Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona

Two. Reimagining Earth

departures 18 two Reimagining Earth
 There was a general understanding, prior to the brief centuries of our present culture, that the earth was alive, with subtle but powerful forces flowing through its body, the land. These concentrated at various points that came to be regarded as totemic spots, sacred areas, power places, or temples. . . . Each of these locations had its own quality, tutelary deity or “spirit of place”—genius loci. They were points of geographical sanctity. —Paul Devereux, Places of Power (italics in original) . . . if Gaia is the living planet and is literally the body of some kind of intelligence, then that intelligence must have energy centres, and often these coincide with holy places, whether they’re Mecca, or Ayers Rock, or Glastonbury. —informant interviewed by Marion Bowman, “Drawn to Glastonbury” (italics in original) The axis around which New Age and ecospiritual beliefs about the Earth revolve is the idea that modernity has alienated humans from the natural world, but that this alienation can be dissolved or cured. Three themes predominate in the expanding body of New Age and ecospiritual literature. First, there is the idea that the Earth is a living organism or being of which we are a part: most commonly, this is not just any being, but a Goddess whose relationship to humans is like that of a mother. Second, we find the notion that there are “energies” of some sort, as yet poorly understood by science, which circulate within the Earth, arranging themselves in fluid or possibly geometric patterns, lines, grids, or currents, and meeting or accumulating at particular places. Finally, there is the widespread belief that premodern, ancient, or indigenous cultures have been more attuned and sensitive to, and more knowledgeable about, these energies and “mysteries” Reimagining Earth 19 of the Earth, mysteries which our modern culture has denied or forgotten but which are being rediscovered today. In this chapter I will examine these three sets of ideas and trace their growth and contestation within the ranks of their supporters as well as scholarly detractors. The literature in these areas is vast and wildly varying in merit, so my overview will focus on a selection of key figures, ideas, and moments, which I will contextualize within broader debates over prehistory and over the natural environment and our relationship to it. In chapter 3, I will focus on the practices by which these ideas and models are actualized in specific places. Ideas and practices can hardly be understood in separation from each other, however; and the place-readings that make up the remainder of the book will make clear that it is the interaction between the two that is most important for us to understand and critically analyze. goddess gaia, past and present Our modern culture is a little like a person suffering from amnesia. Something happened to cause a significant—but not total—loss of memory. . . . While virtually all modern cultures consider the Earth to be deaf, dumb and inanimate , the people who lived on our planet for tens of thousands of years, from the dawn of the Paleolithic some 40,000 years ago, experienced it as a great living being that was responsive, intelligent and nurturing. —Paul Devereux, Earthmind: A Modern Adventure in Ancient Wisdom Gaia, God’s wife. God, Gaia’s husband. The great G-words paired and recoupled like recombinant DNA in the murky, high-nutrient soup of the New Age subconscious. Try as [scientists James] Lovelock and [Lynn] Margulis might to bring their living Earth brainchild up as a proper scientific theory, their budding princess, like most any other beauty, did not care a fig to be understood when she could be adored. —Lawrence Joseph, Gaia: The Growth of an Idea In the early 1970s, biochemist James Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis advanced the “Gaia hypothesis”—the notion that the biogeochemical components of the Earth behave as if they constituted a single, dynamically self-regulating organism. Following a suggestion by novelist William Golding, Lovelock named the hypothesis after an ancient Greek goddess. Since then, the speed at which the idea has been taken up outside departures 20 the academy has been astonishing. Analogous to the spread of the wholeearth photographic image (which originally triggered the insight for Lovelock ’s hypothesis) in its uses for advertising, marketing, and environmental consciousness raising, the idea of Gaia seems to respond to a widespread desire for a life-affirming, mythic, or symbolic connection...