Just uncovered one of the original cornerstones of the anthropological study of religion: the idea of evolutionary stages in religion (part of social evolutionism), as proposed by Sir Edward Burnett Tylor in the late 1800’s. He basically believed in the “progress” of religion from the simple & primitive to the complex & modern. The main stages are usually cited as: (1) animism, (2) polytheism, (3) monotheism. And of course, animism is seen as primitive & savage while monotheism is seen as the pinnacle of religious understanding.

I found a more detailed rendering of his stages of religious evolution, which adds in a couple extra steps.

1. animism - simply defined as the belief that everything has a soul.
2. manism - a term I’ve never heard before which is supposed to equal ancestor worship.
3. fetishism - basically the worship or use of magical objects.
4. polydaemonism - I think this is supposed to mean that pure spirits exist aside from inhabiting specific objects or bodies.
5. polytheism - so I guess polytheism is a more formalized version of polydemonism, resulting in sets of gods who preside over specific locales, activities, animals, etc
6. monotheism - belief in one god which rules all

There’s definitely some interesting aspects to this theory I think, although I don’t wholly agree with it. It leaves too much out. I do like the idea though that you have this process where “soul” becomes increasingly abstracted away from inhabiting physical bodies into spiritual beings.

Instead of a linear progression or evolution, I myself am more inclined to see this as a cyclical movement. I might go on and add pantheism (”All is god - god is all”) or panpsychism after monotheism. According to Wikipedia, “Panpsychism is the belief that mind, or consciousness, is omnipresent throughout the universe and is a fundamental aspect of the universe.” It’s basically the outgrowth of saying that your monotheistic god is omniscient and omnipresent. To say that your god is everywhere and knows everything is essentially to arrive back at animism, which says that everything is inhabited by spirit.