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This paper analyses how South American leaders like Nicolás Maduro and Javier Milei use belief narratives dealing with animal mythical beings in political discourses. Despite opposing ideologies, both draw on animistic and zoomorphic imaginaries to foster voter identification in their campaigns.

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This presentation relates to a previous one, dealing with “Speaking birds and cosmic kites: mythical beings in South American political discourse” (Palleiro 2023). Taking into account that t the term “political folklore” can be used as an umbrella concept which emerges from the political process, including both beliefs and vernacular narratives, related to political events (Astapova 2015), and that the concept of “vernacular posthumanisms “ can be considered as an ontological category dealing with the slippery slope between “human” and “animal” (Thompson 2019), the aim is to analyse the use of belief narratives dealing with animal beings as argumentative resources in the discourse of South American political leaders such as the Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro the Argentinian president Javier Milei. Although supporting different political ideologies, both of them draw on animistic mythical discourse dealing with animals to sustain election campaigns. The hypothesis is that South American political leaders resort to an animistic social imaginary anchored in zoomorphic representations of supernatural forces, such as "the forces of Heaven," cited in repeated speeches by Argentinian President Javier Milei, to foster mechanisms of identification among their potential voters.

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This paper explores narratives of mushroom pickers in southern Lithuania, where mushrooms are treated as beings with agency and personhood. Through stories, rituals, and taboos, foragers articulate interspecies relations that shape human life near the forest.

Paper long abstract

Among the Dzūkai people of southern Lithuania, mushroom picking is not only an economic activity but also a narrative practice that attributes agency and personhood to mushrooms. Beliefs persist that mushrooms can respond to human actions: a boletus may wither if looked at, shouting may frighten mushrooms away, while rituals of greeting and farewell help ensure successful foraging. In local stories and practices, mushrooms are described as living beings with heads, legs, and eyes, whose behavior resembles that of animals.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork—walking with mushroom pickers, observing their foraging techniques, and collecting narratives—I explore how mushrooms are embedded in a multispecies network where humans, plants, animals, and inanimate beings co-create shared environments. These narratives do not simply reflect symbolic beliefs but shape practical engagements, guiding how people move, perceive, and orient themselves in the forest.

By attending to the ways mushrooms are animated in Dzūkai narratives, I argue that foraging practices reveal an animistic ontology in which the forest is a community of interdependent beings. This challenges rigid separations between human and nonhuman life, highlighting instead the permeability of boundaries and the co-creation of meaning across species.

The paper contributes to discussions of new animism and belief narratives by showing how everyday practices of mushroom picking generate stories of interspecies cooperation, respect, and negotiation, situating mushrooms as active agents in the lived world of the forest.

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This paper offers a metaphorological reading of animistic cosmology in narratives ranging from Oghuz to Old Turkic and Altaic traditions. It analyses recurring metaphors of nature through the lens of Hans Blumenberg's metaphorology.

Paper long abstract

This paper offers a metaphorological reading of animistic cosmology in narratives ranging from Oghuz to Old Turkic and Altaic traditions. It analyses recurring elements of the natural world, including animals, plants/trees, mountains, and sacred waters, and shows how they function as absolute metaphors that orient social knowledge, ethics, and ontological meaning. Through the theoretical lens of Hans Blumenberg’s The Readability of the World, Sources, Streams, Icebergs / Quellen, Ströme, Eisberge and Paradigms for a Metaphorology, it contends that these narratives include recurrent metaphors of nature that have their roots in Turkic-Altaic cosmology. Although the importance of natural elements in Turkic-Altaic mythic narratives has been studied by prominent scholars, including Emel Esin, Jean-Paul Roux, Bahaeddin Ögel, and Uno Harva, Blumenberg’s idea of “the readability of the world” has not been examined in this context. By doing so, this study highlights Blumenberg’s relevance beyond European contexts and demonstrates how the frequent use of nature imagery and the fluid boundaries between humans and non-humans create an animistic way of reading the world. Turkic-Altaic metaphors of nature can be analysed as absolute metaphors that disclose the substratum of thought in bygone eras. Still, far from being relics of myth, they can provide us with frameworks of orientation that enable a way of reading the world as alive, relational, and ensouled.

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This paper explores the figure of the charmer in Lithuanian belief narratives, emphasizing the connection between charmers and snakes. By embodying animalistic traits the charmer acts as an intermediary between humans and the more-than-human world.

Paper long abstract

According to Lithuanian legends, a charmer is considered powerful only if he can heal a snake bite. A special bond unites the charmer and snakes: snakes obey him, while he must never harm or kill them. This reciprocity highlights their interdependence and mutual respect.

From an ontological perspective, the snake and the charmer appear as equal subjects, capable of manifesting in both anthropomorphic and zoomorphic forms. Snakes may take on human shapes, often bearing women’s names, while the charmer’s knowledge of these names affirms his recognition of their human aspect.

The charmer’s animalistic traits are revealed through his practice. Snake venom is understood as the anger of the Earth erupting to the surface through the snake. To cure a patient, the charmer must embody greater anger than the patient, for only then will the verbal charm succeed. His performance itself carries animalistic features: the charming resembles hissing, and he is sometimes called a whisperer or murmurer. By imitating a snake’s whistle, he summons serpents and understands their own whistling.

Thus, the charmer occupies an intermediate position between humans and the more-than-human world. His power lies in his ability to mediate across these domains, a role comparable to the healer described by David Abram, who channels healing by bridging human and other-than-human agencies. In this way, the Lithuanian charmer emerges not merely as a folk figure, but as a liminal mediator whose animalistic nature secures both his authority and his effectiveness.

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This paper examines Irish belief narratives, drawing on texts like Fairy Legends and the Fenian Cycle, to locate literary precursors for New Animism's emphasis on other-than-human agency, boundary permeability (metamorphosis), and nature's personhood.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores how Irish belief narratives provide a rich literary foundation for understanding "New Animism," particularly the concepts of other-than-human agency and shared environmental influence. Traditional Irish folklore, spanning fairy lore and epic cycles, consistently portrays non-human entities as possessing agency, intelligence, and even personhood, thus offering a historical context for contemporary ecological literary criticism.

Key texts reveal a universe where power is distributed widely beyond humanity. The Fairies, or "Good People," (such as the Shefro, Cluricaune, and Phooka) are described as a "powerful" and "capricious" race that often influences human fate and behaviour. The sources depict nature explicitly exercising will: mountains are said to "fight for you" in battle, and the perennial plant digitalis purpurea (Fairy Cap) bends its stalk "in token of recognition" towards supernatural beings.

The permeability of boundaries, a central tenet of animism, is frequently emphasized through metamorphoses and hybrid forms. Powerful beings transform into animals (the Phooka often appears as a Spirit Horse), mythical figures shift shape (Cian is turned into a pig by a Druid rod), and magical objects may contain previous, non-human identities (a treasure-bag was once the transformed woman Aoife). Such literary portrayals of interconnectedness and fluid identity make Irish folklore an indispensable archive for analyzing shared agency in the modern ecological age.

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Drawing on folkloric, ethnographic and ethnolinguistic texts this paper focuses on the connection between mushrooms and the devil in Lithuanian belief narratives. Additionally, it explores the links between mushrooms and other mythical creatures associated with the devil.

Paper long abstract

Since ancient times, mushrooms have been one of the groups of organisms in the living world to which mythical significance has been attributed. A phenomenon can usually be mythologised for two reasons. First, it may be important in practical human life. The second, and much more common reason, is its unusual nature. The stranger a phenomenon appears, the more likely it is to be associated with the mythical world. This is especially true for representatives of the mushroom kingdom.

According to Lithuanian folklore and ethnography, mushrooms are mythologically associated with various deities, including God, Laima/Dalia, forest lords such as Kerpyčius (Kiepiczus) and Šilinyčius (Silinczus), and the Devil. However, due to their chthonic nature and various biological characteristics, mushrooms are often associated with the Devil in Lithuanian mythology.

The larger part of the paper is devoted to exploring the relationship between mushrooms and the devil in Lithuanian belief narratives. To this end, it draws on folkloric and ethnographic texts that express mythical thinking, as well as ethnolinguistic material related to miconyms —common names of mushrooms that people typically used. Additionally, the paper explores not only the connection between mushrooms and the devil, but also their links to other mythical beings associated with the devil, such as kaukai, laumės and witches, as well as some animals.

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The Seal’s Skin and the saga of Guðmundr Arason entail animistic ideas. Both stories contain a seal that can be seen as a hybrid, half-seal and half-human. The talk analyses human and animal characteristics, relations with humans and discovers different perspectives connected with the seals.

Paper long abstract

In animist beliefs, animals have a similar interiority to humans, and they confirm social relationships, have ethical precepts and norms as humans do (Descola, 2014, 129). Still, they are different from humans in their bodily form (2014, 138). In addition, animals have human qualities such as intentionality and knowledge of language. This talk presents beings on the borderlands between humans and animals: supernatural seals in the Icelandic texts that can take both seal and human forms. Do the seals' characters conform social relationships with humans, and can they be connected with systems of attitudes? Do they have human behaviour?

The examples discussed stem from two texts: Selkolla from Gudmundar Arasons saga, and a seal woman from a folk tale. In the saga of Guðmundr Arason, the metamorphosis isn’t permanent, and Selkolla can take different bodily forms: a seal-headed demon, Vigdis, or even a horse bone. The seal described in a folk tale can also take a human form, but the transformation is more constrained: when a farmer steals her seal skin, the seal maiden cannot return to her seal form. After the transformation, she also has a personhood and inward being that make her more human than an animal. In this tale, a clear animist ontology is evident. The seal-headed demon can also be seen as a person. However, another perspective can be seen in her demonic nature. Both texts contain animistic ideas, metaphorical symbols, and show seals as animals and humans with personhood in a broader or narrower sense.

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In my presentation, I will first discuss of the autoethnographic method . Secondly I examine my own narrative of animistic interactions with nature and natures agency as my meaningful supporter when I encountered difficulties in my research, as well as my autoethnographic interpretation of it.

Paper long abstract

I am writing (auto)ethnographic dissertation about shamanism in contemporary Finland. Both researchers and practitioners of shamanism think it is based on animism. In autoethnography, the researcher’s own narratives of their experiences of the research topic are part of the research material. This method is particularly useful for the study of shamanism, as an outside researcher cannot perceive the intangible dimension that plays an essential role in the shamanistic experiences. However, certain principles must be observed when using autoethnography, such as positioning the researcher, being reflective, and writing down experiences as soon as possible after the events being studied to ensure the results are as reliable as possible.

In my presentation, I will first discuss my use of the autoethnographic method . Secondly I examine my own narrative of animistic interactions with nature and natures agency as my meaningful supporter when I encountered difficulties in my research, as well as my autoethnographic interpretation of it.

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This paper explores free-range shepherding in Sardinia as a device of multispecies memory and ecological resistance, where humans, sheep, and landscapes co-create knowledge through emplaced romanticism and forms of more-than-human witnessing.

Paper long abstract

This paper investigates free-range shepherding in Barbagia, central Sardinia, as a practice of multispecies witnessing and ecopolitical memory. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, we explore how shepherds and their flocks co-create worlds through what we term emplaced romanticism—a cultural device where memory is not a passive recall of a lost past, but an active, material practice shaping present ecologies. In the village of “Funtanalba,” ruins, orchids, and sheepfolds serve as memory devices, entangling humans and more-than-human beings in shared acts of remembering and reworlding.

These dynamics are not solely human-driven. Sheep transmit knowledge of the land across generations, guiding humans in settlement and pastoral practices, while plants like Ophrys apifera embody extinct relations in their petals. Drawing on the work of Despret, Meuret, and Haraway, we conceptualize this shepherding ecology as a cosmoecology—a network of mutual obligations and affective ties between humans, animals, and landscapes.

Focusing on such memory practices challenges dominant, often colonial and technologically mediated narratives of knowledge and witnessing—those shaped by satellites, sensors, or extractive logics. By contrast, these embodied and relational forms of memory give voice to ecologies that are technologically unmediated and historically silenced. They reframe traditionally excluded actors—reproductive forces such as shepherds, animals, plants, rocks, winds, and ancestors—as legitimate witnesses. In a region often perceived as peripheral or “wild,” free-range shepherding becomes a form of ecological reproduction and political resistance that pluralizes the field of who and what gets to remember.

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This paper explores how herbs function as ritual agents and healing resources within Polish Native Faith, shaping and mediating relationships between practitioners and nature.

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This paper explores narratives and practices of members of Native Faith in Poland that concern nature, with particular attention to herbs. Drawing on ethnographic research, it examines how knowledge about it is produced, shared, and transformed, and how this knowledge shapes practices that attribute both magical and healing properties to herbs. The paper is based on participant observation during collective herb gathering for Kupala Night celebrations. In addition, popular narratives—such as lectures delivered at Native Faith festivals and Slavic culture events—will be examined as materials through which these practices and meanings are further articulated.

The analysis addresses how engagement with herbs establishes members’ relationships with nature, emerging through negotiations between practice, intuition, and scientific knowledge. Herbs play an active role in shaping both the individual and collective daily lives of members of Native Faith. They serve simultaneously as vehicles of mythic storytelling, agents of purification, mediators in offerings to Slavic spirits, and practical remedies. Considering these multiple forms of herbal agency offers new insight into the reciprocal ways humans and their immediate environment influence one another.