It's called animism (a modern term for something that predates what we call "religion"). In prehistoric and hunter / gatherer civilizations, this was how we tho

It's called animism (a modern term for something that predates what we call "religion"). In prehistoric and hunter / gatherer civilizations, this was how we thought about the world. In many ways this mindset was the precursor to science. We employed what's termed as sympathetic magic where we used our pattern-recognition capabilities to try to control nature. If we were experiencing a drought, for example, we might put blue stones in our pastures because they looked like raindrops, hoping this would bring rain. This is crazy of course but it set the stage for trial and error which eventually enabled us to learn things empirically. Shintoism has held onto this vestige of proto-science. It's amazing and beautiful.