With respect to other kinds of spirits, animal or plant or other kinds of natural power, no animist ever confuses them for or with human beings or with qualities that human beings possess. One sees, not the human performer underneath the mask, but the buffalo spirit that is revealed by and in it. In short, one cannot anthropomorphize spirit but cannot do anything else with or to deity. Because the supernatural does not exist in and of itself in any manifestation that can be seen or apprehended by human beings, God is not only invisible but also supremely unknowable after all, it must be invented and filled, like any other empty signifier, with qualities that are derived from something and from somewhere. Animistic people do not invent the qualities of spirit because buffalo exists and provides the qualities which constitute its spirit.
Animistic people know spirit from observation.
Europeans know God by virtue of the qualities they have projected on to Him from their own lack of being what is supernatural to them. Hence, God must exist because poor little pitiful Rene could not give himself credit for his own delusional thinking. This is true and inescapable for the simple reason that Christians are the ones who claim that God, as supreme Creator of universal reality, gave them the right and the duty to exercise control and domination over nature and all natural forces. Animistic people, on the other hand, have never expressed the notion that they have been destined to exercise any kind of control or dominion over nature at all. For animistic people, however, since spirit does not create or uncreate anything at all, and has no capacity of judgment, there is little or no probable ground for being afraid of it.