The Dor-Bonism period, the budding time of the religion, extended from the reign under Tibet’s first king Nyatri Tsenpo (ca. the 4th century BC) to the reign under Drigum Tsenpo (ca. the 2nd century BC), the eighth king of the Tubo Kingdom. It is known as the period of “Seven Heavenly Kings” in Tibetan historical books. With regard to religious conditions, Tibetan scriptures read: “At that time, the Bon religion had only magic Dower to subdue demons and devils of the lower world, worship the heaven and gods of the upper world and prosper the families in the middle world.’’ This indicates that the Bonism hadn’t formed its own theoretical system and showed the traces of primitive sorcery by then. The initial sorcery was mingled with primitive religion, and it was difficult to distinguish one from the other. So, some proposed that sorcery was the predecessor of religion.

Mutri Tsenpo of Tubo, a pious believer of Bon religion, wears a monk's cap.

In general, the Bon religion mainly featured the worship of deities and demons in the Dor-Bonism period. Actually, animism is the common thought source of ancient people’s faith in deities and demons. Primitive human beings believed in that natural phenomena were endowed with life and supernatural magic power. Therefore, the known initial natural religion was called multi-spirit diabolatry religion. It was a religion that advocated animism, featured chaotic mythologies, and believed in magic with phobia excelling other religious emotion. The belief rose naturally from factors universally contained in human experiences (e.g. death, sleep, dreams, trance and hallucination, etc.), and developed into a faith in mental entity independent of the body through a simple logical thinking. During the development of the concept, everything was believed to be endowed with spirit, the element that bestows vitality and vigor on things. For instance, in the Dor-Bonism period, Tibetans universally held the view that it was the spirits that caused diseases and dominated their fates.

Based on the aforesaid phenomena, we may conclude that the Bon religion belonged to the sphere of natural religions in the Dor-Bonism Period.