Guardians of the Earth: Spirit Worship and Animism in Rural Cambodia

Chapter One: The Two Rivers: What is Animism and How it Coexists with Buddhism? To truly understand the spiritual life of Cambodia, one must look beyond the serene, gilded roofs of the Buddhist pagoda. One must also see the small, ornate spirit house standing proudly in front of a family home, the strip of colored cloth tied around the trunk of an ancient banyan tree, and the humble offering of fruit left at the base of a curious rock formation. These are the visible signs of a much older and more intimate faith: ** animism **. It is the belief that the entire world—every tree, river, mountain, and rice paddy—is alive, inhabited by a vast and powerful pantheon of spirits. This ancient worldview is the spiritual bedrock of the Khmer people, the indigenous faith of the land itself. And while Cambodia is a devoutly Buddhist nation, this older belief system was never erased. Instead, the two have flowed together for centuries, like two great rivers merging, to create a single, uniquely Cambo…