Thirty years ago I gave a presentation that would change my life. I was a Pagan environmental activist and had been invited to deliver a talk at an academic conference at Newcastle University. The event, ‘Paganism in Contemporary Britain’, was the first international academic conference on the subject of Pagan studies and they wanted a Pagan perspective on the environmental crisis. My presentation was called ‘Sacred Ecology’, and it led to me doing a PhD. ‘Sacred Ecology’ was subsequently published and has been more widely read than anything I’ve written since.
'Sacred Ecology' considers the environmental crisis and asks; how can we achieve real change? I consider philosophical options, including Social Ecology and Deep Ecology. I reject both, and present instead my vision for a somatic philosophy that embraces our embodied knowing. I propose ecstatic Pagan ritual as a fundamental pathway to embodied knowing. Such rituals enables us to reconnect with ourselves, healing the rift between body & mind and gifting us a deep knowing of the sacredness of the Earth.
Passionate and radical, this presentation is perhaps more important now than it was thirty year ago.
