a reality beyond human experience.

He claims that the immanent worldview was empirically derived from observing natural processes. Everything- from stones, plants and streams to fire, the sun and the stars- had an inner spirit or soul that animated them. People were surrounded by spirits; the distinction between natural and supernatural was meaningless.

People also had a soul that animated their physical bodies and through which they could interact with the spirits, especially in dreams. Words had power since speech is driven by breath- the soul’s life force. Spells tapped into the soul’s spiritual power to cast their magical powers.

Marshal Sahlins also claims that even ancient cultures with strong egalitarian values had a worldview structured by a spiritual hierarchy: ‘the cosmic state as a general condition of humankind even in the state of nature’. The supreme gods were the sources of the laws of nature, the powers governing human fate and the agency of human success and failure. They reigned at the top of this hierarchy, from which all power flowed. They were immanent in human affairs whether directly or indirectly through delegation to subordinate spirits.

As divinity transformed from immanence to transcendence, human institutions emerged modelled on the hierarchical structure of the cosmic state rather than the other way round: ‘kingship came from heaven to earth, not from earth to heaven’.