Wilderness in Mythology and Religion: Approaching Religious Spatialities, Cosmologies, and Ideas of Wild Nature

352 Pages·2012·3.513 MB·English

by  Laura Feldt (ed.)

Wilderness in Mythology and Religion
Religion and Society
Edited by
Gustavo Benavides, Kocku von Stuckrad
and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
Volume 55
De Gruyter
Wilderness in Mythology and Religion
Approaching Religious Spatialities, Cosmologies,
and Ideas of Wild Nature
Edited by
Laura Feldt
De Gruyter
ISBN 978-1-61451-224-0
e-ISBN 978-1-61451-172-4
ISSN 1437-5370
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Contents
Laura Feldt
1. Wilderness in Mythology and Religion ................. 1
Jan N. Bremmer
2. Greek Demons of the Wilderness: the case of the Centaurs 25
Laura Feldt
3.Wilderness andHebrew Bible Religion –fertility,apostasy and
religious transformation in the Pentateuch ................. 55
Ingvild Sælid Gilhus
4.“Themountain,adesertplace”:Spatialcategoriesandmythical
landscapes in the Secret Book of John ..................... 95
Dag Øistein Endsjø
5. “The truth is out there”: Primordial lore and ignorance in the
wilderness of Athanasius’ Vita Antonii .................... 113
Marianne C. Qvortrup Fibiger
6. Wilderness as a Necessary Feature in Hindu Religion ...... 131
Thomas Hoffmann
7. Notes on Qur’a¯nic Wilderness – and its absence .......... 157
Jens Peter Schjødt
8.Wilderness, Liminality,andtheOtherin Old Norse Mythand
Cosmology ......................................... 183
Anne-Christine Hornborg
9. Making a Garden out of the Wilderness: landscape, dwelling
and personhood in the encounter between European settlers and
the Mi’kmaq in “New France” .......................... 205
Robert A. Segal
10. William Robertson Smith on the Wilderness ............ 229
Morten Axel Pedersen
11. The Taiga Within. Topography and personhood in Northern
Mongolia ........................................... 241
VI Contents
Graham Harvey
12.Ritualis EtiquetteintheLarger thanHumanWorld:thetwo
wildernesses of contemporary Eco-Paganism ............... 265
Bron Taylor
13. Wilderness, Spirituality and Biodiversity in North America –
tracing an environmental history from Occidental roots to Earth
Day ............................................... 293
Contributor biographies ............................... 325
Index .............................................. 329
1. Wilderness in Mythology and Religion
Laura Feldt*
1. Introduction1
Wilderness is often understood as a place where humans have not fully
“infected” nature, as uncontaminated by ‘civilization’ (Cronon 1995;
Oehlschlager 1991; Oehlschlager 2005; Garrard 2004,59). Wilderness
has been imagined as a part of the solution to humankind’s problematic
relationship withthenon-human world,andascrucial tounderstandings
ofnatureasalterity.Yet,anyunderstandingof wildernessisofcoursepro-
foundly cultural. Ideas of natural wildernesses from deep forests, arid de-
serts, vast steppes and uninhabitable mountains to the depths of the
ocean, the rainforest, and the inland ice have played important roles in
the history of religions and still do so contemporarily – in religious
ideas, narratives, rituals, cosmologies, and in everyday practices. People
go to the wilderness to meet themselves, their demons, and their gods;
it is simultaneously framed as refuge, paradise, waste land, and hell; it
is where you can be lead astray, into idolatry or death, or where you
can discover a new subjectivity, where you may find the deepest wisdom
or great ignorance. Ideas of the role of various natural environments in
diverse religions have also influenced theoretical work on what “religion”
is and what it does, from the early days of the scientific study of religion
untiltoday.Forinstance,itmightbesaidthatideasof wildernessplayeda
role in the early studies of ‘primitive cultures’ and animism, the religion
of ‘theSemites’,over theinterest in theGoldenBough (Frazer 1990)and
the worship of nature to, perhaps, discussions about the naturalness of
religion today.
* Laura Feldt gratefully acknowledges a grant from the Danish Council for Inde-
pendent Research in the Humanities that enabled the research behind this vol-
ume.
1 IwishtothankIngvildS.GilhusandJanN.Bremmer warmlyfortheirhelpful
comments.
2 Laura Feldt
Wilderness mythology is probably one of the most abiding creations
inthehistoryofreligions.Itdelimitsthepresenceof“theworld”andver-
balises anatural/imagined frontier.Wilderness in mythology andreligion
isaspaceofencounter–betweenthehumanselfandsupernaturalothers,
and between humans and a natural alterity. Wilderness mythology resur-
facesin wildlife andnature preservation discourses andstillserves asare-
positoryof identityformationtodayinvaryingformsofsocialpractice.It
isclearlyaspaceofnatural,cultural,andsocialsignificance.Itsinteresting
multiplicity calls for new approaches that venture beyond previous di-
chotomizing perspectives. For what are the specific relations between
the world’s religions and its imagined and real wilderness areas? Analyses
of religious conceptions of wilderness and wild nature may throwimpor-
tant light on how humans interact with their ‘natural’surroundings and
how they respond to the climate debates, as they represent the imagined
sideof territoriesandclimates.Thecontributionsof thisbookinvestigate
the territory/climate cluster of wilderness in religions past and present, as
well as in the history of the study of religion. It intervenes analytically in
the conversation on religious space, climate and nature by analyzing the
religious construction/production of wilderness, and the uses, functions,
and history of wilderness in diverse contexts.
In spite of its provoking and inspiring hybridity, wilderness has nei-
ther previously been subject to detailed scrutiny from a comparative and
cross-cultural history of religions perspective, nor has it been subject to
extensive study or theorising within the humanistic study of religion.
Wilderness has, rather, been investigated as parts of eco-theology (e.g.,
Deane-Drummond 2004; Eaton 2005; Jasper 2004), by literary critics
(e.g., Gersdorf and Mayer 2006; Graulund 2006; Garrard 2004,
Heise 2009, et al.), or by philosophers and historians (Cronon 1995;
Oelschlager 1991). Wilderness is, in the study of religion, an under-the-
orizedconcept and anunder-investigated theme. Thisbookaddressesthe
need for humanistic, anthropological and historical investigations of reli-
gionandwilderness. Assuch,itisacontributiontothedebateontheuse
of natural spaces in the study of religion. It contributes to the field by
presenting a stimulating variety of theoretical approaches and case stud-
ies, thus advancing comparative and cross-cultural research on religion
and wilderness.
As Timothy Morton points out, thought, including the ecological
thought, has long placed nature ‘over yonder’, as a thing in the distance
(Morton2007,1–28)and theideaof wilderness hashadarole toplayin
this. Yet, the religious materials analysed in this book clearly demonstrate