For the Goddess' Sake (2021-)

In this book project, I highlight the intersections of alternative spiritualties, ecology and everyday life to show how the spiritualization of ecology is an everyday negotiation in religiosity. I ground my argument on my fieldwork in Glastonbury (2018, UK) and elucidate how Glastonbury Pagans configure and negotiate their daily lives through a worship assemblage (DeLanda 2006) that entangles religious and environmental practices.

 

Following this worship assemblage, I first illustrate how Pagan Goddess worship forms a larger sociocultural network that consists of heterogeneous, interacting components such as time, place, material and symbolic presence. When linked together, these elements form a larger network that shapes and configures people’s acts of worship both in collective rituals as well as in their everyday lives.

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By tracing the development and intersections of the relationships in this assemblage, I then expose an entanglement of worship and environmental practices. I show how environmental practices become ways of honoring Goddess in both intentional, everyday religious acts as well as routines. 

 

In this way, I demonstrate how religiosity and environment mutually contribute to each other and deliver us to an ecology of life. This ecology of life, however, not only speaks of sacrality and the mundane along each other but also encourages a political consciousness among Glastonbury Pagans. Finally, I elucidate how this worship network produces ecological citizenships via an assumed sacrality projected by (eco-)spiritual Pagan practices.

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Literature cited

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DELANDA, M. (2006). A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. London, New York: Continuum.

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