Deep Blue: Critical Reflections on Nature, Religion and Water

by Shaw,Sylvie

• ISBN13: 9781845532550
• ISBN10: 1845532554
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2014-08-21
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Paganism has often looked to forest groves or mountain tops for inspiration and spiritual transformation. Deep Blue plunges deep into sacred waters through thirteen essays by leading writers in the expanding academic field of nature religion. Amongst others, the book will be of interest to nature religion academics, environmental researchers and activists, as well as practitioners and students of paganism and religion, faith and spirituality studies and those involved in the intersection between religion and ecology. From anthropologic and mythological understandings of archetypal mind structure, through to sociological and psychological levels of analysis, academic theory and inquiry are blended with grounded accounts of experience and understanding from writers spiritually connected with water. The book aims to explore dimensions of the human spiritual relationship with river, sea and pool with a view to developing further understandings of the interrelationships between spiritual practice, academic nature religion discourse and environmental concern. Ancestral cultures invest watery places with spiritual power. With this deep connection comes respect, understanding and sustainable relationship. Deep Blue reconnects contemporary Western culture to these roots, exposing the vital significance of salt and fresh waters to humankind and making a call to arms for the development of holistic, sustainable relationships with waterways.

Table of Contents

Preface
Sacred waters	p. 1
Entering sacred space: Editors' introduction	p. 15
'Singing through the sea': song, sea and emotion	p. 17
Water of life, water of death: Pagan notions of water from antiquity to today	p. 33
The fertility goddess of the Zulu: reflections on a calling to Inkosazana's Pool	p. 49
Rivers of memory, lakes of survival: indigenous water traditions and the Anishinaabeg nation	p. 67
Divine connections: Editors' introduction	p. 87
Creature of water	p. 89
Saltwater feet: the flow of dance in Oceania	p. 107
I am the river bleeding	p. 127
Deep blue religion	p. 137
The sacredness of water: Editors' introduction	p. 157
The spirit of the Edge: Rachel Carson and numinous experience between land and sea	p. 159
The mystery of waters	p. 179
Sister Water: an introduction to blue theology	p. 195
Sea spirituality, surfing and aquatic nature religion	p. 213
Waves of energy: in defence of water: Editors' introduction 235
Animism, economics and sustainable water development	p. 237
Blue, green and red: combining energies in defence of water	p. 253
Neglect and reclamation of water as sacred resource	p. 275
Eco-logue: and in me you find peace	p. 295
Close	p. 301
Index	p. 303
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