Chapter IX, The Primal Religions, They Symbolic Mind, Summary and Analysis

It is not entirely wrong to peg primal religions as polytheistic, but it has nothing to do with the polytheism of Greece or Rome. Albeit, giving deistic position to ancestors, animals, and objects, does not rule out the primal idea of the Supreme Being. This Being is not named because the Being is unknowable. The symbolist mentality (as it has been called) of the primal religions sees connections between the physical and the metaphysical. For example, to an Andean the landscape is seen as a reflection of a superior reality. It must not be assumed, however, that a primal religious people are mystics. Just as in historical religions, there are those who go about their activity with a sense of their belief and those who meditate on...