Anima Bank

An anima bank is where surplus life energy is collected and held, taken in through sacrifice, devotion, offerings or ordinary interactions, and available to be drawn on. What makes the idea wide-reaching is the range of things that can serve as one: not only an object or a shrine but a living or dead person, a rite, or an idea. A revered leader, a relic, a ritual, a flag or a cause can each concentrate anima and let others draw on it or feed it. Marsh gives a concrete case in her discussion of monuments to atrocity, where a preserved skull tower acts as a bank holding anima credit as grievance across generations. Anima banks are central to abstracting divinity, since they are a main route by which life energy is captured, stored and administered rather than reaching people directly.

The idea has rough parallels in anthropology and religious studies, where relics, shrines, sacred figures and rituals concentrate and channel spiritual power or mana. Marsh fits the repository into a single energy model, where anima is a definable thing that moves, is stored and can be extracted, and extends the range of banks to include living people and ideas as well as objects and rites.