Deep Blue : Critical Reflections on Nature, Religion and Water 9781317488187, 9781845532550

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DEEP BLUE

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Deep Blue Critical Reflections on Nature, Religion and Water

Edited by Sylvie Shaw & Andrew Francis

First published 2008 by Equinox Publishing Ltd, an imprint of Acumen Published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © Sylvie Shaw, Andrew Francis and contributors 2008 Illustrations on the title and part pages are by Andy Smith and reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notices Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13 978 1 84553 255 0 (paperback) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Deep blue : critical reflections on nature, religion, and water / edited by Sylvie Shaw and Andrew Francis. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-84553-255-0 (pbk.) 1. Nature--Religious aspects. I. Shaw, Sylvie, 1948- II. Francis, Andrew, 1962BL65.N35D44 2008 202’.12--dc22 2007037250 Typeset by Kate Williams, Swansea

Contents

Artist’s statement Contributors

vii ix

Preface Graham Harvey

xiii

Invocation

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Introduction: sacred waters Sylvie Shaw and Andrew Francis

I

1

Entering sacred space Editors’ introduction

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1. ‘Singing through the sea’: song, sea and emotion John J. Bradley

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2. Water of life, water of death: Pagan notions of water from antiquity to today Dieter Gerten

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3. The fertility goddess of the Zulu: reflections on a calling to Inkosazana’s Pool Penny Bernard

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4. Rivers of memory, lakes of survival: indigenous water traditions and the Anishinaabeg nation Melissa K. Nelson

67

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contents II Divine connections Editors’ introduction

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5. Creature of water Andrew Francis

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6. Saltwater feet: the flow of dance in Oceania Katerina Martina Teaiwa

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7. I am the river bleeding Douglas Ezzy

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8. Deep blue religion Sylvie Shaw

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III The sacredness of water Editors’ introduction

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9. The spirit of the Edge: Rachel Carson and numinous experience between land and sea Susan Power Bratton

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10. The mystery of waters Vivianne Crowley

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11. Sister Water: an introduction to blue theology Margaret H. Ferris

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12. Sea spirituality, surfing and aquatic nature religion Bron Taylor

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IV Waves of energy: in defence of water Editors’ introduction

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13. Animism, economics and sustainable water development David Groenfeldt

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14. Blue, green and red: combining energies in defence of water Veronica Strang

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15. Neglect and reclamation of water as sacred resource Michael York

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Eco-logue: and in me you find peace Adrianne Harris

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Close Index

301 303

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Artist’s statement

My earliest memories of water were as a teleportation device. When other children were practising their strokes I could be found submerged, revelling in the quiet and the total freedom of weightlessness. Each time my head dipped beneath the surface I was taken to another world, a world where I was cocooned: safe and free to fly, tumble and glide. Water will always be my escape. Andy Smith

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Contributors

Penny Bernard, an anthropologist and professional nurse, lectures in anthropology at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. Specializing in the fields of medical and environmental anthropology in her teaching, she is currently writing her PhD thesis, which is a comparative exploration of the water divinities in southern Africa and their role on the calling of diviner healers. She has published a number of papers on themes relating to her thesis and research programme. Born in Zimbabwe, her formative years were spent largely playing in rivers and sitting under waterfalls in the remote and beautiful Eastern Highlands of the country. Susan Power Bratton is Chair of Environmental Studies, Baylor University, Waco, Texas, USA. She has a PhD from Cornell University in plant ecology, and a PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas in humanities. She has published three books in environmental ethics and theology, including Six Billion and More: Human Population Regulation and Christian Ethics (1992), Christianity, Wilderness and Wildlife: The Original Desert Solitaire (1993) and Environmental Values in Christian Art (2007). She has also published articles on religion and ocean ethics in Ethics and the Environment, Worldviews and Sojourners. John J. Bradley has bounced about in small boats on the Gulf of Carpentaria for the past thirty years. During this time he has been taught and mentored by the Yanyuwa people, who call this part of Australia home. He is a senior lecturer and deputy director at the Center for Australian Indigenous Studies. He has published widely in regards to indigenous people and maritime relations, has worked on major land claims over sea country and, in conjunction with the Yanyuwa people, developed a major Yanyuwa atlas of their country. He is presently working in ways to animate 400 kilometres of song line.

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contributors Vivianne Crowley is a psychologist in private practice and the author of numerous books on Jungian psychology, Wicca and contemporary Paganism. She was formerly Lecturer in Psychology of Religion at King’s College, University of London, and helped establish Europe’s only Masters degree in the discipline. She is a Wiccan priestess and a leading teacher in the European Wicca community. She was raised by the sea and sees water as an important symbol of the unconscious, onto the ebb and flow of which we project humankind’s complex and conflicting longings and fears for both eternity and change. Douglas Ezzy’s research is driven by a fascination with how people make meaningful and dignified lives. His most recent book is Teenage Witches (with Helen Berger, 2007). It examines the interconnections between teenage spirituality, the mass media and nature religion. He shares with Pagans a respect for the earth as sacred and often wonders what matters to wombats. His other books include Qualitative Research Methods (with Pranee Rice, 1999), Narrating Unemployment (2001), Qualitative Analysis (2002), Practising the Witch’s Craft (2003) and Researching Paganisms (with Graham Harvey and Jenny Blain, 2004). He is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Tasmania. Margaret H. Ferris is a doctoral candidate in the philosophy of religion and theology at Claremont Graduate University’s School of Religion. Meg is finishing her dissertation, Blue Theology: An Ecotheology and Ethic of Water. She focuses on ecotheology and the interconnection between theology and economics. Meg first began her work on ecotheology with Rosemary Radford Ruether, and later studied with John B. Cobb, who introduced her to the importance of economics to the study of religion and ecology. Her focus on water arose from living in southern California, where water is paradoxically scarce and plentiful. She lives in Seattle, Washington, where water supplies are stressed by a growing population and a variety of sources of pollution. Andrew Francis is Associate Professor in Psychology at RMIT University and runs a private practice as a medical herbalist. He has published extensively in the fields of psychology, behavioural neuroscience and alternative medicine, with a holistic biopsycho-spiritual focus on understanding and improving the adaptation of individuals to their physical and social environments. He has contributed to several published scholarly works on nature religion. As a surfer and nature-carer, he sees his own wellbeing and spiritual perspective as flowing directly from the nature and health of the waterways with which he lives. Dieter Gerten has been engaged in professional research on freshwater for more than ten years, with a focus on the global-scale interconnectedness of the water cycle, aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and human societies. His conviction is that the presence – or absence – of spiritual relationships of people with their environment, including water, is a crucial determinant of their dealings with nature. He is a hydrologist and ecologist with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

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contributors David Groenfeldt is an anthropologist with a professional focus on water and its interaction with culture. His initial work on cultural impacts of irrigation development in India for his PhD research led him to an interest in how farmers organize themselves to manage local irrigation systems (for the International Water Management Institute, 1984–89), and how water-user associations can stimulate broader social and economic development (for the World Bank, 1999–2001; www.inpim.org). More recently, he served as Coordinator of the Indigenous Water Initiative (www. indigenouswater.org). Since 2006 he has been the Executive Director of the Santa Fe Watershed Association in New Mexico (www.santafewatershed.org), working to restore flow to an over-allocated river. Adrianne Harris is a Wiccan and member of Applegrove’s Circle of the Hearth. Adrianne was the New South Wales (NSW) coordinator for the Pagan Alliance from 1997 to 2002 and published the NSW newsletter PANSW. Adrianne has a keen interest in eco magic and activism and working closely with the elements. Adrianne has presented at gatherings including the Australian Wiccan Conference (1998, 2006), Hollyfrost and various Applegrove gatherings over the years. Adrianne holds a BA (Sydney) and a MAppSc (CSU). Melissa K. Nelson is a cultural ecologist, writer, educator and activist whose work is dedicated to indigenous revitalization, environmental protection and cross-cultural reconciliation. She is a professor of American Indian studies at San Francisco State University and president of the Cultural Conservancy, a non-profit indigenous rights organization. Melissa co-produced the award-winning documentary short film The Salt Song Trail: Bringing Creation Back Together (2004). She is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sylvie Shaw has lived near waterways, rivers, estuaries and the sea since early childhood. In these water places she finds inspiration and solace. Each day, as she connects to the river in Brisbane, she is reminded of the tenuous healthy future for waterways and inspired by the spirit of kinship between water and self, a kinship that demands commitment. She is disheartened that marine and land-based aqua systems are under severe threat: whales hunted, fish depleted, mangrove forests bulldozed and rivers failing to flow into the sea. But she is also heartened by the myriad nature-carers committed to protecting dynamic environments and precious creatures. She lectures in religion and spiritualities at the University of Queensland and continues to explore the significance of nature in people’s lives. Andy Smith is a freelance illustrator and was born in Bankstown, NSW. He grew up fighting crime with the Hardy Boys, drinking magic potion and eating wild boar with Asterix and travelling the globe-foiling villainous plots with Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock. Before illustrating became a means to earn a crust Andy spent time in academia and the ‘real world’. For a number of years he taught psychology to second-year students as an assistant lecturer at Monash University. From there he escaped to the hurly burly and glamour of web and graphic design.

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contributors Veronica Strang is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her interests include human– environmental relations, cultural landscapes, conflicts over land and natural resources (particularly water), art and material culture and performance and gender. Her books include Uncommon Ground: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental Values (1997) and The Meaning of Water (2004), and she is currently working on another monography concerned with water ownership, agency and identity. Veronica is a member of the UNESCO Scientific Advisory Committee for the International Ecohydrology Programme, and was recently awarded a Lumières de L’Eau Gold Medal by an international jury at the Ninth Cannes International Water Symposium in recognition of her contribution to anthropological research on water. Bron Taylor had a fifteen-year career as a California State Park Lifeguard before entering academia. At the University of Wisconsin he founded an environmental studies programme and at the University of Florida, where he currently teaches, he helped establish a graduate programme in religion and nature. He has written widely about religious environmental movements, nature religions and environmental ethics. In 2005 he published the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature and led initiatives to create the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture, which was established in 2006, and the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture, which began publishing in 2007 (www.religionandnature.com). He often wonders why he left his full-time job at the beach. Katerina Martina Teaiwa is Pacific Studies Convener in the College of Asia and the Pacific at Australian National University and has a PhD in anthropology. Her research interests are in the history of phosphate mining on Banaba in Kiribati, popular culture and consumption, Pacific diasporas, women’s studies, globalization, dance studies, visual ethnography, and theory and method for Pacific studies. A founding member of the Oceania Dance Theater at the Oceania Center for Arts and Culture at the University of the South Pacific, she is currently working on a book, Between our Islands: A Multi-sited Ethnography of Banaban Phosphate, and a collaborative educational DVD project, Ocean Island: Land from the Sea, Land from the Sky. Michael York holds a PhD in religious studies from King’s College, University of London. His interest concerns the sociology of religion, sociology of new religious movements and sociology of the New Age and Neo-Pagan movements. His books include The Roman Festival Calendar of Numa Pompilius (1986), The Divine Versus the Asurian: An Interpretation of Indo-European Cult and Myth (1995), The Emerging Network: A Sociology of the New Age and Neo-Pagan Movements (1995) and Pagan Theology: Paganism as a World Religion (2003). Until his retirement, he held the position of Professor of Cultural Astronomy and Astrology at Bath Spa University in England.

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Preface Graham Harvey

Deep Blue is a refreshing work. Anthropogenic global climate change is leading to rising sea levels, increasing drought and storm conditions around the world. Water quality and availability are the focus of increased activism and conflict in and between many countries. Water-related religious activities are gaining prominence in many cultures. Environmentalists, however ‘deep green’ they are, have realized that without water of the right quality and quantity the green mantle of the land is frighteningly fragile. All these are good reasons for an engagement with water. What this book adds is a timely and refreshing immersion in the question of what motivates people to pursue water-related issues and participate in water-related actions. Sylvie Shaw and Andrew Francis have brought together a group of contributors who complement each other’s work in such a way that even their differences of opinion and approach greatly enhance the value of the whole work. The contributors to this excellent volume offer a range of perspectives on and engagements with water: oceans, seas, rivers, pools; drinking water, surfing waves, being watery, living in water, being alien in water; water related to respectfully; water abused relentlessly; human intimacy with water; human alterity from water. Our moistness is as vital but as temporary and brief as our lives. After our bodies lose air, they lose water; all that remains is dust. We are earthlings. Sometimes we act as proverbial clods and sods (foolish and abusive) towards our life-givers: earth and air as well as water. There are chapters here arising from the indissolubility of all living constituents of this small blue-green planet. All contributors, in particular ways, also discuss one or another form of alterity. There is the alterity of disrespectful, life-threatening abuse of water, and the alterity of dialogical encounter with water. Bruno Latour (2002) has written that in the ongoing but rarely acknowledged war between Western modernism and other cultures there is a desperate need for diplomats, mediators between ‘us’

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graham harvey and ‘them’, people who will seek mutually acceptable solutions. In ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Earth’ ([1793] 1958), William Blake wrote that ‘enmity is true friendship’, insisting that the collapse of difference is the destruction of life. But enmity is not always friendly; only a visionary could hope that opponents could find common ground on which to honour difference. Just as well, then, that this volume contains visionary and hopeful writing that anticipates, inspires and requires dialogue and diplomacy between humans and water. Real problems are never ignored, but nor is the end result a tidal wave of depression. Things have to be done, but they are things that can be done. Everyone who picks up a book to see what it contains will already be carrying particular concerns, perspectives, commitments and passions. The most obvious reasons for diving into this book (once you have imbibed the delicious title, Deep Blue) will include interests in water. Some readers will already be marine biologists, surfers, venerators of aquatic deities, devotees of pure water or ethnographers of human relations with water. Some may share the editors’ and contributors’ generous openness to multiple interests and perspectives. They will go with the flow of the chapters. Others will have a more focused interest and may chart a course directly to chapters that seem most likely to match a particular purpose (e.g. an essay on surfing, an ethnography of indigenous performances, or an encouraging example of marine activism). It is hoped that everyone will slip moorings and drift into new (for them) territory, having been inspired or provoked to think or act in new ways by the discovery of new positions and perspectives. Apart from celebrating this first exuberant submersion into a wide range of waterrelated pursuits and reflections, the two things about this book that most interest me as a scholar of religion are the explicit debates and implicit contributions to thinking about ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’. We are used to considering the relative applicability of these words, but neither fits comfortably with ‘deep blue’ experiences, commitments, ceremonies and discourses. According to Cicero, the Latin religio is most closely related to relegere, retracing or re-reading. In later Christian Latin, religio is linked to religare, binding together in piety. Either way, it is a fairly solidly earthed word. ‘Spirituality’, meanwhile, has breathy, airy, ethereal associations. Popular usage in the West (derived from a long history of Christianity, especially in Protestantism, which gave birth to modernity) links religion and spirituality with transcendence. They make bodies, including bodies of water, problematic as they reach beyond our world. So what word fits all that is ‘deep blue’? I cannot think of one. But what this book makes certain is that we are already immersed in and flowed through by the water of this world. We are containers of water contained in water. We belong; we do not need to retrace our steps to the ocean, or re-commit ourselves to the tides. The great value of this book is that it introduces us to people who illustrate some of the many ways in which humans relate with water and provokes us to engage with many issues of critical importance.

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preface Bibliography Blake, William. [1793] 1958. ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’. In Blake: Poems and Letters, selected by Jacob Bronowski, 92–109. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Latour, Bruno. 2002. War of the Worlds: What About Peace? Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press.

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Invocation

I am water. I have come to speak to you. We are bound to each other. I am part of you, and you are my creature. I was there in the beginning, And from me you were birthed. Your tides are mine, and mine are yours. I am the silent pool you reflect upon, The murmuring creek you bespeak in the forest, The dark, fast cloud of rain and snow, A sliver of ice, the wet in your mouth. I am the abyss, where you may find your self, And mine are the beasts that dwell within. My domain is sacred. I am the originator and the destroyer, With me you live and die. I have come to speak to you. I am water.

AF

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Introduction: sacred waters Sylvie Shaw and Andrew Francis

I’m floating in the void, high in the heavens, when I’m captured by an image that leaves me breathless. I’m swept away by the sight of the earth rising in space, and for a profound moment I catch a glimpse of divinity in the luminosity of the blue planet glowing in a sea of wonder. For the astronaut Dr Edgar Mitchell being in space and viewing the earthrise was a life changing experience; he was suddenly aware, at ‘a deep emotional level’ (Spiro 2001), of the supreme interconnectedness of the universe and his own place within it.1 This iconic image of the blue globe spinning in space not only inspired the space traveller, it became the symbol for the awakening of a global environment movement and, in part, is the impetus for the title of this book, Deep Blue. We define ‘deep blue’ as that glimpse of divinity resonant in the life-affirming connection between human and water. Embedded in this lived and living religion is a deep reverence for water and water bodies that manifests in a profound relationship with the divine other. It is an expression of the sacred that honours the flow of this precious liquid through a multitude of waterscapes – rivers, oceans, embayments, lakes, swamps, springs, rain, snow and ice – including the human body. Like other forms of nature religion, the deep blue venerates the ecological processes on which life depends and acts in service to preserve and protect these essential and life-sustaining ecosystems. Nature religion has looked largely to forest groves and mountain tops for inspiration and spiritual transformation, whereas Deep Blue’s focus is the watery realm and the essence of freshwater and saltwater spiritualities. From watersheds to waterfalls, from wave-surfing as warp to fish-hunting as worship, in this book we explore meta1. Inspired by an interview with US Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell in The Monthly Aspectarian (Spiro 2001).

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sylvie shaw & andrew francis phorical, intellectual and experiential encounters between humans and the element of water while highlighting water’s symbolic representations in cultural production within Western expressions of nature religion and among indigenous cultures. Indigenous and ancestral cultures invest watery places with spiritual power enacted through myth, song, dance and ceremony. With this sacred connection comes reciprocity, understanding and sustainable relationship. But contemporary Western cultures relate to waterways almost entirely on economic and recreational levels. They harvest for profit from wild places and revel in the beauty and freedom they find, but may not be cognizant of the essential spirituality involved in these pursuits and places. By failing to acknowledge the deeper connections inherent in ancient and indigenous cultures, contemporary Western societies also fail to grasp the underlying spiritual roots of the current ecological crisis and the need to develop holistic, sustainable relationships with waterways and other ecosystems. In concert with other nature religion beliefs and practices, deep blue religion celebrates the changing cycles in the natural world, the seasonal flows, the movement of sun and moon, the turning of the tides, and the beauty and danger inherent in these passing cycles. Whether through ritual or activism, water-carers acknowledge their kinship with water and pledge commitment to its continued flourishing. But all over the world, water and waterways, both fresh and salt, are under severe threat from human disturbance through urban development, increasing industrialization and consequent pollution, habitat destruction, over-fishing, damaging agriculture and aquaculture, drought and global warming. The outcomes are depleted oceans, polluted rivers, declining coral reefs, disappearing wetlands, melting polar ice caps and glaciers, and a sense of moral outrage at what is happening. Animals, fish and birds are threatened. Polar bear, walrus, albatross, shark, blue fin tuna, turtle, dugong, river dolphin, Steller sea lion, and species of whale, seal, otter and penguin are endangered. A recent study on the loss of marine biodiversity warns of increasing pressure on coastal and ocean ecosystems, particularly the ‘global collapse’ of commercial fish species by the year 2048 (Worm et al. 2006: 790). But the researchers argue that sustainable practices such as the introduction of marine reserves and fisheries closures can lessen the impact and help restore biodiversity. It all depends, they say, on ‘our collective societal choices’ (Worm et al. 2007: 1285d). As a result of these frightening projections and other ‘aqua-logical’ imperatives, marine scientists are calling for a sea ethic, a moral stance that recognizes the ocean’s role in the ongoing health of the planet and human wellbeing. There is a general lack of awareness about what happens beneath the water’s surface; it is out of sight, thus out of mind. Instead, says co-founder of the Blue Ocean Institute Carl Safina, we need to become aware of our intimate human connection to the ocean, to realize that the air we breathe emanates from plankton, and to appreciate that our bodies, which are 70 per cent water, carry the memory of life that evolved long ago in the sea. He hopes that knowing this will encourage moral engagement, commitment and an urgency to act (Safina 2005: 2). But does thinking of ourselves as water encourage us to be more water-minded? Perhaps that requires more than awareness, but it is a great start. Education about

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introduction: sacred waters water builds understanding; understanding and knowledge can lead to action such as taking care of waterways by cleaning up coastal dunes, replanting wetlands, monitoring river water quality or protesting against unhealthy ocean outfalls. These are just some of the urgent tasks that activists worldwide are involved in. This book is dedicated to these water-carers, and to the water bodies that continue to inspire them.

Troubled waters Scarce, non-potable and polluted water and poor sanitation affect vast numbers of people worldwide. The International Water Secretariat (IWS) estimates that ‘1.8 million people in the world, mainly women and children, die each year from waterrelated diseases; 1.1 billion people do not have access to clean water; 2.6 billion people do not have access to adequate sanitation systems’ (IWS 2007). Access to clean water is foremost on the agenda of major international non-government agencies including the United Nations Committee on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights, which has recognized that access to water is a basic human right, although practically it is a different story. In their book Blue Gold, water advocates Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke (2004) argue that the earth’s freshwater reserves are running low, and running out. They are highly critical of the increasing privatization of water resources globally, which limits public access through the unequal and increasingly expensive distribution of resources. They highlight the destruction of habitat resulting from the drying up of the earth’s water, and consequent deleterious effects on animal and human communities. At the same time, conflicts over water access occur as users are pitted against each other for the same scarce resource. On a local or regional scale it is fishers versus farmers, indigenous communities versus irrigators, rural dwellers against city residents, the public versus industry, but also nation states are implicated through crossborder tensions over water diversions, dams and pollution. The Indian scientist and environmental conscience Vandana Shiva is uncompromising in her critique. Her book Water Wars (2002: xiv) terms the destruction of water resources, forest catchments and aquifers ‘a form of terrorism’, as the Third World community, many living in poverty, lose their access to water as the once abundant source dries up literally through drought, and through privatization. People now have to pay for what was freely available. In the United Nations Decade ‘Water for Life’ (2005–2015), dedicated to the provision of clean water and sanitation for all, the impact of commodifying water flies in the face of water access as a basic human right. The result, says Shiva, can be devastating: ‘For Third World Women, water scarcity means traveling longer distances in search of water. For peasants it means starvation and destitution as drought wipes out their crops. For children it means dehydration and death. There is simply no substitute for this precious liquid’ (Shiva 2002: 15). Water suffers because it is in public territory. Rivers and oceans are threatened by what Garrett Hardin (1968) famously calls ‘the tragedy of the commons’. In the

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sylvie shaw & andrew francis commons, he observes, no one person cares for shared resources, so where the resource is limited, whether it is the supply of clean drinking water or the once plentiful ocean fish, the self-interest of individuals, nations and competitive economic advantage interact to voraciously plunder the resource (Ward 1997). The natural environment, wild rivers, wild seas and water sources are all such commonly shared resources, which, to avert Hardin’s tragedy, need obligation, responsibility, cooperation and equity. Shiva terms this process ‘water democracy’. It is practised by many rural societies across the Third World where commons and cooperation go hand in hand with sustainability. To keep water in the control of the people not the proprietors, and maintain shared resources and shared responsibility, Shiva has drawn up nine fundamental principles of ‘water democracy’ that, in part: recognize the significance of water to all life – human and all other species; uphold the need to conserve water and use it sustainably; oppose the privatization and commodification of the water supply; and honour the sacred gift of water received freely from nature. And we follow her maxim: ‘Each of us is responsible’ (Shiva 2002: 139).

Hope like a river Australia is the driest continent on earth and for the past six years has been caught in the grip of severe drought. Rivers have been decimated, their flow reduced. Some rivers no longer reach the sea, but dwindle into a landlocked dryness. They have no more water to give and seem to have simply given up. Governments argue over water flows and boundaries; water-users from farmers to urban dwellers scrabble over rights, while the water, and the surrounding ecosystem suffer. These concerns are global. Water access is a contentious issue that it is hoped can be thwarted though the implementation of ‘environmental flows’ as a generally accepted best management practice for streams and rivers, and a ‘tool to ward off social conflict and environmental degradation due to the overuse of water in the river basins of the world’ (IUCN 2004). ‘E-flows’, as they are known, refer to managing water in rivers, wetlands and coastal zones when there are competing water-users including the ecosystem, not only the human, as a valid user of water (IUCN 2005). This move is seen as a major paradigm shift in water management. Although lacking an explicit reference to spiritual realms or even ethical considerations, the consensus view among water resource specialists now accepts the value of keeping rivers alive and flowing. It seems surprising that, previously, the health of a riverine ecosystem was not paramount in the minds of resource managers, but the hope is that water policies in many countries have now recognized the right of rivers to exist as ecologically intact systems. For example, in Europe, the EU Water Framework Directive directs member countries to attain a ‘good ecological status’ of rivers, lakes and estuaries by 2015. South Africa has established the concept of ‘ecological reserves’ as a startingpoint for water development along rivers, while Australia conducts environmental

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introduction: sacred waters flow assessments to establish ecological requirements for rivers. But the future is dicey for rivers in the American West. Water resource managers there still regard rivers as water supply channels, valued for utilitarian and economic use rather than their own intrinsic value (see Groenfeldt, this volume, Ch. 13). The executive director of the Santa Fe Watershed Association, David Groenfeldt, explains that laws in some western US states including New Mexico explicitly proscribe leaving water in a river so long as there is a willing human user. Little account is taken of ecosystem health, so the ecological reserve that is mandatory in South Africa is illegal in New Mexico. It is inevitable, writes Groenfeldt, that the American West will shift in the direction of environmental flows, and agrees with the IUCN’s observation that: Depriving a river or a groundwater system of these flows not only damages the entire aquatic ecosystem, it also threatens the people and communities who depend on it. The question is thus not whether environmental flows can be afforded, but whether and for how long a society can afford not to provide environmental flows. (Dyson et al. 2003: 3) When the integrity of any water system is threatened, whether river, lake, ocean or ice cap, the collective voice of water and water-carers is raised and asks: does a waterway have a moral right to be itself?

Spiritual flows: finding the source Water holds a cultural and spiritual significance that is often lost in discussions on natural and marine resource management strategies. It is a central element in many religious ceremonies of purification, and yet its role within nature religion discourse has been largely obscured by the emphasis on green nature. The intention in Deep Blue is to shift the focus from green to blue and green, and to deepen awareness and understanding of the human-engendered environmental threats with which our watery planet currently contends. To achieve this aim, the book dives into sacred waters through essays by leading writers in the expanding academic field of nature religion and beyond. If we wish to change profoundly the behaviour of people and the relationship they hold with their environment, then we must speak to their deepest selves. Whether re-attainment of a healthy spiritual orientation to the environment be identified as such, or as heartfelt emotion, strongly held environmental conviction and concern, or something less definable, we contend that it is in the re-attainment of a healthy ‘spiritual’ orientation to the environment that a sustainable physical relationship will most naturally follow. It is at this archetypal substratum of the human psyche that our most essential orientation to the world is defined. It is at this level that we seek to make our impact: re-enlivening the connection between water and the personal meaning of our own lives. The facts, figures and worldly accounts of environmental peril speak to but one part of our selves. We must speak also to people’s hearts and

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sylvie shaw & andrew francis ask them to believe once more in the beauty and sacredness of water and the wider ecosystems within which all life revolves. In this volume we attempt thus to summon and converse with those deeper human levels. From anthropological and mythological exposés of archetypal mind structure, through experiential accounts of divine connection, to sociopolitical and psychological analyses; a multidisciplinary and multi-voiced format blends academic enquiry with grounded accounts of experience and understandings from writers intimately connected with water. Contributors outline ethical and spiritual lifeways directed at the sustainability of aquatic environments. As seems fitting, we have used the natural and symbolic form of ritual as an implicit structural metaphor for the exposition. The intent of the book, as ritual, is to invoke, honour, merge with and sacralize water, and then to raise and send energy for the protection and regeneration of aquatic ecological environments. Through the writing and reading of the book, participants energise this intent. In Part I, ‘Entering Sacred Space’, we call forth and reflect on the beauty, depth and significance of the element of water, and of the human relationship to it, at the anthropological level of myth and ancient culture. Meetly, this first part opens with a lyrical and moving contribution from anthropologist John J. Bradley entitled ‘“Singing through the Sea”: Song, Sea and Emotion’. He charts the significance and vitality of the song maps and song cycles of the Yanyuwa Aboriginal people of northern Australia. These song cycles link the people to land and sea; they show directions to travel and reveal the interconnectedness and vital essence of the sacred relationship between ‘the people’, ‘the ancestors’ and their ‘place’. In ‘Water of Life, Water of Death: Pagan Notions of Water from Antiquity to Today’, hydrologist Dieter Gerten explores the spiritual and cultural underpinnings of European water mythology. He charts the early reification of watery places where Pagan gods and goddesses reside and shows how, over time and with the onset of Christianity across Europe, formerly benevolent deities of place were gradually transformed into spirits with both benevolent and malevolent qualities. In particular, Gerten describes this tension through the transmutation of mermaids, nymphs and other water sprites who can capture men’s hearts and souls, but he shows that early Pagan sacred sites and rituals are active in today’s society where people still worship, or seek assistance from sacred wells and holy springs. In ‘The Fertility Goddess of the Zulu: Reflections on a Calling to Inkosazana’s Pool’, Penny Bernard takes us on an intensely personal journey to the place of a most significant ritual in her initiation as a diviner-healer in the Zulu tradition. An anthropologist in South Africa, Bernard embarked on a study of Zulu diviners and in the process, and unexpectedly, was invited or called by the ancesters to become a diviner or isangoma, subsequently being called to Inkosazana’s pool, a sacred pool hidden in the middle of the forest in Kwa-Zula Natal. Later Bernard travels through the region interviewing local people about their connection to Inkosazana, and the rituals they perform in her honour. Finally in Part I, Melissa K. Nelson, in ‘Rivers of Memory, Lakes of Survival: Indigenous Water Traditions and the Anishinaabeg Nation’, reveals the cultural

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introduction: sacred waters ecology of indigenous North American relationships to water. In her discussion of the water understandings and traditions of the Anishinaabeg Nation and other tribes, she weaves a complex tapestry of meaning, tradition and ritual between a people and their watery landscapes, one that engenders harmony and respect. But all is not well among waterways and people, as rivers are dammed and geothermal energies mined. In meeting and protest the people join with water in ‘remembrance’, to regain honour and humility, and correct their relationship to water. Within the sacred space thus created, as a ‘drawing down’ of and reflection on the essence of water, individual human experiences of spirit and divinity in watery environments are explored in Part II, ‘Divine Connections’. As pilgrim and surfer, psychologist Andrew Francis takes us to the southern ocean, exploring the mythopoeic substratum of a Pagan, water-oriented spirituality in ‘Creature of Water’. From the middle reaches of an inland freshwater river ecosystem to the depths of the briny abyss, he outlines a symbolic narrative with the environment that encompasses aquatic life cycles, Sumerian myth and Jungian depth psychology. Francis argues, along the primary thesis of Deep Blue, that it is in our ‘mythic dissociation’ from those parts of ourselves that connect us deeply to water, and that permit sustainable and honourable relationship, that our current environmental crises have emerged. In healing this dissociation globally we may hope to re-attain that which we have lost. Continuing in the southern hemisphere, we are then led by anthropologist and dancer Katerina Teaiwa through the sacred saltwater choreography of the Pacific and beyond in ‘Saltwater Feet: The Flow of Dance in Oceania’. The meaning and flow of water is revealed in human movement, connecting people to each other, their histories and traditions, and to land and sea. The survival of traditional dance in Oceania is a story of political and religious struggle, and speaks of the resilience and contemporaneous relevance of the cultural understandings and aquatic environmental relationships it reflects. Sociologist Doug Ezzy also reflects on the outcomes of a communicative relationship with ‘water persons’ in ‘I am the River Bleeding’. Water is not merely an element but also an ‘other’, a person to whom one might relate. Drawing on Levinas’s notion of face-to-face relations and Graham Harvey’s new animism, Ezzy examines the ethics of relationships with the streams of Mount Wellington and the Derwent River in Hobart, the city where he grew up. He combines stories of his own relationships with water with accounts of the effects of others on the waters of Hobart. Water can be both respected, and have the life bled out of it. While water is ‘other’, it is also part of a whole of which we are all a part. Ezzy’s chapter explores the pleasures and pain of empathetic animist engagement with water. Finally in Part II, Sylvie Shaw reflects on the connection between spirituality and environmental activism in ‘Deep Blue Religion’. In doing so, she draws together the main themes of the book. What drives nature-carers to protect aquatic environments, and what sustains them in their quest? Shaw explores the significance of a waterimmersed religion in the lives of ‘sea-carers’. As they dive into the watery depths, dance with waves or try to stop illegal whaling in the southern ocean, they are confronted with the ocean’s power, their own mortality, and the extent of ecological devastation. Building on Bourdieu’s notion of social capital, Shaw proposes an ‘ecosocial capital’,

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sylvie shaw & andrew francis reflecting the rich links between human health and wellbeing and environmental health, wellbeing and sustainability. From anthropological understandings of archetypal mind structure and ancient tradition (Part I), through personal narrative and reflection on divine connection (Part II), our discourse moves next into multidisciplinary academic treatises on the numinosity and sacredness of watery environments and experiences. In Part III, ‘The Sacredness of Water’, the personal, sacred and religious relationship that exists between humans and water is explored at ecological, psychological, theological and sociocultural levels of analysis. In ‘The Spirit of the Edge: Rachel Carson and Numinous Experience between Land and Sea’, Susan Power Bratton inoculates us with the passion and wonder Rachel Carson imparted in her writings on the sea and the numinous boundary between land and water, ‘the Edge’. Ecologist and ethicist herself, Bratton is our guide through Carson’s spiritual experience of the fragile Edge, prompting a sea ethic that values both ocean and boundary, diminutive lugworm and ‘flashy angelfish’. To understand our sacred human relationship to water, we must also understand ourselves. From the numinous natural world realism of hydroids and elfin starfish as experienced by Bratton and Carson, we travel next to the ‘between-worlds’ divinity to be found in unconscious and archetype. In ‘The Mystery of Waters’, Vivianne Crowley, Wiccan priestess and psychologist, summons the voice of water as it speaks to our deeper self. What does water mean to us, and how may we relate to it? Through the dual prisms of Wiccan tradition and Jungian psychology, Crowley illuminates and explores the abyss of the human psyche and its inhabitants; following the symbolic journey of the salmon (as self) from river to sea, and its return to origin. In doing so she bridges the gap between anthropology and psychology, between myth and personal psyche. With Crowley we dive down to discover that grit around which a pearl will form within us: to reflect on our own relatedness to water and, as thought, will and intent precede behaviour, then to act towards water in accordance with our true nature. Building on the Part III theme of theological eclecticism, and further to the primary thesis of our volume, ecotheological researcher Margaret H. Ferris responds to our human disconnection with water in ‘Sister Water: An Introduction to Blue Theology’. Raising consciousness and water literacy, teaching of the inherent economic, social and spiritual value of water, blue theology is thoughtfully ecumenical and honours all forms of spirituality. Based in ecotheology, blue theology also draws on the work of liberation and feminist theology by recognizing the connections between class and gender oppression and destruction of ecosystems. Importantly, Ferris illustrates the inextricable connection between doctrine and praxis in two communities already engaged in a blue theology: Pilgrim Place and WaterSpirit. Catching the last wave in Part III, Bron Taylor explores the religiosity of surfing subculture in ‘Sea Spirituality, Surfing and Aquatic Nature Religion’. Soul surfing is a meaningful ritual practice that gives rise to physical, psychological and spiritual wellbeing. These mystical experiences engender reverence for, and a desire to protect, nature. A surfer himself, Taylor explores contemporaneous and historical

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introduction: sacred waters surfing culture from within, leading us through the subcultural media artifacts, myths, rites, symbols, shared beliefs and ethical mores of his fraternity. Surfing as a form of aquatic nature religion is deemed a ‘new religious movement’ that celebrates the sensuality of wave-riding and the belief in nature as powerful, transformative, healing and sacred. Finally, in Part IV, ‘Waves of Energy: In Defence of Water’, the conatus raised in the first three parts of the book is grounded in accounts of ecological peril, sociopolitical dialogue, environmental activism and a call to arms for the defence of water. Who are the ‘stakeholders’ and what is their moral claim? How do we balance the needs and rights of many, including ‘water persons’, when the crucial element on which terrestrial life depends continues to become increasingly scarcer? What are the lessons to be learned by modern humanity if we are to survive in harmonious, respectful and sustainable relationship to our aquatic environments? What is the role and value of sacrality in building this relationship? How can we progress our dialogue on the sustainable use and preservation of aquatic environments? These are some of the questions addressed by our final group of authors. We have drawn a diverse set of contributors, so that all voices may be heard. We hear first from David Groenfeldt, anthropologist and executive director of the Santa Fe Watershed Association in New Mexico. In ‘Animism, Economics and Sustainable Water Development’ he identifies and discusses the inevitable conflict between animistic, spiritual orientations to water and the prevailing materialist ideology of Western societies in general and Western water management in particular. He illustrates this conflict and its evolution through the story of the Santa Fe River (New Mexico), which has become a dry ditch in order to feed the insatiable demands of the growing city of Santa Fe. Groenfeldt explores the physical steps and underlying cultural values that have resulted in the death of the Santa Fe River, and then shifts to a discussion of ongoing efforts to revive the river. In the end, is it possible that animism and ecological economics can be mutually supportive in guiding sustainable water policy? In ‘Blue, Green and Red: Combining Energies in Defence of Water’, Veronica Strang, anthropologist and member of the UNESCO Scientific Advisory Committee for the International Ecohydrology Programme, also addresses the ‘purported’ polarity between ‘spiritual’ versus ‘commercial’ relationships with water. Strang argues that sustainable resource use is not merely an issue of spiritual or aesthetic restraint versus the attainment of base desires, but also a wider moral and political debate. Moving to the heart of that debate, she maps some similarity of values between the various ‘stakeholders’ in an Australian context (with global relevance) – farmers, indigenous peoples and environmentalists – and seeks to progress the dialogue between these groups. She argues for more explicit collaborations between them in ‘applying the brakes’ to systems of agricultural production that are ‘plainly in overdrive’. Finally, Michael York takes us on a water journey through global history, mythology and contemporaneous peril in ‘Neglect and Reclamation of Water as Sacred Resource’. In scintillating style, he leads us through our essential issues with respect to water – what are we doing, do we want it the way it is and is there another way? – thus illuminating the discussion through a rigorous and broad-ranging examination of

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sylvie shaw & andrew francis the sacredness of water in its many forms and sources. From Ireland, where sacred springs are being paved over by development, to India, where the sacred Ganges flows burdened with pollution; in drawing together science, myth and humanity he suggests a way across the abysmal divide that currently stands between ourselves and sustainable aquatic environments: a simple and deep engagement with water.

The water cycle The water or hydrological cycle represents, in iconic form, an important part of our intent and meaning in Deep Blue. It depicts the continuous movement of water and the essential interchange between saltwater and freshwater, between oceans and rivers, between clouds and rain, and between land, sea and sky, and between all the creatures that live in these ecological domains (see Fig. 1). This water mandala is a significant and potent symbol that we can use to raise community awareness about the relationship between the perpetual movement of waters and the ongoing life of the planet, including humans. We would welcome a day set aside as an International Day of Water using the symbol of interflowing waters through the water cycle as a sacred icon for celebrating the day. Most of us learned about the movement of water from ocean to land and back again when we were still in primary school. Water in the sky is continually evaporating and condensing, shaping and reshaping cloud formations made up of tiny water droplets that, when they become too heavy, fall to the earth as rain. Much of this rain falls over the ocean and the interflowing patterns of evaporation, condensation and

Figure 1 The water cycle.

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introduction: sacred waters precipitation starts all over again. When we were children we would spend hours lying on our backs looking up at the sky telling stories of the images we could see in the swirl and dance of the water vapour. Without realizing it, we were acknowledging the sacred process of the movement of water. The water cycle marks the passage from creation to dissolution, and then regeneration, the turning of the wheel of life. In the beginning there was only water. Creation stories in many cultures arise from, or are associated with water, especially the emergence out of the primordial sea, the great cosmic mother, the ocean (Eliade 1958). The creation of all life is generated via an erotic surge of water as the sky, through its lifegiving rain, inter-courses with the earth, fertilizing the ground, nourishing the plants and replenishing the rivers and ground ater systems. Life is fecund, fertile, sensuous, shimmering. It travels through the water cycle in an eternal dance, balancing and rebalancing the movement from salt to fresh, from ocean to sky, from earth to ocean. In the process water comes to be worshipped as a source of healing and eternal life, as water magic and ritual healings are enacted through a reverential and respectful affinity towards watercourses, to springs, lakes, rivers, and waterfalls. But divine water can also bring death through dangerous waters and fearsome deities who need to be appeased. This is the paradox of water as life-giver and life-taker, at once fearsome and alluring, creator and destroyer. The circular movement of water forms through the water or hydrological cycle embodies the basic ritual structure associated with nature religion practice. The circle is sacred space, a place for communion with deities; it represents movement and change – the turning phases of life, death and rebirth, the changing seasons, the ebb and flow of tides, the pull of the moon and the expression of these natural cycles in our own bodies. As a symbolic expression of nature religion beliefs and values, rites of passage involving water such as initiation and purification work to bind the community together in a close relationship with water-spirit. According to Gerd Baumann (1992: 98), rituals are generally regarded as ‘symbolic performances’ that unite a particular group of people together in a shared event that underlines a common belief system and communal practice. In this way, they generate a sense of what the anthropologist Victor Turner (1974) terms ‘communitas’ or a feeling of being bound together in a community of shared experience. This sense of communitas is demonstrated effectively through the experiences of volunteers involved in river care and regeneration. For example, the American River Network found that people get involved in river and watershed care: ‘To connect with nature. To make a lasting difference in the world. To meet other, like-minded people … to get together with neighbors and work towards the common good provides a rare feeling of community’ (2000: 1). Similar findings emerged in a study conducted in Queensland’s catchment (watershed) areas by Margaret Gooch (2003). She found that a person’s decision to volunteer is related to their sense of belonging and identity to place and community. People develop a strong affinity with land and waterway partly because they already have a strong connection to such places, and partly because their involvement in river restoration brings and reinforces a sense of attachment to the places they care for. Volunteers describe their participation in both spiritual and communal terms as

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sylvie shaw & andrew francis ‘quietly religious’. They experience a ‘religious activity where you share a common bond’ (ibid.: 6), and gain ‘a warm fuzzy feeling because I can give something back to the river that gives me so much’ (ibid.: 5). Underlying the concept of deep blue is a reciprocity of care and creativity where the vitality of water acts as metaphor for the vitality emergent in committed and spiritual activism. This entails an ethical approach to sustaining water systems and a profound devotion manifest in deep blue ritual or what Bron Taylor (this volume, Ch. 12) terms ‘aquatic nature religion’. Taylor, like Francis, celebrates the deep blue through surfing, while sea-kayaking adventurer Doug Lloyd finds spirituality and meaning in those ‘sublime moments’ in communion with the ocean’s wild waters: ‘This kind of spirituality can move us beyond religious tradition and liturgy … . Parables from the ocean and wilderness speak to me as clearly as any sermon. Here, in the peace and harmony of nature, my spirit is energized and my personal faith finds meaning and expression’ (Lloyd 2000). The essence of Lloyd’s reflection, and the experiences of other water-carers, express well the connection between living water and living religion. These experiences through engagement with, and being held by, the power and mystery of the ocean, the tumultuous tumble of waterfalls and the luminescence of pools and lakes activate a responsiveness that gives rise to responsibility. As we step across the boundary (the littoral zone) between self and other and float on or under the liquid blue, we engender something new: a partnership born of the cross-flow of permeability, embodied waters enmeshed as one. Out of this relationship emerges an ecological sensuality and sensitivity of the sacred bound within the need to preserve aquatic life: the source of all life.

Deep waters Deep blue is the colour of dreams and darkness, of the night, mystery, the unknown, of dark rivers and deep seas. In recent years explorations of the ocean’s depths have revealed an amazing array of organisms that live in the dark, cold and oxygen-starved environment of the abyss, including various species that radiate bioluminescence and see with ‘glow in the dark’ eyes. This is the world that legendary deep sea researcher Sylvia Earle regards as the most enticing for scientific research. These vast recesses of the ocean’s wild places are home to highly prized fish species, targets of destructive and unsustainable industrial practices in which gigantic trawl nets scrape across the sea floor taking everything in their wake: fish, corals, sponges, seaweeds and other sea creatures. It is akin to clearfelling the rainforest. The spoils of the catch are retained but everything else is regarded as trash and thrown overboard as unwanted bycatch. But in May 2007 a landmark decision for the South Pacific was taken by the world’s leading fishing nations. Bottom trawling is to be severely curtailed in vulnerable areas such as the ecologically rich undersea mountain regions such as seamounts and deep sea canyons.

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introduction: sacred waters Sylvie Earle’s love of the ocean began when she was just three years old when a wave pushed her over and she was immediately transfixed. ‘It’s been a torrid romance ever since’, she recalls (Lavendel 1999). In her mid-teens she went diving for the first time and connected with the transcendent: ‘For 20 blissful minutes, I became one with the river and its residents’. Such experiences that spawn an ‘oceanic oneness of being’, have the power to move us, enliven our spirits, enhance our wellbeing and encourage us to care for the wider world. Known as mystical experiences, they are often cited as pathways to religious conversion or, in our case, conversion to deep blue religion. The sacred connection with water, physically, emotionally and spiritually lies at the heart of this volume. We dedicate Deep Blue to water: in human terms, a powerful metaphor for the deeper and generative unconscious realms of the human psyche. The surface of water defines the meeting place and doorway from one realm to another: from that which is revealed to that which is hidden, from conscious to unconscious, worldly to otherworldly. As we gaze at the mirror surface of water before us will we, like Narcissus, become so enraptured with our own visage that we will fail to perceive the depths and life below; and dwindle as a consequence? Or will we reconnect with the deep blue within and without, and in so doing save ourselves and our planet? It is time for us to become whole once again. It is time to heal ourselves with the power of the sacred waters that flow through our lives.

Acknowledgements In writing this book we are indebted to each other, to the contributors, to the special people in our lives and to the waterscapes we know. From our deepest heartspace we thank Nikki Rickard, Bridie Francis, Adrianne Harris, Andrea Chester, Julie Barrington, Gary Bouma, Graham Harvey, Wendy Nash, Peter Cock, Brenda Addie, Cathi Lewis, Iris Bruer, Stephen Martin, Jo Kinross and the people who have shared their stories and experiences of water.

Bibliography American River Network. 2000. ‘Volunteers’. River Voices 11(1). www2.rivernetwork.org/library/ rv2000v11n1.pdf (accessed Jan. 2008). Barlow, M. & T. Clarke. 2004. Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water. New York: The New Press. Baumann, G. 1992. ‘Ritual Implicates “Others”: Re-reading Durkheim in a Plural Society’. In Understanding Rituals, ed. D. de Coppet, 97–116. London: Routledge. Dyson, M., G. Bergkamp, J. Scanlon, eds. 2003. Flow: The Essentials of Environmental Flows. Gland, Switzerland/ Cambridge: IUCN. www.iucn.org/places/wescana/documents/flow1.pdf (accessed Jan. 2008). Gooch, M. 2003. ‘A Sense of Place: Ecological Identity as a Driver for Catchment Volunteering’. Australian Journal on Volunteering 8(2): 22–33. Eliade, M. 1958. Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. R. Sheed. New York: Sheed and Ward. Hardin, G. 1968. ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’. Science 162 (13 December): 1243–8. International Water Secretariat (IWS). 2007. ‘Water is Life!’ www.i-s-w.org/en/index.html (accessed Jan. 2008).

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sylvie shaw & andrew francis IUCN. 2004. ‘International Organizations accept “Environmental Flows” as Solution to Social Conflict over Water’. News release, Stockholm, 19 August 2004. www.iucn.org/themes/law/pdfdocuments/ LN190804_prEflowsAug2004.pdf (accessed Jan. 2008). IUCN. 2005. Environmental Flows – Ecosystems and Livelihoods – The Impossible Dream? 2nd Southeast Asia Water Forum, Session Report, 31 August 2005. http://iucn.org/places/vietnam/our_work/ecosystems/assets/eflows_dream.pdf (accessed Jan. 2008). Lavendel, B. 1999. ‘Her Royal Deepness, Marine Biologist Sylvia Earle (Brief Article)’. Animals (1 March), http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FRO/is_2_132/ai_54152688 (accessed Mar. 2008). Lloyd, D. 2000. ‘Fitness, Health & Spirit: High Notes in the Chorus of Life’. Wavelength (August/September). www.wavelengthmagazine.com/2000/as00high.php (accessed Jan. 2008). Safina, C. 2005. ‘A Sea Ethic: Floating the Ark’. Talk delivered to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Huntington, New York, 20 March. http://cmbc.ucsd.edu/content/1/docs/Safina-unitarian.pfd.pdf (accessed Jan. 2008). Shiva, V. 2002. Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit. London: Pluto Press. Spiro, G. 2001. ‘A Conversation with Edgar Mitchell’. The Monthly Aspectarian (November). www.lightworks.com/MonthlyAspectarian/2001/November/conversation.htm (accessed Jan. 2008). Turner, V. 1974. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Ward, C. 1997. Reflected in Water: A Crisis of Social Responsibility. London: Casssell. Worm, B., E. B. Barbier, N. Beaumont et al. 2006. ‘Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services’. Science 314(5800) (3 November): 787–90. Worm, B., E. B. Barbier, N. Beaumont et al. 2007. ‘Response to Comments on “Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services”’. Science 316(5829) (1 June): 1285d.

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I Entering Sacred Space

Editors’ introduction Leafy Sea Dragon, fecund and mysterious. Potent symbol of The Deep. We honour thee. We call forth and reflect on the beauty, depth and significance of the element of water, and of the human relationship to it, at the anthropological level of myth and ancient culture. The contributions provide an overview into the pervasiveness of water in creation myths across the globe: water as the originator, as the chaos from which logos emerged, as the womb of the world. We explore heritages – indigenous, mythological, anthropological, cultural – examining the place of sacred waters as sites of spiritual and cultural power. Our intention is to expose archetypal structures of mind, human nature and culture as they relate to water, to document the voice of the water from past and present as a foundation for understanding the spiritual significance of aquatic environments. The cultural history of water is told through water-centred myths of creation, culture-evolution and an immersed sacred ecology.

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1 ‘Singing through the sea’: song, sea and emotion John J. Bradley

Nine hundred and seventy kilometres south-east of Darwin, in the Northern Territory of Australia, is the small township of Borroloola. It has been home to the Yanyuwa people for the past hundred years as successive waves of colonialism and enforced institutionalized removal from their homelands has taken place. They are really ‘saltwater people’; their homelands are the Sir Edward Pellew Group of Islands and the immediate adjoining coastal regions. While resident at Borroloola they have never forgotten about their homeland. They have fought through the long process of land claims to win back large portions of their homelands, a journey of over thirty years of intense court hearings and government negotiations. The island and sea country has, over all of these periods, been constantly visited, talked about, danced and sung about. It is the sea country that has been at the heart of their emotions even while living in the diaspora of Borroloola. The Yanyuwa people’s own name for themselves is li-Anthawirriyarra, or ‘the people whose spiritual origins are derived from the sea’. In this chapter I intend to allow Yanyuwa voices to sit alongside my own,1 and with regard to the sea it is fitting that a senior Yanyuwa elder Dinah Norman Marrngawi describe what this relationship may entail:

1. This chapter has been written with the support and editorial rights of the Yanyuwa people of the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria in the Northern Territory. I have worked with and for the Yanyuwa people over the past thirty years and, in particular with regard to this chapter, wish to thank Dinah Norman, Jemima Miller and Annie Karrakayny for their support, teaching and assistance. There are also many other men and women who I wish to thank but listing them would be beyond the space available. However, I acknowledge the teachings and time of Johnson Timothy, Steve Johnston, Ron Rickett and Tim Timothy Rakuwurlma and their permission to reproduce a small section of their clan’s song line.

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john j. bradley Let me tell you something, the sea, the saltwater, the waves, they are my mother, the sea is my mother, it is my mother’s Ancestor. I know this, I have known this since I was small. Further I will tell you the sea has names, many names, names for the reefs, names for the sea grass beds, names for the sand bars, and the sea has boundaries, we know these boundaries, they did not come here recently. From the time of the Ancestral beings and our human ancestors they have been here. Our songs and ceremony are also in the sea, they are running through the sea, both along the bottom of the sea and they also rise and travel on the surface of the sea. White people think the sea is empty, that it has no Law, but the Law and the ceremony is there in the salt water, in the fish, in the sea birds the dugong and the turtle, it is there and we knowledgeable people are holding it. When Dinah speaks of the sea being her mother she is not speaking in some vague, over-arching spiritual sense; she is speaking in the sense that her actual biological mother life spirit came from the Ancestor, which is the sea. As a result Dinah is jungkayi, guardian for the sea, for her mother, for its physical reality and for the Law and knowledge that is derived from it. In the Yanyuwa language the sea, antha, is masculine, while the waves, a-rumu, are feminine, male and female combined, no separation. The waves are feminine because they were created by the female Sea Snake Ancestress, a-wirininybirniny. The foaming white crest of a wave is called nanda-rayal; her spit, the fine sea spray from the wave, nanda-minymi; her condensation, the external arch of the wave is nanda-wuku; her back, and the concave interior, nanda-wurdu. Her stomach, the wave and the sea snake are one and the same, there is no separation. Today the Wave and Sea Snake are embodied as both the physical phenomena of the wave, and a massive wave-shaped sand dune on the northern most tip of Vanderlin Island, the largest island in the Sir Edward Pellew Group. This sand dune is located at a place the Yanyuwa call Muluwa, and that subsequent colonial overwriting has named Cape Vanderlin. The sand dune is the source of the power of the Sea Snake and Wave. The Sea Snake is but one of many Ancestors that travelled Yanyuwa country, giving it meaning and imbuing all of the land and sea with an essence or thick substance in Yanyuwa. This is called ngalki. The ngalki is still there in the sea, on the islands, on and in the sea, on the coastal lands of the Yanyuwa and in every living and non-living thing, including Yanyuwa people. There are four different types of this substance, which equate with the four clans that now constitute the Yanyuwa people: Rrumburriya, Mambaliya, Wuyaliya and Wurdaliya. Each original Ancestor carried one of these distinctive essences. The Sea and the Waves are Rrumburriya. It is the clan of Dinah’s mother. But her own clan and that of her siblings, the clan of her father and paternal grandfather also, is Wuyaliya; and their ancestor is the large fish, a-kuridi, the Groper. Descent in Yanyuwa country is paternal and spouses must be found outside of one’s own clan; however, children have important rights of guardianship to the clan sea and lands and living things that belong to their mother. The four clans also represent other relatives. So for Dinah the Ancestral beings of her own Wuyaliya clan she calls jamurimuri, my most senior paternal grandfather; those of the Rrumburriya clan she

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‘singing through the sea’ calls ja-yakurra, my Ancestral mother; those of Wurdaliya she calles ja-wukuku, my most senior mother’s mother; and those of Mambaliya she calls ja-ngabuji, my most senior father’s mother. Thus Dinah is related to all things in Yanyuwa country; she is part of a multitude of invisible threads of connection; she stands in a matrix that sees her able to call all people and all animate and inanimate things in Yanyuwa country as kin. Thus, if they are kin, there can be no non-animation: all things, the sea included, are sentient. In the same way all other Yanyuwa men, women and children, depending on their clan, stand in similar webs of relationships. It is common in much of Australian literature that speaks about indigenous people to call the relationships as described above the ‘Dreaming’. The Yanyuwa people use this term as well, but they also use their own word, Yijan. Both the English word and the Yanyuwa word have nothing to do with sleep. Rather, it is a term that refers to the relationships between people and their country and the Law, narnu-yuwa, that is embedded in the country; and it is this Law that sets out the realm of Yanyuwa experience. It is the Law that embodies their beliefs and, in Aboriginal English, the Law is said to be derived from the ‘Dreamtime’ or the ‘Dreaming’. This English term is misleading, however, because it carries connotations of an imaginary or unreal time. Despite its popular currency among both indigenous peoples such as the Yanyuwa and non-indigenous people, the terms ‘Dreaming’ and ‘Dreamtime’ carry a series of ideological and political connotations stemming from colonial discourses of conquest and dispossession, and these terms are discussed and highlighted by Patrick Wolfe (1991). In much of the discussion that centres on the terms ‘Dreaming’ and ‘Law’ there has been the tendency in the West to construct binaries of the sacred and the secular, or non-sacred. This binary does a huge disservice to the way in which the Yanyuwa people see their place, and the place of all living and non-living things in their country. All things that belong to Yanyuwa country have Law. Law can be their observed biological behaviour, or it can be the songs, rituals and important body designs and objects as well as the powerful places in the land and sea associated with them. Because of the images of relatedness that have been described above, there can be no separation of sacred and secular; rather, all living and non-living things have the potential to carry their more normative forms and become something else, and this potential is always present. Thus the Yanyuwa place themselves and the inhabitants of their country into a system of classification that is primarily based on having or not having Law. In this system there is a flexibility based on the notion of relatedness that is articulated in terms of human and non-human, intention and non-intention, social and non-social, moral and amoral, poetic and non-poetic in particular sociopolitical instances and circumstances. These distinctions are not polar opposites of a dichotomy but two points where the oscillation between vitality and super-vitality of species, people and things can be observed in action. This breaking down of binaries and the replacement of terms such as sacred and secular allows for endless reinterpretations of vitality and supervitality characterizing the living world as known by the Yanyuwa to a point where it is important to state that such classification of relationships not only encompass

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john j. bradley different logics or ways of reasoning but, more importantly, they are grounded in constant social action (cf. Povinelli 1995; Tamisari and Bradley 2005). An illustration of the above concepts can be given by seeing Yanyuwa land and sea as a whole: it is both vital and super-vital. Its vitality is demonstrated by its ability to give and sustain life; its supervitiality is demonstrated by the places of power that are scattered over the land and through the sea but also, importantly, by the way people can interact with it on a daily basis. The present-day Yanyuwa people say that their old people were so strong in the conviction that they had come from the land and sea, and so strong in the Law that they carried and that came from their country, that they could ‘bend the country’, they could ‘crack it’, they could ‘lift it up’ and enable it to respond to them. That is, they could draw it nearer to them just by singing. Thus by singing the country they could make their journey shorter. By singing the country that they were travelling and by singing the destination, time and space were contracted. They would sing: Kayarra wilijibiyu Burndu kajikajila Yajanga banjarri janga Kajikajikaji!

Starting at the first light of day Beginning to sing, moving with speed Watching the country, bending the country Move without effort Quickly, quickly and ever more quickly!

This is a power song, a song of Law; it is a song that comes from the country, and people who know such things are powerful people. It may indeed be called sacred, but it is also of the everyday. Rather it should be seen as a process, where the vital is made super-vital by stressing a power derived from a relationship. In a Yanyuwa understanding such songs can also be used on the sea, as it too is country. The most powerful demonstration of knowledge that relates to country and a Yanyuwa person’s relationship to it is through the singing of kujika, which have come to be known in popular imagination and literature as ‘song lines’ or ‘song cycles’. While T. G. H. Strehlow’s mammoth Songs of Central Australia (1971) created an awareness of song lines and their importance, his intensity in trying to tie their importance to Western literature genres silenced the voices of the Arrente people with whom he worked. These issues are well discussed and analysed in Barry Hill’s Broken Song (2002), which is a detailed discussion of the life and scholarship of Strelhow and, of particular issue, the silence of Strehlow in regard to the people who are still singing the songs that he said were silenced. Bruce Chatwin’s Song Lines (1987), while introducing a general reader to the concept of the song lines, is totally dependent on Strehlow’s understanding of them and fails in any way to address the critical issues of land as sentient and moving in response to kin. While these notions have become somewhat axiomatic in academic circles, how it is that song, land and kin are precisely connected via the medium of song is not as well understood in a wider and more general readership. For the Yanyuwa, kujika are multi-versed, sung narratives that travel through country. They are songs that the Yanyuwa describe as ‘bringing everything into line’

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‘singing through the sea’ and all living and non-living things, peoples’ names, the names of the land, the winds and other seasonal events are given a place in these song. The narratives presented within these pages are spoken forms of these journeys, which are at their most powerful when they are sung. Understanding Yanyuwa song cycles is not simple when many contain in excess of 200 verses that must be sung in order. The feats of memory and knowledge are formidable considering that an older Yanyuwa man or woman may have knowledge of four to five song lines, sometimes more, and this then could mean that they have knowledge of over 400 kilometres of song. At one level it is possible to call these songs environmental narratives but that is underestimating their purpose and content. The terms ‘environment’ and ‘landscape’ are used by the teachers of Western knowledge to describe the places in which we find ourselves living and working and spending our lived existences. In Yanyuwa, the same word would be ‘awara’, which can mean earth, land, place, soil, possessions, sea, sand bar, mud bank reef and home. Awara is summarized as meaning ‘country’, but again, the meaning is far different from what it might be expected to mean in English. Country, which is also the sea, is spoken about in the same way that people talk about their living human relatives. People cry about country, they worry about country, they listen to country and long to visit country. In return, country can feel, hear and think; country can also accept and reject, and be hard or easy, just as living people can be to each other. So it is no surprise that sometimes people will also address each other as ‘country’, that is, as close relatives who bring to that relationship all of their past experience, their present and their future. So when people talk about singing their country, all of these relationships are present. It is not just a song about the environment. However, the term ‘environment’ is still a useful starting-point in trying to understand a Yanyuwa understanding of country and the powerful link that song has to this relationship of people and country. What needs to be first understood is that the verses of the song lines, the kujika, are a distillation of not only the potential to negotiate and influence the environment but also a rich imagery that expresses qualities that are seen as indicative of the health and vitality of all the living and non-living things on the land and in the sea and river systems. A study of the etymology of the word ‘environment’ demonstrates that it originally also contained ideas of vitality. In old French the word viron refers to surrounded-ness and comes from the verb, virer, meaning to turn and transfer, which in modern times has come to mean to change colour. The two Latin relatives of this word are ‘virero’ and ‘vibro’: the former expresses notions of flourishing and vigour while the latter expresses curling, dynamic or tremulous movement that causes shimmering effects and images of gleaming and glimmering. The linguistic history of the word ‘environment’ has implications in that, originally, the Western perceptions of the environment come from the idea of being surrounded by a flourishing world full of movement and brightness, a shimmering place world (cf. Cousin et al. 1994; Lewis 2000). For the Yanyuwa people this is the ideal that the song lines celebrate, a country that contains images of brilliance and brightness that signify the physical, emotional and spiritual health of the country, and it is these images that are contained in the verses of the song lines. There are verses that speak of the bright white flanks and muzzle of

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john j. bradley the dingo, the shark rich in flesh and fat, the Seven Sisters or Pleiades star constellation shining brightly or the glistening of the sea spray on the head of a shark. Thus song is not just restricted to land but also speaks of the sea and sky. The songs become a way of engaging through sight and sound and human emotion with the essence of the creative power, vitality and nourishment that still exist in the country because of the Dreaming, the original Ancestors of the Yanyuwa. When the country is well, when it is content, the animals that call that country home are fat. Animals without fat are not healthy and it indicates that something is wrong with the land and, consequentially, the Yanyuwa people begin critical selfexamination of their actions in relation to each other and country to try to discover the source of such unhealthy beings. Fat too has a quality of shininess and many song-line verses talk of things being ‘fat’. Conditions of fat speak also of displays of brilliance, where each species and its health indicates the strength and wellbeing of country and of its ability to nourish and be nourished in return. There are two examples of song cycle portions in this article (Figs 1 and 2),2 which at first viewing and reading may appear to be superficial and descriptive; however, the process of singing just one verse, let alone the many others, draws both the singer and the listeners back to the original time of beginning, to the original text of creation. The songs create a powerful repetition of ongoing dialogue between the past and the present whereby each singing, even of one verse, is an interpretation of Ancestral events, of country, Law and kin, as well as knowledge of the rituals associated with each Ancestral being and the narratives that surround them. Each song verse then is like a keyhole that, when peeped through, leads to another room full of understanding about the Law that then leads to another door with another keyhole. The song-cycle verses are keys to the ongoing accumulation of knowledge about the specifics of the Ancestral beings, their country and of the living kin that call that country home. Thus song is a fabric constructed of many, many webs and, as knowledge is acquired, a multidimensional structure is built. But it is a structure of the mind, drawn from the land and sea, that is brought into being and articulated through speech, song, ritual action and moving through country and over sea. Jal barram ba Ngang ka ku min dini

White-bellied sea eagle calls out over the surface of the sea

Jal barramba Bu larr ku min dini

White-bellied sea eagle white chest feathers shining

2. These illustrations were drawn by the author with the permission of the li-Yanyuwa li-wirdiwalangu (Yanyuwa elders group). The drawing of creatures of Law was, until quite recently in Yanyuwa society, associated with actions of sorcery and the breaking of Yanyuwa Law more generally. The drawing of species by the author with the permission of the elders has been seen as a way of avoiding some of these issues. The drawings are taken from a much larger work in progress that has mapped and drawn over 400 kilometres of song lines

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‘singing through the sea’

Figure 1 From Lingambalngambal the kujika turns north-west for a short way and comes to Kuwirnyibarnku, and then the kujika turns east and comes to the reef of Nungkariwurra.

Ngarra burna Yulu yu Ngu yu ngu yu

Blue bone fish swimming through the sea

Ngarra burna Yulu yu Ngu yu nguyu Murni ngurna

Blue bone fish swimming through the sea they gather on the reef

Warr ngan du ngan du Lham bi ji kundu rurru

Storm winds from the north bending all before them

Wi rrarra baka bulu ji Darri darri Rainbow Serpent from

Centre Island (Munkumungkarnda) rising from the water, it is clearly visible

Ngan jarr budarni Ngan jarr bun da

From the country of Kuwirnyibarnku the tongue of the Rainbow Serpent can be seen, tongue flashing like lightning

Wala ya li birrku Ngarda Yulurr yu lurrun badi

The heads of the whales surface, as they travel side-by-side

Bayal ma kurra Di janynyng kurr Mulam burr bu rrandi

Large Tiger Shark stripes on its body show clearly

Aya baba raku Ki-yangurr lamarr Ka-rarra minya

Large Tiger Shark, His dorsal fin rises clearly from the water

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john j. bradley Wuku warrba Ngarda ni-ngarda Bul manji manji

The liver of the large Tiger Shark is rich in fat

Nung ka rinja jangu Nung kari wurru ngu yu

The reef Nungkariwurra in the midst of the sea

Nung ka rinja jangu Nung kari wurru nguyu Birlim birli ma

The reef Nungkariwurra in the midst of the sea tidal currents swirl around the reef

Jal barram ba Bularr ku mirn dini

White-bellied sea eagle white chest feathers shining

Figure 2 Around and around the kujika circles the reef at Nungkariwurra. It is here that the Manankurra Rrumburriya men hand over the kujika to the Rrumburriya men of Vanderlin and North Island. The kujika circles and then moves eastwards to Yulbarra.

Jal barram ba Nga durru nga durru

White-bellied sea eagle glides, wings outstretched

Marn kalha nyam bu Dari dari lanya

Spotted catshark swims the bottom of the sea

Ngarri barring ki Diji diji ngam ba

The Wobbegong shark rests on the bottom of the sea

Ki yirri dini banji Mulu ja mulu jarru

Leopard shark swims near the reef searching for food

Nya-mari nari burlu Ki lirri bu manirri

Eagle ray swims the surface of the sea 24

‘singing through the sea’ Nya-mari nari burlu Ki lirr bu manirri Jala manu manu

Eagle ray swims the surface of the sea it breaks the surface

Kam bum ba Bam burr wala wala

Large black stingray with strong tail barbs

Murr bundu ngularna Birri ji war umala

Shovel-nosed ray swims close to the bottom of the sea

Ngul ku bam bu rrirri Bilan daya rnani

Stingrays swimming together in large numbers

Arla la arla la Nyam burr mijin daya

Suckerfish cling to the Tiger Shark

Nuka nuka Bila ra nuka Ngaba lirra burru

Moonfish swim flat bodies shining in the sea

Ngarin ba ngari yang ka Di jaynyng ka barra

Red spot crab rests near the reef

Lam barri jinda wurru Ma-wurrang kayi wurru

Blue swimmer crab swims through the sea

Li-wurni wurni Mi yalim ba yanba

Mullets swim the shallow waters of the beach country

The song cycles are the primary structures on which relationships and ritual are built, many of these rituals being powerful so their knowledge is restricted. However, it can be said here that ceremonies become the most intense and practical demonstration of Ancestral power and authority, their origins in country and how people are related and inseparable from ceremony and country. The actual songs are, of course, at their most powerful when they are being sung, however, certain Yanyuwa men and women are also skilled at describing the path of the song using the spoken word. The following example describes the path of the Tiger Shark song line as told by a senior owner of that song, Ron Ricket Murundu. In this text the understanding of the kujika rising up from the freshwater well, travelling through the river and then out to the sea and islands, and eventually to be ‘put down’ into the freshwater lake named Walala, is dramatically told: The eye, the freshwater well of the Tiger Shark is there at Manankurra; it is there that the Tiger Shark climbed up singing: the shark was at the well singing, he

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john j. bradley was sending his song back to the country where he had travelled, we are naming the well Dungkurrumaji, my father’s name. The Tiger Shark was at the well singing and so it is we are singing the well and the trees that surround it, then we are singing the double-barred finches and the bar-shouldered doves that come to drink at the well. Onwards then we are carrying the song and we are singing the very tall cycad palms which have as their personal name Yulungurri, the same as the shark, then we are singing the white barked gum tree which is named in the song as Karrijiji, the same name as my father’s brother. We are singing northwards, and we descend down into the depths of the river. We are singing the mouth of the shark. Down in the depths of the river we are singing, we sing the bundle of soaking cycad and we follow the high tide when the current is flowing strongly downstream. We continue singing northwards and then we are climbing, up on to the riverbank, onwards now along the riverbank we are singing. We are singing the tall steep sides of the eastern riverbank, it is the mainland, yes we are still singing on the mainland, we are singing the camps for the old people. We are singing the children who will not stop talking, we sing the bark canoes and the old man making the fishing net, the cycad bread and the footpaths along the top of the riverbank. Onwards and northwards we follow the path of this song; in its fullness and completeness we are singing it. We are getting to the bush cucumber as is grows on the savannah grasslands, and we are singing the brolgas as they gather at the lagoons and stand on the plains. We are leaving the savanna grasslands and are coming back down to the riverbank; we are singing the black flying foxes in the camps, and we are singing the pink-eared duck, then on, northwards, ever northwards we are singing the tiger mullet. Then we are singing the high tide as it is washing ever downwards and northwards. In the midst of the tide we are singing the salt-water crocodile as it floats on the high tide, and further northwards, in the river, in its depths we are going, northwards ever northwards we are travelling, and we come to that place that we call Nungkayiyirrinya, it is at the mouth of the river, the east bank. At this place we are singing the saltwater crocodile floating on the high tide, and then we go down into the broad expanse of the river, and on the east bank we are singing the nest of the white-bellied sea eagle and then in the depths of the river mouth we are singing the sea mullet and the mud crab and the eagle ray. Ever northwards we are singing, the tide is pulling and swirling ever northwards. We sing the immature Tiger Shark, we are singing the sand bar at the river mouth, which we name Limabinja and then we are singing the fully grown Tiger Shark, yes we are naming him, my senior paternal grandfather. We are singing in the depths of the river channel, ever downwards and northwards and we are singing the manta ray and then we are singing the black kingfish and then again we are singing the Tiger Shark. Now we are in the depths of the sea and it is open before us, and we are singing the bottle nosed dolphin and the irrawaddy dolphin. Ever northwards we are singing the sea grass beds, the dugong cows and their calves, the bull that strikes

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‘singing through the sea’ the water with his flukes, and we are singing all of the other kinds of dugong. Ever northwards and onwards, onwards we are singing the wide expanse of the open sea and we sing the point where sea and horizon meet, we are singing the wind, the storm wind from the north that comes from the islands. We are moving through the country of Wurlaburla and Lingambalngambal, they are in the depths of the sea, onwards we go, through the sea and then we come to the reef, we are singing the reef that we are naming Nungkariwurra, [see Figures 1 and 2 for kujika at this point] we sing the sharks, all kinds of sharks, the wobbegong, the leopard shark and the cat shark, the manta ray, and then the parrotfish. We are climbing upwards now, we are coming out of the sea and we are giving this song to those other people, to the island dwellers, we give it to them, but still we sing with them, they are our kinsmen, we are all Rrumburriya. We have carried the song to that place, to that reef called Nungkariwurra, and we are still singing however the island dwellers are in the lead now. We who have carried this song from the mainland, through the sea, the song that has its true beginnings at Manankurra, we stand behind now, but still we are singing. We are climbing up into the shallow sea and we are singing the saltwater crocodile and the sea spray as it splashes on the rocks, we are singing the tidal currents as they swirl near to the land, and we are singing my sister, her name is there, her name is Malarndirri, there in the north as we come out on the land at Yulbarra. We are climbing up out of the sea and we are singing the saltwater crocodile in the swamp with the paperbark trees. Up and ever onwards and northwards we are singing the messmate trees and we are singing the children and people carrying water from the spring waters that are there. We are singing the cabbage palm and northward and further inland. We are climbing upwards and we are at Ruwaliyarra and we are singing the blue-tongued lizard and then the death adder, we climb up on to the high sandstone ridges, high up on to the back of the land and there we are singing the spotted nightjar and the quoll, and then her, that one that remains alone, the rock wallaby, we are singing her, and then north-eastwards and onwards we are singing and descending and singing the paperbark trees and the white berry bush and then again we are singing the paperbark and messmate trees. We are going north-eastwards, then for a little while we are turning east, and we come to the creek we are calling Wurrkulalarra. We are there in the waters of the creek and we are singing the blind Rainbow Serpent, it belongs there, we go to the mouth of the creek and we are singing the sea, the sea grass that is growing there and the flying fox camps in the mangroves and the rubbish that floats on the tide and the spotted eagle rays. Then we are turning away from the sea and we are heading northwards, twisting and turning but always climbing up and going northwards but we are merely singing the cabbage palms and the messmate trees, then are getting to the parrot, the little corella and we are singing that bird and then spring waters, we are singing the file snake and the brolga and then into the west we travel and then northwards we come to Walala (Lake Eames) we come to it on the west side, yes we are meeting that place we call Walala.

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john j. bradley Round and round the waters of this place we are singing and from the north we come into the waters of this place. We are singing the dolphin and then the Rainbow Serpent that is there, we are singing his head, his tongue, back and tail, we are singing the Rainbow Serpent that only belongs to this place. We are singing we are carrying this song and it is nearing daylight. We are descending into the depths of the water; we are singing the side of the lake that is named Walala. It is near to daylight, and we are placing this song down, we are putting it down into the depths of the waters at Walala, we are leaving it here, at Walala, we are placing it down, we are putting it down, we are leaving it, it is finished. This description of the path of the Tiger Shark song line is thick with meaning: there are statements of kinship and politics and the nature of shared responsibilities of the song by kinsmen; there are names of both kinfolk and names of country mentioned in the text, which reinforce the understanding of the human–country relationship; there are many species of birds, plants and animals mentioned, all of which are also considered to be kin to the owners of this song. Thus a Tiger Shark, a wave, the open expanse of the sea can be seen for what it is, in the way that most of us would apprehend it, but for the Yanyuwa such things also are ancestors and have ancestral Law; they are kin. By the singing of the songs the shift from vital to super-vital is carried out according to context. There are times when the sea is just the sea, the tiger shark just the tiger shark; but at other times they are relatives, and the action of singing brings forth their immediacy. But perhaps the most vivid impression that can be drawn from this text is the sense of constant movement or engagement with that which is already there embedded in the land and sea. These song cycles were placed into the earth and sea by the original Ancestral beings, so it is as if the land and sea themselves have become a recording device and the song is still there constantly moving, only waiting for human kin to give it voice. These songs it could be argued are Australia’s oldest music, a most ancient libretto embedded in the country, which speak of origins and beginnings, and ways of understanding the richness of this continent. With songs such as this there can be no terra nullius or indeed marae nullius, a sea without inhabitants. On reading the above text it also becomes clear why the Yanyuwa often refer to song cycles as a-yabala, a path or road, and to sing a song cycle is called wandayarra a-yabala, following the (pre-existing) road. In the Yanyuwa language it is possible to talk about the act of singing as an activity of the past, present or future, however the song cycles that move through the earth and sea can only ever be spoken about in the present tense; they have their own agency, they can exist for all time, even without being sung, they are moving (ja-wingkayi), they are flowing (ja-wujbanji), they are running (ja-wulumanji), they are in the earth, they are in the sea, they are ever present, even if there is no one left to sing the song line. As the song line moves through a particular stretch of country or sea, then that song line still exists: it cannot be erased or dug out of the earth. It is wrong and demeaning to the authority of the song cycles to see them merely as road maps to survival in the land, as having only a life-saving function to be part of

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‘singing through the sea’ a structuralist, functionalist part of a culture. While many of the songs name lagoons and freshwater wells, many of the songs also travel through the depths of the sea or through thick impenetrable mangrove forests; they travel as the Ancestral beings travelled, and they did not always travel with human kin in mind. Furthermore, from a Yanyuwa perspective, clear understandings of these songs can only be truly understood by knowing the country they are moving through. This does not mean that a singer has to travel the route of the song; rather, it is hoped that the singer has had enough of life’s experience on country to actually know the physical characteristics of the land that he is singing. People can sing song lines many kilometres from their source but still have an active engagement with the country being sung. Song functions as a compendious mnemonic and encyclopaedia of knowledge of country that begins to explain to outsiders how much knowledge of country is required for survival: survival not just in the physical sense, but also in a spiritual and emotional sense. The song lines are like a conduit of power placed by the Ancestral beings and to sing these songs is to reveal original creative energy and potency. It is for this reason that these songs are sung carefully, and in order, and then placed back into the earth or lagoons or parts of the sea with particular care. The power that is awakened must also be put back to rest. The following words belong to the chant that is sung at the conclusion of singing song lines and demonstrates most clearly the idea of returning the song carefully back into the country. Yarrbada yarrbayarrba Dunanajada wijka rarra Bardiyu wijka rarra Bardiyu juju Balya juju Balyu

Song of our Law, We have carried you And now we put you back Into the depths of the country A long way down into the depths of the country A long way down we put you to rest.

When people sing these songs, the country in all its wealth and vitality opens up in the singers’ minds. They are seeing the land anew as it once was and they hope it will always be. A distillation of the power and sentience of the country is being revealed once more, and it is as if the singers are the loudspeakers for what they know already exists in the country. The country and sea sings and reveals itself through its human kin. Yanyuwa song cycles enact a celebration of the specificity of their country and knowledge. The learning of these song cycles requires true scholarship, thus they are objects of high value and consequently must always be carefully negotiated with due respect in order to maintain the balance of both the country and its living and non-living kin. It is the words of the song cycles that provide the means to unify and extend the social community, and how they can come to understand the various species and parts of nature and thus to see time and space as a continuum not as separate events. Songs such as these become the beginning of Law rather than a product of it. The very sounds of the song cycles are also the sound of the subject being sung, warlamakamaka, the broad open sea, or warriyangalayawu, the hammerhead shark. The very syllables resonate with the super-vital; the sounds combine to make up words that

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john j. bradley give meaning. But at one level meaning is also seen to be secondary because the very words are seen to be building blocks of Yanyuwa country. Song, to use an analogy, is a repetition of the country’s DNA strand and to sing is to bring forward all of a country’s biology, geography, meteorology, its phenomenology, indeed the very biography of the place. Song is a way in which the Yanyuwa people negotiate with their country. Often in the context of Western meeting structures and negotiations, the people meeting are urged to strive for a ‘win–win situation’, so that all parties will walk away satisfied with the negotiations. In a comparable way, when Yanyuwa people sing and discuss the country they sing, they are striving to understand and accommodate its needs, so that country will in turn continue to meet theirs. The slow passage of the foot and the dugout canoe have been replaced by the speed of the car and motorboat; things once learned only by stopping and an easy pace within the world are passed by. As Annie Karrakayny, a senior Yanyuwa woman, once said: ‘the world moves too fast for all of us now’. How, then, can the world be slowed down? We need to slow the pace to show the detail in the spaces that today are quickly passed by: the birds, fish, dugong, the nature of the sea and other animals, seldom seen, and the chestnut rail that ‘lifts up’ the mangroves, the call of the red-capped plover that guards the sea, the sea snake that is a wave. This is not to be too romantic about all of this, but for the old people who remember, as with so many memories, there is nostalgia and love for what can be remembered. Kujika, the singing of country and sea, is about love and the lifting up of space and place, of the only home that people have ever known. Constantly these songs are about memories as well. They become distilled with commentaries. Thus as new commentaries are added, old ones may be forgotten or absorbed, and in doing so the meanings are redefined and shaped to add sense to the meaning of the lives of the present generation. When sung in the proper manner kujika becomes an invocation, a conjuration of the enchanted, that brings with it the experience that it describes; it is never ‘history’ or memory, nor a metaphor for something else. Kujika is of the now, of the ever being. When performed with full knowledge and enthusiasm, it becomes actual re-creation. Kujika includes the experience itself. Yanyuwa country is not a wilderness, not even the sea is unknown space: it is only wilderness if there is no knowledge. Wilderness, in a Yanyuwa sense, is a place that is devoid of reverence and revelation. The tragedy that is now occurring on Yanyuwa country can be likened to a radio or television that is turned right down. Technically the sounds, the music, the conversations are still there, and there is a generation that has chosen not to hear them any more, or has not been given the gift of knowing how. Country is critical for educating people about song. Without the links the relationship becomes strained, segmented and eventually nonexistent, song without country, country without singing and hunting, without dance, without language makes country weak, ‘low down’. There is no emotional engagement, it is not being ‘lifted up’ by the constancy of people and their presence and their emotional need to be on country. In a quite strict Yanyuwa view of their cosmology, if something is connected to absolutely nothing, then symbolically, linguistically, physically and psychologically it

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‘singing through the sea’ is literally meaningless. And in the same way, if something is connected to everyone and everything it is totally meaningful. To be meaningful there are rules; there is the Law, and it is the Law that speaks of how country works. If the Law or the rules are followed, if we ‘play by them’, then there is a reward, an understanding of why people inhabit country and just what potential that can offer any one individual. The ultimate potential is to know how and why everything in Yanyuwa country is connected to everything else: to reach the point where life is supercharged, permeated and over brimming with purpose and meaning. On a day-to-day basis, it is possible to be oblivious to these things; and then there are moments when something happens or events demand that we see the connection. We are astonished that we could not see them until that moment. These are often the revelations of the sacred, the super-vital in our lives and in the country. Just beneath the surface, each person is linked to every other person and to every other organism, and there is a responsibility to preserve these invisible threads of connection. Knowledge of kujika and country is a way of sensing the presence of a network of mutual interdependence that binds us to others both human and non-human, both animate and ‘non-animate’. It perhaps is a common-sense Western understanding that it is impossible for a person to imagine his or her conception. However, I have met and travelled with people who tell in extraordinary detail the events that surrounded their conception and ultimate birth. There are people who relate to each other as wurranganji, kin derived from the depths of the water, people who shared the same site, the same freshwater well, or stretch of sea, from which their ardirri, conception spirits were derived, and it is kujika that celebrate these relationships. For people who know such things a single verse of kujika is a potent recreation of the event, a tangible and sometimes overwhelmingly emotional linkage that speaks beyond the humanness of physical conception and birth to a conception from country and its super-vital energy and authority. The consciousness of the Yanyuwa world is dependent on the continued fabric of kinship, country and Law, regardless of contemporary, radical and, all too often, tragic changes. The older generation knew, and there are those that still know, that their bodies and minds are composed of this fabric, and that the meaning of life and death is inherent in it, and perhaps, just perhaps, the deepest knowledge they possess is to know what life is really about. Kujika is about the very beginning pulses of Yanyuwa time. The oral tradition surrounding the kujika means that there is never one editorial. So-called mutually exclusive accounts are woven together and this allows for an understanding of a multifaceted nature of reality, and in this there is the wisdom that brilliantly conveys the message of country so that it leaves the listener, the learner and the singer in the same state of confusion about what ‘really’ happened (as if reality were only one thing at a time). For the men and women who know kujika, everything happened and it all happened at once, and everything and everyone is there and distilled; nothing is nothing, and everything is everything; it is all the same but different. Confusing? Not really, because people and country and all that it contains are needed to make clear the way these things are learned. It is too hard to explain; it

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john j. bradley needs to be experienced, needs to sensed and then, once the experience has been had, it is possible to move on to a situation that begins, ‘All right, I’ll tell you a story …’. Kujika are texts of the sacred, of the super-vital that conceal myriad meanings. Ordinary everyday words cannot contain them, thus they require the special language of the Dreamings themselves, the language of the plants, fish, dugong, waves, birds, rainbow serpents and all the other human and non-human entities that are in the embrace of country. The commentary surrounding the words is necessarily fluid because each singing redefines the meaning of all the previous stories. The ‘new’ singing ripples backwards and forwards through all the previous singings and thus new stories about ancient songs are constantly being invented. My Yanyuwa teachers have constantly taught me that all the things in their country are just the way they are supposed to be (leaving modern encroachments aside), the way they must be. However, to completely understand this there must be a surrender of ego, a submerging in the flow of song and narrative on, in and through country; and in doing so we also learn that much of what is called Law. The merging of the ‘sacred’ with the ‘secular’ is all dependent on relationships of affection and shared purpose as well as continuing unashamed accounts of biography and autobiography. Ultimately, however, kujika lived constantly in the minds of those that are now deceased and it lives in the memories of those still alive, and for those who cannot sing, the word kujika still conjures important issues and moments of introspection of the wealth that still courses through country. The value of kujika was probably best summed up by the Yanyuwa senior Law man, Jerry Brown, when he said, at the end of an important land claim meeting in 1993: It is the kujika that holds us Yanyuwa speakers as one, it is the most important things for us. White people do not know this, they do not understand, they have no ears to hear the country, but for us Yanyuwa speakers it is the Law, the kujika is the road in the country that we follow with a single intensity, it is for us and it holds us tight.

Bibliography Chatwin, B. 1987. The Songlines. London: Jonathan Cape. Cousin, P., L. S. Knight & L. Robertson. 1994. Collins French School Dictionary and Grammar. Glasgow: HarperCollins. Hill, B. 2002. Broken Song: T. G. H. Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession. North Sydney: Random House Australia. Lewis, C. 2000. An Elementary Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Povinelli, E. 1995. ‘Do Rocks Listen? The Cultural Politics of Apprehending Australian Aboriginal Labor’. American Anthropologist 97(3): 505–18. Strehlow, T. G. H. 1971. Songs of Central Australia. Sydney: Angus and Robinson. Tamisari, F. & J. Bradley. 2005. ‘To Have and Give Law: Animal Names, Place and Event’. In Animal Names, eds A. Minelli, G. Ortalli & G. Sanga, 419–38. Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze lettere ed Arti. Wolfe, P. 1991. ‘On Being Woken Up: The Dreamtime in Anthropology and in Australian Settler Culture’. Comparative Studies in Society and History 33(2): 197–224.

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2 Water of life, water of death: Pagan notions of water from antiquity to today Dieter Gerten

Introduction Hundreds of years separate most modern societies from those times when the world was believed to be populated and shielded by gods and other non-human beings. Irrespective of the enormous cultural upheavals (including transitions in religious beliefs) in Europe and elsewhere, water is always indispensable for human wellbeing and survival. At the same time, water always was, and still is, a potential threat to humans. It can be so abundant that it inundates settlements, so scarce that humans and ecosystems suffer from droughts, or so salty or contaminated that it becomes undrinkable or even lethal. People have therefore tried to cope with the ambivalent nature of water and particularly to tame its unpleasant, sometimes dangerous face, be it spiritually through direct communication with the forces manifest in water, or technically through engineering solutions. Embracing both worldviews, this chapter explores facets of earlier religious approaches to inland waters and the sea in ancient Europe, specifically in Greek, Roman, Germanic and Celtic societies, and follows the route of these beliefs into the Christian era up to contemporary neo-Pagan convictions. When modern Pagans integrate water in their rituals, they often resort to practices, beliefs and myths from ancient times, for example by referring to legendary water creatures, by invoking the healing, cleansing, creative and foretelling powers of water, or by reinstatement of wells, water bodies or riverine sites that are thought to have been early Pagan cult sites. Although there is a solid understanding of European Pagan myths from ancient texts, inscriptions and medieval recordings of oral tales, this knowledge is likely to be incomplete and probably biased by religious and emotional presuppositions of the authors of the texts. Therefore, one can only speculate whether modern Pagan practices and worldviews really reflect ancient ones, that is, whether they are truly in line with a Pagan tradition. It is thus inevitable that contemporary

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dieter gerten endeavours to continue such traditions include romanticized assumptions about the past, and to a degree, they also blend views and images from different epochs and regions (Hutton 2000; Maier 2003). This fact does not automatically discredit these attempts; in essence it does not matter whether they are based on a historically correct or a fictitious past, as they represent a modern spirituality that is not in need of historic rationalization. In general, Pagan water myths are an integral part of Western culture and have served as a source of inspiration for many centuries. The spread of mystical and symbolic beliefs and practices of water cults among early European Pagans and their survival in folklore, literature and the arts throughout the past two millennia are offered as sources for possible inspiration to those with a sense of place and a concern for our aqueous environments.

‘Every spring is sacred’ (Servius): water in ancient Greek and Roman worldviews To understand the role of water in pre-Christian religious life in Europe, it is necessary to get an idea of how nature as a whole was perceived in those times. According to Brian Hayden (2003), the Greeks and the Romans believed that humans are situated in a natural hierarchy above plants and animals, but below land and water spirits and the prime pantheon. However, the supposition that nature was situated below humans did not imply that it could be controlled by humans. By contrast, evidence suggests that the forces of nature and water were perceived as threats, which were under the command of the (major) gods and goddesses; hence, there was a tendency to consider natural phenomena, and natural disasters in particular, divine acts (ibid.). According to this worldview, people would have tried to disturb the deities as little as possible, or to appease them by offerings and other rites of devotion and compensation. Thus, the Greeks and Romans apparently invested parts of the landscape with an aura of history and myth, with local (minor) gods attending specific, sacred places (MacMullen 1997; Dowden 2000, 2002). Springs, rivers and inland water bodies were crucial elements of these sacred landscapes. In the Greek imagination especially, the springs were allied with local, female water nymphs known as naiads, the relatives of numerous male and female land, river and sea spirits such as potameides, limnades, hesperids, sirens and okeanids, which probably descend from a common Indo-European source. According to Jennifer Larson (2001), the water nymphs were multifaceted supernatural beings holding many religious and social functions. Their most important characteristics are: association with a water source, typically a spring with which they are often personified; cultic function – they were worshipped in rural cults as providers of freshwater and for their healing properties; as daughters of a (river) god; immortality or at least a lifespan far longer than that of humans; a ritual function in important stages of female life; ambiguity – water nymphs were often described as sexually desirable,

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water of life, water of death undomesticated and without familial restrictions. The cultural and religious importance of these naiads is believed to have stretched beyond their microhabitat towards the surrounding land and mountainous areas that formed a physical and spiritual unity with the actual watery place. Interestingly, naiads could have liaisons with mortal men, some of whom were overwhelmed by the loveliness of the nymphs and sooner or later became obsessed by them. Such cases of nympholepsy were always positive or, at worst, ambiguous events in archaic and classical Greek tales. However, the liaison between the nymph Echo and Narcissus, the handsome son of the river Cephissus, went awry. After spurning Echo, Narcissus was condemned to fall in love with his reflection in the water surface, which he stared and stared at until he died. A related tale is the unsolved disappearance of young Hylas, who was lured into the water by nymphs (Larson 2001). In the Greco-Roman world, it appears that almost every spring had a sacred status for the simple fact that it provided water. The Romans even celebrated a festival of the springs in October, when they were full again after the long and dry southern European summer. Other springs, especially hot ones, were visited in order to make use of their assumed healing properties, and those who were ill often resorted to the use of thermal waters, for example, by incubation, that is, by sleeping in temple rooms encircling the water source, so as to receive healing dreams. The cleanliness of freshwater was believed to remove not only illness but also impurities in general. As an example of the latter function, the ancient Greeks habitually used the clear water of springs and streams for the ritual washing of statues and other representations of gods, for bathing newly wed couples and newborn children, and for other initiations, especially in the various mystery cults (see Dowden 2000; Giebel 2003; Wolf 2004). It seems that the qualities of freshwater were honoured by a variety of offerings, mostly coins, flowers, votive tablets and also living animals, as well as the creation of altars, stone formations and temples. Charles Sprawson (2000) even suggests a connection between springs and the Olympic Games. The games were held in an area with many springs, and winners were buried near them after they had died. The water of springs also served as a medium in prophecies. The Greek oracles were often located near springs, and from the water’s condition it was determined whether the circumstances for foretelling were auspicious. Before receiving the oracle’s advice, the people seeking advice had to undergo various rituals. First, they had to take a bath or drink from the sacred water, and the priests and seers employed the hydromantic power of the spring’s water when questioning the oracle. Other hydromantic rituals apparently made use of mirroring water surfaces (Alpers 1988; Wolf 2004). Water also seems to have been used in funeral rites: Robert Wolf (2004) mentions that the dead were washed before burial and, since it was assumed that they suffered thirst, they were sometimes buried together with drinking vessels. The many ritual functions of water in ceremonies that involved a cleansing ritual were common practice in (for example) Mesopotamia and Egypt as well, and have been partly sustained in Christian times (Fox 1988). Like springs, rivers also served as cult objects in Greco-Roman times. The Romans believed that the flowing rivers continue the miracle of life that emerged from their

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dieter gerten

Figure 1 Ancient Roman statue of the Tigris river god, changed to Tiber (by adding the wolf and the twins) in the sixteenth century when Michelangelo redesigned the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome. (Photo: Andreas Diesel, with permission)

source, the spring. According to Reinhard Falter (1999) and Ken Dowden (2002), crossing rivers was a matter of particular importance, so much so that permission was asked of the river before traversal. Many rivers were seen as manifestations of gods, particularly in ancient Greece, and later, under Greek influence, in Italy as well. The Romans frequently portrayed their river gods in anthropomorphic sculptures as well as in mosaics, and on pillars and coins (see Fig. 1). Water nymphs were also depicted on Greek coins and vases (Larson 2001), well into the Christian Byzantine era. Rivers were also regarded as conveyers to the realm of the dead, as in many mythologies worldwide (Selbmann 1995). In Greek mythology, the dead were ferried across the river Styx to the underworld (the Hades); while in Norse mythology, the Gjöll, one of eleven rivers originating from the well Hvergelmir and eventually reaching the underworld (Hel), apparently had a similar function. According to a series of fourthcentury BCE Greek funerary inscriptions – probably connected with a private mystery religion, or with Orphic poetry (Zuntz 1971) – the dead drank from a river called Lethe. This act caused complete forgetfulness so that the dead would not remember their past life after reincarnation. In contrast, there was also a belief in another underworld river called Mnemosyne, named after a titaness who personified memory, from which initiates were made to drink when they died, so they could remember everything. Similarly, and according to Pausanius’s Guide to Greece, those who wanted to consult the oracle in Boeotia had to drink alternately from two springs also called Lethe (causing supplicants to forget all they had been thinking) and Mnemosyne (causing them to remember what they saw after their descent in Hades). Water served as an element of pleasure in many other (not strictly religious) contexts in everyday Greco-Roman life, as is manifest, for instance, in the outstanding urban architecture of Roman spas and wells. Also, swimming in rivers and the sea was common in the Mediterranean region as well as in the more northern parts of Europe, although Sprawson (2000) argues that these activities were suppressed by the later Christians for moral reasons. 36

water of life, water of death Floods were thought to be sent by furious gods for punishment of, for example, transgressive behaviour of people and/or their leaders. The frequent flooding of towns by the river Tiber and its tributaries was interpreted as a warning sign for even worse things to come. Holger Sonnabend (1999) puts forward the hypothesis that the Romans were aware of the fact that they themselves contributed to these floods, for instance, through river regulation, but this awareness did not give rise to moral appeals for environmental protection. It has even been suggested (Radkau 2002) that the prime reason why the Greeks and Romans communed with their land and water gods was to gain power over such potentially destructive natural processes, whereas articulation of respect for nature and the gods was deemed of minor importance. The sea also played a significant role in classical mythology, in which especially seawater’s rowdiness was believed to be an expression of forces used in quarrels among gods and between them and mortals. The seas were thought to be inhabited and controlled by a number of gods and other creatures, including sea monsters and the fish-tailed, mermen-like tritons. Okeanos was the ruler of the oceans, which were thought of as the circumradiance of the world; with his sister Thetis he begot three thousand rivers. The Greek sea god Poseidon (and the corresponding Roman god Neptune) – brother of Zeus (god of the heavens) and Hades (god of the underworld), and husband of the sea nymph Amphitrite – was thought to reside in a golden underwater palace and to ride over the waves on a seahorse’s back. When Poseidon became enraged, he churned up the water with a pitchfork, an act that carried the risk of flooding on land. Greek mythology is replete with monsters and other dangerous creatures and phenomena related to the sea; an example is Homer’s Odyssey (see e.g. Burn 2003). Voyaging over the sea, Odysseus passed the island of the sirens, the terrifying maelstrom Charybdis that alternately sucked down and threw up the heaving water, and the equally horrifying Scylla, a six-headed monster that snatched passing dolphins, seals and mariners. According to legend, the sirens, dreadful women with bird tails, lured travellers on to their island with their magical chants. The approaching crew plugged their ears with wax while Odysseus had himself bound to the ship mast, so that the crew could carry him safely past the island yet let him listen to the captivating chants. According to Alain Corbin (1995), the sea had primarily negatively connotations in Western imagery well into the eighteenth century. The aspect of all-encompassing destruction was harnessed into myths of submerged islands, empires or cities, stories that proved to be particularly long-lasting and appealing, even until today: think of Plato’s mention of Atlantis, or later the legendary cities of Vineta and Rungholt in northern Europe.

Water in Celtic and Germanic worldviews There was an astonishing variety of male and female spirits resident in rivers, lakes, springs and the sea in Celtic, Germanic and Slavic worldviews as well (Green 2003). In the Norse sagas (e.g. as recorded in the Icelandic Eddas) it is told that the many local

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dieter gerten spirits could bring people good fortune in harvest, for example through their influence on the weather, as well as protect their land, home and animals. If, however, the spirits were not treated with respect, they played tricks. Irrespective of general similarities between the Greco-Roman and Celtic–Germanic myths, it has to be considered that the landscape and climate in the more northern parts of Europe was, and still is, different from that in the Mediterranean region. Being darker, colder and richer in water, these landscapes are reflected especially in Norse myths, which are laden with water- and ice-related dramas. In Irish mythology, the sources of rivers rose out of the otherworldly Well of Connla, and were thought to be empowered by the sun’s cosmic and revitalizing energy, especially when oriented eastwards (Rattue 1995; for similar evidence in Baltic regions, see Vaitkevičius 2004). Drinking from the Well of Connla or eating a salmon caught downstream from the well was believed to be beneficial for health, wisdom and creativity. Early Celtic tales report that humans, in turn, can temporarily visit the ambient Otherworld, with aquatic environments (rivers, lakes, sea beds) being particularly suited as passageways to and from that world. This has an analogy in the Norse myth of the world-tree Yggdrasil, which together with the linked Well of Mimir – whose water provided visionary knowledge and informed the major gods – represented the ultimate source of the world’s rivers. There are similar Scandinavian and Celtic tales of children born from springs or from the sea, who bring prosperity to the land and later become kings, heroes, poets, or seers (Davidson 1988). The sea was often associated with challenges and/or chthonic threats in Celtic myths. According to Miranda Green (2003), for example, the so-called fomorians or ‘under-demons’, a degenerated race of marine gods, repeatedly plundered Irish territory and imposed immense taxes on the inhabitants. But it seems that the sea also accommodated beings who, at first glance, were friendly, such as the nine beautiful women who lived beneath the waves on an underwater island. They certainly enjoyed themselves with a traveller called Ruadh who temporarily visited them, but since he did not come back after his subsequent journey, they killed Ruadh’s son. In Celtic tales (similar to the Greek epic of the Odyssey), many fearless heroes, such as Bran, Brendan and Maeldun, sailed over the seas and through miraculous archipelagos. To ensure that these Celtic travellers could return home, they experienced a time warp (i.e. they returned in the far-distant future), and were totally transformed. Given that in Celtic mythology many water sites (as parts of the hydrological cycle that in its entirety interconnects heaven and earth, above and below ground, fertility and barrenness, life and death) were linked with the Otherworld, water seems to have been worshipped not only for its curative qualities but also for the fertility that especially alluvial rivers brought to the land and the herds of the worshippers. Accordingly, there is evidence that rivers were associated with (principally female) gods, one of the most popular among them being the Irish goddess Danu, whose name is still reflected in river names across Europe such as Dee, Divonne, Danube and Don (e.g. Ò hÒgain 1999). Thus, water and the rivers appear to have been associated with the female fertility aspects, while the male aspects resided predominantly in the terrestrial domain and in forests in particular (Hayden 2003). However, the association between

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water of life, water of death female supernatural beings and water was not always a positive one. Old Irish tales report battle goddesses (morrigans) fighting in water, while women who washed the spoils of battle by the river were said to be harbingers of death (Davidson 1988). It appears that the Celts, Germans and Slavs often communed with their gods at cult places in exposed natural environments as permanent temple buildings were rare in western and northern Europe (Davidson 1988; Dowden 2000). The simplicity of most Celtic and Germanic cult sites (thus the low likelihood for their discovery) is probably one reason why there is little evidence for water worship in the pre-Roman Iron Age. Some known exceptions are reports on Druids who exerted power over water (Guyonvarc’h and Le Roux 1986) and honoured water gods (Ó hÓgain 1999), while at other places such as Bath in southern England coins were deposited as votive offerings to the spectacular hot spring that was later enclosed by a Roman temple (Hutton 1991), and during the Celt’s seasonal feasts, there is evidence of individual worship and decoration of springs (Hayden 2003). As discussed below, it seems that only after the invasion by the Romans were powerful cults established that centred on springs with purifying and medicinal properties (Green 2003). These attracted pilgrims from all over Romano-Celtic Europe. Pre-Roman ritual deposits have, however, been found in rivers, bogs and lakes across Celtic and Germanic Europe. These deposits usually consist of diverse objects, among them flints, axes, sickles, pottery, unused weaponry and precious ornaments. Some of these hoards date back to Neolithic times, suggesting a long-lasting pre-Roman religious custom, however restricted to particular sites (Hutton 1991). Cauldrons (the most famous of which is the Gundestrup Cauldron from a marsh in Denmark; see Fig. 2) were also found in water bodies and at various Germanic and Celtic burial sites

Figure 2 The richly decorated Celtic-style Gundestrup Cauldron, which is thought to have been used for sacrificial purposes of the Druidic religion during the La Tène Period in the second or first century BCE, now at the Danish National Museum (Nationalmuseet), Copenhagen. (Photo: Malene Thyssen, with permission, www.mtfoto.dk/malene)

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dieter gerten (Ó hÓgain 1999). In everyday life the cauldrons functioned as containers of water, which may explain why they were put back into watery places; but their fine decoration suggests that they also had a ritual function. Green (2003) suggests that cauldrons were also symbols of feasting and plenty in Celtic mythology. Another practice during the Iron Age in particular was to dig pits into the ground, often so deep that they reached the ground water. According to Hayden (2003), this was probably related to the belief that the dead – assumed to enter a spiritual domain that can be easily accessed through water – were in need of the sacrifices and objects that were put into the pits, and also in need of drinking water. River deposits that included human bones and skulls probably also had a funerary significance, as did the rivers on which dead Celtic and Germanic aristocrats were set adrift in boats and ships, accompanied by their prestige objects. The motives for offerings to water were manifold, among them gratitude, penance or a plea for something, but they remain unknown in many cases. Overall, it is not unlikely that the perception of water as a sacred element was consolidated, and that, at least in some places, a native water cult was practised before the Romans conquered Central and Western Europe. But after the invasion Roman practices soon became established, not least because the native Celtic and Germanic gods were easily incorporated into the existing diversity of Greco-Roman divinities. Hence, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish native deities from classical ones in the arts of countries under Roman rule, especially since it was possible that deities of different religions were amalgamated and worshipped as one (Davidson 1988; see also Fig. 3). An example of the establishment of Roman cults is the two natural springs at Chamalières, which in

Figure 3 Blend of Roman and Celtic styles. Relief of Venus washing her hair with two water nymphs, second or third century CE, High Rochester Roman fort (UK), now at Museum of Antiquities, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. (Photo: Barbara McManus, with permission, http://www.vroma.org)

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water of life, water of death the first century BCE and the first century CE were often visited by sick people hoping to be cured by drinking from, or bathing in, the pure water. There is also evidence that people were incubated for the purpose of healing in dedicated temple rooms (as in the Greco-Roman ritual described above). For example, at the source of the river Seine near Dijon, over 200 wooden models of humans were found in a bathing pool left as a reverence to the healing goddess Sequana (Davidson 1988). They perhaps represented the pilgrims themselves, or the parts of their bodies that required curing or where healing had taken place. Elite Celtic and Roman worshippers left more prestigious objects, and in Coventina’s Well in Roman Britain, over 14,000 coins were located together with bronze statues, pottery and other deposits (Ross 1967; Hayden 2003). One must recognize the differences in perception of water within and among the early European societies, the evolution and fusion of these perceptions in the course of time, the diversity of geographical settings where people lived and that may have shaped their worldviews, and the deficiency of archaeological and anthropological evidence for water-related practices and their meaning in many regions. Nonetheless, there is sufficient evidence to indicate significant and highly diverse functions of water in religious customs all over pre-Christian Europe.

Christianity and the fate of sacred wells and streams It has long been debated whether the replacement of polytheism with monotheistic Christianity in Europe from the fourth century CE affected the way people perceived nature and thereby water. Indeed, Ronald Hutton (1991: 246) envisages this shift as ‘the greatest alteration in [its] religious history’. Such a change in behaviour toward the natural environment may have been induced by the belief in Christianity that the divine is situated outside of nature (thus perhaps encouraging a destructive attitude toward nature; White 1967); that gods, goddesses, and land and water sprites have been replaced by a single god; or that the central mysteries of nature and life and the nature-based seasonal feasts of Pagans were transformed to celebrations of the Christian God’s manifestation in history (e.g. Hayden 2003). As dramatic as these changes unquestionably were, also problematic is the assumption that they really affected the perception of water as a sacred element. There is indeed evidence that the early Christians refused the idea of water goddesses and other spirits, demonized and expelled them, felled sacred groves, and demolished other Pagan cult sites (Jones and Pennick 1995). But it is also true that the earlier societies also manipulated and damaged their natural environment without particular concern. What made them refrain from such interventions was mostly that they feared the gods’ revenge. Furthermore, it is too simplistic to contend that the early Christians completely rejected the Pagan heritage. Their attitudes towards Paganism had many nuances and resulted in numerous hybrid forms of religious practice and ritual. Water worship appears to have been especially deep-rooted, so earlier water rituals could well have been assimilated into the new religion.

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dieter gerten Certainly water played an essential role in Christian myth and ritual from the very beginning, particularly in baptism, and its healing, hydromantic and wish-fulfilling functions (e.g. through the tossing of coins into wishing wells) were sustained. Interestingly, springs were ‘tamed’ by Christians by blessing them so as to sanctify them, by enclosing them with stones, by associating them with a church or monastery (which were often built atop springs), and by rededicating the springs and their feasts to saints and especially to the Virgin Mary (see Rattue 1995). It has to be noted that female qualities were still assigned to the wells and I return to this issue later. The holy springs, however, were not necessarily the same as those that had been sacred in Pagan times. Some were actively suppressed, particularly from the sixteenth century on in regions where the Reformation took place, when Puritans actively destroyed many well-cult sites in the course of actions against almost anything that they thought to be ‘Roman’. Nonetheless, holy wells are still revered these days in much of Europe (Jones and Pennick 1995). In the Renaissance, remembrances of Pagan traditions surfaced among the upper classes in Europe through the creation of beautiful garden designs and sculptures including depictions of nymphs and river gods, the founding of new spas, and the restoration and rebuilding of once famous wells (Rattue 1995; Godwin 2005). But, during the past 150 years, water has suffered through the co-existing processes of secularization, water resource management practices, the commercialization of water, increasing urbanization and waning human dependence on agriculture. These have exacerbated a loss of connectivity with the natural environment, including the loss of the social, religious and cultural functions of water (Goubert 1989; Rattue 1995; Gerten forthcoming).

What became of the water sprites? The tie between Pagan practices of water worship and the Christian well cults perhaps represents the most obvious strand of trans-religious continuity of water cults over the past two millennia in Europe. But there is another such strand, namely the remnants of water-centred beliefs in folklore, literature and the arts. Myriad local folk tales from across Europe report of mythological water creatures such as sea monsters, banshees, mermaids and other merpeople. They appear to be related to each other, offspring of a family of elementary spirits already appearing in early Greek myths as sirens, tritons, nymphs and other beings. As a side note, from vintage newspaper reports of stranded or trapped merpeople (e.g. Anon 1994) one can infer that belief in mermen and mermaids persisted into the eighteenth century. It seems that tales of nympholepsy and related siren myths (popularized through the Odyssey epos) are among the best-known tales of occidental collective memory. Like a thorn in the side of Western imagination, their central motif – the encounter between a human male and a strange, female, semi-human creature that is just as charming as dangerous – has survived until now. Yet, the details of the storyline and

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water of life, water of death the protagonist characters have undergone numerous metamorphoses and differentiations over time; they have been continuously adapted to the zeitgeist and contemporaneous moral values. As many local tales reveal to us, the sirens and the nymphs gradually changed in both look and character under Christian influence. In Greek tales under Orthodox Christian influence, the nereids became categorized as a large family of supernatural beings. These nereids seem to be an offspring of the nymphs and the earlier benevolent daughters of the sea god Nereus, who also dwelled in water, and had the shape of beautiful young women who danced and weaved. But, in contrast to the nymphs, who were usually associated with health and prosperity, the nereids of later tales were often held responsible for misfortune, disease or death, thus they were thought to be allied with the devil (Larson 2001). The phenomenon of nympholepsy – the obsession of men with nymphs – now turned into something negative. Mortals could enter an abnormal mental or physical state after encountering a nymph or being kidnapped by her; in some tales the possession by nymphs could indeed be lethal for the male. Larson states that: ‘Concern with the malignant influence of evil spirits and demons and the dangers of interaction with them was a feature of the Hellenistic world, but it seems only to have increased with the introduction of Christianity and its emphatic division of the supernatural into the categories of good and evil’ (2001: 64). The imagery of bird-tailed sirens and water nymphs seems to have been amalgamated into the fish-tailed mermaid (documented for the first time in a Gothic manuscript dating back to 780 CE). The fact that the water surface separates the pleasing visible part of the mermaid’s body from the hidden animal part may be interpreted as an amplification of her tricky and ultimately dangerous character. Following Anna Maria Stuby’s (1992) argument, this ‘new’ waterwoman is a lot more attractive than the earlier siren, so it is much easier for her to attract males through the promise of worldly pleasures that lead mortal men astray and, according to contemporary fears, deprive them of their powers and eventually their soul. It appears that women, represented as the water creatures, were believed to be closer to the chthonic (hence, in Christian terms, the diabolic) forces than men, thus were more in need of salvation. This contrasts markedly with their vivid character, and their dancing and singing activities, so that they had to be given a more melancholic character in Christianinfluenced tales (Benwell and Waugh 1965; Roth 1996; see also below). Male water spirits obsessed over by human females do not seem to have been described, perhaps because it was doubted that women had a soul at all, hence it would not make much sense for a merman to strive for her soul (Kleßmann 1997). The interpretation that mermaids were thought to be soul-catchers is supported by the fact that medieval images depict them holding a fish, an animal that symbolizes the human, Christian soul (Stuby 1992). But in many cases the exact meaning of early (medieval) descriptions and depictions of nymph-like creatures remains unclear. At any rate, they often but not necessarily, represent ‘evil’ (Schmitz-Emans 2003). The core theme of mermaid tales from medieval times until the present is the ‘nightmarish marriage’ (Mahrtenehe in German) between an otherworldly female (e.g. a waterwoman) and a human male who is in a state of emergency at the time of the first

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dieter gerten encounter. The waterwoman offers assistance as well as wealth and prosperity but only as long as the male does not break a certain taboo that she imposes; otherwise, she will either lose her appealing and magical powers or return to her otherworldly realm. The first medieval folktales tell of female creatures that flee their Christianization and leave their saddened husband. In the later well-known Melusine tale written down by Jean d’Arras in 1392, the husband of a young woman, who wears a fish tail and has magical powers, breaks his promise to never enter the woman’s bathroom where she periodically gains her true form. Thus betrayed and cast out, she is condemned to grieve for the rest of her life (Stuby 1992). Melusine and her forerunners were still positively connoted for their benevolent magical powers, and the taboo that men should not enter her private rooms may be interpreted as a guarantor of women’s (endangered) sovereignty and honour. However, the female autonomy apparent in the early tales is eroded in d’Arras’s story when her husband finally disowns Melusine. In the sixteenth century Paracelsus notes in his Liber de Nymphis (a book describing and classifying elementary spirits) that there are monsters among the nymphs possessed by the devil. Paracelsus’s separation of the hitherto ambivalent motif into a ‘bad’, destructive character (Melusine) and a ‘good’, soft character (Undine) introduces a fundamental ambiguity and raises doubts over the integrity of the waterwomen, associating some of them with deception, betrayal and eventually death, as in later variants of the story. From a feminist perspective, Stuby (1992) interprets Paracelsus’s demarcation as a catalyst for the generally more negative portrayal of females in the subsequent centuries, culminating in nineteenth-century tales in which the waterwomen were subjugated to bourgeois gender segregation. This is already foreshadowed in the famous novel Undine by Friedrich de la Motte-Fouqué (1811), which tells of the knight Huldbrand who falls in love with young Undine, a mysterious, energetic woman living on an island enclosed by an idyllic lake (obviously a reference to the ancient, paradisiacal locus amoenus). Little by little, Undine loses her elemental power and lure as Huldbrand domesticates her; she even rejects the help of Kühleborn, a powerful water spirit who informs and guards Undine throughout the story (Fig. 4). By the wedding night Undine has completed her change to a woman full of regret, with a soul but without autonomy (Stuby 1992). This theme of domestication is cemented in the later fairytale The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. Becoming more and more estranged from Undine, Huldbrand falls in love with, and eventually marries an earthly woman named Bertalda, and sad Undine finally kills him with a kiss. Men’s fear of losing their masculinity through the adverse influence of a waterwoman, and the taming of the siren/nymph/Undine/Melusine from a vivid, miraculous, otherworldly being to a pale, mute and passive creature, were further explored in novels and poems from the nineteenth century onwards. At the same time the supernatural encounter with (supposedly Pagan) waterwomen represented a rebellion against the dominant Christian and patriarchal system of values. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe borrowed from the water-related classical imagery in his erotic descriptions of bathing scenes enriched with bewitching water nymphs, river gods and narcissuses. In the context of bourgeois morals of the late-eighteenth and nineteenth

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Figure 4 Undine, watched over by the river sprite Kühleborn, and Huldbrand taking her over from the undomesticated, otherworldly watery realm to the worldly, protected land. (Drawing by Michaela Klein, with permission, after de la Motte-Fouqué’s novel)

centuries, Goethe’s related poems appear to reflect the ambiguities of water; it brings both life and death, is both liberating and dangerous, and is symbolized as both male and female (Böhme 1988). Generally, many Romanticists expressed their concern for the loss of a mythopoetic worldview and of imagined water beings, ‘always with the same shiver of the alluring, the abandoned, and the amoral’ (Hutton 2000: 9). The ambiguous character of mermaids thus persisted in the literature and the paintings of the nineteenth century. They were portrayed with long, soft, golden hair, which evokes not only the tranquil movements of the waves but also the traps and meshes that can cause fishermen to drown (Stuby 1992). Whatever the detailed storyline of all these tales, be they Greek or Celtic myths, medieval Christian narratives or Romantic fiction, they all embrace the idea that humans enter a watery Otherworld, or encounter a supernatural being at the border between land and water and enter into an ephemeral and ambivalent relationship with the water creature.

Honouring water: past and present Myths are always polyvalent and open to interpretation. A vast number of stories and poems about Undine, Melusine and related figures have been published since the

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dieter gerten Romantic period, and many non-fiction books, mainly written during the past two decades, try to shed light on the tales about water sprites from every imaginable angle, so there is no single universal theory as to their meaning. One possible understanding of the nymph tales is found in the described tension between the human males (characterized as engineers and controllers of the world, namely as domesticators of the sea) and the semi-human water females (characterized as originally unbound and tempting creatures). This can also signify the everlasting tension between humans and nature. But why is water chosen as the medium in which all this takes place? Obviously, the land–water dichotomy demarcates the solid, cultivated terrain from the fluent, largely unexplored and unfathomable aquatic domain, thus, in a sense, it represents a border between the unconquerable and potentially lethal wilderness and civilization (Duerr 1987). In an act of initiation and rebirth, those who cross this threshold enter a realm that is at once dangerous and fascinating. According to Monica Schmitz-Emans (2003), the ephemeral encounter with the unknown but alluring water world estranges the voyagers from their familiar life, as the fluid and ever-cycling nature of water is particularly suited for undermining and deforming all things beyond recognition. Thus, the often-tragic encounter between mortals and immortal water beings may be a symbol of the unrequited love between humans and their natural environment (Kleßmann 1997). Some of the tales may further be interpreted as the alienation of humans from nature, or as their illicit intrusion into it, which in the end may have lethal consequences. Apart from its importance in myths, water undoubtedly had a variety of ritual functions in early times. It was worshipped for its many functions, but also feared for its destructive potential; it was regarded with awe and respect, and became personified as gods, goddesses and other supernatural beings that characterized the ambiguous nature of wells, rivers, lakes and the sea. Such a spiritual sensibility for water might well still be effective in solving environmental and water-related problems today. For example, invoked encounters of, and temporary identification with, land and water sprites have proved useful in environmental protest actions (Letcher 2001). Also, paying homage and reverence to individual rivers as manifestations of gods and goddesses could become a guiding principle in water resource management. This would help reinforce the deeper connections between humans and the (watery) environment in which they live and on which they ultimately depend (Falter 1999, 2003). In this context, an effective Pagan concept is the idea of a web that interconnects all living and inanimate agents in space and time (Aswynn 1998). Humans should (again) become aware of their ambiguous and ever-increasing role in this web, especially as the signature of their collective disturbance of the natural water cycles has now become evident on a planetary scale (Vörösmarty and Sahagian 2000). That said, water myths are vital and relevant in the highly mechanized world of today, and the search for harmony between humans and water/nature will continue long into the future, almost certainly with even stronger emphasis than before.

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water of life, water of death Bibliography Alpers, K. 1988. ‘Wasser bei den Griechen und Römern: Aspekte des Wassers im Leben und Denken des Griechisch-Römischen Altertums. In Kulturgeschichte des Wassers, ed. H. Böhme, 65–98. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Anon. 1994. ‘Nachrichten von Meerweibern, Meermännern und Fischmenschen’. In Werwölfe und andere Tiermenschen, ed. K. Völker, 340–43. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Aswynn, F. 1998. Northern Mysteries and Magick: Runes and Feminine Powers. St Paul, MN: Llewellyn. Benwell, G. & A. Waugh. 1965. Sea Enchantres: The Tale of the Mermaid and her Kin. New York: Citadel Press. Böhme, H. 1988. ‘Eros und Tod im Wasser: “Bändigen und Entlassen der Elemente”. Das Wasser bei Goethe’. In Kulturgeschichte des Wassers, ed. H. Böhme, 208–33. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Burn, L. 2003. ‘Greek Myths’. In The World of Myths, ed. Trustees of the British Museum, 1–77. London: British Museum Press. Corbin, A. 1995. The Lure of the Sea: Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World 1750–1840. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Davidson, H. R. E. 1988. Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Dowden, K. 2000. European Paganism. London: Routledge. Dowden, K. 2002. The Uses of Greek Mythology. London: Routledge. Duerr, H. P. 1987. Dreamtime: Concerning the Boundary Between Wilderness and Civilization. Oxford: Blackwell. Falter, R. 1999. ‘The Perception of Rivers in European Antiquity’/ Wasser & Boden 51: 53–8. Falter, R. 2003. Natur neu denken. Klein Jasedow: Drachen. Fox, R. L. 1988. Pagans and Christians. New York: HarperCollins. Gerten, D. forthcoming. ‘Hydrolatry in Early European Religions and Christian Syncretism: How Water Transcends Religions and Epochs’. In The Ideas of Water, eds T. Tvedt & T. Østigård. London: I. B. Taurus. Giebel, M. 2003. Das Geheimnis der Mysterien: Antike Kulte in Griechenland, Rom und Ägypten, 3rd edn. Düsseldorf: Patmos. Godwin, J. 2005. The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance. York Beach, ME: Weiser. Goubert, J.-P. 1989. The Conquest of Water: The Advent of Health in the Industrial Age. Oxford: Polity Press. Green, M. 2003. ‘Celtic Myths’. In The World of Myths, ed. Trustees of the British Museum, 313–38. London: British Museum Press. Guyonvarc’h, C.-J. & F. Le Roux. 1986. Les Druides, 4th edn. Rennes: Ouest-France. Hayden, B. 2003. Shamans, Sorcerers, and Saints: A Prehistory of Religion. Washington: Smithsonian Books. Hutton, R. 1991. The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy. Oxford: Blackwell. Hutton, R. 2000. ‘The Roots of Modern Paganism’. In Pagan Pathways: A Guide to the Ancient Earth Traditions, eds G. Harvey & C. Hardman, 3–15. London: Thorsons. Jones, P. & N. Pennick. 1995. A History of Pagan Europe. London: Routledge. Kleßmann, E. 1997. ‘Einleitung’. In Undinenzauber, ed. F. R. Max, 1–21. Stuttgart: Reclam. Larson, J. 2001. Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Letcher, A. 2001. ‘The Scouring of the Shire: Fairies, Trolls and Pixies in Eco-protest Culture’. Folklore 112: 147–61. MacMullen, R. 1997. Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Maier, B. 2003. Die Religion der Germanen. Munich: C. H. Beck. Ó hÓgain, D. 1999. The Sacred Isle: Belief and Religion in Pre-Christian Ireland. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. Radkau, J. 2002. Natur und Macht. Munich: C. H. Beck.

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dieter gerten Rattue, J. 1995. The Living Stream: Holy Wells in Historical Context. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. Ross, A. 1967. Pagan Celtic Britain. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Roth, G. 1996. Hydropsie des Imaginären: Mythos Undine. Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus. Schmitz-Emans, M. 2003. Seetiefen und Seelentiefen. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Selbmann, S. 1995. Mythos Wasser. Karlsruhe: Badenia. Sonnabend, H. 1999. Naturkatastrophen in der Antike. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler. Sprawson, C. 2000. Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Stuby, A. M. 1992. Liebe, Tod und Wasserfrau. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Vaitkevičius, V. 2004. Studies into the Balts’ Sacred Places, British Archaeological Reports International Series 1228. Oxford: John and Erica Hedges. Vörösmarty, C. J. & D. Sahagian. 2000. ‘Anthropogenic Disturbance of the Terrestrial Water Cycle’. Bioscience 50: 753–65. White, L. 1967. ‘The Historic Roots of our Ecologic Crisis’. Science 155: 1203–7. Wolf, R. H. W. 2004. Mysterium Wasser: Eine Religionsgeschichte zum Wasser in Antike und Christentum. Göttingen: V & R Unipress. Zuntz, G. 1971. Persephone: Three Essays on Religion and thought in Magna Graecia. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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3 The fertility goddess of the Zulu: reflections on a calling to Inkosazana’s pool Penny Bernard

South African diviner-healer traditions are replete with narratives and myths regarding certain chosen people who are called under water by fish-tailed and serpent deities, where they are taught the skills of healing and given great divinatory powers. For Zulu diviners this complex consists of the great ancestral spirits (that manifest as a large snake or python) and a singular feminine mermaid deity called Inkosazana1 or Nomkhubulwana. While both are responsible for the calling of diviners (usually through dreams) Inkosazana is also regarded as the source of all fertility and water and may occasionally manifest to those who are ‘pure of heart’. This chapter explores my own personal journey that led me to her pool following a series of dreams I had during my training with a group of Zulu diviners (izangoma). This account is accompanied by a critique of the literature in the field, which has focused on positivistic and psychological reductionist efforts to explain the phenomenon. *** ‘This is for real!’, I thought to myself as I knelt on the wet rock by the edge of a deep turbulent pool at the base of a small waterfall, which then flowed over a precipitous drop to another pool below. The lower pool was hardly visible beneath the dense overhanging trees that crowded in on the steep narrow river gorge. I had washed my arms and face in the water as instructed, and near where I knelt two yellow candles glowed and a bunch of dried imphepho (Helychrysum odoratissimum) smouldered, giving off a strong aromatic smoke.2 Zanele stood behind me urging me to pray to the ancestors

1. Inkosazana is literally translated as ‘first girl born’ or ‘chief ’s daughter’. 2. Imphepho is a plant incense used by Zulu diviners to attract the presence of the ancestors and other divine forces.

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penny bernard and Inkosazana: ‘Pray, Penny. Tell Inkosozana that you have come to the place she has shown you in your dreams.’ Zanele is a Zulu diviner (isangoma – singular) who has been a close friend and guide since my own calling to be a diviner in 1997; according to our teacher Baba our ancestors had brought us together and were from the water. They were part of the great amakhosi (Zulu term for chiefs/lords/kings). Zanele, Baba and three other diviners were standing a few metres behind me. They told me that they could not come too close as they did not want to scare Inkosazana or she would not manifest. She only appears to those who she has called and will not reveal herself if anyone present has a ‘bad heart’. ‘There she is. I can see her head coming out of the water’, whispered Zanele urgently. ‘I can smell fish. It is her, Baba!’ My head was bent low as I prayed, too nervous to look up except to take a quick sidelong glance. All I could see was the turbulent water at the base of waterfall. I was anxious about whether I was ready to be taken under water as this was the possible reason for my being called here. The izangoma had already warned me that the ‘snake’, the manifestation of the great ancestors, was likely to come out of the water and take me underneath to the land of the ancestors. I had been shown this in one of my many dreams since becoming apprenticed as a novice (ithwasa) in Baba’s izangoma training school. This was what happened to Baba himself when he was nineteen, but in his case, the ancestors had called him to the sea near Durban, where the snake allegedly came out of the sea, wrapped itself around his body putting him into a trance state and, with its head resting above his like an Egyptian uraeus, had taken him under water to the dry land of the ancestors. There they had communed with him and given him special skills and knowledge. They then sent him back to the anxious izangoma and family members3 waiting on the beach. He had spent three hours under the sea and on his return was accompanied by a dolphin and had the symbolic snake of divinership wrapped around his neck. Following this event he achieved great powers of divination and the ability to directly communicate with the ‘whistling spirit ancestors’, the great amakhosi amakhulu.4 This was the reason I had met Baba in the first place. In 1997 I had embarked on a comparative research project for my Masters degree in anthropology to investigate the spiritual significance of water in the training of diviners, the symbolism of the snake or python, and the mermaid. I also studied reports of certain very powerful diviners who had experienced going under water for periods of a few hours to up to four years. I met Baba through Zanele, who worked for my sister, after she had had a powerful two-day dream in which she encountered a large snake that wrapped around her and 3. Family members were forbidden to cry or grieve at his disappearance under water for fear that the ancestors would be angered and not return him alive. This prohibition theme recurs throughout southern Africa for the relatives of anyone who disappears under water. 4. Amakhosi amakhulu is translated as the Great Ancestors. When Baba consults with them in his sacred hut he lights imphepho, summons and greets them. Soft audible whistles (much like bat sounds) emanate from the rafters in the hut above the sacred altar, the umsamo. Because of his underwater experience, Baba is able to translate what they say. Such diviners are regarded as very powerful and accurate (Ngubane 1977).

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Figure 1 The author with Baba, Zanele and fellow izangoma. (Photograph by author.)

took her to the ancestors. As a result of this dream Zanele was directed to a diviner who could assist her. This was Baba, who had also experienced being taken under water by the snake. I was keen to interview diviners who had endured this powerful but rare experience, so I asked Zanele if she would request an interview with Baba. It was during my first meeting with Baba that he introduced me to the amakhosi, and was informed by them that I was like him, and that my ancestors were from the water. They had sent me to him to help me understand the phenomenon. Once I had accepted the calling,5 I had to be ritually incorporated as a novice into Baba’s training school, which precipitated the onset of very powerful dreams, the main medium through which the ancestors guide and teach the novice. The teacher will only act on the dreams the novice receives, hence no dreams means no progress.

To return to the pool site A light rain was falling as I prayed and huge dark cumulus clouds were billowing over the edge of the mountain that towered above us. Initially we had been unaware that this pool that I had been led to was also known to local people as the place where Inkosazana resides. Described as the heavenly princess of the Zulu (Berglund 1976),

5. This decision was not taken lightly and there were a number of reasons why I accepted that I cannot dwell on here.

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penny bernard she can appear in many different forms: a mermaid, a snake, a rainbow, a tree, an animal or even a young or old woman. As she is regarded by many Zulu-speaking people as the ultimate source of life-giving rain and all fertility,6 the rain was a very auspicious sign, made even more powerful by the appearance of a rainbow over the forest canopy on our arrival. This elicited gasps of delight and excitement from the izangoma, since for the Zulu, the rainbow is called uthingo lweNkosazane, the bow of Inkosazana, and is one of the main ways she reveals herself. As I prayed at the water’s edge I tried to grapple with the enormity of the events that had led me to this point. They were subtle and intangible, based largely on my dreams and Baba’s responses to them, yet they were extremely powerful and had revealed knowledge beyond anything that I would have been able to elicit or understand through the usual sociological research methods. I was also a bit confused. I had definitely been shown this place in one of my dreams and knew that I was meant to be here, but it was not the same place I had seen in the one very powerful dream that had prompted this particular journey. This dream had excited Baba tremendously and convinced him that I was likely to be taken under water. In the dream I had a powerful encounter with an enormous snake with a fish-like tail7in a pool where I was taken by two children. The children greeted, talked and laughed with the snake, which appeared quite friendly, and they indicated my presence to it. The creature raised its head and half its body out of the water and turned to focus on me. On meeting my stare a bright light emanated from its eyes that gave me the sensation of blacking out. When I ‘came around’, still in the dream, the snake and children had disappeared but a gift had been left on the damp rock near the pool. It was a membranous sac, which I opened to find a laughing infant. I had a very clear visual about the appearance of this pool. It was large and fed by a waterfall, which flowed over a broad curving rock lip and had a deep cave behind.8 The pool we had come to, Inkosazana’s pool, was definitely not the same, and yet I knew it was of enormous significance as I had been shown its location in another dream and now, quite unexpectedly, had been led to it. A brief explanation is needed to indicate how this happened. After I told Baba about my dream encounter with the snake he was very excited and asked me if the exact location had been revealed, which it had not. However, I felt it was located in the mountains, possibly along the foothills of the great Drakensberg/ Ukhahlamba mountain range. I told him it could be somewhere near the source of the Pholela River,9 as this river had appeared in an earlier dream. In this dream I was shown a distinct forest-clad mountain, as well as a deserted house on the slope across

6. This is especially among those who still adhere to traditional Zulu religious concepts. Although Christianity and modernity have eroded many of these beliefs, knowledge of them is still widespread. 7. The fact that the snake had a fish-tail was what had excited Baba the most. 8. I was eventually able to find this pool over a year later. It is located some 500km south of Inkosazana’s pool and has all the features shown in my dream. It has to be approached with small children leading in front. 9. Sometimes spelt ‘Polela’.

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Figure 2 Approaching Inkosazana’s pool. (Photograph by author.)

the valley. I was told, ‘You are near the Pholela River’. On the basis of this dream I suggested to Baba that this may be where the pool was located. He agreed as he knew there were some very powerful pools located along the river, where izangoma often perform their river rituals. Some months later Baba drove the group of us to the Pholela River in KwaZuluNatal province. As we were driving through a small village Baba suddenly brought the car to a halt near a small dirt road. ‘Which way must I go?’, he asked me. Fairly panicked, as I had no idea, I suggested we turn down the side road. We descended into the valley and to my surprise I saw the exact forest-clad mountain from my dream. ‘The ancestors have shown me this mountain in another dream’, I told Baba. He seemed interested but did not slow down since there was no sign of a river or waterfall. Aware that I was totally unsure if we were on the right track, Baba stopped at another isangoma’s house to enquire if there was any pool in the area that fitted my description. The isangoma, MaDlamini, who Baba had also trained, told us that the only waterfall that she knew was special was Inkosazana’s pool. It was, however, a pool that very few Zulu dared to visit unless they had been called there. MaDlamini agreed to show us the way and we headed back up the hill. We stopped at the place I had seen in my dream, and MaDlamini told us we would find the pool below, hidden

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penny bernard deep in the forest. From our vantage point we could also see an abandoned house on the hill opposite, exactly as the dream had shown. As I had already told Baba this was the very mountain and forest from my dream, he suddenly realized its significance and became ecstatic, remarking on how accurate my dreams were. In great anticipation we changed into our izangoma regalia and descended the grassy hill towards the forest, singing praises to the ancestors. The rain clouds were beginning to gather over the mountains and a fine mist was spreading over the tree tops. As we approached the forest we could hear the sounds of the waterfall, still completely hidden under the canopy of trees. It was then that a strong thought message came into my mind which said, ‘When you see the rainbow you will know you are at the right place’. Within seconds the rainbow suddenly arched out of the forest. Awestruck, we knew we were at the right place and Inkosazana was welcoming us! Kneeling by the pool I could hear the flurry of excitement as Zanele said she could see and smell Inkosazana emerging from the water, but with that, Baba nervously exclaimed, ‘Hayi [No], Penny, it is no good. They [the ancestors] are not ready. Let’s go!’ Gathering up my candles and imphepho I scrambled up the slippery and treacherous path following the retreating izangoma. Baba looked visibly shaken. ‘We should have brought the white goat. We must go back and get it.’ We had purchased a blemish-free white goat the previous day to bring to the pool as I had been shown that the ancestors required a goat as a sacrificial offering in yet another dream. I was surprised when Baba had failed to bring it but had assumed he had a reason not to. Despite it being fairly late in the afternoon and with the threat of the gathering storm clouds, Baba instructed the four female izangoma to wait for him

Figure 3 The author at the edge of Inkosazana’s pool. (Photograph by author.)

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the fertility goddess of the zulu while he drove back home to fetch the goat. We knew this would take several hours by which time it would be dark and possibly raining hard, but we humbly agreed. As we waited I sat in the grass and listened to the other izangoma as they reviewed the events of the day and discussed the possible reasons why I had not been taken under water. They all agreed they had noticed the fish smell of Inkosazana and had seen the top of her head appearing above the water but it was at that point Baba suddenly became very nervous, and had instructed us to beat a hasty retreat. They all agreed he had definitely erred in not bringing the goat. It was also possible that Inkosazana had detected a ‘bad heart’ among one of those present and that was why she did not show herself fully. After an hour of waiting under an increasingly darkening sky, the first forks of lightning started to strike close by, so we decided to hitch a lift back to MaDlamini’s homestead. A battered old canopied truck pulled up just as a heavy cloudburst started beating down. The back of the truck was full of people getting a lift back to their homes; they were amazed at the presence of a white women bedecked in an isangoma outfit hitching a ride. The other izangoma told them why we were there. The rest of the journey was spent with spirited discussions on the wonders of Inkosazana, who had called this white woman to her pool. The very fact that the rain was pouring down was enough evidence for them that Inkosazana was pleased with our presence. Of further significance was that some years earlier, in the same area, another isangoma was told in a dream to revive the ancient rituals for Inkosazana (Kendall 1998, 1999). This had stimulated the reinstatement of ancient fertility rituals for Inkosazana that were now performed annually in spring by thousands of virgins in the area, and which had since spread across KwaZulu-Natal.10 A few hours later Baba found us tucked up in MaDlamini’s candlelit hut. On his arrival he was laughing hysterically with joy at the events of the day despite having climbed down the wet and treacherous slope in the pouring rain after dark, carrying the reluctant goat, looking for us at the pool. We slept the night at MaDlaminis’ and the next morning we all returned to the pool, goat in tow. This time the izangoma instructed me to climb down to the pool by myself and pray to Inkosazana, telling her I was there and that I had brought the white goat. The others waited higher on the hill, out of sight, so as to not put her off, as there was concern that one among them may not be as clean-hearted as they should be. Alas, even though I lit the candles and imphepho and knelt near the pool praying and holding on to the white goat, I was not taken under water, nor did I see her. Despite this I was elated that the events of the previous day had shown me quite categorically that the izangoma regarded Inkosazana as a very real entity, and that it was evident they regarded the experience of being taken under water as an actual physical experience.

10. These annual rituals have attracted thousands of virgins. Owing to the HIV/AIDS crisis sweeping the province, virginity testing has been introduced at such ceremonies, which has led to some controversy among human rights groups (Leclerc-Madlala 2001; Scorgie 2002).

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Contemplating the experience After two years of researching the phenomenon, I had reasoned that an actual physical submersion probably does not occur, but that izangoma are probably given certain hallucinogenic plants that induces a trance state and makes them feel as if they are being taken under water. It had seemed impossible and beyond normal physiological explanation that someone could actually experience physical submersion under water for such long periods. But by observing and experiencing the way the izangoma responded to, and acted on, my dreams, and how they behaved at the pool, I realized that although one may go into an altered state, this is not drug-induced, and thus physical immersion is likely to take place. What is more, they showed me convincingly that this was not culturally specific as they believe it could even happen to a white woman of European origin. The experience also demonstrated to me that the izangoma regard the underwater experience that endows them with skills of divination and healing as not only an encounter with the ancestors, but also with the great deities such as Inkosazana, both of which can manifest as a snake. This connection of Inkosazana with diviners and healing, and her residence in rivers and pools, has been largely overlooked by earlier scholars, who have focused predominantly on her fertility and rain-providing aspects, which are discussed in more detail below. My calling to Inkosazana’s pool also opened doors to further knowledge that I may otherwise not have gained. Later I returned to visit MaDlamini to ask her more about her insights into the nature of Inkosazana and why she may have called me to her pool. I discovered that she too had met Inkosazana and had been taken under water. Most of my interview with MaDlamini, however, was conducted with an intermediary, a male isangoma (Mr T), who could speak English and who claimed he had encountered Inkosazana when he was a child. The conversations I had with them provide some interesting insights into the nature of ‘The Lady’. Penny: I want to understand why in my dream I was taken to that place. I’m trying to understand the whole thing about Inkosazana [Nomkhubulwana]. MaDlamini to Mr T: They showed her there because someone there is like her. Tell her. Mr T: MaDlamini says that’s why your family said you [must] go there, because it’s got a person [that] looks like you in the river, a white person. That person in the water, her name is Inkosazana. Penny: Which kind of people go there? Why? Mr T: The people that go there are the fortune tellers and izangoma. There are only three (kinds) of people who must go there; the last people that must go there are the kings of the Zulu. Penny: Does she live in only one pool or does she move between pools? Mr T: Ya, she is not staying in one place. She stays in a perfect place with water coming from an upper place to the pool [waterfall] where she stays and when she moves from one pool to another waterfall. You will never find her

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the fertility goddess of the zulu in [just] one place, and she stays near the forest, so that when she comes out in her own time, no one should see her. It is lucky when the rainbow comes in the rain. The river came with Inkosazana, there is no way you find her anywhere else. I think maybe there is a thing she wants you to do. You go there with a goat or chicken to talk with her. After that you listen to Inkosazana and do what she tells you. She does not trust other people whose hearts are changing. Maybe you trust that person but his heart is cruel. Inkosazana is disturbed by the heart of that person. Inkosazana cannot hear because [of the presence] of that person. She does not want to see people she does not trust. That is why Inkosazana stays in a secret place, in a dangerous place. Nobody can come to play, stay or visit there without permission. If you go there with your own mind [i.e. decide to go there on your own], you get your punishment. Penny: So the punishment can be quite hard? Mr T: Of course, of course, they die. Penny: So that is why people are a bit nervous about it? Mr T: They know they will die, like it or not. On reassuring me of Inkosazana’s kindness to good people Mr T said, ‘So the basic point here, don’t be afraid with Inkosazana. She is a beautiful thing. She brings good luck. When you pray to Inkosazana you get what you want. When you listen and go with the rules they give you and you do not break any of them, you get what you want.’

Who is Inkosazana? This conversation gives some indication of the nature of Inkosazana, but it is worth pausing here to consider briefly how she has been described to past ethnographers who have studied the religious ideas of the Zulu-speaking peoples. Those who have documented the belief in Inkosazana or Nomkhubulwana11 have gleaned the information about her largely from second-hand reports, interviews and material from other scholars. As a result, this has tended to reify certain descriptions of her and this has led to an incomplete picture of who she is. Most attention has been paid to her role in fertility and the cultivation of crops, which is largely the concern of Zulu women. She is thus very strongly linked with women’s issues, and the rituals performed for her largely fall under the control of women. For instance, several scholars have been interested in the role she plays in protecting and guiding young adolescent girls (virgins), in preparing them for womanhood and correct 11. There seems to be general agreement that Nomkhubulwana is the same as Inkosazana, although there are some people who believe they are separate entities. Nomkhubulwana is more of a mother figure concerned with the rituals for female fertility, while Inkosazana is likened to a young virgin lady. However, the term is used interchangeably and this suggests she has various aspects with different roles.

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penny bernard sexual relations (Krige 1968) and, more recently, in relation to the current context of HIV/AIDS (Kendall 1998, 1999; Leclerc-Madlala 2001; Scorgie 2002). All these aspects fall under her area of jurisdiction, in which she issues edicts and laws. Respect and adherence to these rules, and the performance of regular rituals for her, will bring bountiful crops, life-giving rain and water, fertility, health and peace. Should the people fail to respect or adhere to these injunctions, she will inflict them with natural disasters, in the form of drought, floods or tornadoes, starvation and disease. Surprisingly, Inkosazana’s role in the calling and training of healers and the imparting of wisdom and knowledge, with the assistance of the powerful amakhosi (the snake), seems to have gone unnoticed. There has also been very little consideration of how these profound convictions of her powers may influence wise and respectful behaviours towards the protection and use of water resources (see Bernard and Kumalo 2004). One of the first scholars to document the Zulu beliefs in Inkosazana was a missionary, Henry Callaway, who gathered most of his information on Zulu religion from a disparate group of displaced Zulu speakers who had sought refuge at his mission station in south-west Natal in the late 1850s (Chidester 1996: 153). In his book The Religious System of the AmaZulu (1868–70), which was largely authored by his main informant and convert Mpengula Mpande, a short chapter is dedicated to the subject of Inkosazana. Drawing mainly from hearsay, she is ambiguously described as a ‘very little animal, as large as a polecat, and is marked with white and black stripes; one side there grows a bed of reeds, a forest, and grass, the other side is that of a man’ (Callaway 1970: 253). This description was similar to one given by Samuelson in the early twentieth century: She is described as being robed with light as a garment and having come down from heaven to teach people to make beer, to plant, to harvest, and all the useful arts … She is a maiden and she makes her visit to the earth in the Spring of the year. She is also described as presenting the appearance of a beautiful landscape with verdant forests on some parts of her body, grass-covered slopes on others and cultivated fields on the rest. (Samuelson 1929: 303, cited in Gluckman 1954: 4) Alfred T. Bryant, another missionary and ethnographer, who lived with the Zulu people during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, describes her as ‘Nomkhubulwana, “who moveth with the mist; on one side human-being, on one side a wood, on one side a river, on one side overgrown with grass”’ (Bryant 1949: 667). However, Axel-Ivar Berglund, also a missionary and ethnographer, has written the most comprehensive accounts of her and claims that none of his informants described her in terms of the landscape. Rather: the Princess is described as being ‘a very beautiful girl of twenty years with shiny skin and white attractive teeth. She is always smiling, except when something bad has happened or she brings news of drought or famine.’ … All informants agree that Nomkhubulwana appears in the morning mists and that she is closely

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the fertility goddess of the zulu associated with the rainbow, a small number saying she is the rainbow itself. They are equally convinced that the Princess has the ability to bring steady and frequent rains, these brought by pleading with her father, the Lord-of-theSky. (Berglund 1976: 65) Berglund’s description comes closest to those I have encountered in my interviews, yet interestingly none of the authors make reference of her main manifestation being that of a mermaid or the snake, or of her connection with certain rivers and pools. Max Gluckman (1954) used the Zulu Nomkhubulwana rituals as an example to support his ‘rituals of rebellion’ hypothesis. The fact that in a patriarchal/patrilineal society the Nomkhubulwana ritual was dominated by female virgins who acted in reverse of their normal expected gender roles (such as singing and acting in a lewd way, donning men’s clothes and herding cattle) suggested to him a form of ritually sanctioned protest that allowed women to openly express social tensions within a controlled sacred context. These allowed for catharsis, a renewal of the unity of the system and the maintenance of the status quo. In fact Gluckman used the early descriptions of Inkosazana to elaborate more on the gendered tensions in Zulu society. In particular he pointed to: ‘her role in linking a patriarchal society, pressing heavily on the hard-working women, with its wooded, grass-grown, then scantily cultivated, environment. Her figure is only partly human, for it is also partly woods, grass, river, and gardens’ (1954: 10). Eileen Krige (1968) critiqued much of Gluckman’s interpretation of the data and argued that he overemphasized the lewd behaviour. She cited many other non-ritual occasions where young virgins act in similar ways, including wearing men’s clothing and herding cattle (ibid.: 184–5). The most detailed descriptions of Inkozasana comes from Bryant (1949), Berglund (1976), Krige (1968, 1974) and Gluckman (1954), all of whom refer to her as the Princess of Heaven, or the Sky or Heavenly Princess, Inkosazana yezulu or Inkosazana yasezulwini, where her role as a fertility goddess is emphasized. A number of the authors draw a parallel with her and the ancient Greek goddesses. Bryant compares her to the Greek Corn Goddess and finally asks, ‘Was, then, Nomkubulwana, the Sky Princess, perchance Demeter, the Terra Mater … Or was she not rather her daughter, Persephone?’ (1949: 672). Krige describes her as ‘a Zulu Ceres presiding over the growth of grain’ (1974: 197), while Gluckman states, ‘Nomkhubulwana is thus clearly a goddess of the same kind as the corn-goddesses and corn-gods of the ancient world’ (1954: 4). There is consensus that although she resides in heaven with the heavenly father (described by Berglund [1976: 53] as the Lord-of-the-Sky – iNkosi yezulu), she regularly comes to earth to bring people her bountiful blessings of rain and fertility. She is strongly associated with the mist, another of her manifestations, and her arrival in spring is noted when the first mists cover the hills. All the scholars mention her tendency to appear only to certain people to whom she issues rules that must be relayed via the chief to the people. These rules, or the failure to adhere to them, all have implications for the production of crops, climate and fertility.

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penny bernard Despite the lack of scholarly reference to her being a mermaid in the literature I found striking correlation among informants over a wide ranging area who say she is fair skinned, with long fair, dark or wet hair, the torso of a human and lower body of a fish. During my research across southern Africa I have met a number of healers who claim they have encountered her and, even though they range over a wide area of several thousand kilometres and come from different ethnic groups, their descriptions are remarkably similar. Three informants commented that she bears a strong resemblance to me, except that she has a fish tail.12 One of these informants is Lindiwe, an isangoma from Pietermaritzburg to whom Inkosazana revealed herself when she was a child. This occurred when she was six years old, after she had gone down to a pool at the river to try to drown herself because her father was so cruel to both her and her mother. As she sat there trying to summon up the courage, a woman emerged out of the water and asked her what she was doing. Lindiwe explained that she had decided to end her life, which had been made so miserable by her father. For a long while the woman spoke to her and eventually persuaded her not to do it as this would cause her mother further pain. ‘The Lady’ reassured her that whenever she was in trouble again she must return to the pool and call her. Lindiwe then explained what happened next: ‘Then the lady dived under the water and only then did I realise that she was not a person because as she dived she lifted her fish tail above the water’. When I asked Lindiwe what she looked like she said, ‘Just like you. I was shocked when I first met you, because you look just like Inkosazana’. MaDlamini also reasoned that this was why I may have been called to her pool. MaDuma, an isangoma who was also taken under water, emphasizes her transformative abilities: ‘Nomkhubulwana is a living being. She appears as a tree, sometimes as a beautiful woman sitting on the river, which means she is a person but she can change herself to something else. Maybe we can say she is uMvelinqangi [God – “The first to appear”]’. Although Inkosazana has amazing transformative powers, manifesting as mermaid, snake, rainbow, a small animal, a tree, rain and even as a human (usually as a beautiful young woman or an old hag),13 she is not spirit, but rather an embodied being with supernatural and transformative abilities, who can bridge the divide between this world and that of spirit. As my conversation with MaDlamini via Mr T illustrates, it is believed that she reveals herself only to certain chosen individuals who have a good heart, people who do not harbour hatred, greed or jealousy, or who are izangoma or kings, and she does this in a physically tangible way. However, like many reports of mermaids and water spirits across the world, she has an ambivalent nature and, as my conversation with Mr T showed, she is a generous, benevolent being to those

12. Samuelson reported a similar response when she went to visit King Mpande’s kraal in 1872 in the company of her father. While admiring her braids of hair and her skin he likened her appearance to a girl from under the sea (Samuelson 1974: 169–70). 13. These characteristics echo many of her transformative qualities described by Robert Graves in The White Goddess (1999: 20).

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the fertility goddess of the zulu whom she favours and her role as a fertility goddess emphasizes this benevolence. But she can be extremely dangerous to people with a bad heart, her destructive powers being revealed through natural disasters such as drought, violent storms, floods or tornadoes. Her associations with fertility are well illustrated through the sowing, first-fruits and harvest festivals that are dedicated to her. Berglund (1976), Bryant (1949) and Krige (1968, 1974) give detailed descriptions of the various rituals and ceremonies performed for her; although these may have been in decline, there had been sporadic revivals in the many areas.14 All of their depictions bear remarkable similarity to data I was able to gather in the Mvoti region, some two hundred kilometres north of the pool that I was led to by Inkosazana.

The story of Inkosazana’s visit in the Mvoti Valley It was as a result of my calling to Inkosazana’s pool and my obvious interest in her that I was taken to the Mvoti region of KwaZulu-Natal. This is where the ancient rituals for Inkosazana had been revived after she had appeared to yet another isangoma some years ago. With the permission of the chief we were able to interview a number of people who live in the river valley to get their accounts of the event that led to the revival of the rituals and days of observance, as well as to gain an understanding of how they perceived Inkosazana. One of the first people we interviewed was the chief ’s grandmother, who plays an important role in the revival of the rituals for Nomkhubulwana. There were some inconsistencies as to whether the ritual practices had recently been revived, or were in fact slowly dying out, but most of the respondents knew about the rituals although some confessed they did not participate in them. Many still linked Inkosazana to the fertility and wellbeing of crops and people and could recount the ‘story’ of Inkosazana’s manifestation in the valley, especially her request for there to be two days of rest a week, when no agricultural work or use of the river should take place. Her other important request was that the people plant a special garden for her at the beginning of spring. The account given below by Mrs G, an old woman who was the daughterin-law to a deceased headman who used to observe Inkosazana’s injunctions, is a good example of what we were told:15

14. These accounts are of great interest since Bryant’s records date back to over one hundred years ago, Krige’s to over seventy years ago and Berglund’s to some forty years ago. However Gluckman (1954), who draws from these authors’ accounts for his ‘rituals of rebellion’ hypothesis, notes he was not able to observe these women’s rituals because at the time of his research they were no longer performed. 15. There is a striking similarity between these accounts of Nomkhubulwana’s appearance and request for the observance of days of rest and the one recorded by Bryant (1949: 667–8) over a century ago.

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penny bernard There was a sangoma (isangoma) who had a house in a place called KwaHlunu. Apparently, Nomkhubulwana appeared to this sangoma. This sangoma was working in her garden and Nomkhubulwana appeared and talked to this sangoma. Nonkhubulwana asked why did she bring sweet beer with her to the garden, and asked the sangoma to pour it out (on the soil). She commanded that the sangoma had to go and tell the people that she wants her field ploughed, and two days of the week to be respected. These are Saturday and Sunday which are the names of her children, and during Mondays and Tuesdays she is using the river for her family so the people must not throw any dirt in the river. The sangoma then went to Z, who was the sub-headman. After reporting to Z, Z took the issue to Headman G, who then took it to the chief. People respected these days for some time but [recently] they are dropping these taboos. The result is the lack of food in the fields. MaDuma is an isangoma who has also been under water and communicates with the whistling spirits. She provided us with further information about the restrictions on clothes washing in the river on the taboo days: What came from the chief was that on Saturdays we must not wash our clothes in the river. I still observe that. I do it because I know that Nomkhubulwana has to be respected. When you do something she is not happy with, we were told that we will, in one way or another, come up against a problem. Washing right inside the river and pouring dirt there in the river, is what Nomkhubulwana does not like us to do. The reason she does not like it is because we are told on Saturday is the day when she washes for her children. She therefore expects water to be clean on that day. We are not sure of this, but we hear it from history. If we keep to the rules there will be lots of food in our gardens. This I know, I have seen. One lady gave an account of a neighbour who experienced the miracle of Nomkhubulwana’s bountiful gifts. Of interest is her description of Nomkhubulwana’s appearance as a mermaid: When I was a grown up girl there was a woman who had nothing in her garden. One day in the morning she woke us up asking us to come and witness the miracle, her garden had all the vegetables just over night. She said she saw a person coming to her; this person was half-fish and half a person. After hearing this people concluded that this may be Inkosazana and she was the one who planted those vegetables … Such beliefs as the one of Nomkhubulwana are very helpful because they instil trust and respect. I respect her days. In this family we still keep this tradition. Nothing will ever be right if we do not respect our culture. As a result of Nomkhubulwana’s manifestation in the iKhamanzi Valley the chief instructed the ritual planting of her garden be revived by the women who must only

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the fertility goddess of the zulu dig the garden using hand-held hoes, something only women in Zulu culture use (men being able to plough using oxen). These rituals are performed at the beginning of spring before anyone plants their own crops. In early spring the chief notifies the homesteads under his jurisdiction that they must all contribute a portion of their seeds for the ritual. Households that fail to contribute risk being fined. In the account we were given, the chief ’s grandmother, as the eldest woman, is the one who sows the seeds, while all the women assist with the hoeing. Sorghum and sweet beer are consumed for refreshment, a portion of which is poured over the garden for Inkosazana. Special songs are sung after which all the women, who are clothed in garlands of umsenge16 leaves (Inkosazana’s special tree, which is associated with rain), retire to the river to wash. This signals the end of the ritual and everyone then returns home; they are now permitted to begin hoeing their own gardens and planting their crops for the new season. During the ritual, in order to connect Inkosazana to her more remote field in the mountain forest, a goat would be sacrificed at the river. Its gall would then be sprinkled in the water and then the garden. From the interviews it was evident that many of the people were vague as to who Inkosazana or Nomkhubulwana was, and most of them admitted it was something they were told about by their parents when they were children. However, the rituals are still performed and the majority of informants expressed their willingness to participate in them because these were ‘the ways of the ancestors and a part of our isiko [culture]’. They generate respect and people also observed the beneficial effects that the rituals had on their harvests. It was generally observed that those who do not participate in the rituals have poor harvests. However, it is also clear that some people do not participate in the rituals. The impact of Christianity has undoubtedly been a significant deterrent as the following response from one of the informants reveals: ‘Once we accepted Jesus we stopped this entire Nomkhubulwana thing. That garden [Nomkhubulwana’s] is still there even now. We used to sing going down to the iKhamanzi River to bathe after ploughing the garden. By then we did not know Jesus. Once we accepted Jesus we stopped this.’ Many of the Christians who belong to the African Indigenous Churches (such as the Church of the Nazarites, and the African Zionist Churches) appear to have no problem accommodating Inkosazana into their rituals; indeed MaDuma, the isangoma who was taken under water, is an active member of a local Zionist church. An important consideration is the role of the chief in initiating and orchestrating the observances and rituals. There was general consensus from all the interviews that it was the chief ’s responsibility to initiate the spring rituals and to ensure that all adhere to the instructions; it cannot be done without his ritual sanction. The implication of this is that in those areas where traditional governance has either been eroded or eradicated, it is unlikely that such ritual practices will be performed.17

16. Umsenge is Cussonia spicata. This practice was also observed by Krige (1968: 174, 181). 17. For more on the importance of traditional governance relating to the ritual regulation of the environment and some of the contradictions and ambiguities that have arisen during the colonial and postcolonial era see Bernard and Kumalo (2004).

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penny bernard Inkosazana/Nomkhubulwana is a powerful and enduring figure in Zulu religious ‘mythology’. Her connections with rain, water and fertility are evident, and even after two hundred years of European contact, Christianity and modern transformations, her presence is still felt, respected and referred to. She is, as other authors have noted, the epitome of an earth/water goddess18 who provides humans with all their needs as long as they adhere to her injunctions and rules. At this present time of ecological crisis facing the globe, the insights that the Zulu people have regarding Inkosazana could provide a crucial message to all of humanity. She is certainly ‘calling’ people to remember her, and it appears that I am one of them. Dreams appear to be her favoured medium of contact, and they certainly deserve more detailed consideration beyond what I have provided here. In detailing the experience I had at Inkosazana’s pool I hope I have shown the value of using dreams as part of a broader experiential and phenomenological approach to academic research and, especially, how they can help us understand the reality and validity of other people’s worlds (see also Bernard 2007). After reading this chapter the question one might ask is ‘Do you believe she exists?’, to which my answer will have to be in the affirmative. I have no other means of explaining what I experienced, and I find the concept one that gives me hope and encouragement; one that engenders a respectful attitude towards the earth and her most precious resource – water.

Acknowledgements My sincere appreciation goes to all those who have made this research possible and have helped bring this chapter to fruition. Many thanks go to my family, friends and departmental colleagues who have given their full support to my fairly unconventional approach to my research. My deep gratitude goes to Sylvie Shaw and Andrew Francis for asking me to contribute a chapter to their important ground-breaking book and for all their encouragement and support in the process, and to the two anonymous referees who gave me such valuable suggestions. My grateful thanks go those who have funded my research: the Ernest Oppenheimer Trust, the National Research Foundation of South Africa and the Joint Research Committee of Rhodes University. The ideas and opinions expressed in this chapter are not to be attributed to them. Finally, my sincere thanks go to the izangoma who have shown me an alternate reality that connects us with the deep blue.

Bibliography Berglund, A.-I. 1976. Zulu Thought-Patterns and Symbolism. Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksell. Bernard, P. 2007. ‘Re-Uniting with the Kosmos’. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 1(1): 110–29. Bernard, P. & S. Kumalo. 2004. ‘Community-based Natural Resource Management, Traditional Governance and Spiritual Ecology in Southern Africa: The Case of Chiefs, Diviners and Spirit Mediums’. In Rights,

18. The fertility of the earth and all its beings are obviously intimately connected with water, and one should not treat them as separate domains.

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the fertility goddess of the zulu Resources & Rural Development. Community-based Natural Resource Management in Southern Africa, eds C. Fabricius, E. Koch, H. Magome & S. Turner, 115–26. London: Earthscan. Bryant, A. T. 1949. The Zulu People: As They Were Before the White Man Came. Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter. Callaway, H. 1970. The Religious System of the AmaZulu. Cape Town: C. Struik. Chidester, D. 1996. Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. Gluckman, M. 1954. Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Graves, R. 1999. The White Goddess, 4th edn, ed. G. Lindop. Manchester: Carcanet Press. Kendall, K. 1998. ‘The Zulu Goddess and her Virgin Daughters’. In Millenium Girls: Today’s Girls Around the World, ed. S. Inness. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Kendall, K. 1999. ‘The Role of Izangoma in Bringing the Zulu Goddess Back to Her People.’. The Drama Review 43(2): 94–117. Krige, E. J. 1968. ‘Girls’ Puberty Songs and Their Relation to Fertility, Health, Morality and Religion Among the Zulu’. Africa 38: 173–98. Krige, E. J. 1974. The Social System of the Zulus. Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter. Leclerc-Madlala, S. 2001. ‘Virginity Testing: Managing Sexuality in a Maturing HIV/AIDS Epidemic’. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 15(4): 533–52. Ngubane, H. 1977. Body and Mind in Zulu Medicine. London: Academic Press. Samuelson, L. H. 1974. Zululand: Its Traditions, Legends, Customs and Folk-Lore. Durban: T. W. Griggs. Samuelson, R. C. A. 1929. Long, Long Ago. Durban: Knox. Scorgie, F. 2002. ‘Virginity Testing and the Politics of Sexual Responsibility: Implications for AIDS Intervention’. African Studies 61(1): 55–75.

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4 Rivers of memory, lakes of survival: indigenous water traditions and the Anishinaabeg nation Melissa K. Nelson

For all indigenous peoples of the world, water is the source of material, physical, and spiritual life. (Tlatokan Atlahuak Declaration, March 2006, 4th World Water Forum) This chapter explores the spiritual meaning of water from indigenous environmental perspectives, focusing on my own tribal perspective as a member of the Anishinaabeg nation of the Great Lakes Region of US/Canada.1 I focus on water as a holy element essential to the spiritual traditions of Native Americans and provide a specific example from my tribe and its particular relationship to water systems. Of all of the forms of water on the planet, I reflect on the ecology and metaphors of rivers and lakes in North America. I assert that in addition to water being essential for physical survival, it is a metaphysical and metaphorical substance important for human spiritual imagination and crucial to the traditional knowledge and lifeways of native peoples.

1. Although the original name for our tribe is Anishinaabe or Anishinaabeg (plural), we are also called the Ojibwe/Ojibwa/Ojibway (meaning ‘to pucker up’) because of the style of moccasin we wore, which puckered up at the ankle. When the early French trappers heard ‘Otchipway’ they mispronounced it ‘Chippaway’, and our people became known as the Chippewa or Chippeway. The US government followed this wrong pronunciation and most of the treaties were signed with what they called the Chippewa tribe, thus this is generally the official name for our tribe in the US. Now we are known by all three names: Anishinaabe, Ojibwe and Chippewa.

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Figure 1 ‘Green River Summer’. South Fork of the Eel River, Mendocino County, California, USA. This is the river I grew up on. (Photograph by author.)

Personal introduction I have not sat beside a clean river in a long time and that longing to do so is part of my motivation for writing this chapter. If I cannot be by a river landscape then I seek to create a waterscape in my mind. My previous publication on the subject of water is entitled ‘Constructing a Confluence’ (2000). It refers to the odd juxtaposition of construction, the human effort to think through and build a structure, and a confluence, a seemingly effortless flowing together of two or more streams or elements. As I sit down to write about water, I realize the inherent struggle I have in attempting to express the spiritual power of water in English words. I am caught in the conundrum of rationally constructing an essay with the desire to merge poetically diverse elements into a coherent and meaningful whole. My rational mind and poetic mind tango on a bridge. Will they come together and cross the river? Music is perhaps a better expression of water than words, or maybe dance, with its visual movement and flowing forms. And yet water, with its omnipotent authority, must be written about, discussed, questioned and celebrated in the written word. Water’s meanings are too important not to explicate and articulate in verbal language. In this chapter I use both prose and poetry to share the multifaceted aspects of water from personal and tribal perspectives.2

2. All poetry is written by me except when specifically credited to another author.

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rivers of memory, lakes of survival In addition to the challenge of writing about water as a scholar and a poet, I am also Native American and Euro-American, a mixed-blood native person, which gives me both insider and outsider status. As I examine my interest and intentions in writing about indigenous water values, I feel a profound passion to learn and share stories of traditional knowledge and practices, from my own tribe and from other tribes and indigenous groups. I feel strongly that I can only speak for myself and cannot represent indigenous peoples, Native Americans or even the Ojibwe. I can only represent myself but with the knowledge and experience I have gained as a mixed-blood person, Native American professor, indigenous rights activist, and lover of rivers.

Introduction Indigenous peoples,3 the only peoples to demonstrate how to live sustainably within their home ecosystems over millennia without over-consuming the resources,4 have a profound and sacred relationship to the waters of life. From ancient, complex water management systems that grow corn in deserts, to elaborate rituals of transformation and renewal to keep rivers flowing and the earth alive, water is a sacred life-giver that requires special status for traditional earth-based cultures. In many indigenous languages, the word for water and the word for good or wealth are often the same. For example, in Hawaiian, water is wai, and wealth is waiwai. This language comes from a people whose island homes are surrounded by water and over half of their islands are tropical rainforests. The wettest spot in the world is on the island of Kauai, one of the Hawaiian chain’s oldest islands. It receives more that 475 inches of rain per year (over 39 feet or 12 metres). Even with such an abundance of water in their world, Hawaiians still sing ancient chants to the mountains to bring rain to their lands. In contrast, the Hopi and Pueblo peoples of the American south-west live in an extremely arid environment, where water is very rare. Some years, the desert land gets less than 5 inches of rain. Yet their cultures honour water daily in their language, religion and arts. When you visit an elder’s home in Pueblo country, you are always given a glass of water. It is understood that this simple gift is a powerful blessing. Whether abundant or scarce, native and traditional peoples around the world honour water as the blood of the earth, an essential life-sustaining force, and a sacred substance that can give and take life.

3. By ‘indigenous peoples’, I refer to ethnic groups and communities who are descendants of the people who lived in a specific geographic region before European colonization and who have maintained their own diverse cultural, economic and social institutions since the establishment of nation-states (International Labour Organization [ILO] Convention, no. 169). 4. For an in-depth discussion of the ‘ecological Indian’ debate, see my recent article, ‘Ravens, Storms, and the Ecological Indian at the National Museum of the American Indian’ (2006); also see Krech III (2000); Callicott and Nelson (2003); Nadasdy (2005).

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Water and the sacred in Native America With over 500 Indian nations in the US, there are innumerable ways that Native Americans have used and continue to use water for physical survival and sacred renewal. As has been demonstrated elsewhere, the connection between biological diversity and cultural diversity is uncanny (Maffi 2001). Put another way, diverse cultures spring from diverse natural ecologies as nature and culture shape each other in reciprocal ways. Concomitantly, the great aquatic diversity of North America, with various coastal areas, major and minor rivers, large and small lakes, cold and hot springs, and wet and dry weather systems gives rise to very diverse cultural customs and practices for harvesting, honouring and using water. Throughout North America, especially in the south-west region, Indian nations created elaborate and sophisticated ways to collect, transport and manage water for agricultural use. The famous ‘waffle’ gardens of the Zuni Pueblo, for example, helped hold water in the soil, limit evaporation and increase the health of the plants. In terms of the spiritual aspects of water, sacred water sites exist in many forms: as rushing rivers, peaceful lakes, ephemeral springs, dry salt lakes, forest creeks, ocean bays, seasonal rains, glacial mountains and melting ice. Water keeps us alive, provides beauty and metaphors, and connects us literally and spiritually to what is often called ‘the blood of the earth’. For indigenous peoples practising traditional ways, this connection is as real and important as our connection to our biological mother. Rain-makers build a wall of water. Cloud-Eaters lick rain from the side of a mountain. Thunder-Beings gather over the Plains to release fire and rain. River-Spirits flirt in the shade of a tree, creating a vortex. Ocean Makers turn into clouds after birthing the seas. Tideline Holders lift the ocean like a blanket. Snow Monsters hide in a maple forest. Seal Boys return to land to bring food to their families. Weeping Women create a lake of tears. Mermaids and Mermen entice us to jump into streams. Waterfall Goddesses cleanse our broken hearts. These mythical water beings and their adventures are very real and important to the native peoples of Turtle Island, a term based on numerous Native American creation stories and used by many tribal peoples to refer to the North American continent. What Western scientists call ‘ecological processes’, like the ‘water cycle’, some native cultures call ‘water persons’ and ‘relatives’. Indigenous peoples may call them other things as well. In myth and sacred stories, these water spirits are major teachers of how humans are to use water to survive and thrive. According to many native traditions, including Ojibwe, Lakota, Wintu, Paiute, Shoshone and others, water spirits need to be respected and honoured. It is customary for elders, fishermen, farmers, ricers, swimmers, seaweed gatherers and other

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rivers of memory, lakes of survival native water-users to make an offering to the waters before entering them. For the Anishinaabeg, we give tobacco, asayma, to the waters as a humble offering to the water spirits to request safe passage and use; because as much as water gives life and helps us survive, it can also destroy. As a powerful life force, it needs to be respected as a physical and a spiritual entity. Water is infused in Native American lifeways, especially ceremonial life. The act and responsibility of ‘pouring water’ in a Lakota sweat lodge purification ceremony, for example, has a similar importance as using holy water in Catholic mass. It is an act of consecration. In the Native American Church or Peyote religion, water is a central element to the ceremony, with the special role of the water woman who presents water during key moments in the ritual. The Sundance Ceremony of the Northern Plains is also deeply tied to the sacred substance of water, but in this ceremony it is the sacrifice of water in the presence of the great sun at summer solstice over four days that creates new insights into the power and preciousness of water. In the Midewiwin or Grand Medicine Society ceremonies of the Anishinaabeg, it is the water drum that calls everyone together for ceremony and acts as an instrument for healing and initiation. For Native Americans, water is inscribed in ritual, in culture, in language and in the land itself as the natural water forms and as place names. Many place names in the US and Canada are based on native words for water resources: ‘Minnesota’ comes from the Dakota word meaning ‘sky-tinted water’; ‘Mississippi’ from the Ojibwe word ‘great river’; ‘Michigan’ from the Ojibwe word for ‘great lake’; ‘Saskatchewan’ is Cree for ‘swift current’; ‘Winnipeg’ means ‘dirty water’ in Ojibwe; ‘Ontario’ comes from the Huron language meaning ‘beautiful sparkling water’ (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada 2004).

Introduction to the Anishinaabeg nation For the Anishinaabeg people, our origins, identity, spirituality and very existence are shaped by water. Our origins on the earth happened in and through water when the earth was covered with the primal liquid sea. Our identity is shaped by water in that we are place-based people and our sacred homelands include the Atlantic Ocean, the Saint Lawrence River, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. Our very spirituality is connected to water because it is one of the four sacred elements that sustain life and therefore is honoured in prayers, offerings, sacrifices, ceremonies and healing rituals. The oral tradition is one of the most important traditional teaching methods for most indigenous peoples and it is the same for the Anishinaabeg. There are thousands of stories and teachings that discuss the important values, ethics and practices needed to be a good human and live in balance with the earth and all of creation. Creation stories about the origins of the universe, the earth, the first humans, the animals and different types of life forms and ecological processes abound from the memories, minds and mouths of traditional teachers and orators. The Anishinaabeg nation is one of the largest in North America, with over one hundred and thirty officially recognized tribes in the US and Canada, and owing to

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melissa k. nelson the inherently fluid and creative nature of the oral tradition there are many different versions of these stories. Native American stories, like rivers, are not necessarily linear or predictable. Because they are a verbal art form that involves spontaneity, memory, imagination, call and response and other creative elements, the oral tradition transcends logical positivism and reminds us of diverse, indigenous ways of knowing and expressing reality. Different versions of traditional stories are not seen as contradictory but instead they express the profound diversity of and respect for place-based knowledge and local perspective. An orator such as Francis Cree from my Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation in North Dakota will tell a different version of the Turtle Island creation story than an elder from the Mole Lake Chippewa Reservation in Wisconsin. The following stories are based on the transcribed oral teachings of Ojibwe elder Edward Benton-Banai published in The Mishomis Book (1988) and oral tradition told by other Anishinaabeg teachers. According to our creation stories a Great Mystery, Gitchie Manitou, created our people by blowing the breath of life through a sacred Megis Shell (cowry shell) and into four clay beings to create humans. We are Anishinaabe, which means the ‘original being’ or ‘first human’. Creation stories are multi-dimensional and include before-worlds, after worlds, above worlds, below worlds and many different dimensions of space and time not common to the Cartesian logic of the Western mind. The Anishinaabeg language, for example, includes four past tenses, four present tenses and four future tenses. This clearly opens up other understandings of time and space. So these stories may not ‘make sense’ in a Western logical framework. But they are true and essential for our people’s cultural and spiritual identity. In another one of our creation stories, after the first original humans lived on the earth for a while, the Anishinaabeg stopped living by the original instructions given to them by the Creator. They started bickering, fighting, not sharing resources and becoming greedy. To cleanse the earth of this corruption of the original teachings, the Creator generated a huge flood that covered the whole earth in water.5 After this purifying flood cleansed the earth, their land was covered with nothing but water. Only a few creatures survived, floating around, and the birds of the sky had to fly and fly for there was no place to land. One person, our cultural hero, Nanaboozhoo, also survived and was trying to find a place to be.6 Our original ancestor knew that we needed both earth and water together to survive. Our animal brothers helped us as divers who looked for earth under the great primal sea. After several attempts by different animals, it was the muskrat that finally dived deep in the ocean to find earth and then floated to the water’s surface with a paw full of mud. Once placed on Turtle’s back, this little pile of earth expanded into Turtle Island, our sacred homeland, and the North American continent.

5. This ‘great flood’ theme is obviously an archetypal story found in many cultures and too vast to address in this chapter. See Leeming (1990). 6. Nanaboozhoo is often considered the first person on earth. He is part man, part spirit, and a trickster shape-shifter who exhibits both good and bad qualities. He is revered as a hero and is the source of many profound teachings and much humour for the Anishinaabeg people.

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rivers of memory, lakes of survival Traditional teachings tell us that our ancestors renewed themselves after the flood and lived a good life on the Atlantic Coast of North America in the northeastern area of what is today the border of US and Canada. After living there for a while, a man had a prophecy that told the Anishinaabeg that they should follow the magical cowry shell, the Megis shell, on a migration journey west. It was important to move west because an evil wind was coming from the east. Even though many people did not want to leave the good life they had on the coast, the prophecy was confirmed by others and so the Anishinaabeg left the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and travelled by foot and canoe up the Saint Lawrence River to the Great Lakes. The prophecy said that the Anishinaabeg ancestors would know their new homeland once they found the ‘place where food grows on water’. This food, manoomin, the ‘good grain’, of wild rice was found in abundance in the lakes of present day Minnesota/Ontario area. This became the new homelands for the Anishinaabeg nation. Recent figures indicate that there are now over 300,000 members of the Anishinaabeg nation residing in Canada and the US. According to the 2000 US Census, the Chippewa tribe is the fifth largest Indian tribe in the US with a population of approximately 150,000 over five states: Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana. Also, according to the 2001 Canadian Census, the Ojibway tribe is the third largest tribe in Canada with a population of 21,000 reported tribal members living in Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Both of these population numbers are considered under-reported and it is likely that there are twice as many people living in the US and Canada who identify with Anishinaabeg, Ojibwe and Chippewa ancestors. That would bring this population closer to 340,000.

Mino-nibi: “good water” of the Anishinaabeg Water is so essential to the Anishinaabeg that it infuses our worldviews and language. In A Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe by John Nichols and Earl Nyholm (1995), there are twenty-six separate entries for the definition of water. Most of these words refer to things coming in and out of the water – for example, bbakobiiyaashi, ‘blown into the water’ or mookibii, ‘emerge from the water’ – and to the ‘anatomy’ of water – for example, anaamiindim, ‘in the depths of the water’, ondaasagaam, ‘on this side of the water’ and agidibiig, ‘on top of the water’. There are twelve entries for snow, eleven entries for lake, ten entries for river and nine for rain. The different forms of water are clearly acknowledged in Ojibwe language and thought.

Totems of water The clan system is a significant form of social organization for indigenous and traditional peoples around the world. Native American nations use this system as a sophis73

melissa k. nelson ticated form of governance for organizing kinship and genealogy and for defining the cultural roles and economic occupations of different ‘clans’ that were made of groups of families. It is interesting to note that our English word ‘totem’ comes from the Ojibwe word for clan, dodem, meaning kin or extended family. Ojibwe scholar Basil Johnston defines dodem as ‘action, heart, and nourishment’ (2001: 246). Each clan has a ‘totem’ animal associated with it, and the clan is passed along either patrilinealy or matrilinealy. In the case of the Ojibwe, it is passed on through the father’s line. According to oral history and documented in William Warren’s famous text, The History of the Ojibwe Nation (1885), the original six clans came from the sea as different animal spirit beings who taught the Anishinaabeg their unique ways. Other Ojibwe teachers such as Benton-Banai say that there were originally seven clans; others say there were five. Using the original seven clan system, it is the Fish clan, governed by the Turtle, that has the important roles of teachers, scholars and healers. This Ojibwe clan system is still actively used today in many communities. There are approximately twenty-one different clans used throughout the Anishinaabeg territory. They are variations of the original dodems, divided into the Hooved clans, the Fish clans, the Bear clans and the Crane clans. In addition to defining social and economic roles, clans also provide a sense of unique cultural identity. Through its ocean origin story and the significant roles of the fish clan, we see that water again has a cultural meaning fundamental to the Anishinaabeg way of life.

‘The food that grows on water’ Our sacred staple food, manoomin, ‘the good grain’, is the only wild rice native to North America and ‘it grows on water’, as our creation and migration stories predicted. This food has been used for hundreds if not thousands of years to feed and nourish the peoples of the Great Lakes region, and ‘has always been regarded by the Ojibway as the sacred gift of their chosen ground’ (Benton-Banai 1988: 101). There are many stories and ceremonies associated with harvesting, processing, cooking and eating this native staple food. Since the only way to harvest it is to go out on the lake with a canoe and ‘knock rice’ using cedar sticks, traditional harvesters make special offerings to the lake and the spirits that dwell within it for calm waters, safe passage and a good harvest. They also pray to the wind and rain to protect the delicate rice seeds so that they can be safely acquired in their boats rather than blown into the waters. Tobacco is traditionally given to the lake or river to appease the water spirits. One of the most significant water spirits for Ojibwe river- and lake-users is Mizhi-Bizheu, the ‘Great Lynx’, who lives at the bottom of the sea and any water body. It is thought that this spirit causes drownings and other water accidents.7 Mizhi-Bizheu is depicted on rock art and birch bark scrolls as a sacred cat with antlers or horns. It is also trans-

7. See Vennum (1988: 83).

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rivers of memory, lakes of survival species in that it is often part serpent. This great horned Lynx-serpent is a sacred, powerful water spirit that needs to be propitiated through offerings and ceremonies. Although Mizhi-Bizheu is one of the most powerful water spirits, there are other water spirits too, from mermaid- and mermen-type beings to other serpents and mysterious shapeless water energies. More than being feared, these spirits need to be respected to help keep people careful and humble.

Music through water The sacred Ojibwe water drum, Mitigwakik daywaygun, combines the elements of wood, animal and water to create a unique and healing instrument of sound performed only by specially trained Midewiwin priests.8 The wood represents all of the plants of the earth; the deerskin head of the drum represents all of the four-legged animal relatives. The water, nibi, ‘is said to represent the life blood of Mother Earth, the blood that flows through her, carries food to her, and purifies her. This water represents the life-giving force of Mother Earth that purifies and gives life to our bodies as well’ (Benton-Banai 1988: 70). In a very important traditional story, a young boy, often called Water Drum Boy, discovered the Seven Teachings of the Seven Grandfathers to share with his people to better honour the original instructions of the creator. The Water Drum is the ideal and sacred vehicle for reminding us of the seven teachings: honesty, love, courage, truth, wisdom, humility and respect. ‘Each teaching is represented by a different animal. Anishinaabe who study and live the Seven Teachings follow a path to physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being’ (Raven 2000). Water Drum Boy reminds us of the Seven Teachings. He and the teachings are embodied in the sacred water drum. It is the water in the drum that gives the drum beat sound a unique and powerful vibration that emanates these important teachings and communicates a spiritual resonance for healing rituals.

Watershed geography Having seen the ways that the Anishinaabeg honour and use water in cultural traditions, it is no surprise to see that the Anishinaabeg traditional territory is infused with major water ways: the Atlantic ocean, the Saint Lawrence River, the five Great Lakes (Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan and Lake Superior) the Ottawa

8. The Midewiwin Society is a specialized religious group of the Anishinaabeg nation. People are selected to be trained to be members of the ‘Grand Medicine’ Society and perform important religious and cultural roles for the communities. See Grim (1988).

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Figure 2 ‘Natural symmetry’ pond in the Drive Thru Tree Park, Leggett, California, USA. This is another area I grew up in. (Photograph by author.)

River, the Mississippi River, Red River, Lake Nipigon, Lake of the Woods and Lake Winnipeg. Secondarily, our territory is also connected to James Bay to the north and the Missouri River to the west and south. Water was our primary form of transportation and the Anishinaabeg are renowned for their famous birch bark canoes. The Mississippi–Missouri river system in the US is one of the longest in the world and the longest in North America at 3,872 miles from the Central Plains to the Gulf of Mississippi. The second largest river system in North America consists of the Great Lakes, including the world’s largest freshwater lake, Lake Superior, and the Saint Lawrence River and seaway flow to the Atlantic Ocean. This Saint Lawrence/ Great Lakes watershed system ‘comprised 518,000 square miles (1,344,00 km) and is approximately 2,340 miles long (3700 km) making it the seventeenth longest system in the world and representing twenty-five percent of the fresh water supply on earth’ (Perez 2006). This second water system is the heart of the Ojibwe homelands. Ojibwe life is water life. My Anishinaabeg ancestors had to migrate through three of the four major land regions of North America: from the eastern uplands of the Atlantic Ocean at the Saint Lawrence seaway up north of the river through the Canadian shield, then west and south to the edge of the Great Northern Plains. In terms of plant life, they travelled from deciduous and coniferous forest to mixed woodlands to northern grasslands. Such ecological changes could be extremely difficult to adapt to: the weather, plants, animals and waters all shift with this western migration. Yet the Anishinaabeg, following the Megis shell, found food, shelter and medicine on this amazing migration through the diverse ecosystems of north-eastern North America.

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rivers of memory, lakes of survival Water exists in many different forms and flows from the six directions: the four cardinal directions, which are considered sacred to the Ojibwe, as well as from above as precipitation and from below as aquifers. There is rare freshwater and abundant saltwater, running water, standing water and frozen water. There are waters from the sky through rain and the solar-powered water cycle and waters from the ground through springs and shifting geology. Frozen freshwater floats on liquid seawater in the polar regions of the earth, merging and melting like the mixing zones of the wetlands, estuaries, bays and marshes of the massive coastlines surrounding the world’s continents. What would human emotion be like without rainbows and waterfalls? Ocean waves and quiet streams? Reflecting lakes and fog? Whether contemporary humans realize it or not, we depend on these complex, sophisticated and ongoing processes of earth movements, weather systems, water cycles and ecosystem services to create and sustain a liveable planet. Sadly, today, many people do not recognize or honour natural processes or water systems. The remaining precious freshwater on the earth is being polluted and commodified at an alarming rate. In contrast, many indigenous peoples feel they have a sacred obligation to their creator to honour and protect water as the blood of their original mother.9

Liquid meanings and metaphors Water has continually intrigued poets, artists, musicians and philosophers; perhaps this is because water is felt as more immediate, as something elemental that precedes human thought. Just watch a waterfall or ocean waves. There is a natural process occurring that evades our ability to capture it. Because of this, water fascinates us. It eludes us. It inspires us. Indigenous cultures have also attempted to capture this in their philosophy and art. Rivers and lakes are two specific water forms that influence our lives in numerous ways. Besides the ocean, they are the primary water forms that humans interact with. ‘You cannot step in the same river twice, for freshwaters are ever flowing upon you.’ Rivers constantly move, as this famous saying by Heraclitus clearly illustrates. Rivers and lakes in particular have inspired countless people to paint them, make songs and poems about them, and create prayers for them. Within every culture and world religion you will find innumerable metaphors, proverbs, symbols and stories relating to water. Water flows, currents, floods, tides, pools, torrents, droughts; these are all

9. See the Tlatokan Atlahuak Declaration, 4th World Water Forum, March 2006 and other native water declarations at the Indigenous Environmental Network website (www.ienearth.org).

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melissa k. nelson terms commonly used in daily life around the world to represent not only human emotions, philosophies and spiritual meanings but technologies, politics, economics and other aspects of life. Water metaphors have become infused in our daily language and consciousness. Of all the liquid meanings available from waterways, I focus on natural rivers and lakes as two places where humans often express their kinship and intimacy with water. Harvard biologist and author E. O. Wilson has noted in his books Biophilia (1986) and The Biophilia Hypothesis (with S. Kellert, 1995) that humans have an intrinsic attraction and connection to other life forms, or what he calls biodiversity. Likewise, since our bodies and the earth itself are both approximately 70 per cent water, I suggest that humans have a deeply ingrained ‘aqua-philia’: a visceral, sensuous, creative attraction to water. It is a relationship that feeds our souls and imaginations. Just that first time, this body, the river Flows around stones, whorls an undertow, Makes a map, borders another territory Divides up the whole wide wet world. ‘This Body, the River’ (Heid Erdrich 2005)10 Rivers are part of complex watershed systems that drain surface freshwater from mountaintops to the sea: freshwater to brackish water to saltwater. Rivers roar, rivers flow quietly, rivers can be massive or dried up. A river is a unidirectional flow of water from one place (a higher elevation) toward another place (a lower elevation). Rivers have beginnings, middles and ends. Rivers have this ‘watercourse way’, as the Taoists refer to it, but rivers certainly are not linear unless humans have channelled them that way. To many indigenous peoples, a river is seen as a vein of mother earth connecting different ‘organs’ (lakes, wetlands, oceans). It is a life-giver to keep the earth ‘metabolizing’ and healthy. So when these rivers are disrupted through projects such as dams, the whole health of the land and people are negatively affected. I have heard this over and over again from the Hidatsa/Arikara/Mandan people of North Dakota who had their sacred Missouri River disrupted by the Garrison Dam in the 1950s; from the Winnemem Wintu people of northern California, who had their McCloud River disturbed by the Shasta Dam of the 1940s; from the Cree of northern Manitoba in Canada, who have had dozens of dams placed on their sacred Saskatchewan River, which flows into the Hudson Bay; and from the many Paiute and Mojave peoples who have seen their mighty Colorado River at the border of Arizona and California altered by numerous dams in the twentieth century. When these river dams went in, native communities were irreversibly cut off from their sacred sites, hunting grounds, fishing places and villages, which were flooded by the artificial lakes. Dams alter the river systems so dramatically that they virtually kill them and the many life forms that 10. ‘This Body, the River’, © Heid E. Erdrich. From The Mother’s Tongue (Cambridge, MA: Salt Publishing, 2005). Reprinted with the permission of the publisher.

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rivers of memory, lakes of survival depend on the river. This in turn cuts native peoples off from their traditional foods and medicines and the source of much of their material and spiritual cultures. These eco-cultural disruptions also lead to significant health impacts on the native people’s bodies themselves and many elders believe that their sugar diabetes came after the dams went in. Many might say this ‘vein’ or ‘artery’ notion of a river is simply a quaint metaphor. But as current ecological studies are revealing, there is significant truth to this idea that rivers serve a vital role in transporting nutrients (and today’s pollutants) throughout an ecosystem and contribute to the health or disease of the whole bioregion. James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis would certainly support this notion, and more and more Western scientists are beginning to understand and validate these timetested native concepts. In other native traditions, especially the Northern Plains tradition of North America, tribes often use the Medicine Wheel as a sacred teaching tool. The Medicine Wheel is constructed sacred space used by the Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Crow, Lakota and other tribes. It is used for orientation, teachings and healings. It is a large physical wheel or circle laid out on the land with rocks, wood or other natural materials. There is a centre to the circle and the four cardinal directions are identified in four spokes of the wheel, dividing the circle up with the sacred Four Directions used for physical and spiritual orientation. The four directions make a cross within the circle and connect the centre of the circle with the periphery. Between the four directions are other spokes, forming a visual wheel from above. Each corner or quadrant of the Medicine Wheel is identified with a direction, a colour, an animal and an emotion. According to these traditions, there are four dimensions of being human: the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Likewise, there are four fundamental sacred elements in the universe: earth, air, water and fire. In the Medicine Wheel structure and teachings, it is common to associate water with the emotional world. Many other world religious teachings share this association and relate water to the emotions of the heart and spirit. Of all the emotional and spiritual parts of our life that can benefit from the metaphor of water, I want to emphasize the connections between rivers and memory, and how rivers hold a special metaphorical advantage for exploring and understanding memory. Memory is not a static phenomenon but is constantly changing depending on perspective, context, and other factors. Memories, like rivers, have sources in time and have a history. Memories have beginnings that start after an experience happens, they have middles that change over time, and whenever we recall the memory years later, and they seem to have endings, when our human organisms, containing our minds/hearts, die. Owing to trauma, memories too can be diverted or dammed, and with healing they can be released and drained. ‘The river of life’, as it is called, may also end at or merge with a sea, but that is ultimately unknowable and belongs to the realm of the Great Mystery. For traditional river peoples who practise an oral tradition, the land and waters hold important memories. They are the visual and sensory reminders of past events. As rivers change with seasonal cycles, floods and droughts, pulses and placidness, they

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Figure 3 ‘Sierra Lake’. Sierra Mountain lake, Tahoe National Forest, California. (Photograph by author.)

remind us of, and reflect our own changes as individuals and as community members, both the human community and the larger community of life. The river is a relative, not a substance to be commodified.11 Rivers are often connected to creation stories and other traditional teachings that describe the sacred source of that water. For example, the Kashaya Pomo tribe of the North Coast of California remember when Coyote made the Russian River as a result of his thirst after eating too many grasshoppers (Parrish 2002). So when contemporary Pomo fish or swim in that river there is a unique connection to that water through the collective memory of the tribe and the recollection of its distinct creation. The story of Coyote making the river becomes a sort of embedded cultural metaphor in the psyche of the Pomo. It is what Enrique Salmon calls a ‘moving metaphor that creates a moral landscape’ (Martinez et al. 2008). Freshwater lakes are natural pools of land-locked water. They generally do not ‘move’ in the way a river flows from a higher place to a lower place, although many lakes have river or stream sources and outlets. Lakes look placid, stationary and dependable, but they have a lower current underneath. Their water levels fluctuate over time depending on the water sources, temperature, humidity, weather and human influences. Lakes, being relatively stationary and dependable, are often associated with peacefulness, stillness, quiet and solitude. They represent a stable connection to the earth and serve as a place to reflect on inner life. Lakes too can be drained

11. With the growing scarcity of freshwater globally, there is a massive effort by corporations to commodify and capitalize on water. Water is already more expensive than gasoline and will most likely become the next ‘blue gold’. See Barlow (2001).

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rivers of memory, lakes of survival or diverted, but being relatively static bodies of water they have less potential than rivers for being harnessed for human economic use. Rivers and lakes, movement and stillness, represent rich symbols and metaphors for the mind, heart and spirit. They represent profound sources of identity, spirituality and survival for Native Americans. So when the Bureau of Water Reclamation proposes damming a river or draining a lake, this is not only a threat to the ecology and health of that water system, it is also a threat to the cultural integrity and continuance of a land-based Native community. Additionally, when water bodies are polluted by industry, this water pollution affects the whole wellbeing of indigenous nations.12

Contemporary Native water struggles Winnemem Wintu Nation and McCloud River, California, USA The Winnemem Wintu tribe of Northern California is a traditional river nation. The name Winnemem means ‘middle water’ and Wintu means ‘people’. They live along the McCloud River just south of Mount Shasta. Their river is in between the headwaters of the Sacramento River to the north-west and the Pit River to the south-east. This land is characterized by the convergence of three major mountain ranges: it is at the southern end of the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, the eastern edge of the Klamath Range of the Oregon/California border, and north and west of the Sierra Nevada range of California. Due to the convergence of mountains and plates at this area, it is a volcanic landscape. Mount Shasta is a dormant volcano mountain reaching 14,179 feet (4,322 metres) into the sky. This area also lies at the northern headwaters of the major Sacramento River Valley. To the south-east of Mount Shasta is Mount Lassen, another dormant volcano mountain and the beginning of the high desert of the Modoc Plateau. The majestic snow-capped view of Mount Shasta raising 10,000 feet above the surrounding land is always a special sight to see when driving north or south on Interstate Five. On clear days, it can be seen hundreds of miles away. This Shasta region receives an ample amount of annual rainfall and is rich in mixed-conifer forests of pine, fir, juniper, hemlock, cedar and other large trees. It is a land of magnificent mountains, emerald green forests, mighty cold rivers and deep blue skies. Although the Winnemem Wintu signed one of the original eighteen California Indian treaties negotiated in 1851, the Winnemem today have no official recognition as a ‘tribe’ by the US federal government.13 They have been rendered invisible in the eyes of the government. In the 1940s the Winnemem’s traditional territory along the McCloud River, including villages, burials and sacred sites, was flooded by the Shasta dam. Land was promised to the Winnemem in exchange for the flooded land. But by 12. See Winona LaDuke’s ‘Akwesasne: Mohawk Mother’s Milk and PCBs’ in All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (1999). 13. These eighteen treaties were never ratified by the US senate, so were not officially completed.

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Figure 4 ‘Waimen and Mother Caleen’. Waimen and Mother Caleen at Puberty Rock along McCloud River. (Photograph by Claire Hope Cummings, with permission.)

2007, the Winnemem have still not received this land or any other types of compensation for the loss of their traditional homelands due to the dam flooding. Additionally, the Bureau of Reclamation and the state of California are planning to increase the size of the dam to store more water. The raising of the dam would flood additional lands of the Winnemem, including several sacred places such as the sacred puberty rock site. This place is essential for Winnemem young people to ceremoniously experience their rite of passage from youth to adulthood. Fourteen-year old Waimen Sisk-Franco, daughter of Winnemem tribal Chief Caleen Sisk-Franco and Headman Mark Franco, held this important ‘coming-of-age’ ceremony in July 2006. Waimen, and countless other young women before her, live on one side of the river for four days and nights being taught by aunts, elders and friends about women’s knowledge. At the end of the four days, Waimen then swam across the river to greet her community. She is now a woman. She will always remember that river and the river will remember her. This significant rite of passage has happened in this particular location for hundreds if not thousands of years. To flood this sacred site would be an incalculable loss for the Winnemem Wintu people. As the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper headline put it, ‘Shasta Lake – Tribe Sees Dam Plan as Cultural Genocide’ (Martin 2005). Memory and identity are embedded in cultural landscapes. When sacred waterways are desecrated, native cultures suffer. 82

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Pit River Nation, Medicine Lake, California, USA In 1998, at the 8th annual Indigenous Environmental Network’s ‘Protecting Mother Earth’ conference at Fall River Mills, California, participants had the opportunity to be a part of a healing ceremony with the Pit River Indian Tribe, who were fighting to protect their sacred Medicine Lake located in between Mount Shasta and Lava Beds National Monument in north-eastern California. This is a dry, volcanic landscape and lava beds are visible from the road, and highlighted in the Lava Beds Park. Corporations had taken out leases on the Medicine Lake land area owned and managed by the US government’s Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service. The corporations were interested in mining the steam of the lake for geothermal energy development. Even this lake’s English name indicates its importance; it is ‘Medicine’ Lake, a place of high spiritual energy for the Pit River and other local tribes. According to the Pit River oral tradition, the Creator and his son bathed in this lake after they created the world. The Creator’s powerful healing energy is infused in this lake. It is used for healing and renewal, and as a training place for many medicine people (Sacred Land Film Project n.d.) I and hundreds of people attending the Protect Mother Earth conference slowly entered the warm, steamy, clear blue waters of Medicine Lake. We silently prayed and made tobacco offerings to this special water body where the Creator and his son bathed. With the evening sun setting, we saw the purple reflections of sky and forest ripple on the warm water’s surface. Babies were baptized, the sick were strengthened, elders were renewed and we all collectively prayed for the protection of this lake of survival. Fortunately, in November 2006, the US Court of Appeals ruled that the US Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service had violated two laws in extending a geothermal lease to Calpine, the company wanting to geothermally mine Medicine Lake (Pit River Tribe vs. US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management 2006). For now, Medicine Lake is left in its natural state and protected from the threat of geothermal mining. The Pit River and other tribes that hold this place sacred can continue to seek healing and renewal from these warm waters of their Creator.

Great Lakes, Ojibwe Nation, US and Canada The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC) is an inter-tribal Ojibwe organization committed to protecting the natural resources and off-reservation treaty rights of eleven Ojibwe tribes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. It works to protect the rights of Ojibwe to hunt, fish and gather native foods from their reservation land and guaranteed by their original treaties with the US government. The GLIFWC specifically protects the Ojibwe’s right to fish lamprey, sturgeon, trout, walleye, whitefish and other fish of the Great Lakes and rivers of Ojibwe territory. They are actively recording and monitoring water quality and quantity levels of their sacred waterways and working with state and federal agencies to ensure that they can safely continue to harvest traditional foods around the Great Lakes region. This 83

melissa k. nelson important organization is one of hundreds throughout the US and Canada that are concerned with the health of their ancestral water systems. The GLIFWC illustrates the Anishinaabeg’s ongoing responsibility to take care of their sacred waters.

The significance of water As indigenous peoples and as humans, we need to remember the significance of water for our life, health and spiritual ecologies. As oral cultures have shown us, memory is embedded in landscape and helps us know how to interact with the diversity of life forms we share our local space with. It is clear that we must be more conscious of the finite nature of water or else suffer dire consequences. If we can learn from and respect the special spiritual role water still holds for many indigenous communities such as the Anishinaabeg, the Winnemem Wintu and the Pit River nations, then perhaps together we can envisage and enact more sustainable water practices and develop a global spiritual water ethos. Protecting and restoring our local water systems is a way to re-member, to put ourselves back together again and to become whole. As many indigenous leaders teach us, we need to not only restore the ecological diversity and health of the land and waters, but we must restore the spiritual strength and power of sacred places by recognizing them, honouring them and making offerings to them. As Winnemem spiritual leader Caleen Sisk-Franco put it clearly: ‘I’m still hopeful about finding people from all the tribes who still know the songs for the sacred places, the songs for the rivers and have the dances for the ceremonies that help the land. In a spiritual light we really do have to sing to our waters’ (Fenger 2006).

Bibliography Barlow, M. 2001. Blue Gold: The Global Water Crisis and the Commodification of the World’s Water Supply. San Francisco, CA: International Forum on Globalization. Benton-Banai, E. 1988. The Mishomis Book: The Voice of the Ojibway. St Paul, MN: Red School House. Callicott, J. B. & M. P. Nelson. 2003. American Indian Environmental Ethics: An Ojibwa Case Study. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Erdrich, H. 2005. The Mother’s Tongue. Cambridge, MA: Salt Publishing. Fenger, D. 2006. ‘We Really Need to Sing to Our Waters’. The Yuma Sun, 5 December. Grim, J. 1988. The Shaman: Patterns of Religious Healing Among the Ojibway Indians. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. 2004. ‘Places’. www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ks/2000_e.html (accessed Jan. 2008). Johnston, B. 2001. The Manitous: The Spiritual World of the Ojibway. St Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society. Krech III, S. 2000. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. LaDuke, W. 1999. All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

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rivers of memory, lakes of survival Leeming, D. A. 1990. The World of Myth: An Anthology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maffi, L. 2001. On Biocultural Diversity: Linking Language, Knowledge, and the Environment. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Martin, G. 2005. ‘Shasta Lake: Tribe Sees Dam Plan as Cultural Genocide’. San Francisco Chronicle, 27 February. Martinez, D., E. D. Salmon & M. K. Nelson 2008. ‘Restoring Indigenous History and Culture to Nature: Ecological and Language Recovery in Indian Country’. In Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future, ed. M. K. Nelson, 85–115. Rochester, VT: Bear & Co./Inner Traditions. Nadasdy, P. 2005. ‘Transcending the Debate over the Ecologically Noble Indian: Indigenous Peoples and Environmentalism’. Ethnohistory 52(2) (Spring): 291–331. Nelson, M. 2006. ‘Ravens, Storms, and the Ecological Indian at the National Museum of the American Indian’. Wicazo Sa Review 21(2) (Fall): 41–60. Nelson, M. 2000. ‘Constructing a Confluence’. In Writing on Water, eds D. Rothenberg & M. Ulvaeus, 15–31. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Nichols, J. & E. Nyholm. 1995. A Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Parrish, O. 2002. ‘The People from on Top of the Land: A Kashaya Pomo Elder’s Journey’. ReVision 25(2) (Fall): 34–8. Perez, S. 2006. ‘The Great Lakes/St. Lawrence River Basin: The Setting for the Conference’. Transboundary Indigenous Water Program, Cornell University. Raven, G. 2000. Anishinaabe Exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian. Washington, DC. Regalado, A. 2005. ‘The Ukukus Wonder Why a Sacred Glacier Melts in Peru’s Andes – It could Portend World’s End, So Mountain Worshippers Are Stewarding the Ice’. Wall Street Journal, 17 June. Sacred Land Film Project. n.d. ‘Medicine Lake Highlands’. www.sacredland.org/endangered_sites_pages/ medicine_lake.html (accessed Jan. 2008). Vennum, Jr. T. 1988. Wild Rice and the Ojibway People. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota Historical Press. Warren, W. W. 1885. History of the Ojibway Nation. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota Historical Society. Williams, W. D. 1995. ‘The Largest, Highest and Lowest Lakes of the World: Saline Lakes’. Peter Kilham Memorial Lecture, Sao Paulo. Verhandlungen Internationale Vereinigung für Theoretische und Angewandte Limnologie 26: 61–79. Wilson, E. O. 1986. Biophilia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wilson, E. O. & S. Kellert. 1995. The Biophilia Hypothesis. Covelo, CA: Island Press.

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II Divine Connections

Editors’ introduction Dark Sky Eel – pilgrim serpent and weaver of connectedness. Where thou go, we will follow. Within the sacred space thus created, and as a ‘drawing down’ of and reflection on the essence of water, individual human experiences of spirit and divinity in watery environments are explored. Here are stories of connection, merging between the self and watery realms. Contributors share deeply significant encounters that inspire their spiritual practices and beliefs, renew their commitment to the environment and nourish an appreciation of who we are as both human and water. Transformative experiences inform and inspire contributors as they surf, dance, swim and sail their homage to the spirit of water.

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5 Creature of water Andrew Francis

Like a fish rising to the surface, slowly I drift to awareness. I have slept on the beach, in a sandy nest beneath the saltbush. My eyes are still closed as I open almost awakened ears and body to the world around me. The voice of the sea insinuates itself into my conscious and unconscious psyche, penetrating my mind completely. The breathing of Tiamat, the sea, becomes my own. Throughout the star-filled darkness, the rising and setting of a sickle moon, close to the dying embers, She has spoken to me. I am attuned and in Her soul embrace. Slowly, eyes still closed, I breathe my morning prayer: Rise and fall gentle tide, Moon and Sun, your fates entwined. From light to dark and back again, I thank Thee Gracious Goddess for all your bountiful gifts. The ravens which had left the beach at dusk last night have returned. Raucous conversation between them, and the twitter of smaller saltbush dwellers, curious and disapproving of my presence in their domain, tell me the day is well begun. Slowly I open my eyes and find my face turned to the water. My focus begins close and gradually stretches forward, pausing on a new web enclosing me in my nest, mildew strewn and glistening in the low light, hung with tiny, white flowers that have fallen from the saltbush above. I close my eyes again and feel Her embrace. I am safe. She is with me. We are One and together. She knows me. I am part of Her and part of Her greater purpose. I have a place in the universe, and I am part of its unfolding. Today I walk The Path.

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andrew francis I need a system of understandings that connects me personally to the absolute; something that will pull the various threads of me together and weave them into the fabric of everything. My existential self is a creature of water, and watery environments are transformative for me. I follow a Seaward Path, and surfing is my ritual.

Pilgrimage, life cycles, sacred space I live by the middle reaches of a chocolate-coloured, tannin-rich river, which flows from distant hills to an estuarine bay, and from there to the open ocean that flows between the land here and the icy cap of the Southern Polar Gate over there. When I drive the several hours from my home to the ocean, I feel also that I am emptying into the ocean and becoming one with it. I have always had to cross tracts of land to get to the open sea, but think perhaps for this reason I have a heightened perception when I arrive there. There is no opportunity for the beachheads and roads and sounds and smells to become everyday and commonplace. When I arrive, and stop my car for the first time at a sandy verge overlooking open water, the raw energy and expansiveness of the seascape impresses itself upon me anew. There is an immediate yearning to rush forwards and connect myself physically with brine on skin and tongue, washing my feet and face in an act of cleansing and reaffirmation. Thus my ritual begins, and does not end until I leave the water for the last time and draw well away from the coast. Sometimes a sea ritual will last for hours; other times for several days or more. My preference, unless I am holidaying with friends or family, is to travel to the coast alone. I am free then to make my personal connection with the ocean and the forests that dwell thereabout. I sleep rough and eat simple. The trappings and mundane babble fade, and I will fall into a quiet, meditative stream of consciousness that excludes the need for the company of other people, and that focuses and tunes me into the natural environment and its energies. I travel to townships along a wilding coast to get supplies or eat a cooked meal when there is a ban on open fires during the warmer part of the year, but then retreat back to a secluded strand, a ‘working’ surf break, or unpeopled woods, to listen for Her voice in the wash of water on sand and rock, the rush of air through tree and grass, the callings of birds and sugar gliders. I am open and friendly, and converse with people I meet, but I do not seek out human company during this period of prolonged, voluntary estrangement from those things that distract me from a more elemental attunement to Her. When I visit the sea I do so as a pilgrim, not a tourist.1

1. ‘The primary factor in pilgrimage is intention. If we go as a pilgrim to a sacred place, we go in the hope of being inspired or blessed, or to give thanks … Tourism is like a secularized or unconscious form of pilgrimage. Indeed many tourist attractions were places of pilgrimage in the past, and some still are. But whereas pilgrims visit a hallowed place as an act of religious devotion, tourists visit it as more or less

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creature of water *** There is a living dinosaur, a species of eel,2 that abides in the river by which I have made my home. It travels to the ocean but once in its life, there to pro-create and die. I catch them often with hook and line when seeking trout, but only after dark. We gape at each other in the moonlight for a brief time and then they slip back into the river from my hand, ‘until we meet downstream’. In many respects I feel my own journey to the ocean, each time, to merge and commune, recollects metaphorically this life cycle. The life and death cycle of the longfinned eel is virtually opposite to that of the salmon (‘of knowledge’), more commonly the subject of myth and metaphor.3 The eel is a deep sea creature that takes secondarily to freshwater, whereas the salmon is a freshwater fish that has taken secondarily to the sea (Thomson 1920). Salmon are born into the freshwater of the upper reaches of rivers and streams their parents have exhausted themselves to reach and spawn at. Travelling downstream they spend their maturation in the open ocean, returning to their birthplace to complete their own dying act of procreation. The eel begins its life in abysmal ocean waters (Figure 1) and then travels, first as a translucent ‘glass eel’, deeper and deeper inland along freshwater courses. It matures in streams, rivers and ponds; turning to shades of black and dark brown, but becoming silver-hued as the time to return to the sea approaches. It then journeys downstream to the ocean and migrates northwards, virtually the entire length of the eastern seaboard of Australia, to its ancestral spawning grounds, there to procreate, give birth and die. For me, the ocean very much represents home and womb, both personally and in terms of my understandings of the evolution of all vertebrate species, including ourselves. At many levels I understand my own life cycle and its activities to be a temporary journey upstream into fresh and, in a sense, more rarefied waters, before an inevitable return and completion of journey to a briny womb into which I will cast my seed and then find the end of desire. There is a similar cycle and parallel to be drawn at a psychological level of analysis, in which the fish has been an enduring symbol of self, the life cycle of the eel therefore representing the journey of the self. Each trip to the sea is for me akin to the transformational process undertaken by the eel in its life journey from freshwater to saltwater. In each trip I make to the coast from the upper reaches of the river I feel that I am in some sense re-enacting this life cycle at a microcosmic and symbolic level. At the turning of the moon, when I too turn silver, I am returning to and delving deep into my unconscious to give up some of myself to the Deep, to lose myself in a sense and find oblivion for my overworked and desiccated detached spectators. Pilgrims participate in the sacred qualities of the place … tourists do not. Pilgrims add to the power of a sacred place; tourists subtract from it’ (Sheldrake 1990: 151). 2. The longfinned eel, Anguilla reinhardtii, is a bony fish of the order Anguilliformes, superorder Elopomorpha. It is an ancient form, widely separated from more modernly evolved teleost species both morphologically and in the fossil record: a living dinosaur of the aquatic world (Romer 1966). 3. From ‘The Incantation of Amergin’, Erin’s ‘First Poet’: ‘I am a salmon, in a pool’ (Graves 1948: 206).

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Figure 1 Symbolic life cycle of the eel.

consciousness; then to be born again and return eventually to fresh waters, bringing with me fresh archetypal material, to engage in another cycle of development and maturation, individuation and evolvement.4 As a symbolic journey of self and of my own life and spiritual cycles of transformation and growth, and as one tied more closely to my immediate environment and experience, the eel speaks to me more loudly than the salmon. *** Whilst sacred space is everywhere, since She dwells in everything, on reaching the coast I perceive a finer vibration, a closeness and dissolution of boundaries. I have arrived at the sacred ‘zone’, the numinous ‘Edge’ (see Chapter 9, ‘The spirit of the Edge’); and enter therein accordingly, with honour and humility and respect, and with a tuning-in to the local elements and seascape that produce waves for surfing. Within this broader sacred zone, the water itself and certain littoral and deeper landward areas draw a greater intensity. A sandy, seaward-facing grotto – a bat cave in a wave-swept cliff – a moist, riverside meadow deep in the coastal forest; there is my ritual circle. In the water – floating in a rock pool – swimming and diving – finding my balance on a wave and riding it through; there is my ritual and my connection. It is in these watery environments that I seek meaning, transformation and growth. This is where I find Her, and where I find my Self.

4. See Chapter 10, ‘The mystery of waters’, by Vivianne Crowley for a further development of the metaphor linking the unconscious and the sea.

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Initiation, Seaward Path A dream weaves reality as I sleep on the beach. She beckons through the door that hath no key, and I dream that I awaken on the dune and am called by a pair of beautiful fowl, swamp hens – each purple and blue – intelligent, warm eyes. Familiar and comfortable companions, they walk me through a morning mist along the shoreline and we talk freely of great and small, swishing our feet through wet sand and saltwater. They are taking me to a house on the sand at the end of the beach. An ordinary house, filled with familiar faces. I walk as a ghost among the people there, unheeded and unheard. They are preparing for a celebration. They gather around a huge crock, filled with gold, jewels and precious ornaments collected over their lifetimes. I feel repelled as I watch, as they worship their worldly wealth. There is something they have missed. I try to tell them, but my shouts are unheard. They prepare their feast, and seek my companions for their pot. But I hurry them away to the shore and we return back down the beach, in silence. I am sad that I must leave the familiar faces this way, but I cannot go back. The beautiful birds console and advise, walking me back to my sleeping place. They leave and I crawl back into my bed, and then awaken for true on the dune, refreshed and full of light. My day is begun, and I strip down to swim and wash away the past. Developing board skills, the first controlled ride, learning the basics of a surfing ‘culture’ and acquiring first-hand knowledge of the immediate and tangible forces that can produce waves and break bone ’n’ board are important outer rites of passage for a surfer. They initiate one into the exhilaration of surfing, the surfing fraternity, and then onwards to wave addiction. Much later, and with experience, comes a deeper understanding of the latent and manifest forces that create waves and allow one to predict swells: the interaction of moon, sun and earth in producing monthly and seasonal tidal cycles, the influence of wind, the shape of the sea bed.5 As a coastal itinerant, for me part of this rite of passage has also involved developing skills and knowledge for living in and looking after myself in the elements more generally: where to sleep safely in the wild, how to cook outdoors, getting and staying warm and dry after surfing6 and in inclement weather. With this eventually has come a broader adaptation, attunement to and appreciation of the physical environment; and thus of its inherent vitality, beauty and immanent

5. Water movement in the oceans is generated by many forces: seismic activity, deep flow between regions of density difference, tidal undulation under the influence of moon and sun and, most importantly, wind moving across the face of the water. Swells are regular undulations in the surface of the sea that have developed primarily under the influence of wind, and that manifest as surfable waves when a critical ratio between swell height and water depth is reached, usually near the coastline. 6. Water temperature averages about 6 °C in my coastal region during the winter (brr!).

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andrew francis divinity. Long nights alone in the ‘cathedrals of the modern world’7 – a dark coastal forest or deserted beach, a fire for my needs, some instrument to speak a song, and a quietness within which to discern Her voice – slowly thus I found my way to that deep, inner, quiet pool where She awaits the coming of any who will seek. At an inner level, initiatory experiences and rites of passage acknowledge and catalyse the journey of the self through successive stages of development.8 My own inner Pagan initiations and rites of passage have been spontaneous, solitary and immersed in the environment. In various Wiccan traditions there are typically three ‘degrees’ or levels through which a witch may advance their knowledge and workings of the craft. Entry to each of these degrees is achieved via an initiation rite, the nature of which varies depending on the degree. There are some (in my opinion) minor variations between traditions (and covens) as to the nature and form of these initiations at each degree level; however, the overall themes appear relatively consistent and well accepted. Most broadly, the first degree initiation is about death and rebirth: death of the old (non-Wiccan) self and the rebirth of the new Wiccan self, and into the Wiccan community (Cunningham 1993; Crowley 1996; Farrar and Farrar 1996). It is a formal recognition on the part of the initiate (and their fraternity) that they have set their feet to the Path, that they have ‘opened the door’ and experienced the awakening that will lead them further along a path of spiritual development, practical capability and knowledge as a witch. The second degree initiation involves an underworld journey, in itself a common and central element of mythologies and creation cosmologies globally. The particular deities involved vary between cultures and Pagan traditions, but most generally involve the ‘Descent of the Goddess’ into the darkness below the surface of the earth (either willingly or unwillingly), there to reside or reign until an emergence (either volitionally or through ‘rescue’) at a later time once again to the surface of the earth and to light. This cyclical descent (death) and reemergence (rebirth) of the Goddess thus gives rise to the seasons. At a psychological level it represents a cycle of transformation and growth through the creation of connection and journey between conscious and unconscious realms of the psyche (Crowley 1996; Farrar and Farrar 1996). The third degree initiation is that of the great rite, the sacred marriage, hieros gamos, ‘the inner marriage of the soul to the Divine’ (Crowley 1996: 222). The union of male and female polarities that is inherent in this rite is at the very least symbolic in practice, but may also be physical and actual. The God and Goddess are united, ritually, and within the initiate. A self in which conscious and unconscious are connected and conversant is possible, and striven for. The dream related above is one of my earliest transformative experiences by the sea, and I mark it as my first inner initiatory experience on the Seaward Path. There is a letting go of old attitudes, constraints, habits, outmoded ways of thinking, inherited theology and values. There is death of old parts of the self, a rebirth and washing away of sloughed skins. There is an opening up to and acceptance of a more meaningful and personal experience of divinity. Water has played a central role in this 7. Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World (1984), cited by Sheldrake (1990). 8. Joseph Campbell describes rites as ‘the physical enactment of myths’(1972: 45).

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creature of water emerging mythology. My initiation occurs in the transition zone, the beach, threshold consciousness, the door through which we access those deeper parts of ourselves, the Ancient Ones, archetypes, the Deep. Further initiations have followed. These and other experiences have formed the foundations for the development of a wateroriented personal mythology and spirituality framing themes of birth and renewal, growth and fruition, death and dissolution. For me, surfing is an important part of that spirituality: a powerful ritual that I can use to commune with the divine within and without, and to empower my intentions. As a broad cosmology within which to situate a seaward-bound spirituality and ritual practice, the Babylonian account of creation makes a good symbolic fit to my own archetypal moulds. Whilst there is much more I would relate of Babylonian cosmology and my own mythopœic relationship to it, I provide here an outline. *** Between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers lies Sumer, the land in which human civilization is said to have begun. In these fertile alluvial plains9 the Sumerians developed writing, trade and technologies. In a region bounded and isolated by desert, water was as vital a resource to them as it is for those of us who live in the droughtwracked and isolated continent of Australia. Their religion, and that of neighbouring Babylonia, reflected the importance and relevance of water in their lives, as it does my own. Tiamat, the Deep, is a personification of the sea (Barton 1893). The Babylonian creation epic, Enuma Elish, in which Tiamat figures centrally, is most reliably drawn from the Assyrian creation tablets, of which fragments are missing. Based on the ideographic nature of the texts, George Barton dates the original recording of the myth at 2000 BCE. The first tablet of the Babylonian creation poem, as translated by Barton, begins:10 At a time when above the heaven was not named, And beneath the earth had no existence, The abyss was first their generator; Mummu11 Tiamat was the bringer forth of them all; Their waters together were embosomed.12

9. Some sources ascribe the broader Mesopotamia (meaning ‘between two rivers’) region as the probable location of the Garden of Eden described in Genesis 2:10–14. 10. I have paraphrased Barton’s (1893) direct translation for the sake of clarity; although the text is unchanged I have removed annotations and other interpretive punctuation. 11. Raymond Van Over (1980) notes that the word ‘Mummu’, used in this poem as ‘originator’, can also mean ‘form’ or ‘word’. He thus characterizes Mummu as the Logos of Babylonian thought. Other sources render Mummu physically as the mist that overhangs the primeval waters of Tiamat (Barton 1893; Forty 2004). 12. That is, the (female) saltwaters of Tiamat mixed with the (male) ‘sweet’ (fresh) waters of Apsu, her mate (Kirk 1970).

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andrew francis When corn was not gathered, nor a field13 seen; When none of the gods had been produced, Nor had existence, nor fixed destiny. As noted also by Michael York in this volume (Ch. 15), water is a common element of creation myths from across the world, as a primeval abyss from which ‘originator’ gods are either awakened or eternally residing (Van Over 1980). Here Tiamat is the originator, She who brings forth all that there is. She is darkness, the primordial chaos, the womb from which all else has come. Importantly, from my own perspective as a Pagan, in Babylonian mythology Tiamat is not a deity of the sea. Rather, She is the sea, the cosmic sea. She is often also personified as a sea-dragon or serpent,14 and it is in this form that she battles with her progeny, the gods, in Babylonian myth (see Figure 2). The battle is one of light over darkness, order over chaos. In the beginning, Apsu (sweet water) fathers upon Tiamat (salt water) two Elder gods Lachmu and Lachamu, who beget Anshar (heaven) and Kishar (earth), who beget Anu and Ea. The mounting of an order of creation by the younger gods (and the destruction for this purpose of the earlier chaotic forms) angers Apsu and Tiamat; and they resolve to kill the younger gods. Having surmised the plan, Ea instead slays Apsu. This infuriates Tiamat, who gathers a host, ‘sharp of tooth and unsparing of fang’ (Van Over 1980: 176), with which to annihilate the younger gods. At the head of her host she places Kingu, her new consort, and gives to him the Tablet of Destiny.15 Leading the host of younger gods is Marduk, principle of light (Muss-Arnolt 1894) who, first securing for himself kingship among the younger gods, makes his war on the darkness. He captures Kingu, taking the Tablet of Destiny for his own, and, brandishing a storm, slays Tiamat in dragon form.16 He splits her body in two and stands one half up to form the dome of the heavens; the other half he lays down to make a floor over the deep. Tiamat’s weeping eyes become the source of the Tigris and Euphrates, and Marduk slays Kingu and mixes his blood with earth to create humankind. In its essential form, as a struggle between order and chaos, there is clear parallel in the Babylonian creation myth not only to the Hebrew account of creation recounted in Genesis (and which it predates substantially), but also to that multitude of fieldand grove-based seasonal cycles of light and darkness, birth and death, procreation

13. Van Over (1980) also notes another translation of ‘field’ as ‘dark chamber’, thus often used to describe sacred buildings. 14. Thus manifest She is often identified with, although substantially predates, the Leviathan of Hebrew mythology. 15. This thus bestowed on him the power to fix destinies. 16. The killing of a dragon (often the opponent of the dying god) typically represents the battle between light and dark, of the individual overcoming their own dark nature and attaining self-mastery (Cooper 1978). Dragons are also often characterized as guardians or portals of esoteric knowledge (ibid.) and, I would add, of the unconscious realm. Also, Hooke (1961) reviews the work of Van Buren suggesting that in Mesopotamia the fish (as coming from the sea) is connected with the underworld, and with chthonic associations.

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creature of water

Figure 2 Tiamat battles with the gods. Detail on a Babylonian cylinder seal by unknown artist.

and harvest, renewal and dissolution. At a psychological level, similarly, there are symbolic parallels and relationships to be drawn to the life cycle of the eel (see Figure 1), and to those forms and forces of the unconscious (dark, lunar, chthonic, destructive) versus conscious (light, solar, celestial, manifesting) realms of psyche. Resolved thus also into cycles of transformation, growth, death and rebirth, the Babylonian creation myth has provided a rich and well-developed set of archetypal keys with which I have been able to open and develop a seasonal and water-based system of observances, transformational myth and ritual forms. I have left the old lifeways to walk the Seaward Path.

Ritual, death and dissociation The moon is full and there is a huge tide and swell in the sea, the deep of winter. Along the wilding coast the sky is overcast and stormy, the water impenetrable dark green and black: an icy darkness. I sit on my surfboard, alone and awash in a swirling and unsettled inky brine, the taste of fresh rainwater in my mouth. Small peaks rise and fall everywhere, a shifting froth of white water churns angrily. All is movement, and the sound and feel of wind and water. An undulation in the seaward horizon … water stretching skyward … higher, and moving closer … a monster swell coming my way … I wait … Tiamat approaches me now, a massive and threatening wave, filled with vital force and thanatos. A gusty offshore wind shafts upwards along Her crescent face, shooting white spray wildly over a quivering lip and upwards into the air in a drawn-out and menacing hiss. I draw a deep breath as She draws Herself up, towering, potent – ready to devour and destroy – or to empower my ritual. The Goddess is manifest before me, and asking of my intention.

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andrew francis I breathe Her name, visualize my ride, and begin to paddle shorewards, my head turned back to find that perfect pace and place to take off – the point just before She will break – when and where the forces of earth and sky stand in equilibrium. Time slows down. I am drawn up along Her face until I lie upon the crest of the surge, and at the point of final balance and choice: to lean forward and commit to the Deep, or lean back and let Her pass. I look down the face of the wave, an impossible drop over a concave vortex, and then lean forward into the energy stream. As I grab the sides of the board and begin to slant downwards, the wave begins to break. I find my feet and release my hands so that I can begin to feel the energy and direction of the wave pulsing through the board and into my legs, rising upwards and through me. We begin to move together. I become the wave, I become part of Her. Now I am in sacred space, between the worlds. There is no mundane consciousness, just being, and stretched moments … On my feet, I begin the first descent, perilous. There is speed, and the thrill of imminent death or disaster: a hanging, dark menace above, invisible rocks below. I balance my horizontal and hold the bottom-turn as Her jaws snap behind me with a booming roar of falling water. I am thrust along the clean face of the wave ahead. Behind me the wave peels and falls, a constant force propelling me along a tubular vortex. Hands outstretched, forward and back, now I begin to tune myself to the torque-line more acutely. I am in control, for the moment, and at Her discretion. At pace, I move smoothly up and down the face of the wave, feeling the pulse and rhythm, lagging to allow the surge to catch up, and then catapulting forward … flowing and becoming water. I am thrilled and attuned. Alive on the doorstep of death.

Figure 3 Wave Rock, a natural altar, at Star Beach. (Photograph by author.)

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creature of water Surfing is an important part of my Seaward Path. It is an opportunity to become completely immersed and involved in the elemental energies of water. It is the primary way in which I connect with the divine and become one with Her. I also use the energy that I build during surfing to empower subsequent beach- or forest-based ritual forms. Physical exertion generally is an excellent way to build wraith17 for empowering intentions. Surfing further develops this conatus by immersing and connecting me to the raw elemental energy of water. As described in the experience related above, I perceive energy from the waves I ride channelling through me, stimulating and opening up my chakral chain. Over a ritual lasting several days or more, there will be multiple surfing sessions to build the energy that will power a working. Stepping from the road on to the sand in preparation to surf is a transition of consciousness, for now I am on sacred ground. Usually my first act is to walk some way to and fro along the beach, collecting rubbish into a bag to be tossed into the back of the surfmobile, and disposed of at my next trip to town. I also keep an eye out for interesting or needed items that have drifted in from the ocean. The carcass of a bird or other animal or fish is cause to sit and reflect on its life, and the cycle of death and regeneration. If they have found their end at the hands of a plastic bag or such, then I will remove this to give them freedom from the human curse in death at least. In further preparation of the sacred space for ritual, and attunement to local forces and energies, I will invoke spirits of place and seek their permission to use the beach. When I enter the water also, I feel I must be invited: every entry is a crossing into sacred space. Some days Tiamat says ‘Don’t come in’. It is Her domain. She has shown me, time and again, that nothing should be taken for granted. Finding a working surf break to begin with involves being aware of tides, phases of moon and sun, wind conditions, the lie of land and sea bed at various potential breaks, and other things. Much of this is intuitive for the experienced surfer; once you have been surfing a stretch of coast for a while you simply know where to go on particular days, what will be ‘working’ and what will not. I spend time sitting on the beach, or from a cliff vantage, observing the ‘sets’ (the pattern and flow of sets of swells), locating rips and rocks. The surfboard is my athame: a tool for connecting to and directing energy, for moving within the broader energy flows and ‘tides’ (below). As described with respect to the use of Babylonian creation myth as a startingpoint for my own practice, the energy raised in surfing I use for lunar, tidal and seasonal observance and attunement in symbolic ritual forms. Since it gathers its major inspiration from the land, there is little substantive to draw on in traditional Wiccan literature and contemporary praxis as source material to inform my own practices and symbolic narrative to the sea in particular. Dion Fortune, in the The Sea Priestess (1978), does bring Wicca oceanside and beyond: I am that soundless, boundless, bitter sea. All tides are mine, and answer unto me.

17. Chi, Prana, vital force.

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andrew francis Tides of the airs, tides of the inner earth; The secret, silent tides of death and birth. Tides of men’s souls, and dreams, and destinyIsis Veiled, and Ea, Binah, Ge.18 Whilst elements such as this are usable and resonate, they are a smaller part of my own spells, invocations and individual practices. These latter speak more directly to the particular forces and spirits of place I personally encounter in my own stamping grounds. Star Beach, my platform to the greater expanse of the universe, is one such stamping ground. It juts out from the seaboard on an outward curve of coast. Especially when the tide is low and I am able to venture out further on to the rock shelf, close to the breaking waves, the view of the night sky is almost uninterrupted. With the clarity of vision and consciousness that comes on still, pellucid nights, I am able to view and attune myself to the passage of moon, star, planet and satellite, and the infinity between and beyond. On colder nights I return to my fire on the shore, to warm myself for a while and reflect, and then to darkness and divination again. I look for and observe the passing of Venus, the Star of Inanna, Babylonian Goddess of the Underworld. She is the morning star and the evening star. For every eight earth years she passes five times between us and the sun, in each synodic period enacting the cycle of birth and growth (eastern elongation), descent and reemergence from the underworld (inferior conjunction), then waning and diminishment (western elongation), until birthed again from solar regions in the sky (superior conjunction). For me, the underworld journey is undersea. Into dark waters I plunge with the eels and other denizens of the Deep, there to seek the dissolution and rebirth that will pull a few more threads of me together, that will allow me to understand a bit more, create myth, integrate and strengthen archetypes, connect with those that dwell in those waters. There are several rock pools good for scrying19 at Star Beach. In a dark sky they become portals for looking to a larger universe. Best is where there is some star or moonlight to illuminate the border of the pool, and minor reflection on the water itself. Sometimes a creature will stir in the pool, which may be portentous in ways that no static cauldron of inky water can be. These are living and evolving ecosystems, and universes in microcosm. Scrying is a regular activity within my beach rituals. There is time and solitude. The steady rhythm of wave sound induces my trance naturally, and sustains vision and workings. I draw on the waves of energy released by the sea to feed the divination and any spell work.

18. From the ‘Song of Morgan Le Fay, Sea Priestess’ (Fortune 1978: 214). 19. Scrying is a form of divination practised by most witches in one form or another. It may be done with mirrors and other shiny objects, but more traditionally with a cup or cauldron of water. Ink is often added to the water to provide a darker surface, more conducive to ‘projection’ and allowing visualizations to manifest.

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creature of water Before leaving the coast for the last time I will visit any pool of water at the beach and taste brine. This taste will remind me of my underworld journey20 as I travel once more to light, land and order; manifestation and growth. *** It is my hope that one day I will die in the sea, preferably in the jaws of a brother: one ‘sharp of tooth and unsparing of fang’. I would rather so, in an act of devotion, in sacred space, than on a dry hospital bed or lying by the side of a hot, busy road. There would be a violent thrashing around, terror perhaps, locked in the jaws of a monster from the Deep. But then a quick and almost certain death. Interred thus into a sepulchral belly, giving of life and sustenance, eventually pushing up kelp six leagues under, like the eel I will be returned to my source and spawn new life in a creative act of dying. Better that than adding to carbon emissions and global warming at an urban crematorium: in death giving of more death. I have nearly drowned in the sea on three occasions, within my last gasp. Whenever my respect for Her lapses, then I must take a lesson. With our intervention, the seas grow warmer, and lap higher upon the land. Ecosystems will drown. Star Beach will disappear. Aeonian cycles of inundation of the land by water is a feature of the cosmology of many ancient and extant cultures, representing the end of one age of manifestation or dominion, and the start of a new one; bringing thus both death and regeneration. Kirk (1970) attributes the origin and (relatively) common form of all such accounts to Babylonian mythology. Indeed the ‘standard version’ account of the deluge recorded in the 11th tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic Babylonian poem, has been dated at 1200 BCE,21 thus substantially predating other (Africa-Eurasian at least) accounts. The cyclic inundation and reclamation of land by water seems only natural, especially so in a floodplain bounded by two rivers: Mesopotamia. The adoption and/or convergent evolution of this myth by cultures across the world (and as detailed further in Chapter 2 by Dieter Gerten and Chapter 3 by Penny Bernard in this volume as a retributive act of the gods or creators) no doubt reflects the degree to which the symbolic aspects resonate within the human soul. Here, represented on a cosmic scale, is the ebb and flow of dominion between dark and light, chaos and order. At microcosmic levels these aeonian cycles manifest in yearly and daily battles between these forces, and in the natural cycles of the psyche as unconscious and conscious forces vie for supremacy/attention, and in the interplay between instinctual and ‘cerebral’ functions in individual consciousness, between Eros and Logos. What must the Ancient Ones think of our treatment of their domains? It is justifiable that sea levels should rise as a consequence of the global warming that has resulted from our pollu-

20. Huson (1972). There are two pools, side by side, in Hades (the underworld). One of these is fed by the river Lethe. It is the ‘Pool of Forgetfulness’ (unconscious). To the right of this pool is the ‘Pool of Memory’, which the Goddess Mnemosyne replenishes. The Orphic initiate drinks from the Pool of Memory in the underworld before leaving, so as not to forget the journey. 21. It records a much older oral tradition.

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andrew francis tion and abuse of the planet. Tiamat will rise up against us, reclaim the land and devour us; it is only natural. But the civilized mind does not perceive this natural connection, this cause and effect, this inherent rhythm. According to Jung, in the modern mind, there is a dissociation between the civilized-conscious and primitive-mythopœic levels of mind:22 between the upper and lower selves, between our modern rationalism and the archaic modes of understanding that provide meaning, an innate affinity for and understanding of the natural environment and how to fit with it sustainably (Sabini 2002). In Jung’s words, and reflecting his own interconnectedness with nature:23 ‘Matter in the wrong place is dirty. People got dirty through too much civilization. Whenever we touch nature, we get clean’ (Sabini 2002: 1). As a species, we need to reconnect with this instinctive, archaic (‘primordial’) level of mind, with our unconscious, in order to align ourselves with nature, to understand Her, to touch Her, and to allow Her to cleanse and heal us. We have lost our mystical identity with nature, and the result is loss of understanding and respect. We view ourselves to be disembodied from nature, when we are an integral part of it, and it of us. Only in reconnecting can we hope to regain that proper, natural and sustainable relationship. As Dion Fortune, speaking as Isis, would also have it: I am also the Great Deep, whence life arose, to which all shall return at the end of an æon. Herein do we bathe in sleep, sinking back into the primordial deep, returning to things forgotten before time was, and the soul is renewed, touching the Great Mother. Whoso cannot return to the Primordial hath no roots in life they are the living dead who are orphaned of the Great Mother. (1976: 213) Every time I walk the beach there is evidence of humanity’s ‘civilization’ and carelessness: a bottle, a piece of plastic or rubber, once even a discarded television. On broader and more sinister levels, and as reported throughout this book (in particular Part IV), our treatment of aquatic environments and the creatures that dwell within is atrocious and dishonourable. Jung would say that we behave in this way because we are dissociated from the environment, and from the deeper parts of ourselves that connect us to nature. So we must heal this dissociation at a global level. Symbols speak differently to the psyche than does the onslaught of worldly accounts and statistics of environmental degradation. We may speak to the deeper parts of ourselves with symbols that the psyche understands, in the language of the mythopœic substratum of mind, the language of archetype and mythology. We must personalize the sea, and other waterways, into something we can understand in broad

22. Campbell (1972) refers to this condition as one of ‘mythic dissociation’. 23. ‘At times I feel as if I am spread out over the landscape and inside things, and am myself living in every tree, in the splashing of the waves, in the clouds and the animals that come and go, in the procession of the seasons’ (Jung 1993: 252).

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creature of water and inclusive human terms. Then, perhaps, there will be an opportunity for relationship and respect to develop. This has always been the case in more ‘primitive’ cultures, as early chapters in this book reflect. But in our apparently blind strivings for ‘progress’ in human terms, and with a concentration span no greater than a generation, our relationship to nature has been discarded. By a philosophy of apathy and dissociation, the planet is alive but soulless, and therefore not needing of our regard, or permission to take and pollute. Water is sacred. It is part of us, and we of it. Like many people, I conserve water, and act directly to protect the watery environments I am part of. Respectful living with water involves developing awareness of one’s relationship to it. What is our relationship to water when the most we see of the water that we drink and cook with, and in which we bathe, is for those fleeting moments between when it pours out of a pipe (far from its source) and then falls but a short distance straight into a plug hole? There is no time to say ‘Hello, thank you for allowing me to live; thank you for cleansing my body and refreshing my spirit’. Water is hidden to us: within pipes, or below a blanket surface that hides the greater expanse and life that resides therein and which is affected by our poor treatment of it. In this sense, it is similar to our unconscious mind; it is what we are not aware of, but which affects all that we do. Whenever we go to the beach, we need to ask ourselves the question: am I a pilgrim or a tourist? Which way you decide will determine how you treat the place. Deep blue religion is not just about water, it is about the spirit that lives in the water, the vital substance, the life. Her body is not just the waters that lie over and within the earth, but the creatures that dwell therein as well, and whose lives depend on our honour. The point here is that we have lost our mythical and spiritual relationship to water, and now there is a need to recover it in order to regain our correct physical relationship to watery environments. How can we respect and truly care for that to which we have no relationship deeper than usury and pollution? The oceans and rivers and still waters of our planet are sacred, and should be treated such. On all levels, the fate of water is inextricably tied to our own. *** I sat in a meadow and listened to the mountain stream sing for a night and a day. It sang, ‘I am water. I have come to speak to you. We are bound to each other. I am part of you, and you are my creature …’ It is the end of a long, hot day: the height of Summer. The Shining One is in His power and I have surfed the whole day. It has been a day of many waves, and I have surfed well, finding the balance between earth and sky, in the sacred space between worlds. My mind subdued by a glow of body stretch and exertion, though not yet fatigue. I am strong, in control, content, energised and cleansed by a day of ritual in my elemental home. I sit on my board now, just outside the point of breaking, ‘out the back’, resting after a ride and return which has left me enlivened, attuned and breathless. I have given myself up and become one with the surge. I have surfed so many waves today

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andrew francis that even between sets I am still adrift between the worlds. I drift still further out of mundane consciousness, and further into sacred space. Where air meets water is a golden sheet, divine reflection, shifting forward and back, taking me with it. I drift and rock to a gentle rhythm. Deeper down are dappled greens and aqua. I gaze at the sandy bed, the whiting that dart from rock to rock. The soft, offshore breeze, which has held up the face of the waves during the day and polished them to a glassy smooth, has dropped. A breath has been drawn, and held quietly, as subtle forces collaborate and gather around me. I look towards the land. Rugged and untouched hills of olive and dark green eucalypt layer back to the hinterland. Overlooking the ocean, proud and defiant, buttresses and cliffs of hard rock, weathered but unmoved. The Shining One dips towards the horizon, shafting across the air, which carries late afternoon mist, a mist that now sits heavily on the beach – luminous, ethereal and organic – alive with captured sun – a zone of uncertainty and transition. Silhouettes make their way along the beach indistinctly, slowly moving this way and that. All is distant and remote. I am alone on the water and beyond the world of men. I cup some brine to refresh my face, and to bring water close and taste salt. Time slows down now. I look closer to me, where small waves, forerunners of a larger swell arriving, break between myself and the shore. Water rises and is thrown up as if in slow motion. The foam is incandescent white: whiter than I have ever seen it. Foamy bubbles form and congregate, pitch into the air and fizz, and then fall back and merge with the flow. My perception is tuned to the smallest of details, and to everything around me at once. I rise slowly on a smooth swell of water passing under, and time slows further. I feel an indescribable sense of interconnection, throughout all that there is. I am hung in a place where each movement connects and makes me one with all that is around me and onward throughout the universe; in a time between moments, when there is naught but this very ‘now’, and as if that is all there ever has been and will ever need to be. I turn to the open ocean, toward the incoming swells. A pod of dolphins pass close by, fins cutting the water smoothly, heading sunward. A fin breaks from the pod and comes closer, no more than two board lengths. Body roll, and a sentient eye clears water and meets my own gaze. The veil drops away completely and I am overtaken and laid bare. All I have been has led me to this place and time. I am transformed and humbled. I have looked into the eye of the Deep and seen my own soul.

Bibliography Barton, G. 1893. ‘Tiamat’. Journal of the American Oriental Society 15: 1–27. Campbell, J. 1972. Myths to Live By. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Cooper, J. C. 1978. An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols. London: Thames & Hudson. Crowley, V. 1996. Wicca: The Old Religion in the New Millennium. London: Thorsons. Cunningham, S. 1993. Living Wicca. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn. Farrar, J & S. Farrar. 1996. The Witches’ Bible. Washington: Phoenix Publishing.

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creature of water Fortune, D. 1976. Moon Magic. London: Wyndom Publications. Fortune, D. 1978. The Sea Priestess. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser. Forty, J. 2004. Mythology: A Visual Encyclopedia. London: PRC Publishing. Graves, R. 1948. The White Goddess. Kent: MacKays of Chatham. Hooke, S. H. 1961. ‘Fish Symbolism’. Folklore 72(3): 535–8. Huson, P. 1972. The Devil’s Picture Book. London: Abacus. Jung, C. G. 1993. Memories, Dreams and Reflections. London: Fontana Press. Kirk, G. S. 1970. Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Muss-Arnolt, W. 1894. ‘The Babylonian Account of Creation’. The Biblical World 3(1): 17–27. Romer, A. S. 1966. Vertebrate Paleontology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Sabini, M. 2002. The Earth Has a Soul: The Nature Writings of C. G. Jung. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. Sheldrake, R. 1990. The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God. London: Random Century. Thomson, J. A. 1920. The Biology of the Seasons. London: Andrew Melrose. Van Over, R. 1980. Sun Songs: Creation Myths From Around the World. New York: Times Mentor.

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6 Saltwater feet: the flow of dance in Oceania Katerina Martina Teaiwa

What does a choreographer do? I make the invisible visible.

(Pam Schick in Sally Ann Ness 1992: 12)

In this chapter I explore some of the ways in which dance practices and events embody and make visible relations between Pacific peoples, their histories and environments, and the vast body of water that constitutes Oceania. The Pacific Ocean is the largest, deepest and oldest body of water on the planet. It contains around 25,000 islands, and covers one third of the surface of the earth. Despite the region’s magnitude, for decades the islands and their inhabitants have been approached and described by countless explorers, scholars, literary critics, artists, travel writers, colonial officials and contemporary policy-makers as small, remote, primitive, dependent and vulnerable.1 Like the forest for the trees, the ocean is missed for the islands. And yet, the vastness of this region and the manner in which the ancestors of Pacific Islanders successfully explored and settled Oceania over thousands of years contradicts the persistent, terrestrially centric view. Today, many islanders constitute some of the few indigenous communities left on the planet who have autonomy over their lands. As writers such as Albert Wendt (1976, 1999) and Epeli Hau’ofa (1994, 2000) have argued, Oceania is vast, all encompassing and fluid, but it is also the vessel that keeps the dead and living in dialogue. Wendt writes, ‘Tagaloaalagi, the Supreme Atua, when He created us out of maggots, put into us poto (intelligence), loto (spirit, courage), agaga (soul), finagalo (will), and masalo (doubt, imagination, thought)’ (1999: 411). Social life in this region developed through relationships, forged through the constant movement and exchange of bodies, knowledge and materials between connected worlds. Far from

1. See, for example, Callick’s (1993) description of the Pacific in terms of the ‘Doomsday scenario’.

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katerina martina teaiwa being fixed in the island space, Oceania was dynamic and interactive across not just the domains of the living, but of nature, supreme beings, spirits and the dead. This expansive approach to the liquid environment has powerful poetic, pragmatic and political implications in the contemporary Pacific. Here values and practices have changed with the advent of European and Asian imperialism, and now shift even faster in our current state of neo-globalization. My interest is in how embodied practices such as dance are both continuous and shifting, representing changing degrees of connection with the island environment. For oral, embodied and visual cultures, in which music and dance function as archives and conveyers of knowledge, the transformation of music and dance under colonialism, and now globalization, represents a broader transformation of epistemological and ontological significance. In reflecting on what inspires and informs his dance practice, New Zealand based Samoan choreographer and director of MAU Dance Theatre Lemi Ponifasio refers to the dynamic relationships between islanders and their environments. He reflects and expands on philosopher Edith Stein’s understanding of empathy, the mode in which one grasps the experience of others as not mere physical, but living body. In the Pacific, when ancestors, and one’s ‘relations’ include mountains, plants and animals, this ‘other’ is not limited to humanity. Ponifasio writes: Edith Stein in her phenomenological examination of Einfühlung or empathy, complements the Samoan axiom of ulufia, which entails a reliving ‘inside’ another’s kinaesthetic experience. This could also be the movement state of tree, sea or animals … We will use any means to ‘awaken’ the body’s ability to express, sense and communicate. For MAU, the body is the core of knowing. (2001: 52) For Albert Wendt, similarly, the body, and particularly the tattooed (or tataued) body, links to the va, the space between or ‘unity that is all’. The tatau are scripts that tell us about relationships, order and form; the body is part of the fabric of the cosmos. He reminds us that ocean in Samoan is vasa, broken down as va, space, and sa, sacred or forbidden (Wendt 1999: 403). The taboo aspect of the ocean, then, reminds us that the outcome of ‘unity’ is not necessarily integration but sometimes tension. Place, whether land or sea, and the ways in which life inhabits it, is relevant to the content and mode in which islanders express their environments, histories, everyday experiences and spiritual beliefs through performance. Dance – traditional, contemporary or otherwise – does not just occur in ‘space’ but in ‘place’, today in both the islands and diaspora. In this chapter, then, between reflection, poetry, image and dance, and by briefly focusing on two events, I would like to discuss a few of the ways in which the ocean is a corporeal and psychic relational vehicle for Pacific peoples, and the ways in which these relations pivot around the moving body. I briefly look at Pacific dance in the context of Hawai’i, Kiribati and Australia and then move to two specific performance events: Pacific Islands, Atlantic Worlds in New York in 2001, and Culture Moves! Dance in Oceania from Hiva to Hip Hop in 2005 in Wellington, New Zealand.

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Huli Makai, turn to the sea In 2005 I joined a hula halau or hula dance school in Honolulu on the island of Oahu. Halau Hula O Maiki was founded by Maiki Aiu Lake in 1946. Aunty Maiki is described as one of the mothers of the Hawaiian renaissance, a period of Hawaiian cultural revitalization that began in the early twentieth century, emerged strongly in the 1970s, and came to full political force in the 1980s and 1990s. The renaissance involved the production of Hawaiian music and dance, language studies, a revival of voyaging practices, political activism, indigenous scholarship, protection of the environment and a struggle for Hawaiian access to land.2 The halau approach to hula centres on the instruction of dance, the Hawaiian language and history conducted by specific kumu hula, or hula masters, and their students who form hula genealogies that spread across the seven Hawaiian islands and today extend into the continental United States. All hula practices exist in relation to a history of diverse and ancient Hawaiian cultural processes, Christian missionization, American colonialism, plantation economies and militarism that resulted in the incorporation of Hawai’i as the fiftieth state of the United States. Hula, then, while inherently a vehicle for preserving and transforming culture and relationships with the environment, is also about Hawaiian spirituality, sovereignty and struggle for self-determination. It is a way of life, a way of being in the world but also a profound expression of Hawaiian identities that are not homogenous but vary from island to island, valley to valley, genealogy to genealogy, and from the mouths of volcanoes to the mists of mountain tops. Within hula families older women are respected and called ‘aunty’ by younger members.3 Our hula ancestor, therefore, was Aunty Maiki and her way of hula originates on the island of Kauai. While I have spent most of my life learning some form of dance, from ballet to bharatanatyam, learning hula in Halau Hula O Maiki with Aunty Maiki’s daughter, Miss Coline, was the most moving, integrated and concrete approach to dance I had ever experienced. Much of this had to do with specific pedagogical techniques and particularly the ways in which our kumu placed our bodies in time and place. For Miss Coline, hula was not merely a dance but a way of living in and invoking the world. She would teach us values, particularly that of ohana, or family, and aloha, or love, in an integrated sense, and describe the ways in which the respect for these values translated into body movement. What strikes me as most relevant to the discussions in this book about nature religion, and particularly Paganism and water, are the ways in which Miss Coline made us acutely aware of the specifics of the island environment. She first situated us with respect to mauka and makai or mountain-side and ocean-side. Our very first instructions were directional, involving commands to huli ewa, huli mauka, huli leahi and huli makai, that is, turn to the west (the dry side) of the island, turn to the mountain 2. For a good overview of hula see Barrere, Pukui & Kelly (1980). 3. This does not mean that all kumu hula are female. There is a balanced representation of all genders in kumu hula communities.

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katerina martina teaiwa (the Ko’olau’s), turn to Diamond Head peak (on the wet, eastern side), and turn to the sea. The sea, and the ocean were not the same: the ocean, moana, is vast and deep, and kai is shallower and closer to shore. You gather or fish, for example, for very different kinds of food in kai and moana, and one of the first dances we learned, Ka ulu wehi o ke kai (plants of the sea) described the picking of several kinds of limu or seaweed. We also learned about ocean currents and particularly the nature of the passages between the islands in the Hawaiian chain thus gaining an appreciation for the various moods of the sea without actually being on or in the water. Through an awareness of the island environment, our dancing bodies were spatially mapped onto the land and seascape. Immediately we were in relationship with place and the choreography would literally bring the living, breathing environment, in some parts of Oahu now concreted over with high-rise hotels, back to life. We would breathe in the island and sea, we could smell it, we could feel the wind and the rain, and could invoke both the moon and sun in one motion of the hands and tilt of the body. I learned more about the islands of Hawai’i and Hawaiian history from my hula classes then I did in all my Pacific Studies university courses put together. Above all I learned that the original concept of aloha, that word that now dominates everything from tourist brochures to airline logos, was a sincere expression of love that was generated in the na’au (the ‘centre’ of the body) to be shared confidently through dance. As a student, it is not my place to describe the pedagogy used by Miss Coline or Aunty Maiki’s philosophy in any more detail. I start here because hula in Honolulu was for me a profound, albeit too short,4 experience and I wanted to pay respect to Aunty Maiki and Miss Coline. Learning in Halau Hula O Maiki encouraged me to turn to the sea in order to locate my dancing body and to express empathy with its movements, the life within it, the currents, waves, reefs and tidal pools. Hula has been the most recent leg in what is essentially, throughout this chapter, a journey of ‘saltwater feet’.

Oceania Does not the East, Oceania in particular, offer something like a rhizomatic model opposed in every respect to the Western model of the tree? (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 18) An engagement with the Pacific, or Oceania as it is sometimes called, is essential for any attempt to reframe ecospiritual practices and philosophies currently eclipsed by the green spaces of mountains, forests and environmental movements. The stratified model of the tree vehemently critiqued by Deleuze and Guattari (1988), while 4. The journey was short because I have now moved to Australia after being in Hala Hula O Maiki for just a year. Hula is a serious practice and requires a commitment of many years and in some cases a lifetime of learning and teaching.

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saltwater feet resonant with certain aspects of Pacific Island societies, and in particular certain models of genealogy, is adjusted by the simultaneous, complementary and ‘rhizomatic’ concepts of fluidity and kinship that permeate Islander cultures. Articulated and theorized as ‘roots and routes’ by scholars such as Teresia Teaiwa (1998), James Clifford (2001) and Vince Diaz and Kehaulani Kauanui (2001), the Pacific manages to produce both highly grounded and highly mobile or fluid peoples, concepts and practices.5 What holds it all together are the shifting planes of human and environmental relationships. The blue of Oceania has everything to do with the size of its land masses, just a quarter per cent of the entire region, so that on the tiniest of coral atolls the sea and sky form a seamless curtain across the concave horizon. It might be that the dominance of blue here results in many Islanders’ love for red, yellow and any other dramatic and contrasting colour. If this blue watery space is understood to shape fluid cultures, on larger volcanic islands such as those in Fiji and Papua New Guinea with inland, mountain or highland peoples, the concept of fluidity well-known to coastal dwellers still shapes spiritual, political and cultural relationships and practices through regular interactions with seasonal rains and river networks (Teaiwa 2005). Pacific Islanders have described the ocean and their place in it in a variety of ways in their own languages. Some of the more widely circulated contemporary terms include Pasifika, Moana, Solwara and Oceania. Groups such as the Maori in New Zealand have their own specific terms, such as Te Moana Nui a Kiwa, the ocean of Kiwa, who was a voyaging ancestor. Some communities in the Torres-Strait and aboriginal peoples in the Northern Territory of Australia describe themselves as saltwater peoples. In the northern Pacific, atoll dwellers from the Caroline Islands call themselves Re Metau, people of the sea, in contrast to those who reside on high islands (Diaz and Kauanui 2001: 319). The origin of the term Pagan, pagus and paganus, and the ways in which they link place and people is similar to that between Pacific Islanders and their environments. In reflecting on Pagan practices Graham Harvey wrote, ‘If celebrating the seasons inculcates understanding of the “temporality” of life, the celebration of the land teaches the “spatiality” of life’ (1996). But in contrast to the four seasons that frame Pagan practices in North America and Europe, the seasons in the Pacific consist mainly of wet and dry, that is, with and without an abundance of water. The frequency of life-threatening droughts in the central region on islands such as Banaba, Nauru and those in Kiribati illustrates the ways in which the saltiness of the sea and the lack of freshwater is both life-sustaining and threatening. Thus land on most of the Pacific Islands only teaches about the ‘spatiality’ of life in contrast to or in concert with the sea. Except in highland areas of very large islands such as Papua New Guinea, it is the dominant sea that initially frames a concept of spatiality in Oceania for both Islanders and non-Islanders.

5. See Joel Bonnemaison’s The Tree and Canoe (1994) for an in-depth articulation of the balance between roots and mobility in a Vanuatu context.

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Bai n abara: a thing of the land and sea There is a saying in Kiribati that translates as ‘you know your parents love you if they help you to dance’. (Teaero 2006) My own Pacific Island genealogy lies in a group of atolls now called the Republic of Kiribati in the central Pacific. Kiribati is the indigenous way of saying ‘Gilbert’, the former name of the group under British colonial administration for a good portion of the twentieth century. One island in Kiribati, Banaba, was mined for phosphate by Britain, Australia and New Zealand, and its people relocated to Rabi island in Fiji. My great-great-grandmother, Kieuea, was from this island. She married a man from Tabiteuea in the Gilberts and their grandchildren eventually decided to move to Fiji with their Banaban kin. I was thus born and raised in Fiji. For Banabans and I-Kiribati, dance is one of the most powerful expressions of culture and identity. Because the Kiribati atoll island environment is limited in terms of flora and fauna, the primary vehicle for art becomes the creative, decorated and moving body. Even though I was not raised speaking the Kiribati language, my sisters and I regularly attended cultural gatherings and were exposed to the embodied and musical aspects of our father’s culture. This was reinforced by our African American mother’s firm belief in the arts as essential for our education. Between ballet, modern dance, gymnastics, Chinese dance at the Chinese school we attended, popular Polynesian dance and our regular Banaban and Kiribati functions, we learned to keep dance and music at the centre of our lives. Of all the dance forms we were exposed to, I-Kiribati and Banaban dance was always the most difficult and the most complex. The layers of meaning in, for example, Kiribati choreography connect and mediate between the moving body, the land and its creatures, such as crabs or lizards, the sky focusing specifically on the movements of frigate birds, and the sea emulating the movements of fish. The complexity of dance in Oceania, however, is often invisible to outsiders. In the past, European missionaries who came to the Pacific to convert the natives were hell-bent on eradicating what they interpreted as lascivious dancing in islands such as Hawai’i and the Gilberts. In an editorial footnote to a posthumously published collection of ex-British colonial official and popular author Arthur Grimble’s works, historian Harry Maude writes: Once again the ruoia [traditional dance] and easily learnt batere [introduced dance] became immensely popular pastimes throughout the Gilberts, and it was soon obvious that should any further attempt be made to prohibit dancing to church adherents it would be the number of Christians rather than the number of dancers that would decline. (Grimble 1989: 333) Speaking of the great resistance to the missionaries’ attempts to ban performance in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries in the Pacific, Maude made a mistake in describing dance in the Gilbert Islands as merely a pastime. His perception reflects both missionary and colonial misunderstandings of the signifi-

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saltwater feet cance of dance. According to the first Gilbertese–English dictionary produced by the American missionary Hiram Bingham ([1908] 1953) Gilbertese dancing was defined as follows: ruoia. n. heathen chanting accompanied with gestures, slaps, and stamps. This definition of dance illustrates the superficial and problematic ways in which Gilbertese or I-Kiribati dance was read in contrast to a Christian (non-heathen) ethic and mode of bodily conduct. Ethnomusicologist Mary Elizabeth Lawson is one of a tiny number of researchers to have done an in-depth study of I-Kiribati (or Gilbertese) dance. Her understandings contrast dramatically with those of early missionaries. She writes: I Kiribati often say that a reason for the continued significance of Kiribati performance in their culture and why it is so moving for them is that it is bai n abara, ‘a thing of our land,’ or bai ni Kiribati, ‘a thing of Kiribati.’ It is something which originated with and was passed down from the bakatibu, or ancestors. In other words, it is a significant marker of cultural identity for I-Kiribati. (Lawson 1989: 79) What is understood as ‘land’ in a continental or larger island context must be adjusted in Kiribati. All but one of the islands in this group are low-lying coral atolls formed along the rim of submarine volcanic craters. On one side of a long, thin strip of land, not more than two metres above sea level, is a usually calm and light blue lagoon and on the other is the loud, rushing indigo of the wider Pacific. If you drive down the thin strip of this ‘land’, on the one road that connects islets in an atoll chain, you would look left or right or up and see blue. In the Kiribati context, then, bai n abara, ‘a thing of our land’, is inevitably a thing of the sea and it is the body that provides the link between spiritual and material realms. In contrast, however, to Pagan philosophy, which maintains the oneness of the natural and human worlds, and active communion between people, trees, waterways and so forth, in the Pacific Islands there is both an integrated and objective approach to nature where things are understood to be connected but also vastly different. The differences and connections between humans, spirits, ghosts, ancestors, land and sea are to be celebrated, feared, placated, manipulated, sometimes ignored or denied; and are both within and beyond human control. For example, the ultimate goal of Kiribati dance is to stay in control because performance is understood to potentially sweep a dancer into a state of tearful ecstasy. Dance is a fine balance in which te ang, figuratively, the air, wind, courage or spirit, is expected to take over the dancer. It is enough for an I-Kiribati audience and performers to merely hear the call to begin dance, ‘Akekeia!’, and they will brace themselves for the possibility of being swept away or collapsing in tears (see Whincup and Whincup 2001). Despite the almost universal adoption of Christianity in the Pacific and amendments to clothing, choreography and the ways in which gender relations, for

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katerina martina teaiwa example, are displayed in the dance event, Pacific Island performance still maintains and actively invokes connections with the ‘visible and invisible’ environment. Recognizing the potential mana of saltwater, Kiribati dancers today, for example, will sometimes conduct dance rehearsals in the sea near the shore, before dawn, to prepare for a competition (see Whincup and Whincup 2001). Dance and the creative arts in contemporary Oceania reflect a particular relationship with the sea and a fluidity of identities, meanings, practices and relationships that are at times integrating and other times divisive or threatening to a perceived tradition or order and indeed, as Hau’ofa (2000) reminds us, to the survival of oceanic resources and marine life.

Salt water I stood on the shore and waited for the tide my lantern held high the flame burning bright and sure. But the tide never returned And though my eyes were filled with salt water my mouth crying salt water my belly taut and heavy with salt water the tide never returned.

Figure 1 In performance of Vavine: (from top left) Sohlange Casimiro-Gil, Vanessa Gordon, Monique Moffat, Katherine Whitfield, Helen Whitfield, Cherrelle Chan. (Photograph by Julia Gray, with permission.)

So broken and hurt I lay down on the platform inhaled the smoke from the fire the smell of ava’a and mave and watched the flame in my lantern slowly die. My eyes filled with salt water my mouth swallowing cries for salt water my belly taut and heavy with salt water. (Yolanda Gray 2007)

The title of this chapter, ‘Saltwater Feet’, was originally inspired by the poetry and performances of two talented sisters, Julia and Yola Gray, who founded a Pacific dance community, Sunameke Pacific Island Performance, now based in Darwin, Australia. The name Sunameke is an inversion and combination of the words Manus and Mekeo representing the ancestral regions of the some of the founding members. Of Papua New Guinean and Australian descent, Julia and Yola, along with original members Samantha and Katrina, and newer members (but old friends) Paia, Ranu and Mela, regularly represent their approach to dance as a negotiation of two physical and cultural worlds – Australia and Papua New Guinea – separated by the sea. Their

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saltwater feet director, Julia, is formally trained in modern or contemporary Western dance and uses its techniques and principles of choreography to inform, but never to dictate, her process. When I asked Julia about the ways in which dance is the vehicle for crosscultural negotiation and connection to Papua New Guinea, with respect to her childhood friends Paia, Ranu and Mela, she said: We danced together as children and so have the same PNG [Papua New Guinea] traditional knowledge of movement. Through my direction we then create new work … It is kind of like they [my friends] are my dictionary of movement and half the work is done because I don’t have to teach them the words. They already know them … so we are creating new stories together with that [movement] vocabulary. I then give the same directives to Yola to create her poetry and in turn, the poetry that she has already developed influences my creative process. The core of the group are women and many with Papua New Guinea mothers and Australian fathers living in Darwin in the Northern Territory. More recently they have added two male Maori (indigenous New Zealand) and one palagi male dancer. The new dynamic between the Polynesian men and Melanesian women allows gendered tensions that are central to Melanesian dances and cultures to be still played out in the contemporary performance space. In an insightful study of performance and agency in the context of cultural festivals in Australia, Rosita Henry (2000) has articulated the ways in which dance can reveal relations between the moving body and human agency and how dance becomes significant for individuals and collectivities as a way to participate in and resist structures of the state and popular representations of cultural authenticity. This accurately describes the efforts of the women of Sunameke. Australia’s borders are very tight when it comes to immigration from Papua New Guinea or anywhere in Melanesia, so these women represent one of the few ways in which entry is possible: via marriage, usually between an Anglo-Australian man and Papua New Guinea woman. While their heritage is central to their artistic process and protocols as a collective, they regularly collaborate and perform with others of diverse ethnic backgrounds forming a tight network of support in a national environment increasingly suspicious of certain manifestations of multiculturalism. While remaining committed to their traditional roots, they learn dances from a variety of Pacific and Asian dance traditions, and they regularly use tourist, cultural festival and other popular and public contexts to make visible their presence as minority communities and educate the audience on diasporic Pacific Island histories and practices. The entertainment and educational goals of the group require creative approaches to costuming and staging. The colours employed by the women of Sunameke are often deep earth tones of ochre, sienna, ginger and jade, reflecting a rootedness in land as the words, sounds and rhythms of the accompanying music or body percussion evoke the sea. Their own singing voices are used prominently reflecting a very fundamental aspect of Pacific dance in which both vocal expression and movement are key. Their props are usually minimal but effective with the strategic use of colourful

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katerina martina teaiwa fabric incorporated into the choreography, and coconut sasas or broomsticks. The traditional Mekeo costume is woven in, marked by a dressing and undressing of the dancing bodies, or a substitution of the traditional costume with cotton versions. The source of dance in the Mekeo region from which the Gray sisters hail is described thus: ‘Long ago the temptress Vavine tricked the mighty hunter Alule into revealing all his dances and abandoning all his costumes to her. From these dances sprang the rich culture of the Mekeo people of Papua New Guinea’ (McEwen 2005). This history resonates with the source of dance in many parts of the region where ancestors, spirits and the gods (who are mainly understood as manifestations of the land, sea, plant and animal life) inform, influence or direct dance practices. Many composers of Pacific chants and songs, and dance masters, receive their ideas in dreams and visions, often from spirits or ancestors. Figure 1 depicts dancers in the Sunameke production of Vavine, drawing inspiration from the wily Vavine, bringing the women’s two homes into co-presence in Darwin. Figure 2 shows Yola in the Mekeo costume that will later be carefully removed and given over to Vavine. While Darwin is on the northern coast of Australia groups such as Sunameke exist in some of the most land-locked spaces of the growing Pacific diaspora, in the middle of countries such as the US, and often exist as a communal method of retaining cultural principles and practices. One of the most distinct features of an indigenous Pacific relation to the sea is that it is rarely based in an individual or solitary understanding of the terms of engagement. When the sea is part of one’s history, and one’s genealogical habitus, invoking it from any place is possible and usually is far less about ‘the self ’ than about the survival of the collective. Sunameke very much organizes itself around this principle of community, with Julia operating not as creative dance genius or star director, but rather as coordinator and leader. The questions framing this part of Deep Blue enquire about rituals with reverence to water, assuming direct contact between substance and devotee. I believe that this is not necessary in Oceania. By definition, by location and by heritage, the ocean and the principle of fluidity infuse the lives of Pacific Islanders whether they are on Ebeye in the Marshall Islands, Darwin in Australia, or in Arkansas in the USA. Direct contact with or the presence of the sea is not necessary for Pacific Islanders to embody and articulate its moods, flows, colours and sounds. Working with Julia Gray over the past six years has taught me much about the ways in indigenous Pacific women use their creative arts to build community, and maintain and transform their relationships with the sea and the islands across ethnic and other boundaFigure 2. Yola Gray in costume, Adelaide. ries erected by nation-states. Relations with (Photograph by author.)

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saltwater feet water are flexible, pragmatic and reverential. The holistic worldview connecting rain, stream, river and lagoon to ocean allows for both material and psychic relations so that the sea is ever-present at home in the islands and in the middle of continents in the diaspora. The vehicle that often links these spaces is the moving human body.

Pacific Islands, Atlantic Worlds In one scene, a dancer tells of the tragi-comical process of training a goldfish to become a land animal, with the outcome that the creature, its environment having become alien to it, threatens to drown in water. The process of civilisation – it would seem – leaves people high and dry in exactly the same way: in a physical reality that is like a foreign element. (Servos 1998: 45) Contemporary Pacific dance, while built on ancient traditions and practices, pragmatically includes new choreographies, rhythms, costumes, narratives, spaces of performance and audiences, reflecting both the changing environmental and social aspects of Pacific life. There are now networks of Pacific Islanders across the globe. But the shift in context, form or content can be tricky and can produce both successful and unsuccessful results. And while both traditional and contemporary dance can be a focal point for community building and indeed bridging islands and continents, it is not without intense politics and potentially divisive outcomes. In 1999 and 2000 I began to incorporate dance performance into my academic presentations at a number of Pacific Studies conferences. Prior to this, some conferences would provide a space for dance as ‘Island entertainment’ that often featured in great contrast to the more serious and ‘important’ intellectual exchanges that existed throughout the gathering. My rationale for dancing at conferences devoted to area studies, the social sciences and humanities, was that dance was central to Pacific history, political and social organization, spirituality and survival, and should be more than mere entertainment in academic contexts (although fun and play are definitely part of the central ingredients of dance). Other scholars seemed very open to this challenge and dance theatre, particularly, began to feature more prominently at a few Pacific Studies conferences in Fiji, Australia and the US. In 2001 I was invited to perform at the first Center for Pacific Islands Studies (University of Hawai’i) conference outside Hawai’i. At the request of Asia/Pacific/ American Studies at New York University the conference was relocated to New York and titled ‘Pacific Islands, Atlantic Worlds’. This gathering held the promise of important cross-oceanic dialogues and of considering the reach of Pacific Island histories, communities, ideas and practices. The location in New York challenged the geographic boundaries of the Pacific and extended Oceania across the continent to Atlantic shores where indeed many islanders in both the past and present have travelled, lived and worked; facilitated by entertainment troupes, church, military and other labour channels.

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katerina martina teaiwa I invited Julia Gray from Sunameke to collaborate and we put together a show called Saltwater Feet. We used the poetry of her younger sister, Yola, and my elder sister, Teresia, for inspiration, and invited my younger sister, Maria, who at the time was at Columbia University, to dance as well. The idea was to highlight the travels of Pacific women who display both rooted and dynamic identities in contrast to the prevailing stereotype of static native cultures. This seemed to fit well with the themes of the conference. Julia and I were not able to rehearse together and so instead created short sets of narrative and movement phrases that could be woven together in the week before the conference. These sets combined modern dance choreography, and popular forms of Fijian, Kiribati, Mekeo and Samoan dance. My elder sister, Teresia, a poet, provided a live soundtrack: Four sets of feet form a certain sort of sisterhood Four sets of feet certainly do Four sets of feet seek a saltwater tongue To talk about their walkabout To talk about their walkabout To talk about their walkabout True

(Teaiwa 2001)

The various phrases of our performance included: ‘The Travelling’; ‘The Crossing’; ‘Culture Moves’; ‘Between Our Islands’; ‘Fiji: I Love You Full Speed’; ‘Atlantic Islands, Pacific Feet’; and ‘Footprints Fade’. In concept the show was integrated but in practice it came off rather awkwardly, partly because we did not have enough time to synthesize the elements or rehearse on site, and partly because we had to perform on a temporary stage without the usual technical support. Most awkwardly, a day after the show, in a discussion panel, was the reaction of a particular contingent of diasporic Pacific artists who hailed from Utah and who felt miffed that other artists had been brought all the way from Australia to represent the Pacific in New York. In hindsight it must be noted that this was a period in New York just a month following September 11, and it felt as if a wave of tension had gripped some of the participants in the conference. Julia and I were subjected to a barrage of impolite criticisms that would rarely have been verbalized in a Pacific Island context. It was a sad moment when we started crying quietly in our seats and I scanned the crowd to see the convener of the conference, also crying quietly in the front row of the audience. Saltwater then poured from eyes in all corners of the crowded room. Some of the criticism had to do with our costuming, which appeared to affront the Christian critics, but most of it focused on the fact that we had performed a popular Samoan dance and neither of us was Samoan. Among the critics, who were Tongan and Samoan Latter Day Saints migrants to the US, was an expectation of indigenous authenticity that challenged our desire to transcend ethnic and cultural boundaries. While the critics were strongly chastised by older Samoans at the conference, who themselves were not offended by the performance, facing such a strong reaction to

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saltwater feet our dancing caused both Julia and I to think long and hard about the politics of dance. My point in highlighting this brief reflection on ‘Pacific Islands, Atlantic Worlds’ is that new contexts bring new politics of dance and identity to the fore. Dance is taken very seriously in the Pacific Islands and in the Pacific diaspora and issues of authenticity are always at the fore. When the stakes are so high, when dance, place, culture and identity are tied so directly to each other, it is possible to trip and fall flat on new, and sometimes inhospitable, shores.

‘Culture Moves!’ The incident at ‘Pacific Islands, Atlantic Worlds’ resulted in my commitment to organizing another Pacific Studies conference focused purely on dance in Oceania. I thought it would be good if Islander scholars, educators, dancers and other practitioners talked face to face about why dance meant so much to Pacific peoples, why such dance took on a variety of forms that spanned the spectrum from hula to hip hop, and why islanders in both continental and island contexts remained so passionate about performance. ‘Culture Moves!’ was a landmark gathering in Pacific dance studies held at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. For a brief moment, the space of the

Figure 3 ‘Culture Moves!’ (Logo design by Dean Otsuki; contemporary dance image in logo by J. McCauley © 2004, dancer, Travis Khan, The New Zealand School of Dance; Hip hop image by DEAP © 2004, dancer, B-boy 01; hula image by Michael Harada © 2004, dancer, Kaohi Yojo, Mid-Pacific Institute of the Arts.)

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katerina martina teaiwa museum, usually devoted to the display of static objects, was filled with dancing bodies. The conference was a collaboration between Te Papa, the Center for Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawai’i, and Pacific Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. One of the goals of the four-day event was to forge the kinds of communities and relationships that transcended ethnic, national and choreographic boundaries. At ‘Culture Moves!’ co-conveners Sean Mallon and April Henderson and I also extended invitations to participate beyond the borders of the university and museum and beyond the shores of Hawai’i and Aotearoa New Zealand to a wide range of Pacific dance communities. We believed that finding and maintaining the links between our islands, between the islands and the diaspora, between the islands and the continents, was crucial to our survival as a region, so often described as ‘small’ and dependent. The conference featured an opening night, ‘Between Our Islands We Dance’, two showcase nights, ‘Culture Moves! Tahi (one)’ and ‘Culture Moves! Rua (two)’, and a full day of community dance performances around the theme ‘Culture Moves! Dance Flavas of the Pacific’. The participating groups represented a diversity of dance genres including what is popularly understood to be ‘traditional’, ‘contemporary’ and ‘hip hop’ dance. These were seen to be meaningful across the region and diaspora, moving beyond what was accepted as ‘authentic’ Pacific dance to what Pacific youth in particular were passionate about. The line-up of groups included Sunameke, who performed excerpts from another production called Fai’a centring on the experiences of the women growing up in Darwin. Subsequently, the diversity in performing bodies and voices on stage throughout the conference illustrated how creative and formal expression were a matter of survival for Pacific peoples. Recognized as such, and as contributing positively to the national economy and culture by the government of New Zealand, the Pacific

Figure 4 Oceania Dance Theater members, Eroni Bulimaivale, Pita Waqanui and Ledua Peni Tucake, performing an excerpt from Nafanua at ‘Culture Moves!’ 2005. (Photograph courtesy of the Pacific Cooperation Foundation and Colin McDiarmid.)

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saltwater feet Arts are supported there at a scale far beyond that of governments in the islands or anywhere else. This infrastructure for dance development allowed us to ask more critical questions about our practices, such as: what are the historical roots and contexts of Pacific dance practices? What are the limits of culturally based performance and how has tourism transformed our practice? What are the possibilities and potential difficulties of including hip hop under the rubric of ‘Pacific dance’? What are the political implications of borrowing and sharing dance traditions across ethnic, communal and national boundaries? Many of the panels at ‘Culture Moves!’ also discussed the rapid expansion of Pacific arts in New Zealand and the ways in which new contexts of performance pushed the limits of what we understood to be ‘traditional’ repertoires of movement. Many of us realized that while there is much that is excellent in our heritage that must be preserved for future generations, there are also new ideas that are incorporated every day keeping culture strong, flexible and moving. On stage a spectrum of styles and genres challenged the idea that ‘real’ Pacific dance was limited to stereotypical forms. Hula (Hawai’i) followed siva (Samoa), followed bwatere (Kiribati), followed meke (Fiji), followed modern dance, breaking, popping and locking. Many performance groups mixed choreography from a number of dance traditions. After each night of performance representatives of the diverse communities discussed their own works and implications of what we had seen on stage. While issues of authenticity, of preservation, of costuming, of context and of choreography were passionately discussed, while the gathering itself was not short of its own limits and dramas, for four days in Wellington, between our cultures, and between our islands, we danced. When asked by a television reporter about her group’s motivation for participating in the gathering, Julia Gray said, ‘We’re expressive people. If we didn’t dance we’d be … dead’.

Coda: the boiling ocean The Hawaiians have a principle called kaona in which layers of meaning are embedded in all words and phrases. Underscoring all meaning is the relationship between people and each other, people and their ancestors, people and the environment, and people and the gods (of all genders) who manifest themselves in the land, sea and sky. Kaona exists in many forms across Oceania and particularly influences the process of naming. The result is a genealogy of names connecting individuals, groups, places and the larger environment in a web of relationships. As my sister Teresia writes: One word can have many layers of meaning … Thus, a limited vocabulary does not constitute a limited worldview; the kaona principle enriches, makes complex and versatile a limited vocabulary. No word is disposable – if the singular referent it ‘originally’ represented is no longer, then the word is recycled to represent a new referent. (Teaiwa 2005: 29)

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katerina martina teaiwa The flexibility and malleability of words is not just limited to language but also to ideas, concepts, spirituality and practices. Thus, many Pacific Islanders, most of whom are now avowed Christians, also believe and actively invoke indigenous, or what were once described as Pagan or heathen, spiritual concepts and practices without contradiction. For most of my life I took my surname, Teaiwa, to merely be my grandfather’s first name, adopted in the Christian tradition by many members of our extended family to function as our second name. In the Kiribati tradition, our last name should have been my father’s first, that is, Tabakitoa (a rather fierce name that I will not translate). Teresia, a poet and academic, explored the meaning of ‘Teaiwa’ further and broke down the name into parts: Te (the)–ai (fire)–wa (canoe). The fire canoe, or fiery canoe, became the framework for several of her poetry collections and sparked a discussion with my father as to the many things this name might mean. In the Pacific Islands relations of all kinds have historically been traceable through names. Given the kaona principle, let us examine the name Teaiwa again: Te-ai-wa: Teaiwa: Teaiwa:

the fire canoe, fiery canoe to agitate, move about, upset the state of water right before it boils, boiling point

The state of agitation or boiling, for me, indicates a need to be both reverential and extremely cautious in my relationships with people, the sea and all waterways. My relationship with marine life, particularly, is extremely tentative. For if Teaiwa indicates the potential to boil water, that cannot always be so good for aquatic life. As a result of this potential I am always cautious. I am in awe of the vast expanse of water that is Oceania and I believe that saltwater has healing properties, but I do fight fear every time I am in the sea. In Kiribati, our family has clan relations to the figures of Nei Tituabine, the stingray, Tabakea, the turtle and Nabakoa, the shark. My dreams are constantly filled with sharks that morph into men and my elder sister’s with turtles that are also human. By far my most difficult encounters, however, have been with a very different kind of marine creature. While I was living in Hawai’i I enjoyed swimming at Ala Moana beach where the reef creates an open saltwater swimming pool and an ideal stretch for long-distance laps. I would swim a couple times a week for about a kilometre in that ‘pool’. But in 2004 something happened and I have not swum there since. That summer I travelled to Palau to do some filming at the Festival of Pacific Arts, which occurs every four years. The festival is a massive, regional event bringing together dance and other cultural troupes from across the Pacific in a celebration of regionalism and, indeed, nationalism with each country putting forward their best traditional groups. At the festival, on impulse, I decided to get tattooed with my brother-in-law, who researches the globalization of the Samoan tatau or tattoo. The featured artist came from a very famous Samoan family of tufuga tatau or tatau masters. I already had a Kiribati-inspired armband or taulima on my left arm, modelled after a frigate bird feather (but usually mistaken for a centipede or canoe) and so the artist decided to put

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saltwater feet a Samoan version on my right arm. Using traditional Samoan instruments he painfully tapped out the pattern my skin. But this Samoan-style band had a nasty effect on my arm. While the tattoo was healing I went on a boat trip to the famous Palauan rock islands where I swam in a lagoon that was filled with thousands of non-stinging jellyfish. Later that week I noticed that the ink in the tattoo had begun to bleed into my skin following the contours of a bruise created by the two men who had stretched my arm during the process to create a flat surface for the artist. It became worse and by the time I returned to Honolulu the inside of my arm was a dark green-blue colour. A couple months later, after consulting with a doctor, I resigned myself to the fact that my arm would always be this submarine shade of blue. Soon after I went for my usual swim at Ala Moana. At the end of my kilometre lap I felt energized and began to swim faster and faster. I lost my way in the process and swam away from the beach towards the reef. Suddenly I felt entangled in something that I initially thought was seaweed. Then pain shot through my whole body and my right arm went numb. As calmly as I could I swam back to shore with my left arm. I could feel pain electrifying the entire circuit of my nervous system and radiating out from my spine. As I emerged from the water a lifeguard ran towards me and pointed to the jellyfish tentacles on my arm. They were wrapped perfectly around the taulima. Later, when I looked at the scars they mapped directly onto the armbands on both my arms but much more harshly around the new Samoan design. This surprised me as I had felt the tentacles brush my face and hands but I clearly only got stung on my tattoos. Immediately Albert Wendt’s words about the tatau as potentially reflecting the ‘unity that is all’ rang in my ears, along with his reminder of the ocean as va-sa or sacred space. Most Pacific Island traditions include the process of tattooing imprinted patterns and motifs from the environment on the body, and many of these represent the canoes or waka, the sea, wave, wind and current patterns, frigate birds, fish and other marine life (see Wendt 1999). The jellyfish-taulima incident was for me a sign to be cautious, to balance finagalo (will) with masalo (doubt), and to pay attention to my relationship with the sea, marine life and our peoples’ historical and contemporary relationships with the peoples and islands of Palau and Samoa. There, are for example, Kiribati oral traditions that directly and genealogically connect most of the islands of Kiribati to Samoa. Mysteriously, though, there are no Samoan oral traditions that connect their islands to ours; the relationship and knowledge is one-sided. Perhaps if the critics in New York had known how closely connected Kiribati is to Samoa (in our oral histories), or that there are historical exchanges between areas of Papua New Guinea and Samoa, they would not have been so quick to judge our performance as ‘inauthentic’. Harvey has described Pagan ethics in contrast to traditions such as Christianity as being derived not from theology but from ‘relationships with “all our relations”’ (Harvey 1996). Most Pacific Islanders are related to each other, genetically, linguistically, culturally and spiritually through a series of migrations from the western region of the Pacific Rim in South East Asia, Taiwan and Papua New Guinea, and spreading east, beginning thousands of years ago. Many Pacific Island oral histories, such as the kumu lipo in Hawai’i, have human life beginning from roots in the sea, reefs, rocks,

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katerina martina teaiwa mountains, and plant and animal life. While Oceania is indeed a fluid and connected whole, navigating the spaces between our own shores is always a challenge, even when ‘just visiting relatives’ (Petaia 1992: 55). While we may dance across boundaries, add to or transform Oceanic choreographies, and while I am conscious of both the healing and binding qualities of saltwater, I am still mindful of the unrelenting presence, beneath the surface, of the boiling ocean.6

Bibliography Barrere, D. B., M. K. Pukui & M. Kelly. 1980. Hula: Historical Perspectives. Pacific Anthropological Records no. 30. Honolulu, HI: Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum. Bingham, H. [1908] 1953. A Gilbertese–English Dictionary, 2nd edn. Boston: American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Bonnemaison, J. 1994. The Tree and the Canoe: History and Ethnogeography of Tanna. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. Callick, R. 1993. ‘Pacific 2010: A Doomsday Scenario?’ In Pacific 2010: Challenging the Future, R. Cole (ed.), 1–11. Canberra: National Centre for Development Studies, Australian National University. Clifford, J. 2001. ‘Indigenous Articulations’. Contemporary Pacific 13(2): 468–90. Deleuze, G. & F. Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. B. Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Diaz, V. & K. Kauanui. 2001. ‘Native Pacific Cultural Studies on the Edge’. Contemporary Pacific 13(2): 315–42. Gray, J. M. 2002. Experiences in Performing Mekeo Dance in Australia. Paper presented at the Regional Meeting of Experts on Arts Education in the Pacific, UNESCO, Nadi, Fiji, 25–9 November. Gray, Y. 2007. ‘Salt Water’. In Indigenous Encounters: Reflections on Relations between People in the Pacific, ed. K. Teaiwa, 108. Center for Pacific Islands Studies Occasional Paper no. 43. Honolulu, HI: Center for Pacific Islands Studies. Grimble, A. 1989. Tungaru Traditions. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. Harvey, G. 1996. ‘The Authority of Intimacy in Paganism and Goddess Spirituality’. Diskus 4(1): 34–48. http://web.uni-marburg.de/religionswissenschaft/journal/diskus/harvey.html (accessed Jan. 2008). Hau’ofa, E. 1994. ‘Our Sea of Islands’. Contemporary Pacific 1: 148–60. Hau’ofa, E. 2000. ‘The Ocean in Us’. In Voyaging through the Contemporary Pacific, eds G. White & D. Hanlon, 113–31. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Henry, R. 2000. ‘Dancing into Being: The Tjapukai Aboriginal Park and the Laura Dance Festival’. Australian Journal of Anthropology 11(3): 322–32. Lawson, M. E. 1989. Tradition, Change and Meaning in Kiribati Performance: An Ethnography of Music and Dance in a Micronesian Society. Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Music, Brown University, Providence, RI. McEwen, J. 2005. ‘Dancing Between Two Shores’. Realtimearts.net, www.realtimearts.net/article/60/7424 (accessed Jan. 2008). Ness, S. A. 1992. Body, Movement and Culture. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Petaia, R. 1992. ‘Between Our Islands’. In his Patches of the Rainbow, 12. Apia: Samoan Observer.

6. The Boiling Ocean was also the title of two dance productions that I directed with choreographer Allan Alo for the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture at the University of the South Pacific and performed in Honolulu and Canberra in Australia.

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saltwater feet Ponifasio, L. 2001. ‘Creating Cross-cultural Dance in New Zealand’. In Moving to the Future, Nga Whakanekeneke atu kit e Ao o Apopo: Creative New Zealand’s Strategy for Professional Contemporary Dance 2001–2003, 51–6. Wellington: Creative New Zealand. Servos, N. 1998. ‘Pina Bausch: Dance and Emancipation’. In Routledge Dance Studies Reader, ed. A. Carter, 36–45. London: Routledge. Teaero, T. 2006. Lecture delivered in DANCE 255 Dance in World Cultures, seminar at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, April. Teaiwa, T. K. 1998. ‘Yaqona/Yagoqu: The Roots and Routes of a Displaced Native’. UTS Review 4(1): 92–106. Teaiwa, T. K. 2001. ‘Salt Water Tongue’. Salt Water Feet performance programme designed and edited by J. Gray and Y. Gray for Pacific Islands Atlantic Worlds, New York University. Teaiwa, T. K. 2005. ‘Native Thoughts: A Pacific Studies take on Cultural Studies and Diaspora’. In Indigenous Diasporas and Dislocations, eds G. Harvey & C. D. Thompson, 15–35. London: Ashgate. Wendt, A. 1976. ‘The Angry Young Men of Oceania’. UNESCO Courier (February): 4–12. Wendt, A. 1999. ‘Afterward: Tatauing the Postcolonial Body’. In Inside Out: Literature, Cultural Politics and Identity in the New Pacific, eds V. Hereniko & R. Wilson, 399–412. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Whincup, T. & J. Whincup 2001. Akekeia: Traditional Dance in Kiribati. Wellington: Susan Barrie.

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7 I am the river bleeding Douglas Ezzy

In an insightful rethinking of what constitutes ‘animism’, Graham Harvey defines animism as: ‘being concerned with learning how to be a good person in respectful relationships with other persons’ (2005: xi). Further, only some persons are human. In this chapter I ask how we, as humans, can engage respectfully with ‘water persons’ such as rivers, creeks and rain. Following Harvey, I argue that such respectful engagement with water persons involves a significant rethinking of our more general worldview and religious mythology. Further, religion is not about belief in the supernatural, but, quoting Detwiler, Harvey suggests that religion is ‘a quest for ethical responsibility through communicative action’ (ibid.: 49). As he puts it later in the book, ‘animism is concerned with the unfolding of potential (in) relationships’ (ibid.: 64). This leads me to the question: what unfolds from a communicative relationship with water persons? I argue that the answer tells us as much about ourselves, and what it means to be human, as it does about water. The answer, of course, and as always, begins in stories. I stand on a walking track high up on Mount Wellington, the mountain that overshadows the city of Hobart, in Tasmania, Australia, where I live. On this walking track I have a regular stopping point where I stand and listen to a small running stream that crosses the path. If I listen carefully it is possible to ‘hear’ my way up the creek. I can discern the splash of the water that crosses the path from the gurgle just beside the path and the fainter and higher pitched splash of the small waterfall a metre or so away. Listening the other way I can hear the stream cascade off the edge of the path and into the bush below. How often do we, as humans, stop and listen to, or consider, the place of water in our lives? Water has often been marginalized in environmental and Pagan discourse (Shaw 2006). The emphasis is on ‘green’ not ‘blue’. In part this reflects the terrestrial habitat of humans. But, I suspect the marginalization of water also reflects the

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douglas ezzy profoundly anthropocentric and self-centered view of the world common to humans. Humans are the noisiest creatures, and we find it hard to listen. Human experiences of ‘nature’ are often ones that focus on what humans can get out of being there. Harvey suggests that ‘When entering the Greenwood, Pagans enter a less human-centered world with respect’ (1993: 91). What does it mean to ‘enter a less human-centered world with respect’? Put another way, the question could be: what matters to water persons? Do they mind dams built across them, pollution poured into them, or are there more respectful ways of engaging with water? To answer these questions, we have to begin by listening. One of the challenges of engaging respectfully with water is to stop and listen to water persons. This involves silencing the voices in our heads, our soliloquies (Athens 1994), that focus on our selves and our projects. It is only when we, as humans, move beyond our anthropocentric self-obsession that we can begin to listen and understand the activities and purposes of water persons. The injunction to listen respectfully does not mean that we, as humans, have to agree, or like, or obey, what we hear. Rather, it requires an inquisitive approach to water as an ‘other’ whom we meet in relationship. Beginning with relationships, rather than individuals, is a radically different way of understanding what it means to be human in comparison to that provided by mainstream Western philosophy. My thinking here derives from the philosophical hermeneutics of Emmanuel Levinas (Levinas 1969; Ezzy 2004). Levinas argues that in order to understand what it is to be human we need to start with relationships. In particular, Levinas is interested in our encounters with the ‘Other’. He capitalizes the term ‘Other’ to indicate that it not simply another person but an encounter with something more, something that is radically different to us, not the ‘Same’, and not simply a reflection or projection of our own understandings and ideals. Following Barbara Davy, I suggest that Levinas’s ideas can usefully be developed to form an ‘ethical subjectivity responsible not only to human others, but to all others in the more than human world’ (Davy 2003: 5). Water is one such other. Sometime in my later teenage years I walked the five kilometres or so from my home to the end of the road up a nearby valley. I made the journey many times during my youth. On this particular outing I went alone and I spent the afternoon wandering in the bushland on the foothills of the mountain. Late in the afternoon I began my return journey. There were no pavements along this road. One walks either on the bitumen or the gravel edges of the road. I remember this trip in particular because I walked it barefoot. I spent just over a year barefoot when I was seventeen. By the end of the day my feet, hardened though they were, were sore. The long trip back on the gouging bitumen or the gravel was going to be painful. Instead I chose to return along the creek bed that ran alongside the road. The granite rock was smoothed by years of running water. I remember nothing else about this trip except my hurting feet and the pleasure of walking on water. Stories like this are common in more general representations of the other-thanhuman world. They represent a romanticized view of nature as nurturing and comforting. I think that understanding the nurturing role of water is an important first step. However, a more complex, and less nurturing view of water is also possible.

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i am the river bleeding Kate Rigby has observed with respect to European romanticism: ‘The romantics’ view of nature was nonetheless neither homogenous nor without ambivalence’ (2004: 1). Similarly I suggest a more ambivalent understanding of water. Water is life-giving. It comforts, soothes, and is nurturing. However, in this chapter I am less interested in engaging with water’s life-giving role, than in engaging with some more disturbing aspects of water. When I was a child my family would travel during summer to the warm east coast of Tasmania. One summer we camped near a beach with deep white sand. There was a river, perhaps five metres across, that flowed out of the scrubby bush across the beach and into the sea. The water was too deep for me to stand in. We could not see the bottom of the river because the water was the colour of rich brown tea. Tannins in the local vegetation naturally stain the water. The river had steep sandy sides, perhaps at sixty degrees. My brother (six years old), sister (nine) and I (ten) were playing on its banks with some other children. One of the other children pushed my brother into the river. He could not swim and the steep sides meant that he was out of his depth. He was drowning. I do not remember my decision to jump in to help him. I was not much of a swimmer either, and certainly had not had any lessons in water saving techniques. But I do remember being in the water with my brother and my sister who had also jumped in to help. I remember holding my breath and pushing myself underwater so I could get my feet on the bottom to push my brother to safety. I still have a mental picture looking up at the surface from below with my hands on my brother and my feet on the bottom as I pushed him back in to the edge. His legs were flailing and I could see the steep banks below the surface of the brackish water. That event is still vivid for both my brother and I. In traditional Wiccan cosmology water is found in the west, as is also death (Hume 1997). The elemental direction of the west is the watery gateway to the underworld. I suspect this is an accidental correlation, deriving from the British orientation to the (dying) setting sun over the Atlantic Ocean in the west. There are some precedents of the link between water and death. In Greek mythology, for example, the river Styx guards the entrance to the underworld. Nonetheless, the association of water with death is intriguing. What can be learnt from the association of water, the sustainer of life, with death? One of the reasons that mainstream Western society focuses on water as the giver of life is because of our anthropocentrism. As Dave Green puts it: ‘For me, it is no coincidence that modern anthropocentrism and risk society leads to a denial of death’ (2002: 130). A narrow focus on what humans can get from the world leads to a view of what water can do for humans. However, apart from a recognition of water as dangerous, a consideration of values beyond what matters to humans leads to a rethinking of the destructive aspect of water that may also be part of a cosmological cycle in which death is incorporated into the rituals of life. Starhawk and her Reclaiming associates suggest that the ‘acceptance of death as part of the natural cycle can be a healthy counterbalance to our present-day combination of denial and obsession. Modern Western culture hides death away in hospital rooms, isolating the dying’ (1997: 5).

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douglas ezzy In pre-industrial times, people were much more familiar with death as a normalized part of everyday life (Aries 1974). Death was part of a nature-oriented cosmology in which the ritualized cycles of the agricultural year sacralized death as part of the process of renewal and rebirth. The industrial revolution brought mass migration to the cities, where factory labour divorced most people from the rhythms of agricultural life: ‘This cultural divorce from nature has also therefore seen a modern rationalization of death. In the language of machinery we wear out, we become old and obsolete. Death is denied and forced into the margins much in the same way as seasonal rhythms have been shunned to one side by Fordist concepts of time’ (Green 2002: 130). I would add that the eliding of the role of water in our lives has similar sources. Humans see themselves as exempted from the cycles of seasonal rhythms. When we do think of forests, or of water, we tend to romanticize these as life-giving and nurturing. This is an anthropocentric incorporation, and colonization, of other-thanhuman peoples to serve the purposes of humans. In contrast, I suggest that an animist and Pagan understanding of water engages with water in such a way that it fundamentally challenges Western anthropocentric cosmologies. This is clearly illustrated in our understanding of death. I argue that in order to understand the significance of water, we need to understand the significance of death, loss and suffering. Similar to the avoidance of death, contemporary Western culture makes evil, loss and pain faceless. I noticed this most graphically while watching Peter Jackson’s film interpretation of Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings. Evil is a faceless other (Burns 1990). The dark lord Sauron, the Witch-king of Angmar and the Nine Riders are all faceless. In contrast, the original Norse mythology on which Tolkien’s books draw heavily is much more complex (Larrington 1996). The frost giants are the symbols of the destructive forces of chaos. However, they are not faceless. The gods sometimes fall in love with, and marry daughters of the frost giants. The integration of evil is most evident in the character of Loki, who is the son of giants, but becomes a companion of Odin (one of the leading gods). Loki is both a welcome participant at the feasts of the gods, and also becomes one of their greatest enemies. Even the gods themselves act in morally duplicitous ways. While it is clear that one should primarily identify with the gods, both sides have their good and evil attributes. Tolkien reads the Norse mythology through a Christian lens and ‘others’ evil such that the suffering and evil tendencies of the ‘good guys’ are glossed over. In some ways this is unfair to Tolkien, as his work should be seen in the context of the First World War, which had a profound influence on the writing of the Lord of the Rings. ‘In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien faces the horrors of his age, especially the ravages of war, head on … His use of fantasy is not escapist, but a strategy for articulating the awful and inexplicable’ (Mortimer 2005: 121). However, even if his distancing of evil has plausible sources, his portrayal of those on the side of the good is still morally simplistic, reflecting not only a modernist denial of death, but also glossing over the moral ambiguities inherent to what it means to be human. What is it about Western Christian culture that ‘others’ evil? This is primarily a sociological question. Tracey McIntosh observes that ‘most sociological narratives do not engage with moral issues’ (2006: 4). In the rush to avoid the moral tendentious-

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i am the river bleeding ness of religious worldviews, sociology has largely ignored the question of the social sources of the moral orientations of contemporary Western society. Philosophers, rather than sociologists, have examined the social sources of Western morality in a much more substantial way. In a philosophical reflection on contemporary interpretations of Greek tragedy, Martha Nussbaum (1986) argues that Western thought has seriously misunderstood the morality of the Greek tragedies. Pointing to the influence of Plato and Kant, Nussbaum underlines how Western thought interprets morality as an integrated and consistent domain immune to the vagaries of luck or chance. According to the Kantian tradition, a person’s ability to act morally is not a product of chance, but of considered ethical choice. However, such an understanding ignores the moral complexity of the world that the Greek tragedies illuminate. For the Greeks such as Aeschylus, tragedy occurs when competing claims, both of which may be ‘good’, lead to circumstances in which choices have to be made that would otherwise be immoral and inconsistent with a person’s good character. In other words, morality is subservient to chance: Aeschylus has indicated to us that the only thing remotely like a solution here is, in fact, to describe and see the conflict clearly and to acknowledge that there is no way out. The best the agent can do is to have his [sic] suffering, the natural expression of his goodness of character, and not to stifle these responses out of misguided optimism. The best we (the Chorus) can do for him is to respect the gravity of his predicament, to respect the responses that express his goodness, and to think about his case as showing a possibility for human life in general. (Nussbaum 1986: 49) Nussbaum’s observation can be used to explain the facelessness of evil in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. It also provides a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship of death to water, but more of that shortly. Western morality elevates rational choice and an integrated moral system at the expense of a more nuanced interpretation of the world that would expose the richness of moral ambiguities and complexities. Unlike the Devil in the Hebrew book of Job, who debates with God and convinces him to pursue a morally questionable course of action, in the Western Christian tradition evil is othered as the faceless ‘Satan’ of the New Testament. In this cosmology it is assumed that if a person acts in a way that is morally ‘good’ this will have universally positive consequences. The idea that doing good may, at the same time, have evil consequences, or cause suffering, is rarely entertained. Put another way, modernist discourse is that of a ‘misguided optimism’ (Nussbaum 1986: 49) that simplifies the complexities and ambiguities of life into a narrative of progress looking out on a bright and rosy future. Such a narrative ‘stifles’ any description of suffering or any account that might highlight our own destructiveness and the ubiquitous human propensity to do evil. How does this relate to water? I think that the first misunderstanding of water in contemporary times is a narrow focus on water as a giver of life. Water is both the giver, and destroyer of life. In some senses this is true of all four Wiccan elements:

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douglas ezzy air, fire, water and earth. However, the association of water with death suggest a more complex understanding, or that water has some special mystery. An immersion in water is an immersion in both the thrill of life, and the pain of death. There is no way out of this ‘two-sidedness’ of water. The best we can do is to experience honestly the pain of death and suffering. Reading Nussbaum’s analysis of modernist ethics, and Harvey’s new animism together, I want to suggest that it is important to understand that what we, as humans, consider to be good and moral may not be what other-than-human peoples, such as water, consider to be a right and proper way to act. In other words, one of the outcomes of engaging with water respectfully may be that we, as humans, suffer. This might not be because water, or humans, are evil (although sometimes we are), but because both may engage in ‘good’ actions that lock them in to causing suffering for themselves or for others. Doing ‘good’ in one context may have unpleasant consequences for others. In an earlier paper I drew on the Jewish philosopher Levinas’s analysis of face-toface relations, arguing that the encounter with the ‘other’ ‘provides an ethical imperative to responsibility, yet disrupts one’s own sense of self-satisfaction’ (Ezzy 2004: 26). This is precisely my experience of water persons. My meetings with water are not only experiences of the soothing coolness of water on my sore feet, but of the destructive power of water: through her absence in drought, and her rage in a rainstorm. Water’s relationship with death and suffering takes us into a reformulation of our own selfunderstandings. This is Nussbaum’s argument, and also Levinas’s contention: ‘The Other, our encounter with face, dispossess us of the world, or our illusion of control and harmony’ (Ezzy 2004: 26). It is spring. The birds have young, as do the wallabies. The wildflowers are in bloom. It is a time of new growth: of rebirth. However, in Tasmania, Australia, summer is the time of death, even more so than winter. In winter our evergreen trees do not lose their leaves. Even the highest peaks often have only an intermittent covering of snow. The earth does go quiet in the cold of winter, but winter is also a time of renewal. On the mountain slopes the wattles flower at midwinter, their bright yellow blossom often contrasting starkly with the snow. The winter rains fill the lakes and rivers. They soak the earth, seeping deep into the underground aquifers. Winter brings the water that guarantees life. The heat of summer brings death: death by fire, death by drought, death by the absence of water. Death by fire has a long history in Australia. Every summer we ready our houses for the fires that inevitably sweep through the bushland. In the past few years a deep drought has hit the populated areas of Australia. In Tasmania we had two dry winters in a row in 2003 and 2004. There was little snow on Hobart’s Mount Wellington. The first summer was bad, but the second was worse. I remember walking in the bushland, counting off the trees that were dying. Not just the small shrubs, with the vulnerable shallow roots, but also the big trees lost their leaves, and some died for lack of water. We do not know how to respond to death: to the macabre terror of an emptying vein, of a dry river bed, or a tree, naked of bark and leaves, starved of water. And we

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i am the river bleeding respond with a misguided optimism as a way of avoiding a more complex and descriptive admission of our very present and real pain and suffering. At the heart of Western culture is a metanarrative of progress, development, hope and optimism. As Richard Eckersley puts it: ‘A central tenet of modern Western culture is the belief in progress, the belief that life should get better – healthier, wealthier, happier, more satisfying and interesting’ (2004: 17). One lesson of death, and of water, is that this assumption is not necessarily true. As Eckersley goes on to point out, if this metanarrative of progress is not true: ‘then the most fundamental assumptions about our way of life – assumptions that have long been broadly agreed and taken for granted – must be reassessed’ (ibid.). It is possible to make this appear much more complex than it is. In my study of teenage Witches with Helen Berger, an Australian teenage Witch ‘Stella’ told us that her Wiccan practice had led her to find ‘innate beauty in just simple things’. She then explains this with reference to her experience of rain: Sometimes it’ll be pouring down rain and, you go, ‘Shit, rain.’ Then you sort of see that in a different way and how that’s helping the rebirth come along for the springtime I always thought that nature was important, but not to the extent that I do now. I just never really took notice of seasonal cycles. They were just there and, you know, Winter was cold; Summer was hot. Somehow they didn’t mean anything to me personally – that [seasonal change] just happened – but now they do. (Berger and Ezzy 2007: 188) Green (2002: 138) points out that in Pagan cosmology, echoing many indigenous cosmologies, death is not seen as ‘failure’ but as a part of life, symbolic of rebirth and transformation. In many ways the inconvenience of rain, as described by Stella, is also symbolic of this transformation, as are the destructive forces of floods and droughts. Reading Eckersley’s and Green’s observations together, I would argue that one of the critical reassessments that humans can develop out of an engagement with water is to understand that water has its own purposes, and that these may not necessarily coincide with the purposes of humans. Indeed, water, in the form of rain, or melting polar ice caps and rising sea levels, may be inconvenient, or even significantly destructive for humans. The reassessment is to understand that other people, including water people, have their own purposes that humans might not share, and that this is the way things are. Put another way, the progress narrative is largely an anthropocentric narrative. The destruction of ecosystems, the extinction of species, are not counted in the measuring of human progress. As Eckersley puts it: ‘Ecosystem stress is a product not so much of the level of human wellbeing as of the way it is pursued’ (2004: 40). To put this in the terms of Harvey’s new animism, humans have been grossly disrespectful in their engagement with other-than-human persons. The problem with this gross disrespect is that, despite the modernist faith in human ‘exemptionalism’ from the other-thanhuman world (Dunlap 2002), humans are deeply interwoven into this world, and other-than-human peoples are beginning to respond to human actions in ways that are not necessarily pleasant for humans.

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douglas ezzy In an earlier paper I argued that, for economists and politicians: ‘Nature is not something to be respected, as Other, that confronts us and remains radically not us. Rather, nature is something to be controlled, subdued and ultimately integrated into the human project. To use Levinas’s language, nature is not responded to as Other, but violently incorporated into the Same’ (Ezzy 2004: 29). Taking this point one step further, in my meetings with water people I have learnt that they are often not that interested in my projects, or that concerned that their actions might be destructive of human lives. The challenge, I think, is in learning to respond to such an insight. Humans tend to vacillate between an agentic narrative, in which our heroic deeds shape a malleable world to our purposes, or a victim narrative, in which we are the helpless victims of forces beyond our control (Ezzy 2000a). The more complex response is to understand ourselves as embedded in a network of relationships that at the same time facilitate and constrain the possibilities for action. This is precisely the point I would make about human interactions with water. Similarly, humans tend to vacillate between a heroic optimistic confidence in a long-term future, or a depressive despair at their imminent death (Ezzy 200b). The more complex response is to understand ourselves as living in the present, and enjoying the time that we have, but also with an eye to the possibilities that might present themselves in the medium to longer term. The problem of human finitude is largely ignored in the literature on the self. An understanding of death is removed from everyday life. In contrast, cancer, or an AIDS diagnosis, confronts a person with ‘the intense awareness of being mortal’ (Rinken 2000: x). Sebastien Rinken goes on to make a similar point to Nussbaum’s, arguing that Western responses to HIV are a test case of how we respond to contingency. Westerners, by and large, live as if death is not something they will have to confront. Westerners find it difficult to tell good stories of failure, of human finitude, that identify the limits of what it is to be human, and that sacralize death and suffering. This, I suggest, is one of the mysteries of the association of death with water. But there is beauty in the dying. In what is still here. To be. Here. Not what was, or might have been. That is one Pagan pleasure of the dark – and of water. This understanding is not easy to grasp, or express. Being present with our fears and suffering can also make possible a form of pleasure and joy in seeing things as they are, rather than running and hiding from them. Let me underline, this is not a sadistic pleasure in suffering. Rather, it derives from Nussbaum’s observation that suffering is an inevitable consequence of the pursuit of ethically admirable actions. In Kevin Costner’s (1990) film Dances with Wolves, an old Amerindian woman is left behind to die on the side of the trail as she is too slow to keep up with the rest of the tribe who must travel quickly to escape those who pursue them. I do not remember the exact details, except for a visual image of her sitting there singing herself to death, comfortable with a choice that is both horrible and beautiful at one and the same time. Humans are very noisy creatures. Rarely do we stop and listen to see what the world around us is saying. Water is integral to the terrestrial environment of humans. So is death, suffering and the destructive sides of our selves. Humans have hidden our

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i am the river bleeding eyes from the significance of both water and death, suffering and evil. Water is the giver of life, the blood of the land. Water is also cruel and bitter, with no remorse or pity to those who forget or refuse to offer her respect. To offer respect is disruptive. It suggests a different story that is at one and the same time terrifying and liberating. Stories of misguided optimism allow humans to avoid a respectful meeting with water people, who increasingly have destructive purposes when it comes to humans. Australian ecophilosopher Val Plumwood (1999) describes in detail her experience of ‘being prey’ for a crocodile. She was severely injured in the encounter, but escaped alive. This experience was significantly disruptive of her self-understanding; it changed the way she understood the relationship of humans to the food chain. She points out that humans have often understood ourselves as outside the food chain, exempt from the world, rather than an integral part of this world in which we may both eat, and be eaten. Further, such a conception of humans as potential prey undermines our view of humans as always in control of ourselves and the world around us. In the same way, water people are both nurturing, and destructive of humanity. I want to suggest a much broader re-evaluation of humans’ ethical relationships with the other-than-human world. Understanding that we are not always in control requires a concomitant acceptance that there may be other people, crocodiles, water, who may seek to ‘eat’ or ‘destroy’ humans and their creations. This destructiveness is not intentional evil, but a by-product of these other people pursuing their own ‘good’ goals. In particular, the recognition of the limited power of humans, and the acceptance of other people’s destructive (for humans) purposes, leads inexorably to a different understanding of death, our limitations and suffering. Death and suffering cannot always be avoided, and perhaps if we tried to avoid them less we might experience them in a much more healthy and respectful way than we do at present. According to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) (2001), most of south-eastern Australia, where most Australians live, will become much drier as a consequence of global warming. This will have profound consequences for the inhabitants of Australia. As the water people begin to move elsewhere, whole ecosystems will die. It is the actions of humans that have caused global warming, but the whole community pays. Species will become extinct, others will be greatly reduced, forests and lakes will disappear. Drought, desert and fire will turn a once green and blue landscape to brown. How do we respond to such destructive indifference on the part of both humans and water people? How do we tell good stories about these sorts of events? At present Western civilization has few narrative and cultural resources to respond to such broad destruction and concomitant decline in living standards. I think that the first step will be to avoid the misguided optimism that so deeply permeates Western culture and to acknowledge honestly the suffering and pain that we shall experience. We can see it as part of a sacred cycle of renewal, and look beyond an anthropocentric self-obsession with human wealth. It is not easy to be honestly ‘present’ with such pain, suffering and death. It is also liberating in a strangely beautiful way. I am the river bleeding.

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douglas ezzy Bibliography Aries, P. 1974. Western Attitudes toward Death, trans. P. Ranum. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Athens, L. 1994. ‘The Self as a Soliloquy’. Sociological Quarterly 35(3): 521–52. Berger, H. & D. Ezzy. 2007. Teenage Witches. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Burns, M. 1990. ‘J. R. R. Tolkien: The British and the Norse in Tension’. Pacific Coast Philology 25(1–2): 49–59. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). 2001. Climate Change Predictions for Australia. www.cmar.csiro.au/e-print/open/projections2001.pdf (accessed Jan. 2008). Davy, B. 2003. ‘Being Implicated in the World’. Trumpeter 19(3): 5–30. Dunlap, R. 2002. ‘Environmental Sociology: A Personal Perspective on Its First Quarter Century’. Organization Environment 15: 10–29. Eckersley, R. 2004. Well and Good: How We Feel and Why it Matters. Melbourne: Text Publishing. Ezzy, D. 2000a. ‘Fate and Agency in Job Loss Narratives’. Qualitative Sociology 23(1): 121–34. Ezzy, D. 2000b. ‘Illness Narratives: Time, Hope and HIV’. Social Science and Medicine 50: 605–17. Ezzy, D. 2004. ‘Geographical Ontology: Levinas, Sacred Landscapes and Cities’. Pomegranate 6(1): 19–33. Green, D. 2002. ‘Death, Nature and Uncertain Spaces: A Commentary from Paganism’. Omega 44(2): 127–49. Harvey, G. 1993. ‘Gods and Hedgehogs in the Greenwood’. In Mapping Invisible Worlds, ed. G. Flood, 89–93. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Harvey, G. 2005. Animism: Respecting the Living World. Adelaide: Wakefield Press. Hume, L. 1997. Witchcraft and Paganism in Australia. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Larrington, C. 1996. The Poetic Edda: A New Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levinas, E. 1969. Totality and Infinity, trans. A. Lingis. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. McIntosh, T. 2006. ‘Theorizing Evil’. The Australian Sociological Association Conference Proceedings, Perth, December 2006. Mortimer, P. 2005. ‘Tolkien and Modernism’. Tolkien Studies 2(1): 113–29. Nussbaum, M. 1986. The Fragility of Goodness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Plumwood, V. 1999. ‘Being Prey’. In The New Earth Reader, eds D. Rothenberg & M. Ulvaeus, 76–92. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Rigby, K. 2004. Topographies of the Sacred: The Poetics of Place in European Romanticism. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press. Rinken, S. 2000. The AIDS Crisis and the Modern Self: Biographical Self-Construction in the Awareness of Finitude. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Shaw, S. 2006. ‘Deep Blue Religion’. Paper presented at the Australian Association for Studies in Religion Annual Conference, Adelaide, July 2006. Starhawk, M. Nightmare & Reclaiming Collective. 1997. The Pagan Book of Living and Dying. San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins.

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8 Deep blue religion Sylvie Shaw

The ocean’s waters are iridescent. They call; I plunge in. Immediately I am enveloped in memory, in mystery, in wonder and in fear of what I might meet. This tantalizing feeling has stayed with me since early childhood. The water’s edge is the launching place where I step gingerly or rush headlong into the unknown and make it familiar. I dive through the bubbling surf, get lifted up as though by magic on the forming waves, then watch and wait. Get ready. Quick, it is coming. I swim furiously, catch the wave just before it breaks and slide down on the power of the water. Sometimes I am taken right into shore; at other times I am dumped unceremoniously, get churned up, down and around before reaching the surface and the next breath of air. Then I swim back and do it all over again. But while I am spinning on the tides, losing myself in an ocean of delight and blue liminality, my attention is diverted from the escalating damage to sea and coast. And its cause? The actions of humans. In part there is a lack of knowledge about the delicate intricacies of the marine ecosystem and a lack of awareness about the vitality of the ocean we take for granted, which keeps us, and the earth, alive. The ocean, like the rest of the planet, is in danger from global warming. Already the water is heating up, ice caps are melting, and animal, bird and marine species are under threat. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that around 80 per cent of commercial fish species are overexploited and grand, glorious fish such as the cod and blue fin tuna are facing extinction. As wild fish disappear they are replaced by aquaculture, which, in turn, is damaging fragile coastlines through fish farm development and devastation of coastal, especially the vital mangrove, reserves. At present over a third of global fish is farmed. Coral reefs are also in danger from global warming and scientists warn that World Heritage Areas such as Australia’s wondrous Great Barrier Reef have only twenty years left (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007). There is a sense of disbelief, even

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sylvie shaw denial, about these predictions. Australia, in the midst of its most severe drought, is only now beginning to wake up to the potential and devastating effects of climate change. These are the issues that a host of marine scientists, ocean activists, environmental educators and sea adventurers are working to change. In this chapter you will meet some of them: individuals dedicated to protecting the marine environment. These ‘sea-carers’ talk about what the ocean means to them and why they have devoted their lives to saving the sea and its creatures. Whether they are involved in scientific research, helping children explore the ocean’s ecosystems, implementing marine protected areas around Australia’s coast, or riding the shorebreaks, all share a deep love of the ocean and a desire, bordering on compulsion, to defend it. This passion was born in their childhood, going fishing or sailing with parents, donning a mask and snorkel for the first time and exploding with delight at the myriad species they saw, or by fossicking in rockpools, finding wonderment and a curiosity to know more. The sea was a fascinating and magical place, and still is. These are the themes at the heart of my research into the attitudes and motivations of sea-carers. I was astonished that there was only limited research on social and spiritual experiences on the marine environment, so I decided to redress the balance by interviewing a range of individuals whose lives are immersed in the sea. In part this chapter is a review of the research and analysis of the findings and, in part, it tries to unravel the reasons why the social and the spiritual have been almost absent from academic scholarship on the marine environment. It discusses the impetus for seacarers’ involvement, examines the depth of their watery connections on a physical, emotional and spiritual level, and questions the religious expression bound up in their attachment to the ocean.

The research study My research explores the role the sea plays in the lives of the sea-carers interviewed, and the role they play in protecting it.1 They draw strength from the sea; it sustains their commitment and tempers their sadness at the devastation. Some travel to Antarctica to research the impact of global warming on plankton; others go there to stop the murderous hunting of whales by the Japanese. They study the decline in sea meadows and organize underwater restoration picnics to replant the sea grass; they research the decline in kelp forests as well as in seal and fish populations, and while doing this, they often find time to play hide and seek with the seals and other sea creatures.

1. The study was funded by the Australian Maritime College, Launceston, Tasmania. Thanks to Professor Paul McShane.

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deep blue religion Most say the turning point for their concern came through the destruction they have witnessed.22 One Victorian anti-dredging activist told me that he used to love diving in an area that was ‘pristine reef, fish everywhere’. But after dredging the only thing visible was bare rock and the huge claw marks left from the dredge: ‘It was like driving a bulldozer through a national park; everything was flattened. It was sickening, soul destroying, life consuming. It confirmed I was on the right path though it’s an uphill battle. It was far worse than I expected’. This combination of shock and sadness about the ongoing damage to the sea contrasts sharply with the sense of wonder and joy sea-carers describe when being immersed in saltwater. Bob is a retired marine educator who thinks there is nothing better to do in his old age than fight for the ocean. He loves the feel of saltwater, visioning it as: a beautiful big soft mother. It buoys you up and I have this lovely feeling of being nurtured and made comfortable. I feel totally at home. You lie on your back and slip away and there’s a glorious feeling of freedom that gets to the spiritual side of experience. Bob finds spirituality and freedom in an intimate visceral connection with the essence of the feminine where he feels totally at home. The ocean is sacred place, nurturer, comforter, mother, pulsating with life and fertility. It is highly pleasurable; you can lose yourself in the moment and the bosom of the world.

Water(e)scapes Others comment that when they step into the water they feel a need to offer deep respect for the ocean, the lungs of the planet. They say they tread carefully and respectfully because the sea has offered them an invitation to visit; they are the interloper and their visit is always on the sea’s terms. There is an awareness of humility that emerges through their interactions, and while many feel very much at home in this salty world, not all do. It is an environment alien to humans and there is always a sense of risk, of being on the edge between life and possible death, and most have already had fearsome encounters with wild seas, sharks that have been a bit too curious and waves that have swallowed them up and, luckily for them, spat them out as well. All acknowledge the power of the ocean, its ferocity and ability to take life in an instant. They say they are consciously aware of the danger, but their awareness is tempered by their often juicy experiences. Another marine educator who calls herself Driftglass (smoothed by the buffeting tides) explains:

2. This extract and others in this chapter are taken from the interviews I conducted with sea-carers as part of the research study.

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sylvie shaw I guess it’s the combination of these things, and the ocean’s power, because this is where in all honesty, I feel closest to God. I feel that I am part of God, and I use that word because it’s a way that somehow everything makes sense. It’s that force out there that allows me to realise I’m alive and that the world is beautiful. In fact I’m going to cry right now just thinking about it. These accounts suggest a commonality in the sea-carers’ relationship to the sea, a spirituality that effervesces through their experiences and heightens their senses. But not all participants share this spiritual feeling. Many of the scientists I interviewed claim they are neither religious nor spiritual. Underwater photographer and activist Jon makes the point strongly: ‘I’m not at all religious and if I had more faith I’d be an atheist’. This is a familiar perspective among several marine scientists and seems to reflect a disenchantment with the dogma, hierarchy and doctrines associated with mainstream religion. Organized religion is thought to be tied up with authority and institutionalization and there is a widely held belief that the separation of humanity from nature is in part due to Judeo-Christian religious teaching (White 1967). But while they shy away from religion, their passionate accounts of experiences in the ocean indicate that there is an emotional, an ethical and I would argue even a spiritual quality bound up in their relationship with ocean and coast. This vitality of commitment, moral integrity and embodied engagement constitute what I term ‘deep blue religion’.

The spirit of blue Deep blue religion surfaces in the tide of individualized spiritualities that have emerged in late modernity and is part of a growing number of implicit, loosely organized and lightly acknowledged spiritual movements within the realm of nature religion (Roof 2001; Taylor 2004; Harvey 2006). It is also flourishing within institutionalized religions as they incorporate ecological dimensions to worship and develop policies and programmes on sustainability of the environment (Bouma 2006; Kearns 2004). It reflects the interest in environmental issues, particularly in New South Wales where 87 per cent of people surveyed say they are concerned about the environment (women more so than men), while 93 per cent claim the environment is important to their lives, after family and friends (Department of Environment and Conservation 2007). By far the largest area of concern is ‘water supply, conservation, management and drought’. Deep blue religion honours the intimate relationship between human and ocean symbolized by the saltwater that flows through both bodies. It is a spiritual belief and practice that links a deep conviction to save the oceans with an embodied, at times ecstatic, experience through surfing, sailing, kayaking, diving, swimming, fishing or simply walking along the shoreline, breathing in the rich ozone-laden air, and falling into the rhythm of the waves. The eminent environmental visionary Rachel Carson called this allurement a ‘sea love’ (1998; cited in Victorin-Vangerud 2003: 12). This feeling is underpinned though surveys on attitudes towards the sea conducted in

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deep blue religion developing and developed nations that indicate that people have ‘strong spiritual connections’ to the sea and ‘care about its condition’ even if they do not live nearby or rely on it for their wellbeing (Agardy 2003: 3). Connecting with the sea is personally transforming. It fills people with energy; they say it clears out the cobwebs, recharges their batteries and helps them cope with the pain of loss, both personal and environmental (Shaw 2005). It is ‘deep’ as opposed to ‘shallow’, following the vision of deep ecology pioneers Bill Devall (1987). Arne Naess (1989) and George Sessions (1995), who suggest that asking deeper questions will inevitably lead us to make a radical shift in the way we see the world, the way we relate to nature and the way we live. Research on environmental behaviour seems to confirm this perception. There is a strong correlation between people’s pro-environment behaviour and significant experiences in nature and, to a lesser extent, experiences of social and environmental activism (Finger 1994; Cohen 2007). The more we connect and attune ourselves to the subtle nuances of the natural blue and green world, the more we begin to care about it. When the Christian Research Association in Australia asked people where they find a sense of peace and wellbeing, 71 per cent said by the sea (Bentley and Hughes 1998; Victorin-Vangerud 2001). This says to me that connecting with blue is part of what it means to be Australian; it suggests the possibility of creating more of an intimacy with the saltwater environment and more of an understanding of its plight (see also Love 2000). This interplay between experiences in nature and caring for nature lies at the heart of blue religious practice. In the process of engagement meaning is created in the lives of sea-carers, manifest in a profound devotion to the other: the spirit of the ocean and the species which dwell there. It is the end of autumn, a cold blustery day, rain pours down and I huddle deeper into my raincoat, pulling it tight over my ears. The wind is howling. The sea is frothy, grey like the sky. But I am transfixed. Just offshore, above a rocky reef, hundreds of seabirds have gathered; they crowd both sea and sky. Terns, cormorants, gannets, gulls and more are in a feeding frenzy, gorging themselves on a huge shoal of fish. In ones, twos and groups, they dive, dive, dive and dive again, plummeting sharply through the surface as if there is no time to waste. I dive along with them, letting out a loud wooosh, puutsch, ssplaatt each time they drop straight down daggering for prey. I cannot help shouting; I shout with excitement, joy and the thrill of the hunt. For the next ten days the birds engage in their great sea feast, then suddenly they are gone. I have lived along this shoreline for most of my life but this is the first time I have been witness to such an irrepressible sight. It reminds me that the sea is a wild place, and even here, in the middle of the fast-paced inner city with its noisy peak-hour traffic just a few metres away and the brown polluting haze spreading across the horizon, the wild is effervescent. It erupts when you least expect it. Deep blue religion embraces the wild, the danger and the delight in engaging with an ocean wilderness in all its rich diversity. But there is limited research on the sea as a place to experience wilderness, defined pointedly by the marine biologist and underwater photographer Jon who has felt its bite as ‘Any place where you go where there’s an animal who can eat you’.

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Life and death in the wild Research on experiences in wild nature engenders a sense of mystery about the world, a profound feeling of transcendence within and without and a sense of connectedness with the natural world. Some individuals find a belief in a power greater than oneself; for others, it is an appreciation of the beauty of nature. These experiences spark feelings of hope, joy, inner peace and empowerment; they promote physical and emotional wellbeing and bring about significant changes in people’s values, attitudes and behaviour (Kaplan and Talbot 1983; Kaplan and Kaplan 1989; Fox 1999; Frederickson and Anderson 1999). But while the wild has the power to transform and delight, it also has the power to destroy. The evocative nature writer Richard Nelson warns that ‘We may be elevated by the beauty of nature, cling to it, crave to protect it, but we cleave to the coldness of stone, the storm that carries us away without knowing, the waters that kill without reason’ (1993: 218). It is just after the storm. Dead seabirds have been washed up on the shore; they lie stretched out amid the detritus of plastic bottles, sweet wrappers, beer cans and cavernous plastic bags. Today it is a cormorant, a sooty sheerwater, a glossy-feathered fairy penguin. As the days pass, more and more dead birds float among the tides. I carry them up to the bushland behind the beach, say a quick prayer and cover them with sand. I read up on why they might have died, write to the government to ask what they know and receive the reply that they have no idea what the problem is. I wonder if the birds are starving; if the fish on which they need to survive have disappeared or if they have swallowed too much pollution. I treat these days as a reminder of the great losses globally (and locally) in the ocean environment. Dead zones are expanding throughout the ocean. Excess nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural run-off, along with urban waste and fertilizer excess from households, parks and golf links, flow along polluted rivers and flush into the sensitive liquid environment. They starve the sea of oxygen (hypoxia) and smother it with algal blooms. These effects are reversible with concerted community effort (Carless 2003), but not all environmental damage can be overturned.

A tale of loss and success During the 1970s and 1980s the retired marine educator Bob used to take his high school students to the local beach to snorkel and used these classes as a way of explaining how ecosystems work. But he discovered that when beachcombers and poachers began taking too many shellfish from the area, he could no longer use the reef to teach the students about interconnection and ecological resilience as, one by one, the shellfish species began to disappear. He then started lobbying to save the area, to get a portion of the reef set aside for marine creatures. It took over fifteen years for the government to proclaim a tiny marine sanctuary over the reef. The main opponents were recreational fishers, who did not want what 142

deep blue religion they saw as their fishing grounds closed off in a no-take zone. In the end a compromise was reached and the size of the proposed protected area was reduced. Not long after talking with Bob I walked past this area. It was a beautiful spring day and many people were out fishing. About twenty boats were encircling the tiny marine sanctuary. The fishers knew that marine protected areas are excellent breeding grounds for fish species but the fish were not aware that they should not swim out beyond the boundary of the marine sanctuary. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are important for maintaining the integrity of the ocean’s ecosystems and for providing havens for fish and other marine creatures (Agardy 1997). Studies on MPAs have shown higher fish densities over a wide range of habitats (Wing 2001), but the global area set aside for closed-to-fishing or no-take reserves continues to be small. The World Parks Congress in 2003 recommended that by 2012 no-take MPAs should cover 20–30 per cent of ocean habitat, yet in 2006, only 1.5 per cent of the world’s oceans had been set aside for marine reserves and only 0.18 per cent were designated no-take areas. MPAs are urgently needed to stem the tide of marine biodiversity loss but they are facing an uphill battle against tardy governments, illegal fishing, inadequate enforcement and limited funding. The benefits of marine parks stir the hearts of sea-carers when they see that something, however small, can be done. They say: ‘That’s what conservation is all about – to see nature as the underdog and do something to protect it’. Most feel compelled to effect change; they say they are ‘driven’ with a great sense of urgency. A young seal researcher declares: ‘There’s just no time to wait. I can’t just do nothing.’ Likewise, a marine park ecologist, named after the fish species Sea Trumpeter declares: ‘With marine conservation it’s a matter of trumpeting the cause over and over again. The broader community know almost nothing about the ocean, and as we all know, people don’t care about things they know nothing about.’ Concerns about the community’s lack of knowledge are linked to getting the message out, so as well as conducting scientific research, sea-carers visit schools to raise awareness about what is happening to the ocean, produce community radio programmes, participate in government stakeholder committees, and are active members of marine and coastal conservation organizations. Their aim is to engender an ethic of care for the ocean and its diverse bounty, a sea ethic that recognizes the ocean’s importance to the continued existence of life on the planet (Bratton 2004 and this volume, Ch. 9; Safina 2002–3). Likewise the ecohistorian Carolyn Merchant (1997), in examining an ethics for fisheries, calls for a sustainable and healthy partnership between human, ocean species and ecosystem processes.

Human–ocean relationship I want to propose another way of contemplating this partnership between human and marine environment, and here I am borrowing from Bourdieu’s notion of social capital, as an ‘ecosocial’ and ‘ecospiritual’ capital. Social capital refers to the strength

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sylvie shaw of community ties, social cohesion and levels of interpersonal trust and cooperation and is a prime feature of resource management discourse and practice. Based on this definition, an ecosocial capital refers to the strength of individual and collective ties to local places, the quality and strength of these linkages and their influence on both the health and wellbeing of the community. The concept of social capital has been criticized because of its emphasis on economic resources but I would like to reclaim the notion of capital in an ecosocial-ecospiritual capital sense, one that reflects the notion of an embodied and respectful partnership between humans and nature, one that embraces the beauty, richness and wealth of the natural world (natural capital) and our personally enriching connections with it. So could this concept of ecosocial-ecospiritual capital be measured? There is now a plethora of research about the benefits of green spaces, trees, parks and wilderness areas in terms of human physical, psychological and spiritual health and wellbeing (Sullivan et al. 2004; Wolf 2004; Maller et al. 2005; Ogunseitan 2005). Other studies have focused on the association between quality of life and the quality of community interactions (Cummins et al. 2005). Research into the quality of life of the broader Australian community found that the area with the highest quality of life, and the highest degree of satisfaction with life, is the magnificent coastal region and whalewatching mecca of Wide Bay in central Queensland. Places with high quality of life tend to be rural, have low population density, more people over 55, more women, more married people and less income inequality. In contrast, the sites with the lowest quality of life are inner city Perth and Sydney. The researchers state that quality of life is related to social capital, to the strength of the social bonds and networks within the community. But when local residents of Wide Bay were interviewed by the Australian newspaper, they said they were delighted with their lifestyle: they lived in the local caravan park and could walk and fish whenever they wanted. They loved the place where they lived and the social contacts they had. But surprisingly the study did not consider their bonding with place as relevant; it only focused on the social as an element in sustaining a high quality of life. There was no consideration about the association with the ocean and coastal environment as affecting quality of life, nor with any sense of the spiritual or religious associated with this activity. It is a similar story with other social research about the marine environment.

Looking seaward: to limited studies and new endeavours There have been many research studies on the motivations and value orientations of recreational fishers (Fedler and Ditton 1994; Wilde et al. 1998), and even the spirituality of fly-fishing (Louv 2000; Snyder 2007), but in terms of commercial fishers’ attitudes about, or experiences in, the marine environment, there is still only a handful of studies (Manoogian-O’Dell et al. 2002; Minnegal et al. 2003). Emphasis in social research on commercial fishing has concentrated on fisheries management issues, particularly the nexus between fisheries managers and fishers (Baelde 2001; Harms

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deep blue religion and Sylvia 2001; Sharp and Lach 2003), but in the process has overlooked the subjective qualities and emotional and spiritual ties fishers have with the ocean wilderness. Almost twenty years ago, when the marine researchers John Gatewood and Bonnie McCay (1988) asked commercial fishers from various fisheries what they liked about their jobs, most said it was being in the outdoors, the wilderness and open air, and the sense of freedom and autonomy they experienced. But these attributes are rarely explored in fisheries research, so in many cases the identity of fishers, their relationship to the sea and the satisfactions gained from working are overlooked by fisheries management (Coward et al. 2000; Bratton and Hinz 2002; Pollnac and Poggie 2006). Perhaps the divergence between fishers and managers could be lessened if both realize what they have in common: a desire to protect the marine environment, a deep respect for the ocean and, in Australia at least, an urgency to find more sustainable ways to fish. Many books have been written about the role of the ocean in people’s lives, from first-hand accounts of early explorers to anthropological descriptions of indigenous connections to sea country, adventure travel journals of lone sailors, and autobiographies of surfers, divers and sea kayakers. But studies about the significance of marine places in the lives of these people are hard to find. Why? Is it because there is still a legacy of the sea as a place of fear, tempest, darkness, the unknown, shipwrecks and shattered lives? Perhaps for this reason, as Nonie Sharp tells us in her exquisite book Saltwater People (2002), many indigenous people in northern Australia do not talk about the wind, waves or sea, or show off about their fish catch for fear of offending the sea: ‘Never growl sea or anything’, they say (ibid.: 81). I detected a similar feeling among the sea-carers. They talk about their sea experiences with reverence and refer to ‘a sense of awe and appreciation of the ocean, its beauty, its vastness and its tremendous and fearsome power’. It sounds spiritual, but is it? When I asked the interviewees why they are prepared to put their lives on the line for whales, or make a stand against illegal fishing practices, most of them replied with a moving story like this one from the marine scientist, activist and underwater photographer Jon, when he came face to face with a huge whale while out diving. When you are that close to a whale looking into its eye and you know that the whale is looking at you there is a really amazing contact, and the size and power of the whale, and the sound of the exhalation of its breath, like someone blowing a trumpet, is just incredible. And sometimes you get an epiphany where, you know you’re a part of nature and the world. To have these beautiful animals come up and to interact and when you also have the ocean to yourself, it’s a real wilderness experience. When interviewees such as Jon describe their connections with the sea’s vastness, their poignant encounters with whales, going surfing with iguanas or diving with seals, they tend to use spiritually charged expressions. They talk about ‘awe’, ‘reverence’, ‘mystery’, ‘beauty’ and ‘love’, while at the same time most will stress that theirs is an emotional not a spiritual experience. But while claiming this view, whether they follow a religious tradition or not, they tend to revert to culturally mediated language

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sylvie shaw from religious traditions while still grasping for words to express the precious feeling of being connected with the ineffable blue. Could this connection be seen in its broadest sense to be spiritual? I would argue that it could.

Liquid spirit I define spirituality as a process of creating relationship with what we hold to be sacred, with what is desired to be treasured, protected, held safe; in this case the sea. So my contention is that these encounters, ‘incredible’ experiences and ‘epiphanies’ can be regarded as an expression of deep blue religion or ecospiritual capital. Yet this term lacks the poetry embedded in a lyrical saltwater attunement apparent in the partnership between two divers, two mammals, whale and human. However, there might be another issue at play. The interviewees may use religion-inspired expressions to explain how they feel partly because language is unable adequately to explain the sense of mystery and passion bound up in their relationship with the natural world. However realized, the effect of such ‘peak’ (Maslow 1964) or ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) experiences, often after a period of strenuous physical activity, give rise to flashes of illumination, a feeling of unity, a sense of joy, bliss and peace, a transcendence of time and space, and a change in attitude and behaviour. In a spiritual sense, such reactions can be seen as both mystical and numinous. Habel (1993) explains that in encounters with the numinous there is a powerful sense of awe created in relationship with the other, the sacred; while encounters of the mystical kind bring about feelings of oneness with the cosmos where the perception of otherness disappears. However, I wonder whether these two categories can be seen to intermingle in the stories of sea-carers, where connecting with the blue other leads to self-transformation, insight and self-transcendence. Despite the commonality of these experiences, there is a difference in attitudes about religious and spiritual practice. The sea-carers I interviewed can be divided into three main groups: those who follow a mainstream religion; those who acknowledge a spiritual practice; and those who express no religion or spirituality. These perspectives are played out in the way they conduct their scientific research. For instance, one of the Christian-inspired marine biologists claims her research on marine pests is not part of her religious practice, while another who studies echinoderms sees only a tenuous link between his religious perspective and his scientific research. In fact, he comments that he cannot see how enchantment might, in any way, inform the discipline, but then adds wryly, ‘But it might inform the scientist’. So when I’m in the sea looking at marine animals, I really have a sense that I’m not different to them. I’m gazing at them, and they’re gazing at me in a metaphorical sense, and we are together, we are one, and that’s not fanciful. [This feeling] led me to the conviction that sea urchins, sea cucumbers and sea stars are not different to me.

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deep blue religion In this tale of scientific research there is a sense of enchantment, even identification with the species in a relational sense but this is regarded as unrelated to the practice of empirical science. And yet, as he relates, the division between subject and object is blurred; there is an empathy, a reciprocity, a partnership between the two reminiscent of the mystical. Perhaps for some scientists, even those who are spiritually inclined, the tradition of Western scientific thought is so pervasive that they make a distinction between their religious and spiritual beliefs and their scientific research as if there are two schools of thought involved: the school of empirical science and critical reason, and the school of religion and spirituality. But this dichotomy seems too simplistic. Scientists put their faith in the scientific method, but it is a method, a pre-ordained process, a scientific coda. In contrast, their worldview might be other than the rational-empirical and reasoned process. In fact, they might, as some of the interviewees do, combine reason with reverence. In summary, the religious and spiritual beliefs of sea-carers can be divided into three main categories: mainstream religion followers, non-believers and (eco)spiritual practitioners. The first and second group, the non-believers and those following a mainstream religion, share a common approach despite being at different ends of the religion spectrum; they both agree that the scientific method has little to do with enchantment or sacredness. On the other hand, the feelings expressed by the spiritually inclined interviewees both inform their worldview and the choice of scientific research they pursue. They want to make a difference; they want to help reduce the level of environmental devastation, and they see no distinction between their scientific research, their connection with the sea and sea creatures, their conservation ethic, and their spiritual beliefs and practices. If religion is about making meaning and building relationship with the other, then it can be argued that there is an underlying religious meaning involved in sea connections for all the interviewees, not only the ones who declare a salty spirituality. But many interviewees are adamant: theirs is an emotional not a spiritual feeling. This brings into question the ethics of the researcher. In fact, such a suggestion might be seen as unethical and destroying the trust that the researcher has built up with the interviewees. And yet I would argue that there is a frisson of spirit, a shimmer of something profound in their sea encounters that evokes awe and mystery, magic and passion, and underlies their fight to save these powerful places. In the process they find unexpected moments of bliss.

Such intimate moments The marine park specialist and kelp researcher Seal Diver told me about the day she was diving in the kelp forest and a seal began courting her: ‘This seal just couldn’t get enough of me, rubbing himself up against me and I was thinking, “Oh wow, this is

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sylvie shaw fantastic”. My whole life I’ve had these experiences. I’ve been very blessed with some quite close and intimate moments.’ For others, this intimacy is celebrated in the feeling of the sea itself while immersed in its salty flow. The tall ships sailor Zephyr recalls: I’d go walking and just strip off and just walk for miles naked and go into the ocean and roll around in the sea. For me this was embracing femininity, in the ocean that’s feminine too. Just letting yourself go and having no identity at all. You’re just a body in this bigger body and that’s just great. Being in the fluid realm, water flowing through you, washing over you, enveloping you, this embodied connection with the sea and sexuality is a strong impulse for the participants. They relish the sensuousness of the water and, as the boundaries between human and water drop away, they become one with the ocean: To me the ocean is life. The water is me and I am the water. And water plays with light so delightfully that I am constantly entranced. It is so beautiful; it has mystery, it moves, it catches life, and feels amazing on your skin. Their senses are heightened: the feel of the water, the smell of the spray, the sound of the waves, the taste of salt, even the touch of sea lettuce. When the marine educator Bob used to take his students diving at the local reef he would hold up a piece of sea lettuce and say: “Come and feel this. This is the most sensuous, smooooth feeling in the entire world of nature.” And I’d show them if you rub two bits of sea lettuce together, it is slipperier and smoother and more sensuous than the inside lining of your mouth. In the past I have described these sensuous environmental encounters as ‘ecoerotic’, reflecting the sensual, sometimes sexual, attraction to rocks, soil, trees and other elements and places in the natural world (Shaw 2003). But when Seal Diver told me about being courted by the seal, I wondered if that too could be seen as a kind of ‘blue ecoeroticism’. The seal is at home in the sea and has approached the diver with an invitation to play. If humans are an integral part of the ecosystem, a part of nature as well as being apart from it, I wonder if there is any real difference between feeling a sensual connection with rocks and trees, or with a sea mammal such as a seal, dolphin or dugong. It is an edgy thought but there is some evidence that sea mammals are not averse to approaching humans in what seems to be a playful or threatening manner. There are several documented accounts of seals and dolphins ‘attacking’ humans. In Weymouth in southern England swimmers were warned to be wary of George, the amorous bottlenose dolphin, who tried to mate with divers, while in Hawaii, the notorious monk seal known as Humpy has to be removed from his territory when he becomes too frisky with surfers, divers and swimmers. There is a serious issue of human hubris

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deep blue religion and power involved in this subject and I raise it as a question to be contemplated when talking about a sea ethic and ethical human–ocean relations. In contrast, endangered animal researcher Charles Bergman writes tenderly of his wild and intimate encounter with a curious lumbering manatee whose ‘trust and openness were irresistible, endearing’ (1992: 278). The approach was unexpected and playful. He tells how they swam together ‘in a slow motion process of discovery’ (ibid.: 280), explaining the manatee’s actions as an apparent desire for dialogue and contact from animal to human. It was a moment of critical transformation for Bergman, an awakening of the need for reciprocity, conversation and dialogue in the way we relate to animals. The experience evoked empathy and a realization, as he puts it, ‘that there is something lacking in our ability to account for moments like these’ (ibid.: 279). Perhaps one explanation can be found in the quest for the spiritual, highlighting such tender moments as deep blue luminosity, a lived and living religion.

Questioning the spiritual While various theorists have defined useful expressions for the kind of religious and spiritual feelings I have termed deep blue religion – ‘invisible religion’ (Luckman 1967), ‘secular spirituality’ (Daly 1996), ‘lived religion’ (Hall 1997; Orsi, 2003) and ‘implicit religion’ (Bailey 1998) – I find it difficult to call this deep and abiding connection with the blue ‘other’ a religious practice for those who profess no religious belief. But Robert Orsi sets me straight: A particular practice in fact may be caught in the tension between conscious and unconscious motivation and desire, or between now and then, here and there, hopes and memories. Religion is always religion-in-action, religion-inrelationships between people, between the ways the world is and the way people imagine or want it to be. (2003: 172) Orsi maintains that lived religion is fixed in the practice of everyday life, in the hopes and memories of the interviewees, in their dreams for a sustainable and healthy future for the sea and coasts. This is the way they imagine and want it to be. So can a lack of a spiritual connection among some of the sea-caring marine scientists be explained simply as a desire for positivism, rationality, objectivity, in contrast to the more subjective and experiential practice of spirituality? Perhaps this also is a reminder of the nature of Cartesian dualism because, just as I search to find a spiritual connection among the waves, I question whether this can be seen as a reifying of spirituality, that is, a further construction of the split between matter and spirit. I have the same sense of duality when I try to single out the concept of blue religion from the largely green nature religion, but I have done so to raise the issue

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sylvie shaw of ecological devastation to the ocean and coastal environments and highlight the idea of ocean as wilderness. I think one reason why there may be a neglect of the issues around the sea and spirituality for non-indigenous people is that the sea is not commonly regarded, in contrast to land-based wilderness and deserts, as a place of spiritual insight and transformation. Perhaps the difference here is that the ocean is seen as a place of fear and possible mortality more than a place for a religious experience, although soul surfers and seafarers might disagree (See Capp 2005; Hutch 2005; Francis, this volume, Ch. 5; Taylor, this volume, Ch. 12). In this regard, and in many cultures globally, before ships leave the shore a safeguarding ritual is conducted to protect sailors and fishers, while yachters tie talismans to their boat as a way of placating the sea gods (Arms 2000). Certainly some interviewees have an acknowledged religion or spirituality that flows over into their relationship with the ocean, and reaffirms their activist stance. The marine scientist Seal Diver states that her activism is grounded in her Catholic upbringing, where she finds a moral and ethical requirement to be involved. There’s a very strong ethic of justice, altruism, and of courage too – being able to stand up and stick to your principles. I think that all those qualities which are important in having a faith-based religion are also important in maintaining an ethical line … At these times we need courage and spirituality should be feeding our decisions too. I mean the idea that science is some objective process is laughable really. Sea-carers’ levels of commitment are kept afloat by their sea connections. I have described the character of commitment and connection elsewhere as an ‘active love’ (Shaw 2005), where the quality and strength of nature encounters relates to the impulse to care for the planet. Howard Clinebell (1996) refers to ‘conscious activism’, while John Davis (1998) prefers ‘spiritual activism’. According to Davis, being on a spiritual path, being concerned about the environment and seeking expression of that in nature are all connected with deciding to work in the service of the earth: ‘A spiritual path that is sensitive to the earth recognizes that direct contact with nature, wherever it is encountered … expands and develops one’s ultimate concerns and moves one toward transcendence. Environmental problems become an arena for selfless service’ (1998: 92). Sea-carers, regardless of their spiritual engagement or lack of it, might share Davis’s contention about the interplay between selfless service, moral integrity and selftranscendence. The turning point for these feelings came for most of them in their childhood: excited by going fishing or snorkelling, enthused by investigating life in a rock pool or a droplet of water under a microscope and finding the microcosm of the ocean in the intricate patterns of plankton, reading undersea adventures; or watching the pioneering television programmes Adventure (with Hans and Lotte Hass) and The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. These experiences changed them.

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Significant childhood experiences My earlier research shows that environmental activism, and the decision to work with nature, are closely related to childhood experiences in the natural world (Shaw 2002). Particularly important is the frequency and quality of the nature encounters, which is revealed in the activists’ choice of work, altruistic lifestyle, love of wild places and deep commitment to protecting what some see as ‘their mother, the ocean’. Caring for environments, blue and green, evolved out of ‘feelings of contentment’ as they explored these luscious terrains, often on their own, and relished in the adventures they had and risks they took. The interviewees told me how they were encouraged by parents or other adult role models to go swimming, surfing or fishing, even spear-fishing, for as long as they wanted, without any adult supervision. They said their environmental awareness grew along with their curiosity about the mystery of the sea, their sense of independence and freedom exploring it. Many feel this is what cemented their desire to protect the marine environment. But for some, environmental activism also grew out of ‘feelings of discontentment and despair’, either because they saw nature being abused or because they were abused themselves and sought solace and healing in nature. In my earlier research on ‘spiritual activists’, I found that people who saw nature, often their favourite place in nature, being destroyed were more likely to become frontline activists as if their participation to stop the destruction somehow made up for the trauma and deep sadness they felt as children. This is similar to what I have found among sea-carers who make the link between their childhood trauma and their later activism. This vignette from the Coastcare activist tells its own story: One day we went with the bike to see the creek near the beach and they were ripping it up to put in a concrete drain and that shocked me. How could adults do something like this? I couldn’t believe it. Why would they want to do this? Surprisingly, discontentment also came about through fishing. While many marine scientists were taken fishing from a very young age and loved it, some of those who have taken part in frontline activism, for example with Sea Shepherd or Greenpeace, were taken fishing and hated the whole experience. They were mainly in the middle years of their childhoods, aged between five to nine, and were horrified at the killing and the sight of still breathing fish left lying on the bottom of the boat, then thrown overboard on the way home. ‘How could you?’, they asked their parents, incensed at the thoughtlessness. It is possible to see their later activism as an attempt to resolve the trauma they witnessed as children. This is akin to the ‘survivor mission’, where people who have been physically and sexually abused help other survivors cope with their trauma; only in this case, it is trauma done to nature. Their survivor mission becomes the protection of nature. In her book Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman outlines how ‘a significant minority’ of survivors recognize ‘a political and religious dimension’ to their trauma

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sylvie shaw and thus transform the meaning of their trauma into social action. She writes that social action ‘offers the survivor a source of power that draws upon her own initiative, energy, and resourcefulness … [and] offers her an alliance with others based on cooperation and shared purpose’ ([1992] 1997: 207). Action can take different forms, from political campaigning to raising public awareness, and this seems to reflect the experiences of the sea-carers. Getting involved in campaigns now might help them make amends for their inability to act as children. Although their activism, often at the frontline, may lead them to relive flashbacks of their earlier trauma seeing nature destroyed, the shared campaigning may help them overcome their childhood feelings of powerlessness. But something else stood out in the stories they told. Many of them have had traumatic experiences in the ocean: falling overboard, getting hypothermia, being dumped by waves and almost drowning, running out of air under water, being chased by sharks. Here the trauma was not caused by someone close to them but often by the environment they cherish. For one or two of them their childhood life and death experiences meant that for most of their lives they were far too afraid to go near the water. One of the anti-whaling activists known as Mermaid, and now a master diver, recalls such a time: I was absolutely terrified of the water. I almost drowned when I was three and I hated swimming. You would never get me to the beach. I’d never ventured into the water, I hated the water, I hated the water on my face, I hated the sensation, everything, that is until I went snorkelling in Bali about three years ago. I spent over an hour on the edge of the boat freaking out and hyperventilating until finally someone pushed me in. Immediately I felt so at home in the water. I snorkelled around and saw all the beautiful fish and the corals and I thought, I really love this. Then I realized, well, I have to overcome the fear, and the only way to do it is to get in there more often, so I learned to dive. And that’s what changed me. Mermaid’s experience of near drowning was highly distressing and seriously affected her relationship with water. She hated it. But all that changed when she plucked up enough courage to open her eyes under water. She left her job, moved to a divefriendly city, joined the anti-whaling campaign and ventured to the Antarctic to try to stop the horrific annual whale hunt. Her life now revolves around the sea; she calls it her passion.

‘It gets in your blood’ Other sea-carers talk of the ocean as an obsession, an addiction, a sickness. The tall ships sailor Zephyr cannot get enough of this elemental passion: It gets in your blood, and it’s really hard to get away from it. The more time I spend near and in the water, the more addicted I become. This addiction brings

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deep blue religion with it a sense of love and compassion for the ocean that will remain inside me till my parting day. But, she says, this feeling is tinged with ‘the ever present adrenalin rush’ associated with risk and fear, coupled with deep feelings of sadness and grief: ‘of watching something change and not being able to stop it’. When I put the question about ecological damage to a young marine biologist who researches seals among the Bass Strait islands, tears welled up in her eyes and she spoke about her fears for the seals’ future. She told me about the fishers who make no bones about shooting seals, regarding them as competition: the fish are stealing their livelihood, they say. She spoke about the heartbreak she feels when she comes across a dead seal with a bullet hole through its head and wonders why they do not respect the protected status of what she regards as the most beautiful and playful creature she knows. This emotional response was common when marine researchers and divers spoke about the destruction they have witnessed. Several were old enough to have seen a vast decline in marine species in their lifetime, and they talked about this with deep feelings of sadness mixed with moral outrage. They say they are ‘driven’ to change things, and relate this compulsion to the call of the saltwater in their own bodies: their blood, the amniotic fluid in their womb, their sweat, and their tears. Here their salty bodies merge in the briny translucence, which tempers to some extent at least their knowledge about the destruction of the ocean and their deep desire to bring about environmental and social change. But there is paradox. Most Australians live hugging the coastline; there is a strong beach culture and we flock to the coast in summer. The beach is a childhood wonderland; it is also the place most Australians have their first sexual experience. This love affair continues with the sea change of older Australians retiring to the coast in search of a good quality of life. Being near waterscapes is so normal, so much part of the Australian way of life, that we may not see these marine connections as in any way special or sacred. Perhaps it is related to the ocean’s salty water not being able to sustain us physically, or with the perception of the ocean as a resource for fish, a beautiful view or surfers’ paradise, rather than being valued in its own right. This latter is the stance taken by sea-carers; it is an ethical view that overrides the utilitarian view of the ocean as resource and recognizes the intrinsic rights of the marine ecosystem to flourish in all its complexity, biodiversity and wildness. What is apparent from the stories of sea-carers is that immersing in the blue world constantly challenges boundaries, whether ethical, physical, spiritual or political. Self merges with sea, salt with salt, passion with commitment, sadness with love. Seacarers find insight amid the waves, in dialogue with sea slugs and whales, in conversations with kelp and sea stars, and in playful encounters with seals and dugong. They build relationships with the wild and as a result, uncover (or recover) their own wild or ‘amphibian self ’, a relational (eco)self that blurs the distinction between human and marine entities and ecosystems and leads to empathy, reciprocity and an affinity with the ocean, the mother, the sacred (see also Kalof 2003).

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sylvie shaw The sea-carers I interviewed research the complexities of the marine environment, implement marine parks, encourage young children to love the sea, or venture into the southern ocean to study the impact of global warming or to fight the horrendous hunting of magnificent whales. They join with others to change opinions, lobby for change and safeguard the precious ocean environment; this is heart of what sustains them. The marine biologist Seal Diver speaks for all the sea-carers when she says: I mean there are a lot of bastards out there you know that, but at the same time there are a lot of good people … very good people, and there’s a huge generation of people who have yet to experience the oceans … that’s what I’m fighting for.

Bibliography Agardy, T. 1997. Marine Protected Areas and Ocean Conservation. Washington, DC: Academic Press. Agardy, T. 2003. ‘Coastal Ecosystems, Industrialization, and Impacts on Human Well-Being’. Adapted from Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Ecosystems and Human Health – A Framework for Assessment. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute. Arms, M. 2000. Cathedral of the World: Sailing Notes for a Blue Planet. New York: Random House. Baelde, P. 2001. ‘Using Fishers’ Knowledge Goes Beyond Filling Gaps in Scientific Knowledge, Analysis of Australian Experience’. Paper presented to the Putting Fishers Knowledge to Work conference, UBC, Vancouver, 2000. www.fisheries.ubc.ca/publications/reports/11-1/11_Baelde.pdf (accessed Jan. 2008). Bailey, E. 1998. Implicit Religion: An Introduction. London: Middlesex University Press. Bentley, P. & P. J. Hughes. 1998. Australian Life in Christian Faith: Facts and Figures. Kew, Victoria: Christian Research Association. Bergman, C. 1992. ‘Manatees and the Metaphors of Desire’. In Finding Home: Writing on Nature and Culture from Orion Magazine, ed. P. Sauer, 278–90. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Bouma, G. D. 2006. Australian Soul: Religion and Spirituality for the Twenty-First Century. Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Bratton, S. P. 2004. ‘Thinking Like a Mackerel: Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea-Wind as a Source for a TransEcotonal Sea Ethic’. Ethics & the Environment 9(1): 1–22. Bratton, S. & S. M. Hinz 2002. ‘Ethical Responses to Commercial Fisheries’ Decline in the Republic of Ireland’. Ethics and the Environment 7(1): 54–91. Capp, F. 2005. That Oceanic Feeling. Sydney, Allen & Unwin. Carless, J. 2003. ‘Every State is a Coastal State’. BluePlanet (Spring). www.oceanconservancy.org/site/ News2?abbr=bpm_&page=NewsArticle&id=9379 (accessed Jan. 2008). Carson, R. [1965] 1998. The Sense of Wonder. New York: HarperCollins. Clinebell, H. J. 1996. Ecotherapy: Healing Ourselves, Healing the Earth. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Cohen, M. J. 2007. Reconnecting with Nature: Finding Wellness Through Restoring Your Bond With The Earth, 3rd edn. Minneapolis, MN: Ecopress. Coward, J., R. Ommer & T. Pitcher, eds. 2000. Just Fish: Ethics and Canadian Marine Fisheries. St John’s, Newfoundland: ISER Books. Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row. Cummins, R. A., T. M. Knapp. J. Woerner et al. 2005. The Personal Wellbeing of Australians Living within Federal Electoral Divisions. Melbourne: Australian Centre on Quality of Life, Deakin University. Daly, L. K. 1996. ‘Ecological Activism’. In Spirituality and the Secular Quest, ed. P. Van Ness, 445–64. New York: Crossroad Publishing.

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deep blue religion Davis, J. 1998. ‘The Transpersonal Dimensions of Ecopsychology: Nature, Nonduality, and Spiritual Practice’. Humanist Psychologist 26(1–3): 69–100. Department of Environment and Conservation. 2007, Who Cares about the Environment in 2006? A Survey of NSW People’s Environmental Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviours. Sydney: Department of Environment and Conservation. Devall, B. 1988. Simple in Means, Rich in Ends: Practicing Deep Ecology. Salt Lake City, UT: Peregrine Smith Books. Fedler, A. J. & R. B. Ditton. 1994. ‘Understanding Angler Motivation in Fisheries Management’. Fisheries 19: 6–13. Finger, M. 1994. ‘From Knowledge to Action? Exploring the Relationships between Environmental Experiences, Learning and Behavior’. Journal of Social Issues 50(3): 141–60. Fox, R. 1999. ‘Enhancing Spiritual Experience in Adventure Programs’. In Adventure Programming, eds J. C. Miles & S. Priest, 455–61. State College, PA: Venture Publishing. Frederickson, L. M. & D. H. Anderson. 1999. ‘A Qualitative Exploration of the Wilderness Experience as a Source of Spiritual Inspiration’. Journal of Environmental Psychology 19: 21–39. Gatewood, J. B. & B. J. McCay. 1988. ‘Job Satisfaction and the Culture of Fishing: A Comparison of Six New Jersey Fisheries’. Maritime Anthropological Studies 1(2): 103–28. Habel, N. C. 1993. ‘Religious Experience’. In Myth, Ritual and the Sacred, eds N. C. Habel, M. O’Donoghue & M. Maddox, 105–23. Underdale: University of South Australia, and Texts in Humanities, University of South Australia. Hall, D. D. 1997. Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Harms, J. & G. Sylvia. 2001. ‘A Comparison of Conservation Perspectives Between Scientists, Managers, and Industry in the West Coast Groundfish Fishery’. Fisheries 26: 6–15. Harvey, G. 2006. Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth, 2nd rev. edn. New York: New York University Press. Herman, J. [1992] 1997. Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic Books. Hutch, R. 2005. Lone Sailors and Spiritual Insights: Cases of Sport And Peril at Sea. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2007. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Geneva: IPCC Secretariat. Kalof, L. 2003. ‘The Human Self and the Animal Other: Exploring Borderland Identities’. In Identity and the Natural Environment: The Psychological Significance of Nature, eds S. Clayton & S. Opotow, 161–78. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kaplan, R. & S. Kaplan 1989. The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kaplan, S. & J. F. Talbot. 1983. ‘Psychological Benefits of Wilderness Experience’. In Behaviour and the Environment, eds I. Altman & J. F. Wohlwill, 163–203. New York: Plenum Press. Kearns, L. 2004. ‘The Context of Eco-theology’. In Blackwell Companion to Modern Theology, ed. G. Jones, 466–84. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Louv, R. 2000. Fly-Fishing for Sharks: An American Journey. New York: Simon & Schuster. Love, R. 2000. Reefscape: Reflections on the Great Barrier Reef. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Luckman, T. 1967. The Invisible Religion: The Problem of Religion in Modern Society. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Maller, C., M. Townsend, A. Pryor et al. 2005. ‘Healthy Nature, Healthy People: “Contact with Nature” as an Upstream Health Promotion Intervention for Populations’. Health Promotion International 21(1): 45–54. Manoogian-O’Dell, M., L. A. McGraw & A. M. Zvonkovic. 2002. The Ebb and Flow of Fishing Family Life. Corvallis: Oregon Sea Grant. Maslow, A. 1964. Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. Merchant, C. 1997. ‘Fish First!: The Changing Ethics of Ecosystem Management’. Human Ecology Review 4(1): 25–30.

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sylvie shaw Minnegal, M., T. J. King, R. Just & P. Dwyer. 2003. ‘Deep Identity, Shallow Time: Sustaining a Future in Victorian Fishing Communities’. Australian Journal of Anthropology 14(1): 53–71. Naess, A. 1989. Ecology, Community and Lifestyle. Outline of an Ecosophy, trans. and ed. D. R. Rothenberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nelson, R. 1993. ‘Searching for the Lost Arrow: Physical and Spiritual Ecology in the Hunter’s World’. In The Biophilia Hypothesis, eds S. R. Kellert & E. O. Wilson, 201–28. Washington, DC: Island Press. Ogunseitan, O. A. 2005. ‘Topophilia and the Quality of Life’. Environmental Health Perspectives 113(2): 143–8. Orsi, R. A. 2003. ‘Is the Study of Lived Religion Irrelevant to the World We Live In? Special Presidential Plenary Address, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Salt Lake City, November 2, 2002’. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42(2): 169–74. Pollnac, R. B. & J. J. Poggie Jr, 2006. ‘Job Satisfaction in the Fishery in Two Southeast Alaskan Towns’. Human Organization 65(3): 329–40. Roof, W. C. 2001. Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Safina, C. 2002–3. ‘Launching a Sea Ethic’. Wild Earth 12(4): 2–5. Sessions, G., ed. 1995. Deep Ecology for the 21st Century. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications. Sharp, N. 2002. Saltwater People: the Waves of Memory. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin. Sharp, S. B. & D. Lach. 2003. ‘Integrating Social Values in Fisheries Management: A Pacific Northwest Study’. Fisheries 28(4): 10–15. Shaw, S, 2002. Wild at Heart: Creating Relationship with Nature. Unpublished PhD thesis, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria. Shaw, S. 2003. ‘Reclaiming the Ecoerotic’. Ecotheology 8(1): 85–99. Shaw, S. 2005. ‘Wild Spirit, Active Love’. In Pagan Visions for a Sustainable Future, eds L. de Angeles, E. Restall Orr & T. Van Dooren, 173–92. Minneapolis, MN: Llewelyn. Snyder, S. 2007. ‘New Streams of Religion: Fly Fishing as Lived, Religion of Nature’. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75(4): 896–922. Sullivan, W.C., F. E. Kuo & S. F. DePooter. 2004. ‘The Fruit of Urban Nature: Vital Neighborhood Spaces’. Environment & Behavior 36(5): 678–700. Taylor, B. 2004. ‘A Green Future for Religion?’. Futures 36: 991–1008. Victorin-Vangerud, N. M. 2001. ‘The Sacred Edge: Seascape as Spiritual Resource for an Australian Echeschatology’. Ecotheology 6(1&2): 167–85. Victorin-Vangerud, N. M. 2003. ‘This World of Waters: Ecotheology and Rachel Carson’s Oceanic Vision’. Seachanges 3. www.wsrt.net.au/seachanges/volume3/doc/vangerud.doc (accessed Jan. 2008). White, L. 1967. ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis’. Science 155(3767): 1203–7. Reprinted in This Sacred Earth. Religion, Nature, Environment, ed. R. S. Gottlieb, 184–93 (London: Routledge, 1996). Wilde, G. R., R. K. Riechers & R. B. Ditton. 1998. ‘Differences in Attitudes, Fishing Motives, and Demographic Characteristics between Tournament and Nontournament Black Bass Anglers in Texas’. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 18: 422–31. Wing, K. 2001. Keeping Oceans Wild: How Marine Reserves Protect Our Living Seas. New York: Natural Resources Defense Council. Wolf, K. L. 2004. ‘Public Value of Nature: Economics of Urban Trees, Parks and Open Space’. In Design with Spirit: Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Environmental Design Research Association, eds D. Miller & J. A. Wise, 88–92. Edmond, OK: Environmental Design Research Association.

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III The Sacredness of Water

Editors’ introduction Edge-dweller Crab, ‘tween worlds, ‘tween lifetimes. Yours is the wisdom we seek. The personal, sacred and religious relationship that exists between humans and water is explored at ecological, psychological, theological and sociocultural levels of analysis. We search for the numinous and sacred, in nature, and in human practices based around water. In examining the world around us, what do we learn of ourselves? Does the grit that will form the pearl of wisdom already lie within us, leading us on to understanding and a sustainable relationship with our environment? We swim and dive through many-textured waters to find the essence of sacrality in historical, contemporaneous, mainstream and subcultural streams of knowing. We search for the source of our sacred connection so to empower action in the world.

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9 The spirit of the Edge: Rachel Carson and numinous experience between land and sea Susan Power Bratton

The Georgia Bight The tide is out on the Georgia Bight, leaving a huge expanse of gently sloping sea floor exposed below a vermilion sky. The lateral rays of a dying sun glint off the damp atmosphere, infusing the entire seascape with a hazy glow. Enjoying my solitude, I wander back and forth over the water’s edge with its lackadaisical midsummer waves. Here, just here, the ancient elements – earth, air, fire and water – unite. The vastness of the cosmos and its ever-renewing energy pour forth from this uncluttered terrain. A line of oyster catchers, their red bills a delicate accent to a pink-tinted sea, fly casually over the swash as they head home for the night. Gliding on black and white wings, they seem to enjoy the peace generated by great horizontal lines and planes as much as I do. The birds remind me that the beach is not an architectural abstraction or my private platform to explore the eternal, but is alive in all its elemental compartments. As the breakers pull seawards and regain their crests, tiny vortices in the thinning water betray small holes in the packed sand, where mollusc and worm burrows tap the life-giving flood. Unseen microscopic cells are swirling around my ankles, providing sustenance for the reclusive excavators residing under my ephemeral footprints. The scattered evidence for a matrix of living protoplasm buried in the sediment reminds me of Rachel Carson’s admiring narrative about the humble lugworms, occupying these very Georgia shallows. Not the first species on the eco-tourist’s ‘must see’ list, the lugworm is an ecosystem engineer that, in processing detritus and levelling the mudflats, helped to construct this entrancing contemplative space. Not tired of speaking with God, I settle down on a dry swath of fore dune, and allow the light to fade. A ghost crab joins me briefly then, being less theologically inclined, scurries off on its evening’s business. As the moon rises I wander back to meet the incoming tide and the strengthening surf. Wading contently towards the jetty, I notice

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susan power bratton my sneaker-generated splashes are emitting pinpoints of light: phosphorescence, an uncommon visual pleasure – the living sea flashing back a greeting to sister moon. A vaguely remembered Irish prayer, ‘St Patrick’s Breastplate’, harmonizes with the light slosh of the waves: ‘Christ above me, Christ beneath me, Christ around me, Christ within me’. My thoughts drift back to Carson’s affectionate description of this same ribbon of ocean rim: shorebirds, crabs, lugworms and all. ‘Rachel Carson and the Celtic saints would have enjoyed each others company’, I consider. ‘They all longed for the isolation of the wild Atlantic shore, and saw the worthiness of every creature.’ An empty pen shell captures a sliver of moonbeam, so I pick it up, and run my fingers over its pearl interior. Almost anyone can perceive the beauty in the iridescent lining of the fan-shaped shell, larger than my open hand. But it takes a God’s-eye view to the see the glory in a lugworm, and to grasp, as Carson did, its role in creating this spiritually evocative environment. Praising God for all maritime nature-writers and Irish poets, I nestle the pen shell back in the wrack and, turning seawards, I finish my evening prayers.

Boundaries Well known for her popularization of marine science and her masterful narratives of complex oceanic ecosystems, Rachel Carson remains a neglected source for environmental ethics and nature-based spirituality. While repeatedly citing sierra-loving John Muir and land-locked Aldo Leopold, environmental ethicists, philosophers and theologians have largely overlooked the extensive corpus of explicitly marine essays and coastal natural history. The works of Carson and other coastal writers, such as her friend Edwin Teale, are of such literary quality they continue to resonate with postmodern beachgoers and university undergraduates. Carson’s first book on the oceans, Under the Sea-Wind: A Naturalist’s Picture of Ocean Life (1941), has a far greater readership today than when it was first available in bookstores. The original printing attracted so little attention from a nation preoccupied with the Second World War that Carson gave copies away to her friends. Undeterred, she wrote two additional marine volumes, The Sea Around Us (1951) and The Edge of the Sea (1955), both of which became best-sellers. Today, her ocean trilogy remains widely available in paperback. Academic commentaries on environmental values or spirituality, however, rarely draw on Carson’s loving descriptions of ocean ecosystems, and turn instead to her best known work, Silent Spring (1962), which focuses on pesticides and environmental contaminants. Born in 1907, Rachel Carson experienced the archetypical Protestant American childhood. Her mother Maria, probably the greatest single influence in Carson’s life, was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. Maria Carson studied at Washington Female Seminary, a Presbyterian school, and became a teacher. A capable pianist and singer, she met Rachel’s father, Robert, whose parents were born in Ireland, when he was performing with his church quartet. Maria was as committed to books, writing and natural history as she was to the church and music, so she introduced

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the spirit of the edge her daughter to her own loves. Maria Carson participated in the nature study movement, ‘which had a spiritual element, [and] was in part a reaction against industrialization’ and emphasized introducing children to nature, so they would not become alienated from it (Quartiello 2004: 3). Carson, who submitted her first manuscript to a children’s magazine at age ten, began her higher education as an English major at Pennsylvania College for Women, a Presbyterian institution. She transferred into the biology major as a sophomore, finding that it fulfilled her passion for nature, and ultimately obtained a masters degree in zoology at Johns Hopkins University. Carson saw the sea for the first time at age twenty-two, when she spent a summer as a beginning investigator at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In 1936, at age twenty-nine, she realized her childhood dream of becoming a full-time author when she accepted a post as a professional writer for the US Bureau of Fisheries, and started to sell feature articles to the Baltimore Sun newspaper (Lear 1997; Quartiello 2004). The purpose of this essay is to summarize Carson’s spiritual valuation of the seashore and inter-tidal regions, particularly as articulated in The Edge of the Sea and A Sense of Wonder. Fascinated with the Edge throughout her career, Carson spent days exploring rocky outcrops inundated twice a day, and swaths of open sand, where countless creatures hide when the water recedes, only to rush forwards to feed as the oceans once again pour their bounty into hidden burrows (Bratton 2004). Carson found the great boundary between the continents and the oceans to be a numinous zone, stimulating both a sense of wonder in nature, and an understanding of life’s ancient conception in the sun-infused shallows. Spiritual experience with the Edge fuelled Carson’s interest in coastal preservation, and encourages us to nurture a sea ethic, based in ecosystemic equity, where even the mudflats become ecosystems worth conserving. Carson’s writings champion restoration of the silence and solitude of the Edge, as a locale fostering human fascination with and respect for marine environments.

The Edge as spiritual locale Considering the purpose of Deep Blue, it may seem odd to explicate Carson’s works emphasizing the boundaries of the seas, rather than The Sea Around Us, with its imaginative plunge into the seas’ depths. Human encounter with boundaries has, in fact, long been a component of religious mysticism and pilgrimage, and the territories of the tides have played a prominent role in Western spiritual practice as well as in Christian metaphor. Pre-Christian European sacred treks often led to the shore, connecting the terrestrial and the aquatic. Croagh Patrick in western Ireland was probably once a ritual locale for the old Celtic summer festival Lugnasa, dedicated to the solar deity Lugh. Today, Christians struggle up the stony path on bare feet or bruised knees, ascending Patrick’s mount, with its unrivalled views of the moody north Atlantic. The isolated peak rising from the sea simultaneously symbolizes the life of the saint, sacred pursuits, holy Ireland and the domain of the divine. On a trail

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susan power bratton older than the Roman Empire, believers mark the Way of St James from the agricultural reaches of France and the Low Countries, over the Pyrenees, to Santiago de Compostela, and then on to the beach on the Spanish coast where St James’s body supposedly miraculously washed ashore. In name and geography this saint’s road unites the cosmos: earth, peaks, sea and sky (Harbison 1992; Harpur 2002). The scallop shell symbolizes the journey. Christians carefully traversing the sands at ebb tide at Mont Saint-Michel or Lindisfarne become a walking metaphor for death and resurrection. At Our Lady’s Island in southern Ireland, pilgrims still pace or kneel around the island with one foot in the water and one on the sand. On the undeveloped path, surrounded by beach vegetation, a single statue of the Virgin Mary gazes out towards the estuary and the open ocean (rather than down at the pilgrim), both blessing the turbulent waters and providing comfort in the face of the unconquered natural forces (Harbison 1992). Early Christians, such as St Cuthbert (an Anglo-Saxon monk trained at a Celtic monastery), prayed standing chest deep in saltwater, and sought the friendship of otters as they contemplated God. Their poetry praises gathering seaweed and observing the progression of the tides, as well as asceticism and charity (Bratton 1992). All this ancient and medieval history may seem irrelevant to Carson, raised in a Calvinist household, and educated in the rationalist environs of a Presbyterian women’s college. Her pilgrimages were to such scientific ‘Compostelas’ as Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory (Lear 1997). Yet, John Calvin himself saw God’s glory in nature. The Calvinist denominations have historically been supportive of nature study as honouring the Creator. Carson grew up in an environment where spirit and nature were never far apart. Carson was familiar with Romantic poetry, the best American nature writing, and certainly in her ramblings encountered American traditions of coastal aesthetics. Christian values and transcendentalist spirituality have infused American seascape painting. The nineteenth-century Luminist School chose coastal settings, from stormy to tranquil, to express the emotions of humankind and of the divine. Such compositions typically lack overt religious symbols, preferring to capture the spiritual in the features and functions of the physical cosmos. Carson’s writings do not reflect the older Western association of coastal spiritual adventures with fear of the unknown and unconquered elements of the universe. In Normandy, St Michael the Archangel stands atop the spires of his island mount, sword in hand, ready to fight the dragons spawned by unending western seas. Carson, who had an aversion to the Western obsession with boundaries defining dichotomies, favours the venerable poetic line linking scholarship with the life lessons and subtle beauties of the natural, and treats the Edge as a place of integration and flow.

The passageway A first theme in Carson’s writing is the Edge as an experience with primal and cosmic origins. This concept appears in The Sea Around Us, where she describes the complex

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the spirit of the edge geologic history of the oceans and their importance in the origins of life. In her preface to The Edge of the Sea, Carson awards special mystical value to the ‘marginal world’ of the shallows by identifying the environment as very ancient, as old as the earth itself. The shore was: the primeval meeting place of the elements of the earth and water, a place of compromise and conflict and eternal change. For us as living creatures it has special meaning as an area in or near some entity that could be distinguished as Life first drifted in shallow waters – reproducing, evolving, yielding that endlessly varied stream of living things that has surged through space and time to occupy the earth. (1955: vii) This salty, wave-tossed Eden burst forth with the biodiversity that now graces every inhabitable nook and cranny of the Blue Planet. The sunlit, well-nourished waters of the continental shelves rocked life in its cradle and continue to nurture the novel, the fecund and the unexpected. The Edge is a place of primal experience and understanding, a site for seeking life’s deep core. For Carson, bridging the impenetrable barrier between continents and oceans goes beyond scientific expediency. In The Edge of the Sea, she begins by seeking out a sea cave, with hydroids and other invertebrates attached to the ceiling. This locale is only open to her at low tide, and will shortly fill to become part of the sea again. She brings the reader into this boundary realm to provide the semi-safety of standing on terra firma, while personally observing the biota of the sea. The entry into the cave is a symbolic transition, through a ‘magical zone’, into a realm not ordinarily accessible to bipeds. The innermost essence of the cave is its ‘fairy pool’, which Carson observes between attacks by unpredictable breakers beating up against a ledge she traversed to reach her secret spot. The creatures of the cave are, in fact, contemplating their own image. Carson joins them in the first person, kneeling down to see an elfin starfish, suspended from the low ceiling with one tube foot: ‘It reached down to touch its own reflection, so perfectly delineated that there might have been, not one starfish, but two. The beauty of the reflected images and of the limpid pool itself was the poignant beauty of things that are ephemeral, existing only until the sea should return to fill it’ (Carson 1955: 3). Carson sees herself as departing one ecological reality to enter another. She closes the sea cave vignette by noting: ‘And so in that enchanted place on the threshold of the sea the realities that possessed my mind were far from the land world I had left an hour before’ (ibid.: 3). Like Carson’s previous works, The Edge of the Sea coaches the reader into penetrating the boundaries. To absorb what is occurring above the tide line, it is necessary to survey what is transpiring beneath the low water mark. In the sea cave, the organisms are marine, but for an hour or two, when the August full moon is pulling the swirling foam away, the creatures of the tide pools are stranded in desiccating air. A prototype of boundary relationships, the starfish symbolically stretches between the two realms, and becomes twins, one among the apricot soft corals of temporary ceiling and one floating above the green sponges and grey tunicates in the transient

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susan power bratton tide pool. The Edge of the Sea is arguing the same type of ‘reach’ for its reader. We came from the sea and we should therefore stretch back into the accessible shallows in order to understand our oceanic heritage – and the earth’s.

The Edge as an accessible encounter with the oceans Second among Carson’s repeated themes is the Edge as a point of exploration: spiritually, aesthetically and scientifically. Throughout the The Edge of the Sea, the reader, as initiate into the secrets of the boundaries, joins her coast-hugging journey from Maine to the Florida Keys, and learns to read the shoreline. On the rocky coast of New England, the experienced naturalist explicates each zone descending from forest into the waves as one loaded with history and with diverse living tissue springing from the ever-changing face of the north Atlantic. An apparently drab streak of organic matter opens into a textbook or an encyclopedia: The black zone of the shore has meaning above and below its lifeless aspect – a meaning obscure, elusive and infinitely tantalizing. Wherever rocks meet the sea, the microplants have written their dark inscription, a message only partially legible as although it seems in some way to be concerned with the universality of the tides and the ocean. (Carson 1955: 47) In a single band that most people would step over as they clambered down slick surfaces to the water’s edge, Carson observes the imprint of physical processes that reach from one end of the planet to the other. Rocky tide pools are educational microcosms, encompassing within their tiny basins the properties of the seas at large. Each pool is a universe where ‘all the beauty of the sea is subtly suggested and portrayed in miniature’ (ibid.: 110). Carson describes a depression ‘only a few inches deep, yet it holds all the depth of the sky within it, capturing and confining the reflected blue within it’ (ibid.: 111). Even tea-cup sized troughs may support interesting species, and some of the most entrancing pools are hidden, requiring an observant search. Within the confined space of a sea cave, ‘one feels the rhythms of the greater sea world beyond’ (ibid.: 118). Subtly, Carson depicts the hierarchies of the cosmos, and the little worlds that form the greater matrix of all being. Throughout The Edge of the Sea, Carson herself is looking into cracks and digging around in the sediments to extricate the unseen. She opens the sea’s gifts to discover biological surprises. Occasionally even her skilled eye cannot find the cause of an entrancing phenomenon. When out on the flats off the Florida Keys, Carson humbly confesses that she has heard the snapping of shrimp claws in loggerhead sponges, ‘yet the sounds, to a maddening degree, were impossible to locate’ (ibid.: 219). She never finds the shrimp in the rocks, yet, as the text makes clear, it is the process of exploration, inference and synthesis itself that is fulfilling.

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the spirit of the edge

The Edge as an extraordinary relationship A third of Carson’s insight is that humans have an extraordinary relationship with the Edge. In identifying the shallows as a primordial heritage, she claims the linkages are innate, natural and ancient. Carson recognizes, however, that our coasts’ human residents do not necessarily count the ecological communities of the shallows as beautiful, worthy or interesting. Escaping the notion of ocean as mere economy, she purposefully elevates the coral reef from a navigational hazard to a complex and wondrous unfolding of evolution’s finest art. She raises the lugworm and mole crab from expendable fish bait to talented and worthy micro-scale ecosystem engineers. Carson takes the sticky and sometimes smelly mudflat, and encourages her reader to stop and observe its intricacies. The mud, superficially an obnoxious barrier to beach strolling, is actually a colourful maritime metropolis, which imports and exports more materials each year than the Port of Baltimore or ports of Buenos Aires. Although her approach is multifaceted, we can look at Carson’s presentation of human relationship with the Edge as an estuary tide flowing sometimes in one direction and then the other: the incoming is the spiritual gifts the shore provides for us, and the outgoing is the purity of intention we need to return to the sea. Carson summarizes the Edge’s spiritual value in A Sense of Wonder, originally published in 1956 in Women’s Home Companion as ‘Help Your Child to Wonder’ (Carson 1997: 9). In her ultimate effort to stimulate public affection and respect for nature, Carson recreates the storm-lashed night when she first took her twentymonth-old great-nephew, Roger, to engage the sea: Out there just at the edge of where – we-couldn’t-see, big waves were thundering in, dimly seen white shapes that boomed and shouted and threw great handfuls of froth at us. Together we laughed for pure joy – he a baby meeting for the first time the wild tumult of Oceanus, I with the salt of half a lifetime of sea love in me. But I think we felt the same spine-tingling response to the vast, roaring ocean and the wild night around us. (Ibid.: 15) She takes the toddler back to the Edge, after the storm has passed, to meet the creatures they could not see for the rain. Carson preaches ‘sharing of adventures in the world of nature’ (ibid.: 17) with young children, and practises this on a breakerbattered beach in the dark. Roger’s first excursion wove him into the interface among natural boundaries: the atmosphere, land and sea. A Sense of Wonder prefers awe and appreciation to the scientific practice of taxonomy: naming things. Carson intuitively felt that mere ‘identification’ is a form of human control over nature and not real communion with ‘the wonder of life’ (ibid.: 94). The Edge is certainly not the only ecological setting where a pleasurable dance with ‘a world of elemental things’ can wheel and circle among ecosystems. The Edge, however, accentuates the roles of natural forces and processes, making them more obvious through contrast. Even the most jaded of urbanites can comprehend the magnificence of the huge combers on the Bonzai

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susan power bratton Pipeline fuelled by off-shore storms, or the jagged form of a sea arch jutting above the white sprays of erosive foam. Conversely, on a calm day, the expanse of the sea’s surface off the flat sands of the Georgia Bight delivers a daunting impression of infinite space and boundaries humans must struggle to cross. The Edge, where undisturbed by summer homes, quick-stop groceries and boardwalks, remains one of the easiest places to experience the awe and wonder of nature so valued by Carson.

Right relationship with boundaries: valuing fecundity Throughout her descriptions of the coast, Carson emphasizes five characteristics of the Edge, that can both enhance our spiritual understanding of the Blue Planet’s processes, and encourage us to care for this oft-abused narrow chain of ecosystems. These prevalent features are: fecundity, microcosms, diversity, ecosystemic equity and fragility. Ancient and regional religions build entire cycles of myth and poetry on the subject of fecundity. Technological cultures, fed by industrialized agriculture, take fecundity as easily manipulated, and attempt to infinitely optimize ‘productivity’. In The Edge of the Sea, Carson eschews the financial, and concentrates instead on the link between a species’ survival and biotic diversity. Her descriptions of reproduction in the shallows are hardly an argument for longer menus at resort restaurants. The dedicated field naturalist mentions, for example, the ordinary limpets’ lack of protective capsules for her eggs. Carson asks about the place of fertilization (now known to science) and describes the drift of the larvae to new points of attachment on the rock. The text captures the mutualistic interactions between limpets, which rasp away algae, and barnacles, which need cleared patches for their offspring to become established. All this is for interest, and divorced from immediate human economic concerns (Carson 1955: 61). A major theme throughout The Edge of the Sea is the profusion of life in this region of radical environmental transition. One cannot read the entire book without gathering just how many millions and billions of eggs, larvae and adult organisms are scurrying, digging, swimming or floating along the rim. The frequent citation of numbers, size or density, such as the lugworm’s 300,000 eggs (ibid.: 143) or the ‘whole cities of mole crabs’ (ibid.: 153), clarifies this richness. In documenting the sources of Atlantic sands, The Edge of the Sea describes the interstitial fauna. Among the tiny grains is ‘a world of inconceivably minute beings, which swim through the liquid film around a grain of sand as a fish would swim through the ocean covering the sphere of the earth’ (ibid.). This microscopic ‘vast dark sea’ is filled not just with single celled organisms, but with ‘water mites, shrimplike crustacean, insects and the larvae of certain infinitely small worms’ (ibid.: 130). Every available space is filled with feeding and reproducing creatures, so many they could never be counted. Carson admonishes the savvy beachcomber to looks beyond the superficial in what appears to be miles of lifeless sand, when she writes:

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the spirit of the edge But almost always the essence of the lives – the finding of food, the hiding from enemies, the capturing of prey, the producing of young, all that makes up the living and dying and perpetuating of this sand-beach fauna – is concealed from the eyes of those who merely glance at the surface of the sands and declare them barren. (Ibid.: 132) The degree to which the Edge is living protoplasm is, more often than not, overlooked.

The diversity of the commonplace and the aesthetics of the diminutive The Edge of the Sea devotes pages of text to very ordinary species: those having wide ranges, proving resilient to the evils of human construction, or emerging as perennial favourites of small children depositing wiggling things into sand buckets. At times, Carson seems to be projecting a form of Protestant servant-hood on crustaceans, describing these commonplace and routine-bound inter-tidal inhabitants as apparently leading exciting lives. The mole crab, for example, becomes a frontiersman, braving the beaches forever exposed to the roll of the breakers, where ‘only the most specialized creatures can live on sand amid heavy surf ’ (Carson 1955: 153). These little speedsters, sliding out from under waders’ feet, have mastered the ‘turbulent surf ’ and built ‘whole cities’ in the pull of the backwash produced by waves smashing against unconsolidated grains of quartz. Carson emphasizes both their vulnerability to hungry fish and birds, and their ability to glean the tiny morsels of protoplasm sweeping by with every pass of foam-flecked water. Their importance cannot be overstated as they ‘function in the sea’s economy as an important link between the microscopic food of the waters and the large, carnivorous predators’ (ibid.: 155). Carson’s language is laudatory when applied to the mole crabs, their appendages, their populations and even their weird larvae. They are ‘successful exploiters’, ‘amazingly proficient’ and ‘spectacular’ in their mass movement, ‘extraordinary’ to watch. Their antennae are ‘efficiently constructed’ and their position in the food chain is ‘an important link’. The greatest achievement of these commonplace crustaceans, however, is bringing the sands to life. Carson contrasts the moment before the surf pours over the beach, when the surface appears uninhabited to ‘the fleeting instant when the water of a receding wave flows seaward like a thin stream of liquid glass’ and ‘there are suddenly hundreds of little gnome-like faces peering through the sandy floor’. They disappear just as abruptly as the water retreats leaving no trace on the sands’ glistening surface. Casting them as potential figments of the human imagination, Carson elevates them to the supernatural by suggesting the mole crab host might be ‘an apparition induced by the magical quality of this world of shifting sand and foaming water’ (ibid.: 153–5). Carson strengthens the impression that all marine species have worth unto themselves by composing portraits of the tiniest forms of life. These are not mere scientific

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susan power bratton accounts but glean the beauty and the uniqueness of each creature. The Edge of the Sea is laced with the aesthetics of the diminutive, and the wonder of microcosms. To reinforce the ubiquitous nature of shoreline life, Carson reports: ‘Even the smallest pools, filling depressions no larger than a teacup have some life’ (ibid.: 113). She provides a detailed description of a gnat-sized insect, Anurida maritime, able to skate across the still water’s surface. The adaptations of this economically inconsequential micro-scavenger, which feeds on the carcasses of fish, crabs and molluscs washed ashore, are as eye-catching as they are interesting. When viewed with a dissecting microscope or a hand lens ‘it seems to be clothed in blue-grey velvet through which many bristles or hairs may protrude’ (ibid.: 113). Carson observes the hairs trap a thin layer of air, so it can breathe as tide rises. Carson does not tire of the micro-scale even after multiple intense encounters with clever arthropods. She has enough remaining energy to introduce her readers to the ‘brown velvety coating’ of the seaweed Ralfsia, inconspicuously lining the pools. The text repeats the theme that the apparent low diversity of the tide pools is a deception. A quick perusal of a swatch of Ralfsia under a magnifying lens exposes an entire microcosm. The residents of this miniature forest include tiny tube-building worms, ostracods ‘enclosed in flattened peach-colored shells’, bristle-worms and the predaceous ribbon worms, which slither through thin filaments of algae (ibid.: 114–15). In one of the most charming paragraphs in The Edge of the Sea, Carson summarizes the limited space that can hold its own miniscule cosmos of wonders when she lies beside a tide pool she can easily reach across, and describes the mussels paving its floor: Their shells were a soft color, the misty blue of distant mountain ranges, and their presence lent an illusion of depth. The water in which they lived was so clear as to be invisible to my eyes; I could detect the interface between air and water only by the sense of coldness on my fingertips. The crystal water was filled with sunshine – an infusion and distillation of light that reached down and surrounded each of these small but resplendent shellfish with its glowing radiance. (Ibid.: 115) She then goes on to describe the other form of life in the pool, an almost invisible hydroid, emphasizing the delicate nature of this population of thread-like creatures, where: each individual of the colony and all the supporting and connecting branches are enclosed within transparent sheaths, like a tree in winter wearing a sheath of ice. From the basal stems erect branches arose, each branch the bearer of a double row of crystal cups within which the tiny beings of the colony dwelt. The whole was the very embodiment of beauty and fragility, and as I lay beside the pool and my lens brought the hydroids into clearer view they seemed to me to look like nothing so much as the finest cut glass – perhaps the individual segments of an intricately wrought chandelier. (Ibid.: 115–16)

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the spirit of the edge In this vignette, Carson demonstrates the possibility of human enjoyment of a few centimetres of wave-washed rock. Her lovingly framed recollection of an intimate moment with a common mussel and an unselfconscious little hydroid is as aesthetically pleasing as an afternoon spent painting spray-lashed sea cliffs or an evening lost strolling in an orange-pink Pacific sunset. Carson accentuates the value of these oftignored organisms by comparing them to much larger natural features: the misty blue mountains and ice-glazed trees. She expands the sensory framework of the experience by adding touch to vision, as she locates the surface of the pool, not by sight, but by detecting temperature change as she runs her fingers over its invisible surface. Her experience of the pool is also an intense engagement with light. Carefully selected descriptors imply an almost mystical entry into the rock-enclosed, solar radiationpierced microcosm. The colours are ‘soft’ and ‘misty’. An ‘infusion and distillation’ of bright rays in the clear, crystal water illuminates each of the ‘resplendent’ shellfish, giving them individually an importance and presence. Most humans have never had their physical body so glowingly and positively portrayed. Carson’s prose would grace Marc Chagall’s stained glass or the sparkling windows of Chartres Cathedral.

Equity among species and marine ecosystems Carson had the ability to see interest and beauty in any marine organism. Although Under the Sea-Wind describes a wide variety of invertebrates, such as the mindless, predaceous comb jellies entangling and terrorizing Scomber the Mackerel, the volume selectively names and thereby elevates the importance of vertebrates. The Edge of the Sea, in contrast, stars such spineless, detritus-sucking species as the lugworm burrowing into Georgia mudflats. Carson deploys her writing skills to convince her readers that worms are not just a worthwhile topic, they have multiple values. The lugworm digests decaying organic debris, performing a critical ecosystem function in cleaning and recycling: ‘their prodigious toil leavens and renews the beaches and keeps the amount of decaying organic matter in proper balance’. Aside from being hard working, the worms build unique burrows and produce attractive offspring. The egg masses of the lugworm are ‘large, translucent, pink sacs, each bobbing about in the water like a child’s balloon’ (Carson 1955: 142–3). Even the humble garbage processor has its colourful, aesthetic side. The aesthetics of the diminutive in combination with Carson’s ‘fair and equitable treatment’ of invertebrates leads to the question of equal value among marine ecosystems. Are mudflats of less worth than coral reefs? The excursion to the ‘Coral Coast’ concluding The Edge of the Sea provides a biologist-organized tour of one of the most obviously attractive of marine communities. Unlike a day-tripping snorkeller, Carson does not dwell on the flashy blues of the queen angelfish or the undulating movement of the sharp-toothed green moray. She does mention charismatic megafauna – the hawksbill and green sea turtles that once foraged the sea grass flats in droves – and observes barracuda and grey snapper in a nocturnal cruise of a reef flat. Yet

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susan power bratton she is more fascinated with tropical sea hares than with game fishes, and Carson’s first meeting with them was so memorable that she can reference the month and the locale: early May at Ohio Key. She nudged one and ‘it responded instantly by expelling a concealing cloud of fluid the color of cranberry juice’. Sea hare spawning is sheer excitement with the release of strings of eggs as long as 65 feet (ibid.: 119–221). Carson also takes the clumsy queen conch seriously, and by relating its vision to its ‘grotesque leaps and tumblings’ (ibid.: 232) proves the conch is, at the very least, a perceptive and intentional being, with goals and life plans suitable to a scavenger’s benthic existence. She waxes eloquent about the diversity of echinoderms, and even the humble (and ugly) sea cucumber becomes an ecosystem engineer with major impacts on its surroundings. Carson equates their importance to that of earthworms on land, pointing out that annually ‘the holothurians in an area less than two miles square may redistribute 1000 tons of bottom substance’ (ibid.: 228). Poking about in the limey cracks, Caron finds chitons, urchins and a little mollusc called Onchidium similar to a garden slug. Onchidium, overlooked by the vast majority of visitors to the Keys, receives one of the longest treatments – four full paragraphs – of any of Carson’s selected tropical species. This wriggling little creature wears ‘a tunic of slime that makes it look jet black, wet, and shining’. Carson puzzles over the return of a land creature to the sea, a theme she continues in the case of sea grass (an angiosperm not an algae) and the more obviously terrogenous turtles. (Perhaps she wished she could join them.) Carson plots Onchidium’s diurnal treks out from its mini-caverns to rasp plants from the rock, and wonders at its chemical defence of ‘white acid spray’, which it discharges at potential enemies, such as crabs and isopods (ibid.: 209–11). Among the kingdom of coral, Carson selects some tourist favourites and some unexpected creatures for her cast of characters. Within the organization of a major ecosystem, she does not give the living corals precedence over the grass beds or the sand flats. Nor does she consider turtles necessarily more important or interesting than the sluggish sea cucumber or chemically sophisticated Onchidium. She situates all creatures in their own niche and treats one as worthy as another. At the ecosystemic level, Carson’s descriptions of species of ‘The Rim of Sand’ are very similar to those of the ‘Coral Coast’. One of her literary methods is to revisit the same types of organisms and ecological functions from region to region. Each ecosystem is distinctive, yet each has many of the same components: the predators, the scavengers, the burrowers, the clingers and the travellers. While the individual species clearly differ from the rocks to the mudflat to the coral reef, many of the same taxa, such as echinoderms, crustaceans and molluscs, wear various costumes and occupy a range of substrates, while pursuing many of the same activities, from habitat to habitat. Species from north to south find similar, yet individual, solutions to the problems posed by the tides and the surf. The microscopic is a basic source of energy throughout, and invertebrates are key ‘middlemen’ in capturing and converting this resource. The Edge of the Sea extracts this ‘sameness’ while simultaneously recording the tremendous diversity within and between ecological communities. A key theme serving to integrate the three major ecosystems in The Edge of the Sea is the pathway between land and ocean. Dozens of creatures move back and

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the spirit of the edge forth across the tide line, just as the waves and tides constantly shift in space and time. From the ghost crab, which usually refrains from swimming while periodically dipping its toes and gills in the surf, to the mole crab, which follows the retreat of each band of swash, The Edge of the Sea weaves the two realms together, creating not a distinct border, but a zone of constant interaction. Carson relishes the evolutionary history of creatures that arose from the seas, evolved on the land and then entered the seas again. Natural selection has been busy here, fusing, recreating and merging. This well-adapted boundary breaking is the essence of life on the shoreline. By subtle inference, the successes of evolution serve as a model for curious and careless humanity venturing into the physiologically unfriendly realm of saltwater. We can wade and dog paddle but never completely just submerge and speed turtle-like out towards the horizon. In The Edge of the Sea, ecosystemic equity is not a matter of size, economic potential, a well-developed central nervous system or any of the usual human criteria for protecting or coveting a stretch of sea or a marine fishery. Each system has its own worth and its own adaptations, defined in terms of the physical problems it has to solve and its ability to actualize the lives of its own inhabitants.

The Edge as fragile Despite the resilience of its biota in the face of fluctuating tides and surf, the land– sea ecotone supports many delicate residents or species dependent on specific environmental conditions. The Edge, though naturally geophysically dynamic, is easily disrupted and destroyed. Carson wonders about this irony as she explores the northern rocky coasts, notorious for their winter storms. In one tide pool hidden in a cave she explores the algae with her fingers, and begins to ‘find creatures of such extreme delicacy that I wonder how they can exist in this cave when the brute force of the storm surf is unleashed within its confined space’. She locates apricot-coloured bryozoans encrusting the rocks with ‘cells of a brittle structure, fragile as glass’. The whole micro-community ‘seems an ephemeral creation that would crumble away at a touch, as hoarfrost before the sun’. A sea spider scoots across the bryozoans, and this creature too ‘seems the embodiment of fragility’ (Carson 1955: 121). Carson encounters the same delicacy as she explores seaweed with her hand lens. Here and there a tiny snail appears, with an amber shell easily brushed aside. Small sponges with their calcareous skeletons grow among the rockweed. Noting that she could easily crush the sponges with her fingers, Carson ponders their ability to survive ‘amid the surging thunder of the surf ’. Contemplating their relationship with other organisms, she concludes their relationship with the rockweed may be the key to the sponges’ survival. The larger algae’s ‘resilient fronds’ are potentially ‘a sufficient cushion for all the minute and delicate beings they maintain’ (ibid.: 122–3). The ecosystems of the Edge are built from many such tentative associations, some of them predatory and some symbiotic. Carson notes the mutualism in the algal cells

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susan power bratton inhabiting a coral polyp. The presence of the plants within animal tissue advantages the corals in terms of energetics and gas exchange. Although she was writing well before the days when coral bleaching had been repeatedly observed and scientifically monitored, she describes the polyps ejecting their photosynthetic partners in dim light (ibid.: 201). Under stress these beneficial interchanges can break down, in turn modifying the healthy function of the reef. Not just the silica skeletons or the soft bodies of the biota, but the relationships between species are fragile and can fall apart in human hands.

Preserving the Edge One of Carson’s uninitiated projects was a ‘save the seashores’ book. She wrote a preparatory article for Holiday Magazine, which initially did not meet the demands of their editors. She had focused on Atlantic beaches and the invertebrates. For the final draft ‘She took out “all the small creatures, substituted coastal scenery moods,” and added what she had originally intended to say about vanishing seashores’ (Lear 1997: 390). The article, published in July 1958, pleads for preservation of the remaining segments of coastal wilderness, and supports the National Park Service’s programme to expand the National Seashores. Originally planning to extend this theme in a fulllength book, Carson diverted her attention to Silent Spring, and never returned to her coastal conservation volume (Lear 1997: 309–10). In ‘Our Ever Changing Shore’, Carson argues that the potential of the coast to provide numinous experience is a value worthy of preservation: The shore means many things to many people. Of its varied moods the one usually considered typical is not so at all. The true spirit of the sea does not reside in gentle surf that laps a sun-drenched bathing beach on a summer day. Instead, it is on a lonely shore at dawn or twilight, or in storm or midnight darkness that we sense a mysterious something we recognize as the reality of the sea. (Carson 1998: 116) For Carson, basic biological events, such as the mating of horseshoe crabs, become excursions into Deep Time. The shore can speak of ‘the earth and its own creation’, or it can speak of the very essence of life (ibid.). She relates an experience on the Maine coast, where she ‘actually sensed what the young earth was like’. Fog eliminated all perception of land, and she was surrounded by gray mists and dripping rocks. Carson’s imagination carried her back to the Paleozoic, ‘when the world was in fact only rocks and sea’ (ibid.: 118). The article articulates the values of quiet, solitude and isolation: The dunes are a place of silence to which even the sound of the sea comes as a distant whisper; a place where, if you listen closely, you can hear the hissing of

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the spirit of the edge the ever mobile sand grains that leap and slide in every breath of wind, or the dry swish of the beach grass writing, writing its endless symbols in the sand. (Ibid.: 119) .

With her refined perceptions, Carson moves through the hush of the hills of winddriven quartz into ‘the vaster solitude of the beach and sea’ (ibid.: 119). She strolls across expanses of apparently lifeless sands to quietly sight a few gulls, which move ahead of the interloper repeatedly attempting to enter their realms. The experience in the ‘vast and lonely expanse’ infuses those of us ‘of the land world’ with ‘something of the strength and endurance of the sea’ (ibid.: 122). Carson is succinct in her identification of most human occupation of the shoreline as the ‘sordid transformation of “development” – cluttered with amusement concessions, refreshment stands, fishing shacks – all the untidy litter of what passes under the name of civilization’ (ibid.: 123). She contrasts this noisy mess to the silence of the dunes, where one can hear the wind driven sand grains whizzing over the dune crest. The problem with the Ferris wheels, hot dog palaces and beachside parking lots is ‘the sea cannot be heard’ (ibid.: 123). This voice is primal reflection of our origins. Its educational and spiritual values are muted by human indifference to its worth in its undisturbed state. Carson’s understanding of the Edge can further assist us in turning that outgoing spiritual tide into a force for coastal care. The Edge of the Sea suggests six principles for an ocean ethic: 1. In preserving coastal ecosystems, the superior strategy is to extend protection above and below the tide line. When the US Congress designated the first US National Seashores, the National Park Service often did not take jurisdiction below the tide line. Nor for much of the twentieth century did anyone worry about the lack of protection for submerged portions of shoreline ecosystems. This situation has since improved with the international growth of marine reserves. Carson encourages preservation of the boundary for its own sake. The species that live on the dunes are often dependent on the shallows and the species that live in the shallows support species that nest or live on land. The land-biased inclination to conserve the beach while ignoring submerged sand bars is ecologically short-sighted. Nesting sea turtles should not be crawling between legal jurisdictions as they move from wet sand to a dry locale above the high-tide line. Humans who busy themselves carving the planet into smaller and smaller personal and corporate territories should treat the Edge as fluid and dynamic, incorporating it within our political units rather than between them. 2. All the ecosystems of the rim, and of the oceans in general, are worth conserving. Carson stretches the usual aesthetic of the colourful, the obvious and the spectacular. The commonplace and the little seen are incredibly interesting, and potentially necessary to the existence of other creatures in the great food webs of the

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susan power bratton seas. Sand flats are not less valuable than coral reefs. Gravel bottoms and deep layers of ooze deserve our attention, and we should leave representative examples of these habitats intact for the protection of their native biota and for the appreciation of future human generations. 3. Ocean care is rooted in awareness of oceanic scales, including the proper valuation of the diminutive. Many mistakes in marine management or harvest originate in human inability mentally to connect the bottom of the food web to the top. Failures to detect and respect the myriad linkages result in human interventions with devastating outcomes. Carson’s coral kingdoms, for example, are very sensitive to sediment. A ship running aground on a reef is an obvious immediate major threat while beachside condominium construction superficially appears to be a distant minor one. Yet, the run-off from the building site transports small particles of terrogenous material over nearshore reefs, where corals have difficulty expelling the ‘dirt’, so the reef slowly dies. In order to protect the ecosystems of the Edge, conservation strategies must extend past preferred human scales, and connect processes transpiring in a droplet of water to those affecting entire bioregions. Considering the health of the microcosms is necessary to ensure the integrity of the macrocosm. 4. The ecotone itself is important to human education and enrichment. Setting reserve or conservation boundaries at the tide line is like ripping a book into independent chapters and then trying to read half of them: one cannot follow the plot or understand the conclusion. Even small children can study the ecology of the mole crab and track the ghost crab back to its burrow. Where the Edge is heavily modified by human construction, it looses its biota and therefore its educational and spiritual value. The Edge, on a planetary perspective, is very limited in terms of its area. We should design our coastal developments to leave wide swaths of the Edge intact. The Edge should be accessible for a night walk on firm wet sand and a chance to see the moon reflected in the dark rolling swells. If the lights along the parking areas are so bright that a stroller does not notice the sparkle of phosphorescence below the foam, the spiritual value of the Edge is much depleted. 5. The rim, despite appearances, is fragile and easily degraded. Few ecological regions or zones have been as abusively or casually managed as the world’s shorelines. For Euro-American cultures, the region below the high-tide line is frequently designated as public domain. Many coastal national and state parks established in the first half of the twentieth century placed trails and walkways through forest, but left their visitors to their own route-finding when they reached the dunes. Through the mid-twentieth century, off-road vehicles rolled though sea turtle and shore bird nesting areas on US National Seashores. Along shorelines adjoining private property and government projects, bulldozers have rolled. Concrete and boulders have replaced crescent-shaped dunes. Many species dependent on the Edge and the change of tides cannot work around these habitat modifications. We humans all desire access to the beach and the surf. The cost to our fellow creatures is often high. Humans should treat the rim as highly fragile, especially for many of the smaller, more delicate species, such as Carson’s misty

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the spirit of the edge blue mussels and crystal branched hydroids, which may disappear unnoticed with relatively low levels of anthropogenic impact. 6. We should conserve or restore the silence and solitude of the Edge. Since Carson’s death, the world system of marine reserves has expanded manyfold. Today, however, in the more densely populated regions there is little left that could produce a wilderness area the size of Padre Island National Seashore, much less the Great Barrier Reef. Conservationists can, however, attempt to recover the silence by purchasing vest-pocket parks, moving parking areas, improving setback regulations to place development further away from the dunes and the tide line and extending sanctions on wetlands modification. Perhaps the greatest need and opportunity is to extend preservation activities below the tide line and out to sea, even to the deep abyss. The silence can be broken by a fisherman’s drag net as easily as it can be destroyed by an amusement park or a housing development. Wildness should be valued beneath the waves as well as where the breakers terminate on the shoreline sands.

Protestant spirituality? Ironically, when a trendsetting 1992 essay by philosopher Baird Callicott called for a new ethic of the oceans, Callicott invoked Leopold’s ‘land ethic’ and Muir’s concept of the divine in nature as foundations for a new ethic for the oceans, while overlooking Carson’s considerable writing on the intrinsic value of the seas. Callicott, quoting Muir’s argument that God has a plan for the smallest and least significant of creatures (Muir 1916), both spiritualized and universalized human care for the oceans. It is worth asking in closing this chapter: are Muir’s values spiritually or ethically superior to Carson’s? Both Carson and Muir had Calvinist upbringing (Carson’s considerably milder than Muir’s), both were familiar with Romantic concepts of spirit in nature, both drifted from the denominational commitments of their parents, and both wrote primarily for an American middle and professional class audience. Today, the average university student finds Muir more easily read for spiritual concepts, because Muir repeatedly inserts religious language and metaphor into his writing. During the mid-nineteenth century, when Muir first began to keep nature journals, tourist guide books to the eastern United States identified natural features as the work of the Creator, and proclaimed the presence of the divine in high peaks and glowing sunsets. Despite his borrowing of biblical imagery, Muir differs from these thoroughly Christian rationales for vacationing, primarily in his more completely immanent concept of spirit, emphasis on the value of non-human species and effort to completely embed himself in wild nature. Less the amateur naturalist and more of the product of formal biological training and scientific field laboratories than Muir, Carson wrote for a thoroughly modern audience. However, she subtly contests the supposedly objective biological science that portrays living organisms as mere stuff. Like Muir, her Calvinist background predis-

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susan power bratton poses her to find value far beyond the material in nature, extending to the extraordinary and numinous. Perhaps philosophers and historians documenting the religious roots of American environmentalism have neglected Carson because of her scientific training, or because, unlike Leopold, she rarely coaches her readers directly in values and never specifically defines an ethic – prior to Silent Spring. Carson may also have fallen out of the equation as environmental advocates first protected mountain heights, picked up the banner of the land ethic, and sought spiritual rationales for designating terrestrial wilderness areas. It has taken half a century for Carson’s excitement over well-hidden invertebrate fiefdoms to infuse human priorities for nature preservation. Historian Donald Worster (1993) has proposed that American environmentalism owes much to American Protestant spirituality with its asceticism, volunteerism and drive to social reform. Worster’s (1993) list of Protestant-heritage green prophets ironically also ignores Carson, although she is the premier actualization of his model. Her sense of the beauty and glory in nature, and for the interdependence of the land and the waters, becomes a call to responsible societal action in Silent Spring. For Carson, awe and wonder were as much a part of an autumn nor’easter, as summer Sierra thunderstorms were for Muir. Yet far more than Muir, she can drop into the microcosm, and project herself into the unseen portions of ecosystems. If Muir recognized that each creature has worth in itself, Carson articulated the equal value of all life, whether we humans can recognize its beauty or ecosystemic role or not. Above all, Carson has a feeling for the boundaries, or better the great links between ecological realms, and their cosmic importance. If Muir encountered the divine in the heights of the Sierras, Carson repeatedly wrestled with the primordial essence of life at the edge of the sea, where the transition between the two great habitats on the planet – land and water – surge back and forth and mingle with each other.

Bibliography Bratton, S. 1992. Christianity, Wilderness and Wildlife: The Original Desert Solitaire. Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press. Bratton, S. 2004. ‘Thinking like a Mackerel: Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind as a Foundation for a Trans-eoctonal Sea Ethic’. Ethics and the Environment 9(1): 3–22. Callicott, J. B. 1992. ‘Principle Traditions in American Environmental Ethics: A Survey of Moral Values for Framing an American Ocean Policy’. Ocean & Coastal Management 17: 299–325. Carson, R. 1941. Under the Sea-Wind: A Naturalist’s Picture of Ocean Life. New York: Simon & Schuster. Carson, R. 1951. The Sea Around Us. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carson, R. 1955. The Edge of the Sea. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Carson, R. 1962. Silent Spring. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Carson, R. 1997. A Sense of Wonder. New York: HarperCollins. Carson, R. 1998. ‘Our Ever-Changing Shore’. In Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson, ed. L. Lear, 113–24. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Originally published in Holiday Magazine (1958). Harbison, P. 1992. Pilgrimage in Ireland: The Monuments and the People. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Harpur, J. 2002. Sacred Tracks: 2000 Years of Christian Pilgrimage. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Lear, L. 1997. Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. New York: Henry Holt.

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the spirit of the edge Muir, J. 1916. A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Quaratiello, A. 2004. Rachel Carson: A Biography. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press. Worster, D. 1993. The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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10 The mystery of waters Vivianne Crowley

The sea always signifies a collecting-place where all psychic life originates, i.e., the collective unconscious. Water in motion means something like the stream of life or the energy-potential. (Jung [1935] 1966c: para. 15) The ancient mystery traditions, spiritually oriented psychologies such as those of Carl Jung and those contemporary spiritual traditions that seek to revive the ancient mysteries have in common a desire to understand the deeper, ‘truer’ nature of the individual. Common to all three is the idea that our surface ‘everyday’ personality is only a small part of us. Hidden in the depths, often envisaged as the watery depths, is a part of the personality that is not the product of our biology or of societal conditioning but is a seed of individuality that endures beyond bodily death and indeed pre-exists the body. This core can be termed ‘transpersonal’, a part of us that touches on eternity. To pursue the water analogy, in the language of myth this deep core may be symbolized as a fish within the depths of the ocean, a symbol found commonly in ancient myth (Jung [1945/54] 1967c: para. 408). In Irish tradition, the fish is the salmon, which swims from its spawning ground in freshwater rivers thousands of miles to its ancestral ocean feeding grounds until, possessed by what to the ancients was a mysterious knowledge, it returns once more to the place of its spawning to begin the cycle again. This chapter explores, through the language of Jungian psychology and the Wiccan mystery tradition, the human journey to find the true self: a journey of exploration and return.

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Jung and the unconscious The water-simile expresses rather aptly the nature and import and of the unconscious. (Jung [1956/59] 1984: para. 1586) Psychology is the science of the ‘psyche’, which can be translated as science of mind. For Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961), one of the foremost theorists in the field of psychology of religion, mind meant not only the conscious mind, but also the unconscious. Human beings were for Jung creatures of limitless depths, possessors of an unconscious psyche of which we are dimly aware and that we both seek and flee. Jung’s ‘unconscious’ is not Sigmund Freud’s ‘subconscious’, a repository for repressed instincts that the civilized self cannot own, but a ‘living fountain’, ‘the very source of the creative impulse’ (Jung [1947/54] 1969b: para. 339). The personal unconscious comprises: everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted by my conscious mind; everything which involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want and do; all the future things that are taking shape in me and will sometime come to consciousness … (Ibid.: para. 185) The waters of the personal unconscious flow to a wider and more mysterious sea: that of the collective unconscious. Jung was already speculating about the phenomenon of a collective psyche in his earliest writings, the product of his years as a psychiatrist at the Bürgholzi Clinic. Just as the migratory and nest-building instincts of birds were never learnt or acquired individually, man brings with him at birth the ground-plan of his nature, and not only of his individual nature but of his collective nature. These inherited systems correspond to the human situations that have existed since primeval times: youth and old age, birth and death, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, mating, and so on. Only the individual consciousness experiences these things for the first time, but not the bodily system and the unconscious. (Jung [1909/49] 1961: para. 728) Ultimately, however, Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious drew not on biology but on his psychological interpretations of the religious myths and folk traditions of Europe and beyond. Confirmation for Jung of the universality of the concept of the collective unconscious came in 1928 when scholar Richard Wilhelm sent Jung the manuscript of his translation into German of a Chinese Taoist alchemical text of the Qing dynasty The Secret of the Golden Flower, the aim of which was to find the Chin-jo or ‘golden juice’, the elixir of life. In The Secret of the Golden Flower, Jung found images startlingly like those that appeared in his patients’ dreams and fantasies. This

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the mystery of waters was a major turning point that confirmed for Jung that ‘the human psyche possesses a common substratum transcending all differences in culture and consciousness. I have called this substratum the collective unconscious’ (Jung [1929] 1967b: para. 11). Jung’s ‘discovery’ of the collective unconscious led to another concept important for his understanding of psychological and spiritual development: ‘the content of the collective unconscious is made up essentially of archetypes’ ( [1936] 1970c: para. 88), ‘definite forms in the psyche which seem to be present always and everywhere’ (ibid.: para. 89). These were ‘categories of the imagination’ ([1935/53] 1968d: para. 845), common to all humankind and, ‘the reason for the identity of symbols and mythmotifs in all parts of the earth’ ([1918] 1970a: para. 14). It is from these powerful building blocks of the imagination that religious ideas are born ([1947/54] 1969b: para. 342). Religions ‘have developed, plant-like, as natural manifestations of the human psyche’ and this is why, ‘religious symbols have a distinctively “revelatory” character; they are usually spontaneous products of unconscious activity’ (ibid.: paras 408–9). Jung’s practice began in psychiatric wards but moved from his mid-life onwards into his private consulting rooms. During 1911–12, he saw the publication of two volumes that became Volume 5 of his Collected Works, Symbols of Transformation ([1911–12] 1967a). The contents helped precipitate a breaking point in his relationship with Freud and with the psychiatric and academic establishment. Without rejecting his original psychiatric training in psychopathology, Jung ventured into new waters: those of culture, myth, religion, human aspiration and potential. While he continued to treat patients suffering from what could be labelled ‘mental illness’, many of those who consulted him were seeking not Jung the Doctor of Medicine, but Jung the Doctor of Souls. Their afflictions were spiritual rather than psychological: ‘I should like to call attention to the following facts. … Among all my patients in the second half of life – that is over thirty-five – there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life’ (Jung [1932] 1968c: para. 509). The Secret of the Golden Flower stimulated Jung’s researches into alchemy. He concluded that the alchemical traditions of East and West were designed not to achieve their ostensible goals of turning base matter into gold, or of brewing the elixir of life, but to achieve a psycho-spiritual transformation of the base matter of human nature into something greater than the sum of its parts. Jung’s alchemical researches, coupled with his re-reading and psychological reinterpretation of ancient texts and folk and fairy tales, provided the insight that within religious traditions around the globe was a ‘mystery’. The mystery was not that of a transcendental deity, but one that rose from the waters of the unconscious, the mysterious process of individuation. A transformation of the personality, individuation implied a radical shift in consciousness from a psyche dominated by the ego to a personality anchored in the archetype of ‘the self ’. The human personality is incomplete so long as we take simply the ego, the conscious, into account. It becomes complete only when supplemented by the

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vivianne crowley unconscious … Through its integration the centre of the personality is displaced from the limited ego into the more comprehensive self, into that centre which embraces both realms … and unites them with each other. This self is the midpoint about which true personality turns. (Jung [1943] 1977a: para. 819) In other words, ‘normal’ functioning – for the individual to have a strong healthy ego able to act in the world and fulfil his or her social obligations free of neurotic compulsions – is no longer the goal of Jung’s psychology. His vision takes him beyond ‘normalcy’ to that of self-realization, the goal of individuation.

Water and the unconscious Water is the commonest symbol for the unconscious. The lake in the valley is the unconscious, which lies, as it were, ‘subconscious,’ usually with the pejorative connotation of an inferior consciousness. Water is the ‘valley spirit,’ the water dragon of Tao, whose nature resembles water – a yang embraced in the yin. Psychologically, therefore, water means spirit that has become unconscious. (Jung [1934/54] 1968a: para. 40) In Jung’s own journey of individuation, water played an important role. After his break with Sigmund Freud precipitated a psychological crisis, Jung describes himself as feeling like a small sailing boat cut adrift on storm-tossed waters. Images, symbols and strange mythological figures flooded his dreams and as he could not escape them, like a mariner deciding to sail into the face of a storm, Jung plunged into the waves of the unconscious in what he later termed, borrowing from the Odyssey, his Nekyia, the ‘night-sea’ journey of Odysseus’s descent into the underworld, an ‘immersion in the unconscious’ ([1946] 1966d: para. 455). The process of individuation is largely a process of ‘letting go’. By allowing the boundaries of the ego to become permeable to the ‘waters’ of the unconscious – our dreams and fantasies, our hopes and fears – we take up the anchor that keeps us chained to the here and now and cast ourselves adrift on the current of the collective psyche. At the mercy of archetypal forces, in a dynamic interplay between ego and archetype, the new centre of consciousness is born. This experience arouses deep emotions. Emotions are connected in Western cultural consciousness with the symbolism of water, with tears of happiness and sorrow. The imagery of water gives an intimation of the dangers of spiritual growth for the psyche, which are those overwhelming, drowning and dissolving. ‘Although everything is experienced in image form, i.e., symbolically, it is by no means a question of fictitious dangers but of very real risks upon which the fate of a whole life may depend’ ([1934/54] 1968a: para. 82). Contact with archetypal forces by a psyche unready for such upheavals can create a veritable Tsunami. Much of the psychiatric illness Jung treated in his early career was evidence of the consequences of the individual being overwhelmed by material

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the mystery of waters from the unconscious: a tidal wave of unconscious energy with its flotsam and jetsam drowns the conscious mind. Contact with archetypes though myth, symbolism, ritual and imagery is for Jung the foundation of religion: ‘archetypes have, when they appear, a distinctly numinous character which can only be described as “spiritual”, if “magical” is too strong a word. Consequently this phenomenon is of the utmost significance for the psychology of religion’ ([1947/54] 1969b: para. 405). The unconscious is the source of the religious revelation that in time becomes the codified doctrine, but the doctrine is for Jung a rationalization of overwhelming experiences that well up from the depth of the unconscious. Indeed, for Jung, religious belief without such experiences is arid, sterile and meaningless: ‘If attention is directed to the unconscious, the unconscious will yield up its contents, and these in turn will fructify the conscious like a fountain of living water. For consciousness is just as arid as the unconscious if the two halves of our psychic life are separated’ ([1970d: 193). Contact with the unconscious and its archetypes is both necessary for spiritual growth and also dangerous: ‘we discover with terror that we are the objects of unseen factors … It can even give rise to primitive panic, because, instead of being believed in, the anxiously guarded supremacy of consciousness – which is in truth one of the secrets of human success – is questioned in the most dangerous way’ ([1934/54] 1968a: para. 49). To achieve spiritual and psychological growth without destroying the psyche, we must find a means to contact archetypes of the collective unconscious from an ‘island’ in the psyche, a place of safety: ‘Where there is no water nothing lives; where there is too much of it everything drowns. It is the task of consciousness to select the right place where you are not too near and not too far from water; but the water is indispensable’ ([1956/9] 1984: para. 1586). In religion, the place of safety is provided through communal ritual. If the world of the unconscious is that of water and sea, ritual becomes an island rising out the sea or, to use another less static metaphor, a night boat in which we traverse the choppy waters of the unconscious.

The mystery of the waters We must surely go the way of the waters, which always tend downward, if we would raise up the treasure … (Jung [1934/54] 1968a: para. 37) Wicca is a mystery religion (Gardner 1949, 1954, 1959).1 Mystery comes from the Greek word ‘musterion’, which has the connotation of something about which we must be silent and keep our mouths shut. A mystery is revealed by symbol or whis1. Here I refer to the communal religious practice of initiatory Wicca as envisaged by its creators, Gerald Gardner and his immediate successors, rather than Wicca as a solitary magical practice as popularized in the 1990s.

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vivianne crowley pered as a secret in the dark places. It is akin to the teaching of the Upanishads, which are given to those who ‘sit near’ the teacher. We have to listen and strain hard, partly because the words are spoken in secret, partly because the words mean more than their literal meaning. The meaning is allusion not precision; it is a hint not a revelation, a pointing and not the moon. To go to the place of watery realization, we must turn to the ancient seat of the emotions, and learn to see with what archetypal psychologist James Hillman in Re-Visioning Psychology, describes as l’immagine del cuor, the perception of the heart (1975: 14). Jung’s psychology was about revelation, a revealing of the hidden parts of the psyche so they could enter into consciousness and give meaning to human existence. The mystery traditions also attempt to answer the age-old question of life’s meaning and to reveal a secret at the heart of human existence. Jung was not an advocate for secrecy. On the contrary, he considered personal secrets to be dangerous: they involve deceiving others about our true nature. Even more dangerous is repression: hiding something from and thus deceiving ourselves. In small homeopathic doses, however, a communal secret is psychologically adaptive: even an essential pre-condition of individual differentiation, so much so that even on the primitive level man feels an irresistible need actually to invent secrets: their possession safeguards him from dissolving in the featureless flow of unconscious community life and thus from the deadly peril to his soul. It is a well known fact that the widespread and very ancient rites of initiation with their mystery cults subserved this instinct for differentiation. (Jung [1929] 1966b: para. 125) Secrets have power; the power to transform the psyches of the individuals to whom they have been imparted. Jung explains: There is no better means of intensifying the treasured feeling of individuality than the possession of a secret which the individual is pledged to guard. The very beginnings of societal structures reveal the craving for secret organisations. When no valid secrets really exist, mysteries are invented or contrived to which privileged initiates are admitted. Such as the case with the Rosicrucians and many other societies. (Jung [1961] 1995: 374–5) Archetypes are in themselves mysteries. Their importance lies in their power to stir the conscious mind. They speak to us principally because, paradoxically, we cannot understand them. An archetype is the grit that creates the pearl. ‘There is a mystical aura in its numinosity, and it has a corresponding effect upon the emotions. It mobilizes philosophical and religious convictions in the very people who deemed themselves miles above any such fit of weakness’ ([1947/54] 1969b: para. 405). In Wicca, secrets are revealed, mysteries enacted and contact with the archetypes facilitated within the confines of ritual, a patterned act of collective worship. Wiccan ritual, while varying in form between different groups, is conducted according to a

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the mystery of waters common archetypal pattern. A circle is delineated; the four quarters are honoured and invited to bring to the ritual elemental powers. The circle becomes ‘sacred space’ in which psychological and spiritual transformation can take place. This consecrated space is the island in the sea, the magic circle. ‘The drawing of a spellbinding circle is an ancient magical device used by everyone who has a special or secret purpose in mind. He thereby protects himself from the “perils of the soul”’ ([1936] 1970c: para. 63). The Wiccan circle with its four ‘guardians’, representations of the four elements at east, south, west and north, forms a mandala, a circle symbol, usually divided into four or divisions of four that represent totality and signifies in psychological terms, ‘the wholeness of self … or, to put it in mythic terms, the divinity incarnate in man’ (Jung [1961] 1995: 367). Circles and mandalas were for Jung ‘organizing’ archetypes that create order out of chaos, archetypes with particular potency. The archetype thereby constellated represents a pattern of order which, like a psychological ‘view-finder’ marked with a cross or circle divided into four, is superimposed on the psychic chaos so that each content falls into place and the weltering confusion is held together by the protective circle … At the same time they are yantras, instruments with whose help the order is brought into being. (Jung [1958] 1970b: para. 803) In ritual, contained with the sacred circle, we enter not a realm of chaos, but the collective psyche contained. The circle becomes the pool of water on which the psyche floats, interacting and permeable to those with whom it has chosen to immerse itself. Through this ‘letting go’, a temporary sacrificing of our psychological boundaries, we open ourselves to spiritual and psychological growth. In the mystery traditions, these processes are termed ‘initiation’. For Jung, they are the revelatory process of ‘individuation’. The communal rites of mystery traditions are a shared cultural interpretation of an inner process. Undergone by those ‘properly prepared’ (Crowley 1989: 66) and psychologically open to them, they become a means to precipitate a reorientation that leads to individuation. Wicca is at once a physical enactment of a ritual form and an inner experience. The sacred space is created by the use of symbols, words and symbolic actions. By an act of imagination, through a shared language and symbol system, a group of people bound by initiatory ties meet at a time sanctified by the tradition – the full moon or an important turning point in the seasonal tide – to worship together an archetypal deity that connects the individual worshipper to an archetype greater than the personal ego and at the same time connects the participants to one another. Initiates are taught that what empowers the experiences is not the outer forms and actions but the inner ‘work’. Each aspect of the ritual is accompanied by inner processes of visualization. The faculty of the initiate’s imagination is therefore the bridge that allows him or her to enter the place ‘between the worlds’. These worlds are ‘the realms of men’, in other words the ordinary everyday world, and the ‘realms of the mighty ones’ (ibid.:

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vivianne crowley 84), the world of the mighty powers of the archetypes, in other words the collective unconscious.

Between the worlds I don’t presume to know what the psyche is; I only know that there is a psychic realm in which and from which such manifestations start. It is the place where the aqua gratiae springs forth … (Jung [1956/59] 1984: para. 1587) Religion and myth are the creations of the human mind, a psychological and cultural means to bridge the abyss, the void, between our subjective sense of ourselves and material reality, between the objective world and our interpretation of it. Is the ‘realm of the mighty ones’ real or imaginary? For Jung, this question was unimportant. It is our powers of imagination that define us as human and have the power to make us whole. The illusionary world that lies between the worlds of men and gods is a realm that is in the process of becoming ‘real’. Magic is a concerted wish, a desire that what is not shall become what is. It can be seen as symptomatic of infantile wish-fulfilment (Faber 1993) or the product of the urge to create a place where we can express that which truly defines us as human. We can rarely perceive unmediated reality. From infancy, our perception of the world is coloured, shaped, formed by our hopes and fears and the cultural interpretations of those around us. The mismatch between our senses, memory and longings is constant. Our earliest experience is that reality is fluid. In seeking a place to drop anchor in this fluid sea, we learn to create transitional objects that are temporarily stable and link us to the here and now. The island in the sea, the safe harbour, God, all these become the talismans that keep us safe from harm. Freud, who described himself as an atheist (Freud 1927), is well known for his reduction of religion to sexuality. His view of religion as ‘illusion’ has been developed, however, by post-Freudians, and particularly object-relations theorists, in a much more constructive way. Paul Pruyser (1983), for example, uses Donald Winnicott’s (1971) theories of transitional object and transitional space in his exploration of the possibilities for spiritual growth of the ‘illusionistic world’ as a bridge between inner subjective consciousness and the hard objective world. In The Play of the Imagination, Pruyser lists the salient features of the inner autistic world of subjective feeling, the outer realistic world subject to empirical analysis and the ‘illusionistic’ world that bridges them, an imaginal realm shaped by shared language and culture that is the source of artistic and religious ideas and expression (Figure 1) (Pruyser 1983: 65). Pruyser’s illusionistic world has a role for the poetic, imaginative, myth-making, story-telling aspect of the human psyche. They are not, as for Freud, neurotic displacement activities or sublimation of wilder instincts that civilization must suppress. Their importance lies in the fact that they are not, ‘“untutored” fantasy which, entirely under

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the mystery of waters Autistic world untutored fantasy omnipotent thinking utter whimsicality free associations ineffable images hallucinatory entities or events private needs symptoms dreaming sterility internal object (imago)

Illusionistic world tutored fantasy adventurous thinking orderly imagination inspired connections verbalizable images imaginative entities or events cultural needs symbols playing creativeness transcendent objects prefigured by the child’s transitional object

Realistic world sense perception reality testing hard undeniable facts logical connections look-and-see referents actual entities or events factual needs signs, indices working resourcefulness external objects

Figure 1 Pruyser’s three worlds.

the sway of the pleasure principle, is autistic, private, unspeakable, and infantile’ (ibid.), but, ‘the creative fantasy which is stimulated by curiosity, spurred by aesthetic, moral, or numinous, feelings, makes active use of human talents, and respects the nature of reality’ (Pruyser 1991: 52). This ‘third realm’, the illusionistic creative world, is real in the same way that the outer world perceived by the senses is ‘real’. It is real in its effects. As Jung explains: ‘Symbols are not allegories and not signs: they are images of contents which for the most part transcend consciousness. We have still to discover that such contents are real, that they are agents with which it is not only possible but absolutely necessary for us to come to terms’ ([1911–12] 1967a: para. 114). The Protestantism of Jung’s youth failed to inspire him because, in a determined pursuit of rationality, it had stripped away the mysticism for which, as a teenager going through the rites of confirmation, he longed ([1961] 1995: 71–3). Communal worship, lacking shared inner engagement around a meaningful symbol system, became empty and meaningless. Jung accorded rationality its place and considered himself primarily an empirical scientist, but he made the realm of imagination his special study. His life’s work was to help human beings to understand its role in our health and wellbeing: ‘We should never identify ourselves with reason, for man is not and never will be a creature of reason alone, a fact to be noted by all pedantic culturemongers. The irrational cannot be and must not be extirpated. The gods cannot and must not die’ (Jung [1917/26/43] 1966a: para. 111). Wicca’s place of safety, the circle, the ‘place between the worlds’, is an environment in which the gods can live. It corresponds to what Pruyser called the ‘third world’: the transitional sphere, containing transitional objects – the world of symbols, of novel constructions that transcend the infantile fantasy and the entities of nature. It is the world of play, of the creative imagination in which feelings are not antagonistic to thinking, in which skills and talents are used to the utmost, and where pleasure is found without categorical abrogation of the reality principle. ([1977] 1991: 52)

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Operating in the ‘third world’ Wiccan ritual operates in this transitional and symbolic ‘third world’ where thinking is not antagonistic to feeling because ritual requires us to hold these critical faculties in balance while we enter the ‘third world’ through what in Jungian psychology are the ‘irrational’ functions, those of sensation and intuition. Jung’s personality theory identified four functions though which we process reality (Jung [1921/25] 1971: para. 900). We perceive either the bare sensory data, the role of the sensation function, or the meaning and connections between the data, the function of intuition. Having selected data from our environment we then analyse it using one of the two rational functions, by either judging whether it is logically true, the function of thinking, or by judging its value and worth, the function of feeling. Jung does not offer here the word ‘irrational’ in a pejorative sense. In fact, the sensation and intuition functions would be best termed ‘pre-rational’. These are both perceptive functions. Sensation perceives directly without the intervention of the imagination. Intuition is an imaginative rendering of sensation. As a product of the ‘third world’, Wicca is an act of creative imagination whereby a physical mandala comprising ritual actions and objects is interpreted by the intuitive function as a symbol of both macrocosm and microcosm. It is at once both a representative symbol of the holistic universe around us and a symbol of the holistic psyche, both universe and psyche whole and hence healed. We can think of ritual as a translation program. It translates the language of the unconscious into a language that can be understood by consciousness. By creating a sensate world of salt and water, incense, candles, altars, besom and ritual knife, these physical objects become symbolic representations, what Winnicott (1971) calls ‘cultural objects’, that fill the gap between fantasy and reality. Ritual helps fulfil the ineffable longing, the desire of human beings for what is at once immanence and transcendence; the desire to allow our psyches to break the bounds of the body and to flow into (again the watery imagery predominates) the wider universe, into nature and into others. The creations of the ‘third world’ are acts of defiance against the reality of bodily death, the abyss, the drowning. Our intuition soars and shows us the possibility of life everlasting, but the realm of the senses feeds back to us the message of our mortality. Unbearable as this reality is, we must endure it and explain how such a cosmic tragedy can be. We create the artistic, imaginal, spiritual realm as a way of bridging the abyss between what we want and how we find the world to be. The power of imagination is both therefore the defining quality of our human condition and that which makes it bearable. Imagination has created the problem, but imagination can also solve it. The beginning is the ending and the ending the beginning. Intuition takes sensation beyond itself. With sensation alone we could only mimic nature and create what we have seen and heard. With the power of imagination we can transform our sensory data into something other than themselves. To understand the imaginal world, we must turn to psychology, for it is this science of the psyche that enables us to understand how imagination creates the world in

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the mystery of waters which we live and move and have our being. Jung foresaw a death of the imagination, a suicide whereby we would lose our power to imagine and would live by secondhand images that had lost their emotive power. The secret power of image and symbol lies in its power to move us, to take us beyond the here and now, the realm of the senses, to the realm of culture and spirituality, the intuitive world of magic. For Jung, it is the response of the psyche to the power of the image that is the core of religious experience. Jung’s ‘re-visioning’ of religious experience gave religion validity beyond its metaphysical claims. If religion could not save us beyond the grave, perhaps it could ‘save’ us in the here and now. It provided a means to transform how we related to the world by transforming the way in which we related to the disparate aspects of ourselves. For the sceptical, this could be seen as a desperate clinging to the comfort of religion when faced with overwhelming evidence of its futility. Many deeply religious people from different faith traditions were willing, however, to embrace Jung’s insights to renew and enrich their religious experience and understanding.

Individuation, invocation and apotheosis … the archetype as an image of instinct is a spiritual goal toward which the whole nature of man strives; it is the sea to which all rivers wend their way … (Jung [1947/54] 1969b: para. 415) In Wiccan ritual, once the sacred space has been delineated by the four elements of earth, air, fire and water, a fifth element, spirit, is invoked in the form of goddess and god, the divine within, the self. The aim of psychological development is to make the archetype of the self the core of one’s being. The self is where the image of the divine is born and from which religious symbolism, feelings, thoughts and longings arise and filter through into consciousness: ‘The symbols of the self coincide with those of the Deity. The self is not ego, it symbolizes the totality of man and he is obviously not whole without God. That seems to be what is meant by incarnation and incidentally by individuation’ ([1958/59] 1977b: para. 1624). In a daring leap of the imagination, within Wiccan ritual an apotheosis occurs, one of the core experiences of the mysteries. The initiate: ‘takes part in a sacred rite which reveals to him the perpetual continuation of life through transformation and renewal. … the permanence and continuity of life, which outlasts all changes of form and, phoenix-like, continually rises anew from its own ashes’ ([1940/50] 1968b: para. 208). In Wicca, invocation is the sacrament, the sacred core process by which the worshipper and the worshipped create a temporary identification between a human being and an archetype. The participants invoke the divine as archetypal forms of deity – the Great Mother and the Horned God – that in their archaic appeal have the power to move us. The deities are invited to enter the sacred space and to commune

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vivianne crowley with the ritual’s participants. In particular, two individuals are chosen by the group to ‘become’ the goddess and god. The power of the divine enters into them and they speak to participants in the form of pre-created or spontaneous ritual poetry. They may give oracles, perform healing or simply bless the participants with their presence. Religion has through recent millennia moved the location of the divine away from human beings, away even from nature, into the ‘beyond realm’, a transcendent realm beyond time and space. Unusually in contemporary religions, although not in preChristian traditions, in Wicca the worshipper is at the same time the worshipped. The Gods are both transcendent and immanent, outside time and space, but also present within material creation and within human beings. For humans, they can be considered ‘aspirational self ’, that which the devotee wishes to emulate. Invocation breaches the membrane between conscious and unconscious, reality and aspiration, present state and future state, to create a temporary identification between divine and human, self and ego. The person who is invoked as the incarnate deity withdraws the conscious mind as censor, a suspension of belief or disbelief. The aim is to become a passive vessel, the recipient of the divine outpouring; to become the grail of the wine of life. Jung says of this experience: To carry a god around in yourself means a great deal; it is a guarantee of happiness, of power, and even of omnipotence, in so far as these are attributes of divinity … in the pagan mystery cults, … the neophyte, after initiation, is himself lifted up to divine status: at the conclusion of the consecration rites in the syncretistic Isis mysteries he was crowned with a crown of palm leaves, set up on a pedestal, and worshipped as Helios. ([1911–12] 1967a: para. 130) Invocation sets aside the ego, the everyday sense of ‘I’, to become ‘other’, something/someone greater and better; greater in the sense that the ritual intention is to identify with the forces of nature themselves. ‘I am … the mystery of the waters,’ says the Goddess. ‘I am the door to the Land of Youth’ (quoted in Crowley 1989: 161): what comes after the door is, surprisingly enough, a boundless expanse full of unprecedented uncertainty, with apparently no inside and no outside, no above and no below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad. It is the world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the realm of the sympathetic system, the soul of everything living, begins; where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me. (Jung [1934/54] 1968a: para. 45) This experience is an intimation of the goal of individuation, a radical reorientation of the personality around a centre greater than the personal ego. We invoke within the sacred space of the circle, a consciousness change is effected, the change dissolves and we return to ordinary consciousness with just a small part of us

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the mystery of waters permanently changed by that experience. The repeated experience of that change causes erosion. Water, dripping, smoothes the unyielding stone of our egocentricity so that pure water may flow to find its destination, self fuses with the transcendent other. Out of this state there emerges a more or less continuous dialogue between the conscious ego and the unconscious, and also between outer and inner experience. A twofold split is healed to the extent individuation is achieved, first the split between conscious and unconscious which began at the birth of consciousness, and second the split between subject and object. The dichotomy between outer and inner reality is replaced by a sense of unitary reality. (Edinger 1992: 96–7) We experience the dissolving into oneness of unification mysticism. The divine seizes us, takes hold of us. In an experience that is within the body as well as in consciousness, at once sensual and sexual as well as imaginal, we realize the divine within by a fusion with the divine without. To borrow the language of the Upanishads, Atman becomes Brahman and Brahman Atman: I am Thou, Thou art I. The outcome is a permanent reorientation, a shift in the psyche through the creation of a new vantage point beyond the functions of sensation, intuition, thinking or feeling. We create a fifth ‘transcendent function’, a vantage point for the deeper self whose perspective is ‘transpersonal’, beyond the fixed prison of the ego. It has been named the ‘transcendent function’ because it represents a function based on real and ‘imaginary,’ or rational and irrational, data, thus bridging the yawning gulf between conscious and unconscious. It is a natural process, a manifestation of the energy that springs from the tension of opposites, and it consists in a series of fantasy-occurrences which appear spontaneously in dreams and visions. (Jung [1917/26/43] 1966a: para. 121) No longer ‘caught’ in our subjectivity, we see the true purpose of our individual existence, which is alchemical: to redeem base matter and separate gold from the lead. As Edinger explains in Ego and Archetype: ‘Psychological development in all its phases is a redemptive process. The goal is to redeem by conscious realization, the hidden self, hidden in unconscious identification with the ego’ (1992: 103). We make room for a deeper, wider, self-based awareness that is at the same time ‘not self ’, that takes account of a more objective perspective on reality than the subjective perspective of the ego. For Jung, this is the ‘Great Work’ of which the hermeticists – the Renaissance magicians and alchemists and their heirs – spoke of in hushed tones as ‘a true labour, a work which involves both action and suffering’ ( [1917/26/43] 1966a: para. 121). Invocation is a union between ‘I and other’, a healing of the inner division that results from the separation of the ego iceberg from the waters of the unconscious to provide us with a stable reference point in consciousness. In a letter to Walter Bernet

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vivianne crowley on 13 June 1955, Jung explains that this ends in, ‘the confrontation of the ego with the “emptiness” of the centre. Here the limit of possible experience is reached: the ego dissolves as the reference-point of cognition’ (McGuire 1979: 259). This dissolution takes us back to the element of water.

To the sea and back again Ancient cultures revered the salmon for its extraordinary journeys and its mysterious knowledge that enabled it to navigate its way home. The salmon is unusual in that it can live in both fresh stream and salt sea, swimming from the clear freshwaters of consciousness down the stream of imagination, dream, symbol and myth to enter the ocean of the collective unconscious and then return stronger than before to bring new creation into the world. The salmon represents separation from the collective psyche that is essential for adult maturity, a process by which we develop a strong sense of ‘me’ and go forth on our personal journey of discovery. Once we have made the journey to the great sea, we can then return, stronger and wiser than before, to the spawning ground, the place where we fulfil our obligations to society. Collective identities, such as membership of an initiatory tradition, can play an important role in spiritual growth:‘for a long time to come it will represent the only possible form of existence for the individual, who nowadays seems more than ever threatened by anonymity’ (Jung [1961] 1995: 376). Wicca helps the initiate to the point where he or she realizes his or her separate and unique personhood and, at the same time, the deep bonds between the individual and the initiatory group. The ‘spiritual family’ of the coven replaces the fragmented family and restores to the individual a role and place, albeit in a virtual society that operates in another realm from the bonds that ostensibly distinguish us: those of blood, class, locality, ethnicity, gender and nationality. The coven is a group bound by sharing secret interpretations of reality offered by the initiatory tradition, its symbols and passwords, its robes and its rites, and its world-vision. It creates an alternative family, bound not by ties of blood but by the world of water, the world of the collective unconscious and shared imagination. In the world of the circle, we create a shared symbolic meaning, an agreed language of movement, gesture, symbol and thought that extraverts the inner realm into a virtual reality. It awakens the dreaming individual from his or her isolation and alienated individualism to participate in a shared vision. For Jung, however, the mystery traditions are not the final end but, ‘a home port for the shipwrecked’ (Jung [1961] 1995: 375) where we can take on water and fresh supplies. Eventually we have to stand on our own feet; the ecstatic experience of apotheosis does not last forever. The value of the mysteries lies in their ability to transform human beings for the better. The proof of their worth lies in what the individual does with the experience. As Joseph Campbell describes in The Hero with a Thousand Faces ([1949] 1972), after achieving the goal of the quest, the hero must return to serve his or her community.

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the mystery of waters The first part of the initiatory journey, the heroic quest, is a journey to the collective unconscious and back again to fulfil our social obligations to our species. Having done so, there comes a turning point; we must return to the collective. Key to happiness in life is the recognition that the goal of life’s morning is not that of life’s afternoon (Jung [1930/31] 1969a). The mysteries become no longer an education for life, but an education for death and that which lies beyond. The inner transformation experienced by the initiate through invocation becomes the chart that shows the way to return to the great sea of the collective. At the third quarter of the circle of life, we come to the west, the waters of the womb, and of the great sea of the unconscious, of the holy well, of the living stream, the deep waters of the place of dream, the end of the journey. In the oration given at Jung’s funeral, the imagery of water prevailed: ‘But now he himself must go through the last great waters, not only as an explorer and discoverer, but also as one who is explored and discovered. May he in crossing the great water cast himself bravely and gladly into the purifying storms of judgment’ (Lammers 1994: 240–41). On the waters of the womb we are pushed out into the world to ride the stream of being. We return to the salty waters with death, that last and greatest adventure that takes us on the night boat of the Ankhou to the Islands of the Blessed.2

Bibliography Campbell, J. [1949] 1972. The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Bollingen Series XVII. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Crowley, V. 1989. Wicca: The Old Religion in the New Age. London: Aquarian/HarperCollins. Crowley, V. 1998. Principles of Jungian Spirituality. London: Thorsons/HarperCollins. Crowley, V. 1999. Jung: A Journey of Transformation. New Alresford: Godsfield Press. Edinger, E. F. 1992. Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche. Boston, MA/London: Shambhala. Faber, M. D. 1993. Modern Witchcraft and Psychoanalysis. Cranbury, NJ/London: Associated University Presses. Freud, S. 1927. The Future of an Illusion, Penguin Freud Library. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Gardner, G. B. 1949. High Magick’s Aid. London: Atlantis Book Shop. Gardner, G. B. 1954. Witchcraft Today. London: Rider. Gardner, G. B. 1959. The Meaning of Witchcraft. Wellingborough: Aquarian Press. Hillman, J. 1975. Revisioning Psychology. New York: Harper & Row. Reprinted (New York: Harper Perennial, 1977). Jung, C. G. [1909/49] 1961. ‘The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual’. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 4, Freud and Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1917/26/43] 1966a. ‘On the Psychology of the Unconscious’. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 7, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1929] 1966b. ‘Problems of Modern Psychotherapy’. In his The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 16, The Practice of Psychotherapy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

2. The Ankhou in Breton folk tradition is a harbinger of death. He collects the dead in the bag noz or night boat and takes them away across the sea to the west where lie the islands of the dead. He is usually depicted as a skeleton, sometimes in a shroud and sometimes in a long cloak with a hat that hides his face. He may also carry an arrow, spear or sickle.

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vivianne crowley Jung, C. G. [1935] 1966c. ‘Principles of Practical Psychotherapy’. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 16, The Practice of Psychotherapy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1946] 1966d. ‘The Psychology of the Transference. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 16, The Practice of Psychotherapy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1911–12] 1967a. The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 5, Symbols of Transformation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1929] 1967b. ‘Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower’. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 13, Alchemical Studies]. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1945/54] 1967c. ‘The Philosophical Tree’. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 13, Alchemical Studies. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1934/54] 1968a. ‘Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious’. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9, Part 1, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1940/50] 1968b. ‘Concerning Rebirth’. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9, Part 1, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1932] 1968c. ‘Psychotherapists or the Clergy’. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 11, Psychology and Religion: West and East. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1935/53] 1968d. ‘Psychological Commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Dead. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 11, Psychology and Religion: West and East. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1930/31] 1969a. ‘The Stages of Life’. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 8, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1947/54] 1969b. ‘On the Nature of the Psyche’. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 8, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1918] 1970a. ‘The Role of the Unconscious’. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 10, Civilization in Transition. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1958] 1970b. ‘Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, 6 Epilogue’. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 10, Civilization in Transition. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1936] 1970c. ‘Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy’. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 12, Psychology and Alchemy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1955–56] 1970d. The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 14, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Enquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1921/25] 1971. ‘Four Papers on Psychological Typology. 2’. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 6, Psychological Types. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1943] 1977a. ‘Depth Psychology and Self Knowledge’. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 18, The Symbolic Life: Miscellaneous Writings. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1958/59] 1977b. ‘Psychology and Religion: Jung and Religious Belief ’. In his The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 18, The Symbolic Life: Miscellaneous Writings. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, C. G. [1956/59] 1984. ‘Jung and Religious Belief ’. In his Psychology and Western Religion, from the Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vols 11 and 18, Bollingen Series XX, trans. R. F. C. Hull. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jung, C. G., ed. [1961] 1995. Memories, Dreams and Reflections. Recorded and ed. A. Jaffé, trans. R. Winston & C. Winston. London: Fontana. Lammers, A. C. 1994. In God’s Shadow: The Collaboration of Victor White and C. G. Jung. New York: Paulist Press. McGuire, W., ed. 1979. The Freud/Jung Letters: The Correspondence between Freud and C. G. Jung, trans. Ralph Manheim & R. F. C. Hull. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pruyser, P. W. 1983. The Play of the Imagination. New York: International Universities Press. Pruyser, P. W. [1977] 1991. ‘The Seamy Side of Current Religious Beliefs’. In Religion in Psychodynamic Perspective: The Contributions of Paul W. Pruyser, eds H. N. Malony & B. Spilka, 47–65. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Winnicott, D. W. 1971. Playing and Reality. New York: Basic Books.

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11 Sister Water: an introduction to blue theology Margaret H. Ferris

Laudato si, mi signore, per sor aqua, laquale e multo utile et humile et pretiosa et casta. All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Water, So useful, humble, precious, and pure.

Francis of Assisi

This chapter introduces the reader to ‘blue theology’. It outlines the major tenets of blue theology in theory and praxis; first it discusses the underlying and related theoretical discourses of ecotheology, feminist theology and liberation theology that each contributes to the formulation of blue theology, then it reviews two spiritually connected communities that are living examples of blue theologies in action. Blue theology is a theology of water conservation that teaches that all water, salt and fresh, is precious and sacred. Water is fundamental to humans, indeed to all life. Yet, in modern, urban societies, we no longer need to live near water nor worry about where we get our water. This has led to water illiteracy, undervaluing water, and widespread abuse of bodies of water. Water is everywhere. Yet due to the excesses of the twentieth century and trends in population worldwide, water supplies are threatened around the globe. The World Health Organization (WHO 2003) reports that 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water and that this number will rise rapidly in coming decades. Additionally, 2.6 billion people lack clean water for drinking and sanitation, which leads to water-born diseases and widespread deaths.1 The water shortages in developing countries are mainly owing to limited native water compounded 1. These diseases are not insignificant. Every year, 1.8 million children die from diarrhoea and waterborn illnesses, which makes unclean water the second most common killer of children (Watkins et al. 2006: 5).

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margaret h. ferris by a lack of infrastructure (de Moor and Calamai 1997).2 Poorer countries typically have a complex three-fold problem: inadequate supplies of native surface or ground water; deficient clean water, and a lack of infrastructure to capture, store and move water. Water shortages are not limited to the developing world or even to arid climates. Western Europe and North America have experienced water shortages in the past ten years, mainly caused by rising urban populations and new water-intensive industries overtaxing available supply. In general, water stress in the developed world is due to oversubscription of the water supply: too many people demanding water beyond the natural limits of their region. Furthermore, even this scarce water is being polluted by agricultural run-off, industrial by-products and tailpipe emissions in most of the world’s communities. Monocrop agriculture, with its use of massive volumes of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, pollutes a great deal of surface and ground water (Stauffer 1999). Industrial scale livestock and dairy farms create large amounts of animal waste. Less widely known by the general public is the water pollution caused by urbanization. Tailpipe emissions pollute the air causing airborne particles to settle on to rooftops and the ground, where water runs along and dumps those particles into the stormwater systems, which in turn channel the pollution into rivers and oceans. Each of these forms of pollution contains heavy metals, salts, road particles, motor oil and anti-freeze (ibid.: 16–17). Such pollutants may also effectively take potable water out of commission, when lakes, streams or ground water are polluted. Thus, the purity and safety of local water directly correlates to how clean the local air is. As water is a vital part of all human communities, there are fundamental peace and justice issues in protecting water. The United Nations (UN) has even begun to advocate a ‘universal right to water’ out of a conviction that water is so basic a human need that each person has a right of access to a minimum amount. United Nations’ reports have suggested that each person has a right to a minimum of 20 litres (5.28 gallons) per day (Gleick 1999; Watkins et al. 2006).3 Two key components of the UN’s work over the past several decades have been to identify the particular vulnerability of women and children and of the poor to unsafe and inaccessible water. For instance, in the 1970s and 1980s, the World Bank and UN, with financial support of many Western governments, mounted a number of water projects aimed at providing more water to poor and rural people and for irrigation-based agriculture. In addition, the UN declared 1981–90 to be the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade, with a stated goal of providing safe drinking water and sanitation to all populations around the globe by the decade’s end. While many of the projects

2. A nation is defined as ‘water stressed’ if it has an annual supply of 1,000–2,000 cubic metres per person (0.81–1.62 acre-feet/person). Nations with 1,000 cubic metres or less per person per year are defined as ‘water-scarce’. 3. Owing to climate variations and different activity levels, the amount of water an individual person requires varies considerably around the globe. Water experts have stated that as much as 50 litres (13.2 gallons) is needed by an individual in a hot climate doing heavy labour.

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sister water were successful, the overall number of people without reliable access to safe water increased despite the substantial outlay of capital and considerable international cooperation. The UN’s response has not been to abandon its goals, but to demand greater efficiency in water use and to rethink its traditional strategies, such as a prior emphasis on dams and irrigation-based agriculture (Gleick et al. 2002). In the late 1990s, the UN wrote and affirmed several goals called the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), the seventh of which is ‘Ensure Environmental Sustainability: Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water’ (United Nations 2005). Most recently the UN declared 2005–15 the International Decade for Action Water for Life 2005–2015. By focusing on water, the UN, and other international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and human rights groups have recognized the essential connection between access to clean water and human welfare. Such recognition of and dedication to the problem are important, because in the coming decades global water shortages will be an increasingly exigent, even dire, domestic and international issue, demanding the attention of local and national political leaders. Water will probably even be increasingly fought over. In many instances, such water conflicts will lead to violence and even war (Gleick 1998). As the academic theological community has a long tradition of addressing ethics and issues of social good, theologians must look, and indeed some are looking, at this emerging crisis and field ethical responses that speak to religious communities as well as the larger international community. Indeed, the theological community has long been aware of the environmental dangers facing animals, plants and ecosystems. Numerous academic and popular books have been written about the sacredness of the earth and humanity’s responsibility to rethink and reshape its relationship to the biosphere. Yet, interestingly, bodies of water have been almost entirely overlooked in these debates. Blue theology is a response to the coming crisis of water scarcity and safety around the world and, as such, it calls for theologians to join the voices that advocate change and work towards solutions locally and globally. After all, many religious traditions consider water to be holy and therefore it needs to be treated with honour rather than disdainful indifference. Water is a part of most religious systems (Ariarajah 1982) and is believed by many to be the womb from which all life was born. It is an essential part of many rituals and liturgies and serves as a potent and common religious symbol (Campbell 1990). As such, an opportunity exists for theologians to develop theological responses to the multiple challenges of conserving this sacred resource. Indeed, some have argued that religious communities are the very people to rejuvenate the larger ecological movement, as secular leaders of the movement have had limited success and have lost ground in recent years. A strong supporter of this view is environmental ethicist Max Oeschlaeger, who writes: I think of religion, or more specifically the church – both the public church and congregations of people or fellowships of believers gathered in places of worship, engaging in discourse about their responsibilities to care for creation within the context of traditions of faith – as being more important in the effort

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margaret h. ferris to conserve life on Earth than all the politicians and experts put together. The church may be, in fact, our last, best chance. (1994: 5) Blue theology rises to this challenge from Oeschlaeger and can be enveloped within his desire to ‘care for creation’ and confront the ecological crisis.

Theoretical background of blue theology Before exploring blue theology further, I will briefly review the other theologies to which blue theology is indebted – ecotheology, feminist theology and liberation theology – to provide an understanding of blue theology’s foundational assumptions and core principles. It will also reveal some of blue theology’s strengths as it emerges as a field in its own right.

The influence of ecotheology Ecotheology teaches that religion has an important role to play in ecological advocacy and that religious thought and praxis may be vital components in reversing ecological destruction. Ecotheology began in the early 1960s in response to the growing awareness of how human economic development was dramatically and negatively affecting the earth. Christianity was criticized for its role in introducing dualism between matter and spirit, and encouraging a doctrine of human dominance over the earth.4 However, theologians found that Christianity’s attitudes about nature generally reflected the pervasive attitudes already present in the culture, and determined that many other influences were at work, such as economic and political causes.5 In addition, theologians discovered overlooked and forgotten ecological ethics within Christianity. Many genres of ecotheology developed, such as listening ecotheology (based in deep ecology) and ecofeminist theology. Listening ecotheologies, such as the work of Thomas Berry, have sought to listen to the natural world and to use the innate wisdom found there as a model for responding to the ecological crisis (Scharper 1997). Another genre is evangelical ecotheology, which has very recently emerged and seeks to connect right living, using Jesus Christ as a primary model, with ecological advocacy. One American evangelical ecotheology group launched the ‘What Would Jesus Drive?’ campaign to raise awareness of religion’s necessary contribution to environmentalism. Around the globe, religious communities and scholars have developed

4. The best-known example of such a critique is Lynn White, Jr’s article, ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’ (1967). 5. Many ecological scholars note that Christianity inherited a great deal of its negative metaphysics from Greek philosophy through the culture of the Roman Empire when Christianity was still young, such as the dualism between the spirit and matter.

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sister water constructive works that seek to go beyond traditional theologies and reinterpret and reconstruct religious attitudes towards nature. In the 1990s, scholars of other religions also began to examine the interconnection between ecology and religion. While not as abundant as the work done in Christian theology, ecotheology in Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and indigenous traditions has emerged with sophisticated treatments. These newer ecotheologies are creating even more insights into the relationship between religion and ecology. The contribution is both enriching the extant dialogue and challenging assumptions by longtime ecotheologians.

Major themes of ecotheology There are a variety of methodologies and conclusions found in the field of ecotheology, which are too numerous to delineate in the chapter. However, there are major themes found in Buddhist, Judaic, Christian and Islamic ecotheology that are instructive to review, albeit briefly. The themes point to the maturity and breadth of the field, and also indicate starting-points for blue theology as well as future avenues of exploration. The major themes are: the ancientness of religious ecological worldviews; humanity’s relationship to the world; and the certainty of God’s love of the created order. Each of the world’s major religions has ancient ecological worldviews and edicts. Such ancient edicts, when recaptured and unpacked by adherents and academics alike, may develop into new hermeneutical principles for ecotheology, and also for blue theology. When examined as a whole, their abundance is impressive and eye opening. In Buddhism, the importance of compassion for the suffering of all beings is one such edict. All Buddhists are to follow the Eightfold Path and to practise compassion towards other beings as a means of ending suffering. Steven Rockefeller (1997) points out that Buddhist practice may lead to an even deeper compassion for fellow creatures, as it emphasizes individual suffering, rather than the loss of a species or specific geographic area, such as the Artic National Wildlife Refuge. In Judaism, the ancient custom of the Sabbath year demonstrates the belief that God, rather than humans, owns the land. Humans are allowed by the Torah to use the land and its vegetation to sustain themselves. However, in the seventh year, agriculture of any sort is not permitted. Scholar Robert Gordis explains, ‘Neither the field nor the vineyard might be tended, and what grew was public property to be used equally by freemen and slaves, natives and strangers (Lev. 25:5–6)’ (Gordis 1986: 121). In its ancient practice, the Sabbath year established and maintained an ecological worldview based on God’s sovereignty. An ecological understanding is also embedded within Islam that outlines the reverence for animals and the multiple commands to treat them with respect and compassion (Haq 2003: 147–50). According to Islamic law, the owner of an animal is responsible for its wellbeing, and if the owner cannot properly care for the animal, the owner must sell, free or ritually slaughter the animal (ibid.: 148). Next, Islamic scholars working in ecotheology agree that the Qur’an is quite clear that humanity is not master of the world but merely a vicegerent (Ozdemir 2003: 25). Islam emphasizes

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margaret h. ferris that God created the world as a whole. Human beings, as vicegerent, have a great deal of agency but have an enormous degree of commensurate responsibility. One passage in the Qur’an especially makes clear the vizier role of human beings: O people! Worship your Lord, Who hath created you and those before you, so that you may ward off (evil); Who hath appointed the earth a resting-place for you, and the sky a canopy; and causeth water to pour down from the sky, thereby producing fruits as food for you. And do not set up rivals to Allah when ye know better). (Qur’an 2:21, quoted in Izzi Dien 2003: 117) The second major theme of ecotheology is that humanity’s relationship to the world is not one of dominion. For many centuries, the dominant model of humanity within Christianity was that of absolute monarch ruling over the rest of the created order.6 In the 1970s and 1980s, ecotheologians reinterpreted key texts, such as Genesis 1:26 and the Noah narrative, and concluded that the traditional model was misguided and inadequate. Ecotheologians have established that the more appropriate model is that of caretaker, gardener or steward. In Buddhism, the innate Buddha-nature of all sentient beings is emphasized. As every being has a Buddha-nature, each is recognized as intrinsically valuable and deeply linked to each other. By distinguishing and valuing the interconnectedness of beings, Buddhism also demonstrates that suffering is interconnected (Ozdemir 2003: 28–9). Hence, when humanity destroys habitats it consequently creates suffering for all beings because the suffering of one being is shared by all beings. Buddhism successfully deconstructs the priority of human economic development as causing suffering for all beings. The third major theme of ecotheology is that God’s love of the created order is evident and leads to a new hermeneutic for blue theology. Scholars have demonstrated that in the Jewish and Christian testaments, God’s love for the entirety of creation is expressed in many different ways. In each, God is shown to have a relationship with the whole created order. God loves all the plants and creatures of the rivers, lakes and seas, (Genesis 1:12) and the water itself (Genesis 1:10). The created order is good and is beloved by God, and is not merely of instrumental value. God also loves all the birds and each leaf on each tree, as seen in Matthew 6:26 and 6:28. Similarly, there is an abiding concern for nature found in the Qur’an and the Hadiths. First, there are abundant references to animals in the texts (Haq 2003: 147; Ozdemir 2003: 23). In fact, very often animals are not instruments to advance the narrative or allegory but are discussed as themselves. The prophet Mohammed seems to have a strong ethical concern for animal wellbeing as well as a respect for the independent existence of all creatures, that is, as separately constituted from human existence. Indeed, animals are referred to as constituting a community of their own (Haq 2003: 147). Further, animals are described as closely related to Allah (Rockefeller 1997: 6. The interpretation of Genesis 1:26 as a divine mandate to dominate and exploit is modern, beginning with the King James translation of the Bible (1611 CE), and correlates with the modern model of monarchs as centralized and absolute rulers.

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sister water 319). The concern for nature in Islamic scriptures points to Allah’s care for the world and his expectation that humans are respectful and act as responsible vicegerents. What ecotheologians and other scholars have demonstrated in the traditions of Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam is the strength of older doctrines that must be rediscovered and reclaimed by adherents, as well as misunderstood doctrines being analysed and rejected. These major themes in ecotheology are often surprising but, more so, it is uplifting to realize that modern people of faith have tremendous tools with which to battle ecological destruction. In some cases, such as the Sabbath year practice, the ancient and sacred ‘eco-ethic’ needs to be reclaimed and integrated into modern usage in order to create new ecological hermeneutics. In other cases, such as the Buddhist belief in the value of each being, the older doctrines are very much living practices. In these instances the practice needs to be acknowledged as ecological and valuable as an important part of a larger religious practice. Consequently, the practices become ecological hermeneutics for blue theology. As ecotheology asserts that the whole world is important and loved by God, blue theology identifies water as important and loved by God, both for its intrinsic value and also for its instrumental value to all creatures and ecological systems on earth. Blue theology finds that water is precious to God, and therefore precious to faith communities and should be protected and conserved by human beings. The fact that there are multiple approaches to ecotheology speaks to the mature and sophisticated nature of ecotheology as a theological discipline. As such, ecotheology is asking more complex questions all the time and is refining its analysis and response to the central question: what is the relationship between humanity and the created world in light of God’s love of the whole of creation? Because there are so many forms of ecotheology, ranging from liberal to conservative, and from highly academic to exceedingly popular, many more people are able to engage in the conversation than if ecotheology were more centralized, and therefore, ecotheology has a more wide-ranging influence and potential to effect real change. Blue theology, as a derivative field of ecotheology, gains a great deal of sophistication and experience from ecotheology. Blue theology does not attempt to supersede ecotheology but is another theological consciousness that emerges from an investigation into the question: how do we tread lightly upon the earth once we have come to realize God wishes us to? By reviewing the background and major themes of ecotheology, it is possible to see how influential this discourse and praxis can be for an emerging blue theology. Ecotheology has significant strengths to offer to blue theology, in particular, the understanding that ecotheology can be an ideal place for initiating change.

Influence of feminist theology Feminist theology and liberation theology developed in the 1960s. Feminist theology arose as women began entering seminaries and divinity schools in greater numbers, as

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margaret h. ferris well as from cross-pollination from the emerging women’s movement. A major focus of feminist theology has been a recognition of the marginalization of women within religious traditions, particularly the analysis of traditional theological formulations. Feminist theological scholars have done much to reverse the patriarchal nature of traditional theological formulas, such as the maleness of God found in Christianity and the predominance of male leadership in Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Significant to this chapter is the discovery by feminist theologians that women are marginalized in ways that are similar to nature’s marginalization. Hence, the oppression of women is interconnected with the oppression and exploitation of nature. In addition, feminist theology has also been a leading voice for solidarity with women of the developing world. Feminist theology recognizes that women from the developed world, often well educated and highly privileged, may easily overlook the issues of poor women in the developed and developing worlds, and, even with good intentions, universalizing their own circumstances of oppression and their ensuing political agenda to ‘all women’, effectively marginalize and silence poorer women. Thus, feminist theology rejects any new formulations of theology that do not critique the asymmetrical economic and political relationships between the developed and developing worlds. Next, feminist theology recognizes the two-fold connection between women and economics: women are disempowered by being traditionally poorer than men and, to have real change occur, women must change economic models that systematically marginalize women. Women remain voiceless in many societies and women’s issues continue to be downplayed and are often ignored, mainly because in much of the world women lack economic power. Similarly, feminist scholars and activists have realized that systematic oppression is institutionalized in seemingly constructive institutions, such as the World Bank. Calling for the restructuring of international agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund is a vehicle to deconstructing negative social and ecological systems and is a significant way for women to become engaged in reversing oppression, in particular the oppression of poor women and women of colour. Many women have seen that engaged activism is crucial to reversing any oppression and claiming both social and environmental justice (see Rayan 1994; Shiva 1988). There are several significant lessons feminist theology imparts to blue theology. To begin with, blue theology recognizes that nature has been feminized so that it is made into an object and stripped of any authority. If nature is merely an object without any agency or integrity, it is all the easier to discount, to exploit and to abuse. Consequently, blue theology sees that reclaiming nature’s intrinsic value and rejecting any marginalization are important first steps to ecological healing and advocacy. Secondly, blue theology has learned the importance of the solidarity among oppressed peoples against the privileging of one group above others. In other words, blue theology knows that arguments about what group is more oppressed or if nature is more important to defend are divisive and are ultimately unproductive. As humans and non-humans alike are interconnected and hierarchies of marginalization lead to inaction, blue theology refuses to state that it is more or less important than other theologies of liberation.

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sister water Thirdly, blue theology has learned that economic analysis is a crucial component of its overall ecological analysis. Capitalism has been an enormous engine of ecological destruction. It is very useful to understand why capitalism has become a juggernaut and also ways that capitalism can be redirected. Blue theology is not opposed to capitalism, as such, but it is critical of unquestioning acceptance of capitalism as the only vehicle of economic activity.7 Blue theology is especially critical of the newest form of capitalism, interest-based capitalism, which does not make money from producing goods and services but rather by lending money at aggressive rates of interest. By acknowledging and analysing the goals and pitfalls of capitalism, blue theology better understands how water is constantly threatened by development, and how sustainable development might better serve the world and all the creatures that call it home.

Influence of liberation theology Liberation theology arose in Peru in the late 1960s and spread quickly throughout the Americas, emerging as a highly influential theological movement. Liberation theology examines the relationship between the poor and Jesus Christ. Through exegesis of the New Testament, liberation theologians discerned that Christ had a special relationship with the poor, as well as with the sick, the marginalized and children.8 Liberation theologians have declared that all theology must begin with a ‘view from below’, that is, by taking into account the suffering of the poor. In addition, liberation theology teaches that theology cannot be divorced from political action. As José Miguéz Bonino succinctly wrote, ‘Theology has to stop explaining the world, and start transforming it’ (McGrath 1994: 117). Thus, liberation theology is a decidedly different way of doing theology than methods prior to the 1960s. It consciously aligns itself with the politically and economically disenfranchised and acts as advocate for them. It is critical of institutions of power and economic systems that institutionalize poverty, and it demands political action as a normative component of Christian religious practice. Like feminist theology, liberation theology is a rich, complex and mature field, and my summary of its teachings are very cursory. What is germane to this chapter is the identification of the connection between the oppression of the poor and the exploitation of the earth. What is especially crucial is the realization that the poor often suffer first when ecosystems and watersheds are exploited. In addition, the connection between

7. Both Buddhism and Islam have important contributions to the critique of mercantilism and interestbased capitalism. 8. It is to be noted that Christianity is not the only religion that gives special attention to the poor, or demands that the believer take care to protect and support the poor. Judaism, Buddhism and Islam each mandate protecting and assisting the poor. What is instructive about liberation theology is that it locates the presence of the divine as living among the poor, and the connection between environmental racism and the doctrine of preferential option for the poor. As ecotheology matures as a field in the theological fields of each of the world’s religions, more work on the poor and ecology will emerge.

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margaret h. ferris the poor and pollution has resonance worldwide. Poor communities are generally politically weak, and as such are chosen by political leaders as convenient locations for polluting industries and the dumping of toxic waste, a practice referred to as environmental racism (see Hallman 1994). As Scharper writes, ‘Overall, liberation theology demonstrates dynamically that ecological concerns run along the fault lines of society – economic disparity, political oppression, systemic racism’ (Scharper 1997: 183). Liberation theology’s doctrine of solidarity with the poor has many fitting lessons to offer blue theology. First, liberation theology has undeniably demonstrated through its exegesis of Christian scriptures and through examination of Christian tradition that God is not neutral but takes the side of the poor against the rich and powerful, such that it is the responsibility of a Christian to work towards protecting the poor. In addition, liberation theology has shown the connection between praxis and reflection: that action is demanded, and sometimes may be demanded prior to reflection. Liberation theology does not advocate blind action nor reactive action, but that action is as important as reflection and must be ongoing and effective. Blue theology adopts this view of praxis as the duty of the religious person and the religious community. Each must be engaged in ongoing praxis that works towards dismantling oppressive systems while also using reflection to examine the worthiness of the action. Such a view is a challenge to many people’s understanding of what a church is for and how a religious person is to act (for example, many people assume that to be religious is to retreat from the material world). But blue theology advocates action because it is an engaged theology of liberation. Process theologian John B. Cobb has spoken to this issue many times and has continued to declare that theologies are the very place where modern issues are discerned and confronted. Cobb writes: ‘Healthy Christian theology is always written in view of the real situation of the time, whether the issues it addresses are social, cultural, or more purely intellectual’ (1990: 268). While liberation theology is decidedly Christian, its lessons translate well to other religions. The poor are a community that has a special status – a protected population - and it is the responsibility of the larger community to step forward and offer protection. Buddhism, Islam and Judaism each have traditions of protecting the poor as part of their central religious practices. According to Islamic scholar Richard Foltz, poverty is an especially pressing issue for Islam. He writes that the poor are the first to suffer from environmental destruction and, because ‘a disproportionate percentage of the world’s poor’ are Muslim, religious leaders and scholars from the Muslim world are especially concerned with the connection between poverty, ecology and justice (Foltz 2003: xxxix).

Core hermeneutical principles of blue theology As outlined above, there are multiple ways in which to engage in ecotheology. Blue theology is similar. One might come to blue theology from a traditional and conservative religious background and find a concern for waters out of the divine’s love for

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sister water water or a deep respect for water’s holiness. In contrast, one might find that water provides a deeply spiritual experience outside formal religious settings and, from such encounters, seek to fashion ways to conserve and protect water. Regardless of one’s starting-point, once the need for conservation of the world’s waters is recognized, there is a corresponding desire to engage in activism. Yet, prior to embarking on an activist pathway, it is fruitful to engage in analysis and appreciation through the matrix of blue theology. Ecological work is quickly overwhelming, and issues of water conservation are especially so as water scarcity is very complex and global in scope, as is the pervasiveness of water pollution. Often, it feels that there will never be enough capital, international cooperation, or political will to genuinely reverse either scarcity or pollution. Each person engaged in the work of conserving and protecting water will be confronted with the enormity of the task and the likelihood that their contribution will do little to change the problem. It is essential to have tools with which to counter the sense of being overwhelmed and outnumbered. Through the work of blue theology, it is possible to deconstruct and systematize the religious reasons why we need to conserve water, and to identify the sources of authorities that speak to the individual or to the larger community. Blue theology is an excellent means to address the questions regarding the role of activists, especially why activism is important and how one engages ethically and effectively in activism, because blue theology sees itself as a practical theology. Hence, blue theology always enquires: what is the role of the activist in creating change; by whose authority does the activist demand change; and what does one do in the face of seeming inevitable shortfall of the goal? Blue theology offers many new tools, unavailable in other disciplines, that reveal unarticulated religious and cultural assumptions, dismantles dysfunctional models of being, and crafts novel solutions that may lead to more conservation and protection of water.

Adopted core principles Blue theology depends on many older theologies and adopts several ecological hermeneutics, or core principles, from each of them, such as de-anthropocentrism and solidarity with women and the poor. First, the relationship between God, humanity and the non-human world must become less anthropocentric. Many Western ecotheologians and ecofeminists have suggested different models for a new anthropology, such as ‘steward of creation’ and ‘caretaker of creation’, yet these models do not truly rise above anthropocentrism as they continue to place humans in a position of special authority above the rest of creation. Several ecotheologians have argued that models based in anthropocentrism are mistaken and lead to further ecological exploitation. Many scholars have suggested models that recognize humans as just one group of creatures alongside others. An appropriate and accurate model is difficult to develop due to humanity’s unique ability to manipulate and exploit other creatures and harness natural resources. It is nonetheless very valuable to create models that de-emphasize humans and emphasize the world as the home of all creatures.

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margaret h. ferris In contrast, Buddhist ecotheologians have developed a more productive model: that of a non-anthropocentric worldview. Buddhism recognizes the unity of all life through the concept of Buddha-nature and, according to Buddhist scholar Lewis Lancaster, Buddha-nature is present in all entities, both sentient and insentient. Lancaster states: ‘Therefore, one’s mind, which has Buddha-nature as its essence, shares a common aspect with every part of insentient nature, which also possess this same Buddha-nature’ (1997: 13). What is an especially powerful contribution by Buddhism is the idea of the unity of all Buddha-natures. While differentiated in each entity, the Buddha-nature is a shared nature, across the created world; indeed, some Buddhists believe that mountains and oceans have a Buddha-nature (Williams 1997: 35–7). It is this contribution of radical interrelatedness, a powerfully provocative concept, that challenges Western anthropocentric models. However, it must be acknowledged that while the concept of Buddha-nature is a powerful one for deconstructing the anthropocentric model, some might argue it could have limited applicability in the West. This is due to the very different understanding of ontology. In the West, Western theology is still largely in agreement that individuals have souls that are not unified in the manner that Buddhism maintains. Instead, Steven Scharper (1997) suggests that the process theology model of ‘person-in-community’, originally put forward by Cobb, is much more constructive. This model defines humans as one among others in the world and therefore comes the closest to a truly de-anthropocentric model by avoiding a hierarchy of humans over non-human animals. Further, Cobb’s model recognizes that humans interact with the rest of the world as both individuals and as collectives and this lends a more nuanced understanding of how humanity interrelates with the non-human world. His model is also based on an ontological understanding of human consciousness that is radically dynamic.9 Blue theology embraces Cobb’s model because it is most effective in re-imagining the world as de-anthropocentric. In addition, Buddhist and Islamic ecotheologies offer provocative insights for other directions blue theology might take. In Buddhism, the concept of the unity of all beings points to a way of imagining a world in which humans are one of a cacophony of sentient and non-sentient beings. By defying the humanity as one being among many, humans begin to recede into a larger picture of the natural world. Hence, drilling for oil off-shore would not be assumed to be in a wilderness (i.e. devoid of life) but understood as occurring beside other life forms, each of which will be impacted on by the act of drilling. That humans need energy to fuel our economic life and future economic development would then be seen alongside the needs of other

9. Cobb is a Process theologian. Process theology is based on the philosophical work of Alfred North Whitehead, who suggested that the human being is not merely matter and spirit but is also a collective of events over time. Each individual is affected by interactions with other people and temporal events, such that humans, and larger human societies, are in constant states of processes of becoming. This unusual and intricate new way of comprehending human ontology allows for novel and radical ways of understanding human behaviour and human societies.

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sister water species, rather than occurring as if there were no other creatures on the planet. Islam offers a decidedly different but equally provocative worldview. In Islam, the supremacy of Allah is emphasized, as outlined above. This emphasis creates a worldview of all creatures alongside one another as subjects under the canopy of Allah’s sovereignty. Humans are not seen as supreme, but rather vicegerents, which is a position of responsibility and not of whimsy or fulfillment of desires. Hence, pollution of waterways is understood to be inflicting the consequences of human activity on fellow subjects of Allah’s dominion. In Islam, animals are not considered to be peers of humans, but nevertheless their inherent value is very clear from the Qur’anic sources and the Hadiths. In addition to the adopted core principle of a new anthropology, blue theology has adopted the principle of solidarity. Blue theology must be firmly in solidarity with oppressed people and the poor. Furthermore, it recognizes the connection between abuse of water, the abuse of nature and oppressed peoples. The insight of ecofeminist theology has demonstrated that the oppression of women and people of colour is connected to the abuse of, even violence against, the natural world. Liberation theology has taught that a theology that does not put itself on the side of the poor is bankrupt, and therefore blue theology adheres to this position, acknowledging that theologies that ignore the plight of the natural created world are intrinsically bankrupt. Hence, blue theology understands itself to be intended to protect the poor and the oppressed as well as nature. Scharper maintains that ‘any theological response to the environment that does not address systematic poverty and oppression of the majority of the world’s people is inherently flawed’ (1987: 581). Taking these two theological movements as models, blue theology knows the world to be intimately interrelated; all creatures and plants are connected to one another in a web of life. Sustainable, equitable and safe water is essential to that web of life. Further, the entirety of the natural created world, including all of its waters, is beloved by God. People of faith today are called forward to recognize this new world ontology, and to love the entire world as God loves it.

Core principles of blue theology Blue theology also has core principles of its own: radically engaged praxis and religious pluralism. Blue theology is a radically engaged theology. By radically engaged theology, I am attempting to call attention to how dynamic an activity engaged praxis is. In addition, I also emphasize that, in blue theology, praxis is both appropriately a central part of one’s secular and religious life as well as being a never ceasing activity. Ecotheology must be implemented both from above and from below, through initiatives large and small, to make an impact on how people think, act and worship. To agree intellectually with ecotheology is not enough; it must move us to redirect our behaviour in new, positive directions. As individuals are transformed from their own engaged praxis, the larger communities to which they belong (such as educational institutions, corporations and governments) are necessarily affected and will consequently be changed from within and will in turn become instruments of change them-

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margaret h. ferris selves. In light of this knowledge, religious communities in the US and further afield, such as churches and mosques, are developing conservation programmes, educational outreach and liturgies that are expressions of faith in ecotheology or blue theology. This is true of small and large churches, denominational organizations and interfaith organizations. According to Cobb, ‘we have done much too little to consider the social and economic structures that lead to the continuing degradation of the planet and to move from such analysis to proposals for changed directions’ (2000: 510). In addition, blue theology must also be consciously ecumenical and inter-religious. Faith communities should reach out not only to other dominations, but also to faith communities from other religions as well as atheist and secular communities. Likewise, blue theology encourages regular, ongoing dialogue between academics working in the study of religion and the practitioner of religion, as each group can learn from the other. As blue theology speaks to a wider audience, it must self-consciously embrace other religious beliefs as having integrity and authority. This is not to say that blue theology should be nebulous or attempt to be all things to all believers. It is impossible to ignore that, as a theology, it has a specific context and a subjectivity. As Christian Realist Reinhold Niebuhr famously asserted, all theologies are inherently limited and imperfect. Blue theology accepts this principle and works to recognize its own limitations, and to be open to other theological and non-theological responses to the ecological crisis. As blue theology works to be respectful of all the religious expressions that it encounters, it becomes a voice for change in the public debate over the ecological crisis; it must navigate the difficult channel of being consciously an expression of faith to the greater world while at the same time not negating other expressions of faith or doubt. Indeed, such a task might be viewed as an opportunity. Islamic scholar Ibrahim Ozdemir supports the move to interfaith eco-dialogue and comments: What is more surprising is that the global character of our environmental problems has encouraged the members of diverse world religions to cooperate with each other, to see the problems in a real context. To put it differently, this new understanding brings members of different faiths and traditions to a new frontier and paves the way for a dialogue between them that has never before been experienced in human history. (2003: 4) If blue theology can successfully create inter-religious dialogue, only then will it be given a hearing by non-Christian communities and traditional, secular environmental activists.

Blue theology in praxis Blue theology is consciously a practical theology, so it is valuable to look at examples of communities putting blue theology into praxis. Already in the US, there are two active communities engaged in a blue theology praxis: Pilgrim Place and WaterSpirit.

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sister water Pilgrim Place is a community of retired church professionals who are largely from Protestant denominations.10 Located in semi-arid Southern California, Pilgrim Place is a 33 acre campus of mainly bungalow homes, with one assisted living facility and one full-care skilled nursing facility. In 2000, the community launched a conservation project dedicated to reducing their water consumption (Ferris 2005). The project was initiated in response to a lecture given by Cobb, a long-time resident and a pioneer ecotheolgian. Cobb asked the Pilgrim Place community if their energy and water practices were in concert with their Christian values. In his lecture (2001), Cobb stated, ‘Very few communities and institutions consciously shape themselves for the benefit of the Earth. Yet many of the changes that are needed can only be made by collective action based on shared reflection’. The members of the Pilgrim Place community view themselves as stewards of the environment. They perceived how they lived in their homes as an expression of their role as stewards, especially as Pilgrim Place is located just below the ecologically sensitive chaparral hills of the Angeles National Forest. Cobb encouraged the community to find ways to express their faith in God as loving all of creation though a programme of conservation. In response, the community challenged itself to a dramatic conservation target: to conserve 50 per cent of the water used by the community within five years. Even though the community found the prospect of integrating ecotheology into the lives at Pilgrim Place somewhat daunting, they embraced what they perceived to be their Christian responsibility to be stewards. The goal was accomplished through a three-fold campaign. First, a conservation project team worked on educating all residents and staff about ecotheology and water conservation via public and community-wide education programmes. The community enlisted experts from the local water agencies, landscape architect firms and nearby Harvey Mudd College. Secondly, the community retrofitted all residential toilets on the campus with dual-flush ultra-low-flow toilets, which use 1.6 gallons or less per flush.11 They also retrofitted showerheads and faucet fixtures with lowflow fixtures. Thirdly, the community worked on landscape irrigation and plantings. Selected common gardens, lawns and borders areas were relandscaped with drought-tolerant plantings and the irrigation systems were updated. Some residents also relandscaped their own gardens and updated irrigation systems with timers and micro-irrigation systems. Through its three-fold strategy, the community successfully decreased its water consumption by 50 per cent in four years, one year ahead of schedule. What is notable about Pilgrim Place’s conservation project is that it was launched from an ecological concern for water rather than an economic impetus. The residents responded to the theological question: how may I tread lightly on the earth so as to best protect and conserve God’s creation? Indeed, the residents of Pilgrim Place see

10. The community requires its members to have had 20 years of ‘professional service to a church’. The community strives to be non-denominational. 11. Local water agencies provided ‘at cost’ low-flow showerheads and dual-flush ultra-low-flow toilets, speeding the progress of the project.

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margaret h. ferris their conservation project as a theological praxis, not merely as a successful project that saves the community money and does good work. Moreover, they continue to challenge themselves to further reduce their impact on the water of Southern California through new projects, such as retrofitting the assisted living and the nursing unit’s central laundry facilities. Pilgrim Place is an excellent model for other faith communities, showing how conviction can be harnessed and channelled into major changes.12 Similarly, WaterSpirit is a non-profit organization in New Jersey run by the Congregation of the Sisters of St Joseph of Peace (CSJP). An international Catholic religious order, the CSJP has long committed itself to working for peace through social justice. The Sisters see themselves as having a special relationship to water, owing to many of the religious living on or near bodies of water, such as Lake Washington, Bellevue, WA and the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in Elberon, New Jersey (Ferris 2007). In 2002, during an assembly of the entire congregation of the order called ‘Living Water’, the Sisters produced a covenant document that affirms their commitment to focus particularly on water: As peacemakers, we value Earth as our teacher. In our ongoing efforts for the environment, we identify our entry point as the ethics, economics and politics of water. Focus on water leads us to concern for land and air as well. We commit ourselves to prayer, education, direct action and advocacy on behalf of water. (Golas 2002: 2) Organized in 1997, WaterSpirit grew out of the emerging environmental consciousness of the Sisters. WaterSpirit is an organization dedicated to the belief that water is a special part of God’s creation and needs protection from pollution and over-exploitation. Indeed, water is more than a gift from God, it is sacred. For the Sisters, protecting and conserving water – through their ministry of education, advocacy and ritual celebration – is a theological act. WaterSpirit has two primary activities: education and ritual celebration. Education is primarily done through workshops with schools, environmental groups, civic and church organizations, and senior citizen groups that integrate educational programming with prayer, reflection and ritual. The staff have produced programmes that endeavour to create a sense of relatedness to ‘the sacredness of creation’, while at the same time responding to the current ecological challenges, especially those of water. In addition, the community conducts several public ritual celebrations throughout the year that mark the changing seasons, as well as events in the ecclesiastic calendar. These celebrations are intended for contemplation of commitment to the mission of education and conservation as well as revitalization of the participants’ commitment to an awareness of water as sacred and precious. 12. Pilgrim Place residents are members of several congregations, both Catholic and Protestant, as well as a wide range of national and local task forces, and are involved in local city government. Such cross-fertilization adds to the overall impact of Pilgrim Place’s conservation programme.

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sister water Pilgrim Place and WaterSpirit represent a small portion of religious communities that are mindfully working to protect and conserve water as an expression of their religious principles. The power of such communities, especially to raise and change consciousness and advocate water conservation, is largely untapped and potentially enormously effective.

A means towards actions Blue theology is a new branch of ecotheology that is emerging as a leading voice for conservation of all the world’s waters. Water issues are greatly varied and complex. Blue theology will introduce many Westerners to the crisis of water shortages both domestically and internationally. Likewise, blue theology will create literacy regarding the multiple ways in which human communities pollute water systems. It also offers new methodologies of reunderstanding water’s spiritual significance, through the models offered by ecotheology, liberation theology and feminist theology. Finally, blue theology offers a means toward actions to protect the aquatic environment. It assumes that engaged praxis is an essential part of its doctrine and affirms that a theological voice has an important role within the pubic conversation about environmentalism. It is the theologians’ duty to find and enact blue theological responses.

Bibliography Ariarajah, S. W. 1982. ‘The Water of Life. Ecumenical Review 34(3): 271–9. Campbell, M. 1990. ‘Symbol and Reality: Water, Life, Death, and Christian Baptism’. Dialogue & Alliance 4(1): 48–60. Cobb, J. B., Jr. 1990. ‘The Role of Theology of Nature in the Church’. In Liberating Life: Contemporary Approaches to Ecological Theology, eds W. Eakin Birch & J. B. McDaniel, 261–72. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Cobb, J. B., Jr. 2000. ‘Christianity, Economics, and Ecology’. In Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well-Being of Earth and Humans, eds D. Hessel & R. R. Ruether, 497–511. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cobb, J. B., Jr. 2001. ‘Ecology/Concerns: Becoming a Part of the Solution’. Lecture, Claremont, CA, 28 February 2001. de Moor, A. & P. Calamai. 1997. ‘Subsidizing Unsustainable Development: Undermining the Earth with Public Funds’. San José, Costa Rica: Institute for Research on Public Expenditure (IRPE), commissioned by the Earth Council. Ferris, M. H. 2005. ‘Pilgrim Place, Claremont, California: A Case Study of Water as Sacred and Valued’. In WECSOR 2005: The Annual Conference of the American Academy of Religion, the American Schools of Oriental Research, and the Society for Biblical Literature. Phoenix, Arizona, 2005. Ferris, M. H. 2007. Telephone interview with Suzanne Golas, CSJP, 15 February 2007, Seattle, WA. Foltz, R. 2003. ‘Introduction’. In Foltz et al. (2003), xxxvii–xliii. Foltz, R., F. M. Denny & A. Baharuddin, eds. 2003. Cambridge, MA: Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School/Harvard University Press. Gleick, P. H.1998. The World’s Water, 1998–1999: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources. Washington, DC: Island Press.

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margaret h. ferris Gleick, P. H. 1999. ‘The Human Right to Water’. Water Policy 1(5): 457–550. Gleick, P. H., G. Wolff, E. L. Chalecki & R. Reyes. 2002. The New Economy of Water: The Risks and Benefits of Globalization and Privatization of Fresh Water. Oakland, CA: Pacific Institute. Golas, S., CSJP. 2002. ‘Living Water’. WaterSpirit (December): 1–4. Gordis, R. 1986. Judaic Ethics for a Lawless World. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Hallman, D. G. 1994. Ecotheology: Voices from South and North. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Haq, S. N. 2003. ‘Islam and Ecology: Toward Retrieval and Reconstructon’. In Foltz et al. (2003), 121–54. Izzi Dien, M. 2003. ‘Islam and the Environment: Theory and Practice’. In Foltz et al. (2003), 107–20. Lancaster, L. 1997. ‘Buddhism and Ecology: Collective Cultural Perceptions’. In Tucker & Williams (1997), 3–20. McGrath, A. E. 1994. Christian Theology: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Oeschlaeger, M. 1994. Caring for Creation: An Ecumenical Approach to the Environmental Crisis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ozdemir, I. 2003. ‘Toward an Understanding of Environmental Ethics from a Qur’anic Perspective’. In Foltz et al. (2003), 3–37. Rayan, S. 1994. ‘Theological Perspectives on the Environmental Crisis’. In Frontiers in Asian Christian Theology: Emerging Trends, ed. R.S. Sugirtharajah, 221–35. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Rockefeller, S. 1997. ‘Buddhism, Global Ethics, and the Earth Charter’. In Tucker & Williams (1997), 313–24. Scharper, S. B. 1987. ‘Ecotheology’. In Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. M. Eliade. New York: Macmillan. Scharper, S. B. 1997. Redeeming the Time: A Political Theology of the Environment. New York: Continuum. Shiva, V. 1988. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. London: Zed Books. Stauffer, J. 1999. The Water Crisis: Constructing Solutions to Freshwater Pollution. Montreal: Black Rose Books. Tucker, M. E. & D. R. Williams, eds. 1997. Buddhism and Ecology: The Interconnection of Dharma and Deeds. Cambridge, MA: Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School/Harvard University Press. United Nations. 2005. ‘The UN Millennium Development Goals 2005’. United Nations, www.un.org/ millenniumgoals/ (accessed Jan. 2008). Watkins, K. et al. 2006. Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis. New York: United Nations Development Programme. http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2006/ (accessed Jan. 2008). White, L. Jr. 1967. ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’. Science 155(3767): 1203–7. Williams, D. R. 1997. ‘Introduction’. In Tucker & Williams (1997), xxxv–xlii. World Health Organization (WHO). 2003. The Right to Water. Geneva: WHO.

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12 Sea spirituality, surfing and aquatic nature religion Bron Taylor

Introduction Water is an important physical and conceptual resource in religion, which should be unsurprising, for only air is more critical to life. Water may be perceived as sacred or defiled and, whether pristine or polluted, the places where it is accessed are often considered sacred. Pilgrimages to such places, and practices undertaken there, are often religiously meaningful and sometimes obligatory. Water is a powerful substance that can and has been used in different ways by people trying to make meaning of their experiences (Rudhardt 2005). It can be a source of wisdom or mysterious, cathartic power; or conversely, a force in opposition to divine purposes and in need of subjugation (ibid.; see also Tvedt and Oestigaard 2006). Yet despite the often central role of water in religious life, there has been little scholarly attention to the sea in religious perception and practice, even though today over half of the world’s population lives within 200 kilometres of the sea and two-thirds within 400 kilometres. This volume represents an effort to rectify this inattention as it asks: what does the sea, and water more generally, have to do with spirituality? The short answer is that sea-spirituality is an important, global, form of nature religion; specifically, one that I consider to be a form of ‘aquatic nature religion’.1 Put simply, participants in nature religions understand nature to be sacred and believe that facilitating human connections to nature is the most important aspect of their chosen practice. With aquatic nature religions water is especially venerated or

1. I first used this expression when orchestrating presentations exploring water-related outdoor pursuits with a distinctly religious dimension; these were published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (see Taylor 2007b,c; Snyder 2007; Sanford 2007). My contribution to this volume incorporates parts of these articles but includes additional material.

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bron taylor consecrated in some way: an especially important and indispensable ingredient in the perceptions and practices of the participants. Of course, determining what counts as religion, let alone aquatic nature religion, can be confusing: there is no consensus about what the word religion means; some scholars abjure the term because the way it has been construed has injured colonized and marginalized peoples; and there is no consensus as to which if any characteristics are essential or universal in religious phenomena. So is religion a useful term in the first place? One effort to bring order out of such chaos can be found in the entry defining religion in the HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion (Smith and Green 1995), which echoed E. B. Tylor’s famous (1871) definition by insisting that ‘an adequate definition’ must understand religion as ‘a system of beliefs and practices that are relative to superhuman beings’ (ibid.: 893). But scholars exploring what they call ‘implicit religion’ (Bailey 1997), on the one hand, and others who analyse what they call ‘lived religion’, on the other hand, question such traditional premises regarding what counts as religion, and what counts in religion. As Robert Orsi put it in an important introduction to a collection of essays collected under the neologism ‘lived religion’: ‘to study lived religion entails a fundamental rethinking of what religion is and what it means to be “religious.” Religion is not only sui generis, distinct from other dimensions of experience called “profane.” Religion comes into being in an ongoing, dynamic relationship with the realities of everyday life’ (1997: 7). Orsi and the ‘lived religion’ school have sought to break down ‘the dualism of matter and religion, sacred and profane … and [develop] … a more dynamic integration of religion and experience’ (ibid.: 8). Such study urges attentiveness to the practices of everyday life, and the meanings people attach to them, which are often revealed and expressed verbally with religion-related terminology. Such study opens up the question of what it means to go to the beach, or why people invented aphorisms such as ‘Life’s a beach!’ Joseph Price observed that participants in many outdoor activities, including water sports, use language to describe their experiences that ‘frequently becomes poetic and invokes religious metaphors’ (1996: 417) and can express ‘a sense of wonder, awe, wholeness, harmony, ecstasy, transcendence, and solitude’ (ibid.: 415).2 Meanwhile, a growing number of scholars have noted the contemporary preference for the term ‘spirituality’ rather than ‘religion’ when people speak about what is most inspiring, meaningful and fulfilling to them (Van Ness 1992, 1996; Roof 1993; Helminiak 1996; King 1996; Zinnbauer et al. 1997; Fuller 2001; Kellert and Farnham 2002; Heelas and Woodhead 2005; Schmidt 2005). These observers note that, generally speaking, those who prefer the term ‘spirituality’ contrast it favourably to ‘religion’, and view the former as something that is more oriented to the individual’s personal experience, growth and connections to higher powers or forces than are more organized and institutionally grounded religions. Those preferring 2. For nature spirituality and other forms of nature-related recreation, see Johnson (2005) and Stuckrad (2005).

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sea spirituality, surfing and aquatic nature religion the term ‘spirituality’ are also more likely than those engaged in ‘religion’ to understand the sacred as immanent, rather than beyond this world somehow as in traditional theism. Increasingly, spiritualities have assumed an environmentalist ethos, and they seem to have a lot in common with what Price found among those engaged in nature-related recreation. In previous studies, exploring the venues where nature-focused and outdoor spirituality seekers find inspiration, I found a wide variety of groups and individuals who seem to be involved in nature religion (Taylor 1995, 2001a,b, 2004, 2005a,b,c; Taylor and Zimmerman 2005; Taylor and Van Horn 2006; Taylor and Witt 2006).3 Such religion strongly tends to involve two, closely-related dimensions: • a perception that nature is sacred and worthy of reverent care, and that damaging it is an unethical and desecrating act; and • feelings of belonging and connection to the earth – of being bound to and dependent on the earth’s living systems. Such feelings and perceptions are closely connected to beliefs in which the purpose of life is understood to foster positive transformation, wellbeing and healing, for the individual person as well as for society and the natural world. With the above understandings and studies in mind, a few years ago I began to think about the religiosity of surfing subcultures. I found in them, and among some of their participants, many of the same characteristics present in other groups that I had earlier concluded were nature religions. As I turned my attention to such subcultures, the value of analysing the practices of surfers and others involved in ocean-related activities became clearer. This enquiry strongly suggested that some such practitioners should not be considered secular, and even called into question whether I should consider myself secular or spiritual.4 It called for me to examine more deeply my own experiences and what was then, and remains, my own primary subculture.

3. Without disagreeing with Catherine Albanese’s definition and use of the term ‘nature religion’, which has its own heuristic value, I have found it useful to focus my work on a narrower band of religiosity than she generally has (Albanese 1990, 2002). Her definitions and analyses do not require that subjects perceive the sacred in nature or use religious terminology explicitly focused on it. For extended analysis of the term ‘nature religion’ and the putative differences between nature-related ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’. see especially Taylor (2001a,b, 2005c). 4. My approach has affinity with Benson Saler’s in Conceptualizing Religion, who argued that ‘The power of religion as an analytical category … depends on its instrumental value in facilitating the formulation of interesting statements about human beings’ (1993: 68). With Saler I think that when analysing phenomena in the borderland between what some will consider ‘religion’ while others will not – how we understand the term and delineate the beliefs and practices to which it refers is not the most critical thing – the important thing is to understand more about people, their perceptions, motivations and actions. For further discussion see Taylor (2007a).

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‘Soul surfing’ as aquatic nature religion On a sunny November day in 1997 I was in San Diego, California, when a strong southern hemisphere swell was bringing good surf to the coast. I was soon chatting with a young woman at a surf shop, deciding which board to rent. When she learned I was formerly an ocean lifeguard from the region, then visiting from Wisconsin, she exclaimed, ‘Whoa, dude, no amount of money is worth living away from Mother Ocean’. The Hollywood motion picture Point Break is a campy thriller in which a band of surfers fund their global surf quest by robbing banks.5 Early in the film FBI Special Agent Johnny Utah went to buy a surfboard as the first step in his effort to penetrate the surfing ‘tribe’ and find the robbers. Utah explained to the teenager-clerk that he always wanted to learn to surf; the clerk replied, ‘I hope you stay with it. Surfing’s the source; it’ll change your life, I swear to God’. As anyone experienced with surfing cultures can attest, ‘Surfing isn’t easily categorized. It is based in sport, but can drift into art, vocation and avocation, even religion’ (Warshaw 1997: inside cover). As Brad Melekian mused in Surfer magazine, ‘Why can’t surfing be its own religion?’ (2005). For some, surfing is a religious experience, and it does not take long analysis of material surf culture or its associated rhetoric to see its spirituality-infused nature. As the sport has spread globally so has this form of aquatic nature religion. A book that I found in an Istanbul bookshop in June 2006, published in English by a German publisher, began with the claim that surfing: ‘has a spiritual aura that you only get once you’ve experienced it yourself. … It’s always a journey to the inner self. … [Surfing] never will lose its soul and spirit, because the magic that envelops you when surfing is far too powerful’ (Mackert 2005: 3). The ideas expressed in this statement – that there is a mysterious magic in surfing that can only be apprehended directly through the experience, that surfing fosters self-realization, that commercialization is a defiling act, that even such threats cannot obviate its spiritual power – have been expressed repeatedly, in various ways and venues, within surfing subcultures. This article springs forth from these sorts of perceptions. I argue that a significant part of the evolving, global, surfing world can be understood as a new religious movement in which sensual experiences constitute its sacred centre. These experiences, and the subcultures in which people reflect on them, foster understandings of nature as powerful, transformative, healing and even sacred. Such perceptions, in turn, often lead to environmental ethics and action in which Mother Nature is considered to be worthy of reverent care. Deep feelings of communion and kinship with the nonhuman animals they encounter while surfing, which sometimes take on an animistic ethos, can also lead surfers to concern and action on behalf of certain species and individual animals.

5. Point Break, dir. Kathryn Bigelow (20th Century Fox, 1991).

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sea spirituality, surfing and aquatic nature religion There are no firm data on the number of surfers globally,6 let alone an empirical study that quantifies the ways in which religion becomes intertwined with surfing. Individual surfers and surfing cultures are complicated and diverse, and surfers are sometimes nationalistic, sexist and violent (McGloin 2005). But here I focus on a subset of the surfing community that experiences the practice in spiritual terms, deriving meaning and important life-lessons from it, even understanding it as a religion in and of itself. These people sometimes call themselves ‘soul surfers’, a term invented and used in both the United States and Australia since the 1970s (McGloin 2005: 70–75). The Ultimate Guide to Surfing answers the question ‘What is soul surfing?’ by saying it is ‘a powerful, elemental activity’ that surfers indulge in ‘for the pure act of riding on a pulse of nature’s energy, and the contentment this instils in the heart’ and brings ‘magic that only comes from spending time on the moving canvas’ (Moriarity and Gallagher 2001: 73, 75). Explaining what this has to do with ‘soul’, Chris Gallagher added that the key is how the experience connects the surfer to nature, its energies and its wild creatures (ibid.: 77). It is easier to apprehend the religious dimensions of surfing if we deploy the lenses typically used when analysing religion, for example, scrutinizing sacred texts, myths, symbols, beliefs and practices (including ritualizing, ethics, both everyday, and related to life’s most critical challenges and transitional periods); religious terminology and technologies; people, animals, plants and places considered extraordinarily powerful or divine; and institutions and processes for transmitting and spreading religious knowledge. All such analyses can illuminate the religious dimensions of surfing.

Paradise and a myth of origins Among soul surfers there is no common story about the origins of the biosphere. There is, however, significant agreement regarding how surfing practice emerged, that it assumed a religious character, was suppressed for religious reasons, and has been undergoing a revival since the early twentieth century. Glenn Hening, who in 1984 founded the environmentalist Surfrider Foundation and assembled the team of surfer visionaries who would develop the organization, began during the late 1980s to explore the possibility that ancient Peruvians were the first surfers, basing his speculations on their art and architecture, about which he began to learn during a surfing trip (Hening and Taylor 2005: 1610–11). Ben Finney, a southern California ocean lifeguard and surfer turned anthropologist, later found some evidence for ancient Peruvian wave riding, which was eventually published in

6. Estimates of surfer numbers range from two million or more in the United States, and globally from a low of five million to a high of twenty-three million (Warshaw 2003: 605).

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bron taylor a co-authored book (Houston and Finney 1996). He speculated that Peruvians may have ridden waves using small reed-woven boats as early as 3000 BCE.7 Until these suppositions, a somewhat less speculative origin myth, based on extant documentary records, had gained currency within surfing cultures. This was then embellished in a way that turned history toward myth-making. The dominant narrative traced the origins of surfing to the putatively Edenic Polynesian cultures of the South Pacific. A good example of this narrative, but hardly the only one, was articulated by Drew Kampion, one of surfing’s most prolific chroniclers, in Stoked!: A History of Surf Culture (2003a).8 These oceanic cultures were at home in and at play with the forces and spirits of nature, according to this narrative. For a millennium these South Pacific cultures were engaged in prone wave-riding on small boards. The practice was highly ritualized, and this extended to standup board surfing, perhaps especially as it emerged in Hawai’i. Before trees were felled to construct boards, for example, the Kahuna placed a fish offering by the tree and prayers were said, and additional rites were performed at the board’s dedication (Kampion 2003a: 34; drawing on Houston and Finney 1996).9 In another typical recitation of surfing’s origin myth: As early as the second half of the 18th century, Hawaiians were masters of surfing, combined with a deep spiritual consciousness of water and nature … [But] this paradisical situation was suddenly transformed with the first landing of the white man on Hawaii in 1778 under the leadership of Captain James Cook. Metal, guns, cannons, uniforms, alcohol, sexually-transmitted diseases and a strange new religion led to the cultural implosion of the indigenous Hawaiian civilization. … With the destruction of the old civilization, the original surfing culture disappeared. (Mackert 2005: 8) The demise of the surf-focused culture in Hawai’i was accelerated by the arrival of European missionaries, beginning in 1820, many of whom sought to destroy what they considered to be the Pagan dimensions of Hawai’ian culture, including surfing, with its accompanying nakedness and casual sexuality. This dark period of cultural genocide and deterioration almost ended the sport, according to the surfing historians, and by the late nineteenth century surfing was rarely practised (Kampion 2003a: 30–36; Houston and Finney 1966; Young 1983; Colburn et al. 2002: esp. 82–100). Suddenly, however, after Jack London and other adventurers began to write about the practice in the late nineteenth century, a renaissance began, first in Hawai’i in the

7. For reflections on surfing history, see Finney (2002) and Craig Stecyk’s (2002a,b), who draws on Hening’s thesis about Peruvian wave riding. 8. On Eden’s continued cultural currency see Eisenberg (1998) and Merchant (2003). 9. The website of the Hawaiian Boarding Company (www.hawaiibc.com/surf.htm; accessed Jan. 2008) demonstrates that surfboard making, understood as a spiritual practice, has survived into the twentyfirst century.

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sea spirituality, surfing and aquatic nature religion early twentieth century, and soon in California. This revitalization was driven in part by George Freeth, the Irish-Hawaiian surfer lionized by Jack London in a 1907 magazine article on surfing in Hawai’i (Warshaw 2004: ix). But by most accounts, the most decisive figure in the revitalization and transmission of the sport was the charismatic, full-blooded Hawai’ian swimmer and surfer, Duke Kahanamoku. After swimming his way to an Olympic gold metal in 1912, Kahanamoku demonstrated surfing to enthusiastic crowds on both coasts of North America and then in Australia. According to Hening, ‘The Duke promoted surfing around the world, and modern surfers see him as the embodiment of an ethical spirituality that may be just this side of a religious belief system’ (in Hening and Taylor 2005: 1610). Hening, who founded the environmentalist Surfrider Foundation in 1984, and many other soul surfers, trace surfing’s ‘Aloha spirit’ to Kahanamoku.10 In the wake of Kahanamoku’s travels, the mainstream of surfing history continued, as a self-consciously ‘tribal’ surfer subculture evolved in California and Australia, eventually expanding to other continents. In this vein Kampion asserted: Surf culture has a rich history and a unique system of rituals, distinctive language elements, symbolic elements, a loose tribal hierarchy, and unique lifestyle characteristics that have been broadly imitated and emulated around the world. Even today, aspects of surf culture express fundamental and persisting Polynesian cultural values, which regarded surfing as noble, positive, and deeply imbued with spiritual meaning. (Kampion 2003a: 46) The ritualizing even included sacrifices (usually of real or model surfboards in bonfires) and prayers to call forth waves, which were loosely based on what was known or surmised about Polynesian and Hawai’ian rituals (Finney 2002: 87–8; cf. Fourlander 1916). Much of the extension of a Hawai’ian-flavoured surfing spirituality to California has been credited by surfing historians to Tom Blake (1902–94). Born in Northern Wisconsin, Blake met Duke Kahanamoku in a Michigan movie theatre lobby as an 18-year-old, and soon afterwards moved to Los Angeles to pursue the sport. He eventually revolutionized surfing by inventing lighter, hollow surfboards, and became deeply involved in both lifeguarding and surfing subcultures in California, Hawai’i and Florida, before returning to Wisconsin in 1967. Blake expressed reverence for the sea and a biocentric kinship ethics, which was the ground of his vegetarianism and belief in the equality of all peoples. At times, Blake put his faith simply: ‘Nature =

10. Among soul surfers, discussion of surfing’s Aloha spirit is sometimes accompanied by understandings of the word Aloha as originally having to do with one’s frontal presence and breath, and with the exchange of breath or spirit, and even the breath of life. For some surfers, and the native Hawai’ians they are inspired by and with whom they feel affinity, the expression of Aloha is indeed as much a spiritual blessing as a salutation or goodbye. According to Drew Kampion in Stoked!: A History of Surf Culture, ‘Aloha: Literally, alo means “experience” and ha means “breath of life”’ (2003a: 38). For a similar understanding, see Mackert (2005: 17).

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bron taylor God’ (Kampion 2003a: 46; Warshaw 2003: 67; Lynch and Gault-Williams 2001: 217, cf. 181–2). Blake’s spiritual message was not lost on soul surfers. For Kampion, Blake: enlivened the essential surfer’s philosophy of respect – for others, for history, for the power of nature. … He believed that it was all God. The intrinsic sustaining balance of the natural world is self-evident. It is something that is educated into each surfer. If you ride waves long enough and keep your eyes and heart open, you get it. (Kampion 2003b: 187) Kampion read accurately Blake’s spiritual epistemology, one that is expressed by many soul surfers, who believe the sacredness of nature will naturally occur to surfing’s open-hearted practitioners. Through such interpretations Blake became a patron saint to the devotees of the surfing cult, as did Kahanamoku. Certainly Kahanamoku and Blake were critically important to the understanding of surfing as a spiritual practice, a view that was dramatically fuelled by the gestalt changes in religion that began largely in the 1960s, which decisively transformed the West’s religious land and seascape.

Spiritual intensification and globalization It was during the 1960s that surfing’s spiritual revival intensified as it fused with new religious and political currents, blending anti-establishment and anti-hierarchal attitudes with holistic metaphysics often fuelled by psychedelic drugs, or inspired by religions originating in Asia and indigenous societies. Surfing became a part of a wider American turn toward nature religion (Taylor and Van Horn 2006). The influence of the psychedelic age was then and can still be discerned in surfing cultures. Surf films, and any number of graphics from surf magazines, surf-film posters, surf-music album covers, and designs on surfboards and other elements of surfing’s material culture illustrate the sport’s psychedelic dimension, especially those from the 1960s and 1970s.11 Perhaps the two most perennial themes in surf films, whatever differences may inhere to them, are surfing as an ecstatic and mystical experience, and the pursuit of perfect waves and paradisiacal surfing places. During the 1960s and 1970s, surf films were usually shown at civic auditoriums and fraternal clubs where great enthusiasm was often expressed, reminding surfers of the experiences they pursued as their personal quest. I have attended surf films in such venues, and it is easy to view these events as powerful ritual forms that produced and/or reinforced the perception that

11. For more details, see Taylor (2007c).

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sea spirituality, surfing and aquatic nature religion surfing induces liminal experiences, and reinforced participants’ ‘collective identity’, which is often expressed with the self-referential term ‘tribe’.12 In addition to reinforcing the ‘stoked’ feeling that surfing brings, surf films reprise the dream of Edenic return common within surfing cultures. To give one example, Morning of the Earth (1972) focused on surfing in Australian and Indonesian waters constructed as paradises. Its poster described the film as ‘a fantasy of surfers living in three unspoiled lands and playing in nature’s ocean’, while Surfer magazine’s review explained that the film was ‘about the Garden of Eden, plus waves, minus serpent’ (Warshaw 2005: 80–81). Almost every issue of the hundreds of surfing magazines has photographs or other graphics that reprise the Edenic theme, shows pristine beaches, waves and oceanloving communities. The accompanying articles normally feature pilgrimages to such places and often the pursuit of harmonious relationships with the people and habitats there. This idea, that surfing can put human follies and tragedies in perspective, is another common theme among soul surfers. In diverse ways, soul surfers articulate the peace and equanimity they find nowhere else than in the ocean.13 The film Five Summer Stories (1972, dir. G. MacGillivray), which in 1987 was selected by Surfer magazine as one of the three best surf films of all time (The Endless Summer topped the list), provides a cinematic example (Warshaw 2003: 203). It began with a stunning sequence in which the camera is enveloped in rolling surf, and an evolutionary cosmogony is invoked in which the creation is depicted as beginning in the sea. The narrator then suggested that through surfing people can ‘escape the confusion onshore’ (presumably including the antipathy that characterizes human societies) and find ‘peace of mind’.14 Like many in America and beyond during the 1960s and 1970s, some surfers drew directly on religions originating in Asia, which grew popular among those seeking alternatives to what they considered to be a materialistic and violent mass culture. Most famous among such surfers was Gerry Lopez, considered by many to have had the most elegant surfing style of all time, and one of the first who learned to ‘rip’ the Banzai Pipeline in Hawai’i. The image showing him sitting in Lotus position appeared and reappeared in surfing publications, beginning in 1968, as he became known for a ‘Zen-like’ equanimity in monster surf.15 Surfing great Tom Curren called his style ‘pure Zen’ (Warshaw 2003: 345). Reflecting on this era and his surfer friends of the

12. Victor Turner’s understanding of the centrality of ritual in fostering ‘liminal’ religious perception is pertinent to the analysis of surfing in general and its films in particular. For Turner, rituals offer ‘decisive keys to the understanding of how people think and feel about relationships and about the natural and social environments in which they operate’ (1969: 6). 13. Nancy M. Victorin-Vangerud (2003), drawing on Australian survey research by Bentley and Hughes (1998), demonstrates the deep connection to the sea and corresponding sense of peace most Australians derive from it. 14. For Rick Griffin’s Five Summer Stories poster, see Warshaw (2005: 76). 15. See also the 1968 photograph of board-shaping guru Richard Allan Brewer, meditating with Gerry Lopez and Reno Abellira, an image that ‘defined an era’ (Kampion 2003b: 52, 53 [photograph]; see also Kampion 2003a: 105; cf. Warshaw, 1997: 80).

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bron taylor time, Lopez later recalled, ‘We became hippies and got into yoga and that whole self realization thing and started to realize that those moments when you were completely focused on riding a wave are actually kind of spiritual … religious moments’.16 Lopez led explorations of discovery to paradises he likened to ‘heaven’ in Indonesia and beyond, providing another example of how travel to pristine, untrammelled surfing Shangri-Las is a form of pilgrimage long a centrepiece of surf culture. Surfing as a ‘Zen-like’ experience is not only a male province, as illustrated by an interview with Marilyn Edwards, the Publisher of Wahine magazine, which caters to female surfers. Blending surfing spirituality with an ecofeminist ethos in which women more easily apprehend the spirituality of surfing, Edwards asserted: When I see a female on a wave, I see the connectedness with the wave. Women’s emotional energy is about unity. The masculine energy is more independent, more ‘me’ out front. And that is not true for all men, but sometimes men surf ‘on’ the wave, whereas women surf ‘with’ the wave. (Groundswell Society 2001: 24) The Zen of surfing is about being mindful of the energy you are joining forces with, not conquering it. (Ibid.: 25) Among other things, Edwards was articulating the spirituality of connection and belonging that is common in all nature religion (Taylor 2001a,b). When such feeling incubated in the environmental age it inspired environmentalist values and action among some surfers.17

Religious and experiential elements The preceding sections have introduced some of the ways in which surfing can be analysed as a religious phenomenon. It has a sacred story wherein an earlier, naturespiritual and ecologically harmonious surfing culture was nearly exterminated during the colonial mission period. Surfing as a practice was revived and spread globally by charismatic spiritual leaders during the twentieth century, leading many surfers to increasingly assume a self-consciously spiritual and environmentalist identity. Surfing spirituality is, moreover, expressed through a variety of ritualized behaviours, including the construction and aesthetic embellishment of the materials needed for the practice.

16. From an undated Surfer magazine interview, www.surfermag.com/magazine/archivedissues/ intrvu_gerrlopez (accessed Jan. 2008). For an extended interview with Lopez see Kampion (2003b: 109–21). 17. See Taylor (2007c), which has a section explaining the development of surfing’s environmentalist organizations.

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sea spirituality, surfing and aquatic nature religion Surfing’s most important ritual dimension is early rising to greet the sun, waves and sea creatures. It also has a collective if irregular service, involving attendance at surf films held in small, intimate, non-commercial venues, which reminds practitioners of the experience that inheres to the sport’s main sacrament, and reinforces a ‘tribal’ identity. Other identity-expressing and solidarity-promoting adornments, objects and practices are prevalent: surfers read and scatter surf magazines about their homes, mark their automobiles with surfing symbols and slogans, decorate their homes with surf and nature-themed art, listen to surf music, and wear clothing covered with ritual objects (such as surfboards) and, on fancier occasions, wear Hawai’ian shirts or dresses.18 I shall now focus on the experience of surfing, which is the sensual centre of the practice, the terms used to describe it and the benefits believed to derive from it. This will reveal how the sport has come to be understood as promoting personal transformation, renewal, healing, meaning, belonging, connection and even a purpose for life. The rhetoric attending surfing is distinctive in many ways. Many surfers speak of surfing as ‘going to church’ and refer to the sea as ‘Mother Ocean’, just as the wahine did that day in a San Diego surf shop.19 ‘Mother Ocean’ as a trope goes back at least to Surfer magazine, with the beginning in 1970 of its environmentalist ‘For Our Mother Ocean’ column (Kampion 2003a: 161). It has become a metaphor for the intimacy with the ocean that many surfers feel. A segment from Five Summer Stories focusing on the hollow waves breaking over a reef at the famous Bonsai Pipeline in Hawai’i provides a good example. After showing footage of surfers both riding and wiping out on big waves, the film turns to more graceful surfing on smaller waves, as the background music shifts from dramatic and energetic to melodic and gentle. These shifts seem designed to evoke the sublime as the narrator’s voice intones, ‘On smaller days, pipeline is the perfect place for intimate relationships with Mother Ocean’. Here is the heart of surfing spirituality for many – in its connection to Mother Ocean – which can be understood as a beneficent personal presence. The final segment of the film begins with the words ‘Heaven’s Gift to Man: THE TUNNEL OF LOVE’; it shows a stunning sequence of tube rides by world famous surfers, ending blissfully with that of the surfing guru Gerry Lopez. Other surfing neologisms such as the exclamation ‘Cowabunga!’ and references to being ‘stoked’ express the joy if not ecstasy that can accompany the experience. Such terminology testifies to the power of the practice. So does surf-writing, which repeatedly returns to the experience of wave-riding as the sensual centre of the practice that does what many religions purport to do: transform consciousness and facilitate the development of an authentic, awakened self. One of the most dramatic examples of such writing describes what happens perceptually to those in dangerous situations, especially when riding ‘in the tube’ of a large hollow wave. The two things one hears the most from those with such experiences is how they focus attention in such an intense way that one truly must ‘live in 18. This analysis has affinity with the increasingly popular idea of studying ‘lived religion’, popularized by scholars such as Orsi (1997) and Hall (1997). 19. Wahine is borrowed from the Hawai’an language for woman.

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bron taylor the moment’. This notion is something of a goal in some religions originating in Asia, and the idea has been appropriated and spread by New Age subcultures. Living in the moment is believed to bring peace, purpose and wisdom. This idea is often equated with a ‘Zen’ state of mind as, for example, when in a Surfer magazine interview Lopez said: ‘To be truly successful at riding a wave we’re approaching a Zen state of mind … and you’re in the pure moment. Other parts of your life might be in shambles, but because you’re tapping into the source you’re truly happy’.20 Lopez did not define what he meant by ‘the source’, and nor did the surf shop youth urging Agent Utah to find and ‘change his life’ by getting in contact with it. Yet we can surmise that it has something to do with the source of life, however differently this can be understood, and that they would both agree that connecting with this source is part of the surfer’s experience. Not incidentally, Agent Utah did discover the joy and peace of surfing and at the end of the film he left his mundane existence as a law enforcement officer to follow the surfer’s path. What is it about surfing that gives it a religious aura? Price, in a groundbreaking article analysing the religious dimensions of outdoor recreational practices, including surfing, drew on a study by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who concluded that there are cross-culturally universal characteristics to peak psychological experiences. Csikszentmihalyi coined the word ‘flow’ to describe these experiences, which, he claimed, ‘usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile’ (Csikszentmihalyi 1990: 3). For Csikszentmihalyi, and Price who drew on his study, flow is ‘the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost’ (ibid.: 4, also quoted in Price 1996: 425). Surfers certainly wonder why their pastime is so addictive, despite its risks. Jay Moriarity found part of the answer in the way surfing transforms consciousness (Moriarity and Gallagher 2001: 80). For this he offered a naturalistic explanation for fear, understanding it as an adaptive form of evolution: A good dose of fear is soothing for the human psyche. When the brain detects danger, the human body sends out norepinephrine to every part of the body. Once this danger has passed, the body sends out dopamine to the brain, a pleasurable chemical, as a way to congratulate the brain for surviving. These chemicals are what make people want to surf big waves. (Ibid.: 81) Whatever naturalistic explanation may be applicable, this did not prevent Moriarity from labelling as ‘spiritual’ the ‘stoke’ of surfing (ibid.: 10; also in text, above). And whatever brain chemistry may be involved in what surfers crave, there are certain patterns reflected in the reports of surfers about their experience. This is certainly true when surfers recall dangerous surfing, especially inside the hollow part of a breaking 20. Undated Surfer magazine interview, www.surfermag.com/magazine/archivedissues/intrvu_ gerrlopez (accessed Jan. 2008).

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sea spirituality, surfing and aquatic nature religion wave, an experience that can relativize one’s sense of time. Moriarity and Gallagher describe such experience in this way: ‘Riding in the tube is by far the most frightening and exhilarating part of surfing. One top surfer in the 1970s, Shaun Thomson [sic, Tomson], summed up its indescribable delights by saying that “time slows down in the tube”’ (ibid.: 52).21 This phrase by the South African surfing champion Shaun Tomson has been often repeated as a way to describe the experience, or surfers use other words convey it. In response to a question about how he could stay calm in the tube, for example, Gerry Lopez replied, ‘The faster I go out there the slower things seem to happen’ (Warshaw 2003: 345). Hening has also described how riding inside the tube can alter one’s sense of time: In the tube one has no frame of reference except the cylinder of water spinning above, around, and below you. The only thing in your vision that provides a sense of place is the opening, or mouth of the wave in front of you. What can happen next is truly remarkable: if the wave starts peeling faster than you are surfing, the illusion is created that you are either not moving at all, or are moving backwards. And in relation to your only visual frame of reference, you are. So you can be going at top speed forward, but the sensation can be that you are going backward. (Hening and Taylor 2005: 1610)22 Surfers often describe the experience in this way or similarly, whether in conversation or writing, both in print and in online discussion groups.23 Hening concluded, ‘From the unique and extraordinary vision while riding inside a perfect wave the mystic kernel of the religious in surfing grows’ (ibid.: 1610). From the many descriptions of such experience, it is easy to see why he would make this assertion, and little wonder that many surfers refer to their surf sessions as going to church, or use other religious terminology, as they construe their experiences as spiritual or religious.

Connection, communion and healing Much of the spiritual experience of surfing is also related to a feeling of belonging and communion with other living things, the earth and even the universe itself, as well as a perception that such connections are transformative and healing. Some surfer

21. Moriarity drowned on 15 June 2001, a day short of his twenty-third birthday. In Tim Godfrey’s reflections, the tragedy reinforced the humility that soul surfers consider an important lesson of surfing: ‘our great mother ocean can never be fully mastered, even by the most committed waterman’ (quoted in McMorries 2001). 22. I describe my own experience of time slowing while surfing in Hening and Taylor (2005: 1611). 23. Foodoggy, ‘The Seed of Stoke’ (1997), www.mountainman.com.au/news97_a.html, and GrouchyOldMan,‘Time Stands Still When you’re in the Tube’ (1976), www.everything2.com/index.pl ?node=Time%20stands%20still%20when%20you%27re%20in%20the%20tube (accessed Jan. 2008).

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bron taylor intellectuals speak poetically of flowing and participating in cosmic energy waves, as did Kampion in The Book of Waves: Everything is waves. The universe of space and matter is charged with energy … waves of energy. Like echoes of the heartbeat of the absolute being, waves give expression to the divine will. They give form to the universe … Waves pass through everything – steel, stone, flesh and blood and water and air and space alike. Waves are the imprint, the signature, not only of life, but of existence itself. (1989)24 In Stoked, Kampion echoed such sentiment: ‘Surfing is magic, riding liquid echoes of cosmic energy at the wild fringes of continents’. These words were superimposed over the book’s final photograph, in which a surfer sits on his board facing a huge setting sun, with hands raised in symbolic embrace of these cosmic energies (Kampion 2003a: 214–15). Such passages and visuals show that for many surfers the heart of the spirituality is in their felt connection to Mother Ocean and the energies of the universe. Equally critical for many soul surfers is the communion they feel with non-human creatures while engaged in their sport. As expressed by Gallagher: ‘Much of the satisfaction comes not from a nice turn, but from the journey and the connection made with nature. Dolphins, whales, fish, birds, trees, reefs, sunsets – take these things away and you strip a perfect wave of its soul’ (Moriarity and Gallagher 2001: 77). Transspecies encounters are for many as important to surfing spirituality as, or more important than, experiences with fast and dangerous waves. Finally, some credit surfing not only with transforming their consciousness and promoting spirituality and environmental ethics, but also with facilitating physical healing. Mandy Caruso described how Mother Ocean washed away her fears and became an agent of healing, by bringing her a sea turtle as an oracle of hope, during a time when she was preparing for a mastectomy due to breast cancer (Caruso 2005). In a Surfer’s Path article, which was accompanied by paintings depicting her surfing with animal companions, Caruso related her story with words demonstrating the importance of Polynesian/Hawai’ian themes among surfers: In the Hawaiian culture, all ohanas, all families, have guiding spirits that watch over them. These spirits, usually dead ancestors, take visible form in the shape of animals: sharks, owls, turtles. The belief is that … at crucial moments …. your guiding spirit, your amakua, will appear to you, and you will know you’re being given a message, a warning, or a blessing. Now, being haole (white) and a malahini (not born Ka’maaina – in Hawaii), I liked the idea of the amakua, but I never expected to have one. Yet, years before I learned to board surf, in the darkness before dawn, I would rise and drive to a little cove with the gentlest, most caressing bodysurfing waves

24. Also at www.drewkampion.com/books.htm (accessed Jan. 2008).

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sea spirituality, surfing and aquatic nature religion in the world. … One morning, as I was running and diving, rolling and reveling in the luscious velvet caress of the waves, a head suddenly popped out of the foam beside me. My fast-beating heart caught in my throat as a large turtle floated to the surface of the water. His ancient gaze considered me for moments that seemed like eternities. It was as if the Earth herself had come to look at me. (Ibid.: 126) The rest of the story discussed how she came to surf alongside the turtle, gathering strength and courage from this aquatic relation, before and after her surgery. She concluded with an expression of appreciation to the ocean for her healing. This story reprises the theme that the ocean (and her creatures) can bring serenity as well as ecstatic experience. So does the belief that the sea, and experiences with it, can assist with both physical and psychological healing. Keith Glendon wrote similarly about a teenage surfing star, Chad Compton, who was sent into a life-threatening coma after a skateboarding accident: When the word got out about the accident, it was as if a ripple of awareness went out into the Universe, rallying instantaneous support from the hearts and souls of family, friends, and total strangers. Prayers were said around the world – literally – as members of the [surfing] ‘tribe’ learned the story of Chad’s situation. Healing vibes were sent, blessings were given, and appeals to the spirit of the sea were made. (Glendon 2005: 74) The teenager eventually awoke and soon returned to the sea (ibid.). Glendon concluded: The sea holds a magic for those of us who know her. A magic so simple, pure and powerful it works as an unseen force in our souls. We’re drawn to her. The spirit of the sea moves in us as we move within her, undulating folds in pursuit of our peace. As surfers, we inherently know this to be so. The sea brings comfort, solace, release and escape. The sea brings healing. The spirit of the sea, for some of us, is the very essence of life. (Ibid.: 70)

Closeout The spirituality (or religion) of soul surfers involves a sense of connection and belonging to nature in general and the sea in particular and produces concomitant reverence towards nature and a corresponding environmentalist ethic. Its practitioners also report that it brings a wide range of benefits, physical, psychological and spiritual. Observers (both insiders and outsiders) note that the practice and its subcultural carriers resemble traditional religions in many ways, including in its myth, ritual, symbols, terminology

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bron taylor and technology; a sense that some places, animals and plants are especially sacred; and convictions regarding what constitute proper relationships within the community of practitioners as well as with outsiders (human and not). As with most contemporary religion in social contexts that are not insular, the spirituality of soul surfers is hybridized. Some blend their surfing spirituality with religions (or aspects of them) derived from Abrahamic or Asian roots. Others feel more affinity with their (not always accurate) understandings of indigenous traditions or various forms of Paganism. Still other surfers, and perhaps increasing numbers of them, are sceptical or agnostic about most if not all particular religious beliefs, and find sufficient resources in surfing, and within surfing communities, to construct meaningful spiritual lives. The result of such diversity and hybridity within surfing subcultures is an evolving and transmogrifying form of an aquatic nature religion that will probably remain resilient as long as there are people, waves and sufficient leisure time for the two to interact. As the practice of surfing continues to spread, globally, there is every reason to expect that surfing will continue as a contemporary religious alternative, as will any other ways in which people connect to the energies and life forms of the sea, which they consider sacred. Because this relatively new aquatic nature religion is becoming increasingly intertwined with environmental activism, its political impact will probably also grow. This influence will be magnified to the extent that it builds alliances with the practitioners of other forms of nature religion, which are also growing and competing for religious allegiance. And yet, it brings something distinctive to contemporary nature religion: an evocative, ocean-baptized spirituality, capable of moving surfing enthusiasts who otherwise would have little to do with that which scholars construe as religion.

Epilogue Not long ago I was offshore on a day with medium-sized but inconsistent surf, with long periods of calm, and a glassy surface as far as the eye could see. As the sun set behind me, spinning golden and reddish colours around the horizon, a pod of dolphins splashed playfully a few dozen yards away, and my thoughts turned to how I might complete these reflections on surfing spirituality. I remembered a breakfast conversation in December 2004 with Gordon LaBedz, a physician from southern California and a hard-core, biocentric Sierra Club activist, who in the 1990s helped the Surfrider Foundation to develop its chapter structure and thereby its economic viability.25 An ardent surfer who normally rises before dawn to surf, he was in town for a Sierra Club meeting. With us was Bernie Zaleha, the Sierra

25. LaBedz had also been a regular reader of the radical environmental journal Earth First!, and while critical of much of the movement, he identifies with its deep ecological philosophy. His role with the Surfrider Foundation is discussed in the history of the organization located at www.surfline.com/ mag/coastwatch/greencards/surfrider_usa.cfm (accessed Jan. 2008).

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sea spirituality, surfing and aquatic nature religion Club’s Vice President at the time, an attorney who considered himself a Christian Pantheist, who believes that environmentalism is religious at its centre. LaBedz, in contrast, stated that he was an atheist, but he was nevertheless intrigued with the intersection of religion and nature. He asked: what is spirituality? After giving him an academic overview of the ways the term is typically distinguished from religion in popular parlance and scholarly discussions, I asked him if he had ever seen the Sierra Club poster with tree trunks and human legs intertwined and nearly indistinguishable, with prose articulating that Sierra Club activists are motivated by a sense of belonging and connection to the earth.26 He responded that he had and found it ‘powerful and moving’. He added that the poster has a very powerful message about how we are all a part of nature. I then explained that, while there is no consensus regarding the roots of the word religion, some scholars trace the term to words having to do with being bound to, tied or connected, presumably in this context, with something greater than oneself.27 I also suggested that religion confers meaning and provides transformative and healing power and that, in my view, this need not involve supernaturalism of any kind. He seemed intrigued. As we discussed the experience of surfing, he clearly understood and agreed with those who believe it has to do with transformational systems of energy. I mentioned Sierra Club founder John Muir’s experiences while mountaineering in exceptionally dangerous places, where he had Zen-like satoris in which he felt that time slowed down and that the universe was spontaneously flowing through his body, empowering his escape, providing a kind of divine rescue. I mentioned some of my own experiences that cohered with Muir’s in this regard, where time seemed to stand still, allowing a remarkable clarity of vision, seemingly enabling a safe transition. Like many surfers, LaBedz could identify with such experiences. But it was after he mentioned that with rare exceptions he goes surfing every day at dawn, and I commented on the sense of connection and communication with non-human life that one feels while offshore surfing and that this can involve a kind of animistic perception, that he became even more excited. He definitely related to a feeling of connection with the ocean creatures with which he spends his early mornings. Then, like some of the other surfers already discussed, he spoke of how wild it is there, how wonderful it is to put the city behind you, and have in front of you so much wildness. These are not uncommon feelings among soul surfers.28

26. This poster is reproduced in Taylor (2001b: 238, 240 [poster]). These and other publications can be found at www.religionandnature.com/bron/ (accessed Jan. 2008). 27. It is illuminating to read definitions of religion in dictionaries and encyclopedias to get a sense of the different views of the origins of the word. For the definitive study see Feil (2000 [an abridged English translation]), and also Smith (1995) and Auffarth and Mohr (2006). 28. This and a short essay by Kampion are like aquatic echoes of Thoreau’s famous aphorism, ‘in wildness is the preservation of the world’, which was first published in ‘Walking’ in the Atlantic Monthly (Thoreau 1862). In Kampion’s words, ‘the wild restores the essential human spirit. The wild is where we come from. Every meeting with it brings us more fully into our eyes and ears and lungs and fingertips. Without the wild, we are asleep in our lives’. In subsequent paragraphs he describes the way surfers encounter the wild and the ways it transforms their consciousness (Kampion 2003b: 128).

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bron taylor Two days later, after returning to his home in California, LaBedz sent an email to me and Zaleha: ‘5:30 AM, sitting next to the Seal Beach Pier by myself, looking out at Mother Ocean. I realized that you guys have convinced me that there is a religiosity to environmentalism. You guys won over a hardened atheist-materialist … :-)’ LaBedz’s message underscores two of my impressions about surfing: (i) that whether surfing can be considered spiritual or religious depends on how these terms are constructed, and that under definitions like those that I am deploying, what seems at first to be an ordinary sport can be understood as a nature religion; and (ii) adventure sports that are the ground of experiencing nature as sacred are not uncommonly the source of environmental action. The conversation also provided a further example of how scholars of religion, by the way they develop their definitions, can affect the understandings and even selfperceptions of those who have practices that it might just be sensible to understand as religious. But sitting out there, myself, however, I was not thinking so analytically. My mind turned over again, ruminating on LaBedz’s allusion to Mother Ocean in his email. I then thought back to that day in San Diego when I was admonished by a young woman for having moved away from Mother Ocean. I thought about how the spirituality of surfing is not lost on popular culture, when Hollywood films such as Point Break capture some of its sensual ethos. And I thought of that scene at the beginning of the film, when the lad at the surf-shop counter urged the neophyte surfer to stay with it, for surfing, and implicitly the ocean, ‘is the source’. Facing east, with the sunset behind me, the dolphins and pelicans and other sea creatures around me, I thought how right he was. For there is not much we know with certainty about the origins of life other than that the ocean is literally the source. This we can say without having a clue as to why. Whether life is in the ocean, land or air, all life we know of is, like the waves surfers ride, dependent on even longer travelling waves, groundswells of energy and light, emanating from some unknowable mystery in a now distant time. Surfing can be a sensible spirituality in two senses, namely, a spirituality grounded in the senses, which celebrates the energies of the universe and life itself, and a spirituality that does not require metaphysical speculation that reaches far beyond our ken. I would not take such surfing spirituality so far as some of those discussed in this article, or as did the finale to Five Summer Stories, with its implication that one can find divine love in energetic wave tunnels. That also seems far beyond human ken or, at least, beyond my own capacity for confident knowledge. Nevertheless, I have come to understand the impulse to construct as sacred the participatory experience that can be had within cosmically generated aquatic waves. It is an impulse that will drive my own return to the sea.

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IV Waves of Energy: In Defence of Water

Editors’ introduction Warrior Salmon – yours is knowledge and the onrushing power of life! With you we live and die. The conatus raised in the first three parts of the book is now grounded in accounts of ecological peril, sociopolitical dialogue, environmental activism and a call to arms for the defence of water. Contributors share accounts of emotional, environmental and spiritual engagement in place, and revitalization of self, community, place and waterways. The interdependence between human and water is celebrated in activism and reciprocity. We seek to raise awareness about the plight of water; to regenerate and renew community and nature through replanting wetlands, restoring riverbanks, revegetating coasts and re-establishing undersea meadows. What threads of dialogue must we now draw together? What will be the fate of the liquid blue, and where must we now orient ourselves to develop a sustainable future for ourselves and for water?

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13 Animism, economics and sustainable water development David Groenfeldt

A spiritual orientation to water, whether as a substance (water itself) or as a water body (a river, lake, spring, ocean) often conflicts with dominant materialist assumptions of water and how it should be managed. Such conflicts can be most starkly seen in disputes between traditional indigenous communities and proponents of economic development projects (UNESCO 2006; Johnston 1994). When water is considered a commodity to be managed for economically productive purposes, the proponents of a water development project may see themselves as advocates of the larger public interest, while indigenous leaders opposed to the project consider protection of the waters to be their sacred obligation to Mother Earth. Environmentalism, which focuses on long-term ecosystem health, can serve as a mediating force between the seemingly opposite orientations of the proponents of modern economic development and traditional indigenous leaders. Both camps, the materialist developers and the spiritual indigenists, can agree, at least in theory, on the desirability of long-term environmental health and sustainable use of scarce resources. An environmental perspective can help reveal common ground between seemingly opposed positions, and set the stage for constructive mediation. This is one message of this chapter: environmentalism can lead to common understandings about water, and to agreements about how water should and should not be used. There is also a second message of this chapter about spirituality and environmentalism. This message, which sounds somewhat rigid and uncompromising, is that real environmentalism needs to incorporate a spiritual dimension. Spirituality, in other words, is not an optional perspective that we are free to believe or not to believe depending on our religious convictions. The view that I advocate in this chapter is that some kind of spiritual sense and spiritual values is an essential ingredient in the sustainable management of rivers in particular, and water in general. Environmentalism that is truly secular and materialistic, without a sense of wonder,

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david groenfeldt appreciation and humility, may undervalue natural processes and overvalue material returns and is likely to lead, eventually, to conditions that are unsustainable. The message of this chapter, then, is that only a particular kind of environmentalism can bridge the divide between indigenous animists and economic materialists.

Economists and animists Since economic development is embedded in economic arguments about benefits and costs, while indigenous values are typically embedded in explicitly spiritual value systems, I employ the contrasting identities of ‘economists’ and ‘animists’ to refer to these two sets of worldviews. The label ‘economist’ perhaps needs little explanation, except to note that economists come in many stripes, including some who focus on social, institutional and other ‘soft’ aspects of social science, along with those more narrowly focused on the material and financial outcomes of market dynamics. The use of the term ‘animist’ may deserve more explanation, as it is not commonly used in discussions of either water or development. Animists, in the sense in which I am using the term, see the world as fundamentally alive (as with the Gaia principle), and the various aspects of nature – whether rivers, birds, wind, mountains, trees or people – as living beings imbued with spirit (Nicholson and Rosen 1992). In the words of Graham Harvey, ‘Animists are people who recognize that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others’ (2006: xi). In this chapter I seek to chart some common ground between the management of water for economic benefits, and managing water bodies with the respect that their sacred status deserves. The long-term view of environmentalism can lead to a ‘win– win’, where water animists and water economists find satisfaction in the same solution because, ultimately, both are concerned with sustainable rivers and water management (Postel and Richter 2003). In charting a path whereby environmentalists lead a successful exploration to a sustainable future, however, we need to define what sort of environmentalists we are talking about. Secular environmentalists who promote the logic of materialist cause-and-effect, albeit in the very long term, have much in common with economic materialists who focus on short-term profits. What they share is a commitment to improving humanity’s material condition, and their arguments readily turn on questions of tactics and discount rates without questioning the priorities of materialism. I suggest that we bet our future on a different sort of environmentalist who values nature and, for the purposes of our discussion here, specifically values rivers for their intrinsic importance, unrelated to whatever benefits society can derive from them. Whether such environmentalists consider themselves to hold animistic beliefs is less important than their commitment to values beyond the material. It is this ‘practical animism’ that is needed to inform water policies that are truly sustainable for both people and planet. While secular materialists can have reliable insights into physical

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animism, economics and sustainable water development causes and effects through the realm of Western science, they may not understand or be able to incorporate the significance of the deeper spiritual underpinnings associated with our rightful relationship with nature. For that, we are better served by people whose belief systems encompass the immaterial spiritual realms.

Animists and engineers How did we arrive at our present situation of conflict between animists – those who honour and in some sense worship nature’s varied dimensions – and economic materialists – those who believe that human progress is measured by mastery over a lifeless and threatening natural world? It was not always like this! In ancient Sri Lanka, one of the most advanced early civilizations when it came to water engineering, the spirit world was seamlessly interwoven with engineering infrastructure. The ancient sluice gate at Uda Walawe, constructed around 300 CE, was watched over by a sculpture of a seven-headed cobra (Turpin 2006). In modern Bali, every diversion structure taking water from streams into local canals has an associated shrine or temple. Indigenous engineers, whether ancient or modern, were themselves animists, perceiving spirit forces moving in the waters they were manipulating with their engineering works. But Western-educated engineers, even those in Buddhist Sri Lanka, have been trained to think in material terms. Regardless of personal beliefs, the engineering science in which they have been trained views the world as material, with gravity being the only unseen force that must be accommodated. Billions of dollars of foreign aid have been invested in Sri Lanka’s Mahaweli Development Project to construct a series of six high dams, an inter-basin tunnel and a vast network of canals. Along with the funds has been a transfer of Western materialism and scientific rationality. The modern irrigation canals are designed as an imitation of Californian industrialized agriculture with a single function in mind, the conveyance of irrigation water, rather than continuing the ancient tradition of canals as connecting places between people and water and as community gathering places for swimming, laundry and washing of people and animals. The modern sluice gates are constructed without sacred sculptures as if the deities are shut out of the water and sacred places they have always protected.

The secular view of water The conventional, secularist approach to water development focuses on using water for enhancing the wellbeing of humans. It has become unnecessary within our modern, secular and, it may be mentioned, capitalist society, to point out that ‘wellbeing’ refers primarily to economic wellbeing, although social and even cultural quality of life issues are sometimes included as well. Indeed, there is a lively ongoing debate within 239

david groenfeldt water policy circles regarding the extent to which economic considerations should dominate decisions about water development. This is an old debate with antecedents in the ninteenth-century conservation movement within the United States, while in Germany debates raged about the wisdom of draining swamps or straightening the Rhine even in the eighteenth century (Blackbourn 2006). In both the United States and Germany, and, it may be safe to say, in many other nations as well, the forces of secular materialism overcame all opposing forces. But that victory may have been temporary. The era of manipulating rivers to serve clearly defined engineering objectives ended in Germany in the 1970s, according to Blackbourn (2006), and while it has persisted longer in the United States, the paradigm of conquering nature is shifting here too. The emerging trend, particularly in highly industrialized Europe and Japan, is to use water in ways that broadly enhance quality of life, rather than serving the more narrow interests of the economy exclusively. This is still safely within the category of secularism, but without the same degree of materialism. The values being promoted in the European Union’s Water Framework Directive, ratified in 2001, include strong elements of environmentalism aimed at sustainable water use. Environmental flow, for example, is included as a key dimension of basic river health. The operative metaphor for rivers is no longer a plumbing system but rather a biological system (rivers as part of nature) with interactions with social systems (rivers as cultural heritage and agrarian amenity). These discussions have also been informed by the vigorous societal re-examination of the role of agriculture within Europe, with the general acceptance of the principle that agriculture is ‘multifunctional’. It provides not only the economic function of food, but also social and cultural functions such as community empowerment, rural employment, cultural identity and aesthetically pleasing landscapes. The same concept of multifunctionality can be applied to the water that is used for agriculture or, more broadly, to water development in general (Groenfeldt 2006). The narrow economic functions of water, as important and even dominant as they may be, are not the total picture, and in some cases the subsidiary functions can be more compelling than the economic functions. If we accept the proposition that water has diverse utility (the concept of ‘multifunctionality’), and provides a range of benefits to society, then the next obvious question is: what are those benefits? Different individuals, and different interest groups, will enumerate quite different lists of benefits, and their relative priority. What is the value of a river? What benefits do you receive from that river? The answer to these questions depends on who you are. Are you a fisher who depends on harvesting fish for your livelihood? Are you a sports fisher interested in a certain species of fish? Are you a developer interested in a source of water to supply your housing units? Are you an industrialist seeking cheap and reliable electricity from hydropower? Are you a farmer eager for more irrigation water? Are you an environmental activist committed to the protection of free-flowing rivers and riparian wetlands? Have you just built a new house along the river and are concerned about flood control? While the secular view of water can encompass diverse value orientations, the one common feature of all secular views is that humans are beneficiaries of the river’s services, whatever those services may be. In this secular worldview, the rightful place of

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animism, economics and sustainable water development humanity is to derive benefits from nature: the river, lake, or spring. Environmentalism is a value system that is a subset of the secular view and is concerned with the sustainability of the ecosystem for the long-term benefit of society. Disputes between environmentalists and commercial interests, eager to harness the river for economic gain, revolve around what is in the long-term interest of society, but not the welfare of the riparian ecosystem as a goal in itself. For secularists of all persuasions, people are the ultimate beneficiaries.

The animist view of water The perception of water bodies as having a life force or spirit, and being in some way alive, appears to be universal among indigenous peoples, and is also well established in the histories of European peoples, who once met the criteria of being indigenous. Perhaps it is this very memory of a tribal, pre-modern heritage that underlies the disdain of contemporary water planners for animistic beliefs. Even adherents of Judaic–Christian–Muslim religions, which endorse the concept of sacred or holy water (see Gerten, this volume, Ch. 2), reject the notion of river or water spirits that personify or ‘animate’ a body of water. The Oriental traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism take a more welcoming view of river spirits, and in this sense subscribe to a theology consistent with animism: that bodies of water contain, or in some way include, spirit forces having some degree of autonomous power that humans can seek to influence through prayer or ritual. At the 2003 World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan, indigenous participants drafted a declaration outlining their collective position on water and water development. The ‘Indigenous Peoples Kyoto Water Declaration’ stands as a concise overview of an animistic perspective on water (see Box 1). Indigenous people, according to this declaration, are not only the natural guardians of water, but also take their primary identity as people from their relationship to the waters of their territories: ‘Our relationship with our lands, territories and water is the fundamental physical cultural and spiritual basis for our existence’. A similar perception of water is found in the concluding statement of a Pueblo Indian conference on Water and Culture, held in Santa Fe, New Mexico (USA) in June 2003. The motivation for this conference came from a Pueblo Indian elder who implored one of his clansmen, a trained hydrologist, to ‘do something’ to help the Rio Grande River. ‘The River is sick and needs our help; please do something!’ was the Elder’s mandate. The hydrologist organized a conference, bringing together indigenous representatives from the river’s headwaters in the Rocky Mountains to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. The conference participants decided to distil their thoughts into a story that might inspire them to take further actions. The story (Box 2) describes a river – the Rio Grande – that is thirsty for its own water. Compassion for the river itself, as a river, and as the core thread of a riparian ecosystem of plants and animals, ground water and rain, tributaries and, eventually,

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david groenfeldt the sea, leads the animist into a service-oriented relationship to nature. As humans, our role and our responsibility is to serve the larger interests of the spirit world, as represented by the river. Ultimately, our own self-interest as humans, and as society are also met in the process of serving the river spirits.12

1 2

BOX 1. Selections from the Indigenous Peoples Kyoto Water Declaration1 We, the Indigenous Peoples from all parts of the world assembled here, reaffirm our relationship to Mother Earth and responsibility to future generations to raise our voices in solidarity to speak for the protection of water. We were placed in a sacred manner on this earth, each in our own sacred and traditional lands and territories to care for all of creation and to care for water. We recognize, honor and respect water as sacred and sustains all life. Our traditional knowledge, laws and ways of life teach us to be responsible in caring for this sacred gift that connects all life. Our relationship with our lands, territories and water is the fundamental physical cultural and spiritual basis for our existence. This relationship to our Mother Earth requires us to conserve our freshwaters and oceans for the survival of present and future generations. We assert our role as caretakers with rights and responsibilities to defend and ensure the protection, availability and purity of water. We stand united to follow and implement our knowledge and traditional laws and exercise our right of selfdetermination to preserve water, and to preserve life. We see our waters increasingly governed by imposed economic, foreign and colonial domination, as well as trade agreements and commercial practices that disconnect us as peoples from the ecosystem. Water is being treated as a commodity and as a property interest that can be bought, sold and traded in global and domestic market-based systems. These imposed and inhumane practices do not respect that all life is sacred, that water is sacred. When water is disrespected, misused and poorly managed, we see the life threatening impacts on all of creation. We know that our right of self-determination and sovereignty, our traditional knowledge, and practices to protect the water are being disregarded violated and disrespected. We challenge the dominant paradigm, policies, and programs on water development, which includes among others; government ownership of water, construction of large water infrastructures; corporatization; the privatization and commodification of water; the use of water as a tradeable commodity; and the liberalization of trade in water services, which do not recognize the rights of Indigenous Peoples to water. We resolve to replicate and transfer our traditional knowledge and practices on the sustainable use of water to our children and the future generations. We encourage the broader society to support and learn from our water management practices for the sake of the conservation of water all over the world.

1. The Indigenous Peoples Kyoto Water Declaration is posted on various websites, including www. indigenouswater.org (accessed Jan. 2008).

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animism, economics and sustainable water development BOX 2. The River Who Thirsts for Itself21 ‘Grandmother! Abuelita!’ cried the child. ‘Tell me that story again! The one about the river! I want to understand …’ When they reached the river bank Grandmother began to speak, ‘It wasn’t that long ago that the same thing happened. You know, humans came to the river hungry and thirsty after a long time wandering across the desert. They praised its generosity and gave thanks. Then some years passed, and because they were no longer thirsty they forgot what it was like without the river. Soon more humans came to the river for its gifts. It did not take long before they forgot too. Do you know what I mean, child?’ asked Grandmother. ‘You will understand if you listen carefully,’ continued Grandmother. ‘The river kept on giving, all the while trying to teach the humans about the rhythms of water in the desert. Following her nature, the river shrank and grew in great turning cycles. Some summers she became a flood and gave the land a gift of rich soil and habitat. Other summers she was a clear stream well within her banks, leaving the new soil alone so it could strengthen. ‘What makes today different is only one thing’, Grandmother sighed deeply before going on with her story. ‘The river’s generosity has not changed. Her nature is still to give and give. She winds green and glittery through the many-colored desert. With her watery voice tumbling over boulders, or whispering among grasses and cottonwoods, or sighing in quiet pools, she still sings to the skies and calls for rain and snow. ‘Trouble is, now the river’s voice is interrupted and weakened. Humans think the river is only water, and they assume the right to use it however they want to. They forget the RIVER’s right to herself ! They forget how good it is for the land – and therefore also for them – when she can be herself fully, through all her great cycles and moods. ‘So, now the rhythm of her speech is irregular. Her voice seldom dances to the music of her own language. Sometimes it is so faint the skies don’t hear her call, and do not know to send rain.’ Grandmother paused. ‘You see,’ she said slowly, ‘without the river, the rains cannot come. The river begins the great watery cycle of giving from river, to land, to skies, down again to the land, and back to the river. ‘So, you see, little grandchild? The river is more than water. She is the link between earth and sky. And like you, little child, she has “organs” made up of plant and animal communities. She is living and breathing, just like you! ‘The great organ of her skin is the soil, and like your skin it breathes, sweats, and nourishes her. Her lungs are the trees and other plants. They cleanse the air of carbon dioxide and give us oxygen instead! Her blood is the water flowing in her channel, and her kidneys are the wetlands. Together they nourish and cleanse the body of the land. The great river’s heart is the fire that gives us energy, strength, and love!’ Grandmother’s voice became very soft with sadness, ‘Now, the river is tired and thirsty. And Grandmother knows what it means to be tired AND thirsty! You just can’t function when you don’t have enough water!’Grandmother breathed deeply. ‘And still the river gives, and will keep on giving until her last drop.’

2. The River Who Thirsts for Itself is posted on the Indigenous Waters website, www.indigenouswater.org (accessed Jan. 2008).

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Secular or sacred environmentalism? Secular environmentalism sees a common interest between the long-term interests of society and the long-term health of the environment through the principle of sustainable development. Spiritual environmentalists, or animists, also see a common interest between the health of the environment and the success of society, but the motivation is different: we have a responsibility to honour and protect the health of the river, and if we fulfil our duty, both the river and our human descendents will benefit. Does it make any practical difference whether the environmentalist philosophy is based on secular materialism or sacred spirituality? Or can environmentalism serve as a meeting ground between materialists and spiritualists, where both sides can agree on a common course of action that will lead to an environmentally sustainable outcome? If we humans were truly rational beings, then it would make little difference to the practical outcome whether the motivation stems from secular environmentalism or spiritual environmentalism. The concept of a ‘living’ river can apply equally to a river that has continuous flows of water whether the observer believes the river is spiritually alive as a being, or merely metaphorically alive as a working system. The value of keeping a river alive and flowing can be argued quite convincingly on the basis of ecological economics, without recourse to animistic beliefs.3 Practical experience, however, suggests that human rationality falls short, and that relying on logic alone to produce environmentally sustainable results is neither wise nor ultimately ‘sustainable’. While, theoretically speaking, there is plenty of rational justification for doing the ‘right thing’ environmentally, the real-world practice of water management strongly suggests that rational logic, based on secular materialism, will lead to behaviour patterns that are environmentally unsound. Animistic beliefs appear to be a safer foundation for environmentally sustainable water management. Why keep water flowing in the Rio Grande (the second longest river in America, which forms the border between Texas and Mexico) when there is more demand by human users than the river can support? How can environmental flow in the river be justified when thirsty cities are willing to pay almost any price to use the water that is keeping the river alive? Why not let the river dry up, and use the water for maximum economic development? Using every drop of water for economic productivity is, in fact, the legal requirement in the state of New Mexico, in the upper reaches of the Rio Grande. Allowing water to flow in the river, to keep the river in a minimal condition of health, is not recognized as a legally defensible use of water. The logic of water use exhibited by New Mexico’s legal system is itself a manifestation of capitalist logic. Just as a capitalistic society in New Mexico has replaced the earlier animistic Pueblo society, so has capitalistic water management replaced animistically inspired water management practices throughout the world. Donald

3. The groundbreaking report Flow (Dyson et al. 2003) presents a cogent and comprehensive argument for the importance of maintaining healthy river systems, based on economic analysis, and without recourse or reference to spiritual beliefs.

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animism, economics and sustainable water development Worster describes the evolution of capitalist attitudes of water management in his 1985 book, Rivers of Empire: Water in the capitalist state has no intrinsic value, no integrity that must be respected. Water is no longer valued as a divinely appointed means for survival, for producing and reproducing human life, as it was in local subsistence communities. Nor is water an awe-inspiring, animistic ally in a quest for political empire, as it was in the agrarian states. It has now become a commodity that is bought and sold and carried to the marketplace. It is, in other words, purely and abstractly a commercial instrument. All mystery disappears from its depths, all gods depart, all contemplation of its flow ceases. It becomes so many ‘acre-feet’ banked in an account, so many ‘kilowatt-hours’ of generating capacity to be spent, so many bales of cotton or carloads of oranges to be traded around the globe. And in that new language of market calculation lies an assertion of ultimate power over nature – of a domination that is absolute, total, and free from all restraint. (Worster 1985: 52) Environmentalists are challenging New Mexico’s water laws, using the argument that keeping some environmental flow in the Rio Grande is in the long-term best interests of society, but that argument faces a stiff battle against the many vested interests in keeping all the water available for economic development. No one other than the Pueblo Indians dares argue that there is an overriding spiritual reason for keeping the river alive. Arguments based on animism are so far removed from the prevailing discourse that they would be either ridiculed or ignored. The arena of debate is circumscribed by a paradigm of secular materialism; although even within this limited scope there is room for advocating a water allocation for the river, based on principles of hydrology and biological diversity (elaborated below). But without recourse to the logic of animism – valuing the life of the river for its own sake – the arguments to allocate water to the river instead of to new housing developments become another case of pitting short-term human interests (development) against long-term human interests (environmentalism). The Rio Grande is likely to remain ‘the river who thirsts for itself ’.

A thirsty tributary The challenges facing the Rio Grande can be seen more clearly through the localized challenges of one of its tributaries, the Santa Fe River, which has the distinction of flowing, or more typically not flowing, through the capital city of New Mexico, also called Santa Fe. The Santa Fe River is dry for most of the year, not because of the climate, which is, indeed, dry, but because of the city’s policy of impounding the entire flow of the river in upstream reservoirs, for use as municipal water supply. Keeping even a trickle of flow in the natural river channel has been deemed too wasteful of this precious commodity, which, rather than dribbling down the river, can be piped

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david groenfeldt into new housing developments. The Santa Fe River, in short, is dead, the victim of capitalism, materialism and secularism. Might it be revived by animism? The Santa Fe River begins in the high Sangre de Cristo Mountains, at an elevation of nearly 4,000 metres, and flows only 46 miles before reaching the Rio Grande, but this relatively small river is steeped in history. The Spanish established their administrative capital here in 1610, amid several Pueblo Indian villages. During the Spanish colonial period and into the mid-twentieth century the river served a complex network of irrigation canals (called acequias) supporting over 1,000 acres of irrigated cropland. Long-time residents remember fishing for trout in the river in downtown Santa Fe, building swimming holes and even ice-skating. But ask them precisely when the fishing stopped and the river dried up, and they cannot tell you. Over time, the river was turned off and on according to the demands of the city’s water system and gradually the river was ‘off ’ more than it was ‘on’. Fishing and swimming disappeared, and the community grew accustomed to a dry river channel. The river has not had a fully natural flow of water since 1881, when the first dam was built to secure a steadier water supply for a growing Santa Fe. A series of successively larger dams came and went over the years, and today the river is fully impounded upstream of the city, by twin reservoirs. The city of Santa Fe owns the dams, and holds the use rights to most of the surface water. The few remaining irrigation canals also hold a small portion of the surface water rights. Both city-owned and private groundwater wells along the river extract water from the aquifer. No in-stream flow rights exist to support uses such as recreation, or to protect important native fish and wildlife populations. Removing water from the river channel destroys not only water-dependent plants and animals, but also diminishes subsurface aquifers and local springs, some of which have disappeared entirely. The results of these policies can be seen in the dry ditch littered with trash, overgrown with weeds, deeply incised and eroded. The condition of the river has become so bad that in 2007 it was declared to be ‘the most endangered river in America’ by American Rivers, a national river advocacy group.4 The publicity provided by that designation was sought by the local Santa Fe Watershed Association5 to serve as a wake-up call to the community, alerting them that a dry river is neither responsible nor sustainable.

Why revive the river? The environmentalist position on the Santa Fe River is that the river needs to have a minimal environmental flow to function as an integrated riparian system, and that this allocation of water constitutes an absolute necessity for river health. The case for environmental flow is based on environmental logic: since the city is pumping water 4. The website for American Rivers can be found at www.americanrivers.org (accessed Jan. 2008). 5. The website for the Santa Fe Watershed Association can be found at www.santafewatershed.org (accessed Jan. 2008).

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animism, economics and sustainable water development from the aquifers fed by the river, keeping some water in the river is the best way to recharge the aquifers, which would otherwise become depleted. Surface flows also support aquatic life and riparian vegetation, which in turn support wildlife habitat as well as human recreation. The riparian landscape provides an important aesthetic and social amenity; in the words of Santa Fe’s environmental mayor David Cass, ‘The river is our city’s most important park’ (quoted in Albuquerque Journal 2007).6 BOX 3. How to revive the Santa Fe River61 6

The Santa Fe River is the reason our city was established here 400 years ago, but today our community river is in trouble from decades of turning it on and off. Our river has become disconnected from its aquifer, and we have become disconnected from the local watershed that sustains our river and our community. Our current treatment of our river, watershed, and ground water is unsustainable. We have an opportunity, and responsibility, to shift into a new relationship with our river and bequeath a healthy watershed to our children. Here are six steps to get us started: 1. We as a community, need to recognize the Santa Fe River as an extraordinary natural, cultural and economic asset. By working to restore the river, we will be investing in the future of our community, and make Santa Fe an even better place to live. 2. We need to embark on a community-wide process to outline a new vision and policy for our river that will restore regular flows. This ‘Environmental Flow Process’ will involve a series of public meetings and workshops aimed at a recommendation for how much water to give to the river. 3. We should commit a minimal flow of water to the river this year, so that even after the current abundance of the spring run-off, our river can continue to function while we await the prescriptions of the environmental flow process. 4. By using less water in our homes, we can allocate more water to the river. We propose an initial community-wide commitment to reduce water use by 5 per cent, and to strive for additional conservation in the future, to allow for larger environmental flows. Water conservation suggestions, including roof-top water harvesting and more efficient landscape irrigation, can yield much more than 5 per cent savings, particularly during periods of peak water demand. 5. We can improve our management of storm water, to allow more infiltration that can feed the springs and arroyos that in turn feed our river and ground water. This is a high priority need that the city is already working on. 6. We can restore a more natural, meandering river channel and, where possible, reclaim the river’s floodplain to ensure that the river can disperse some of its energy in high flows, and enhance infiltration to the aquifer. These six suggestions are just a beginning, and will support the important restoration work that the city, county, state and many environmental groups are already undertaking: restoring eroded stretches of the river channel, extending the trail system, building new parks, planting native shrubs and trees and so on. It is all important work and it is being done by many actors. Together, as a community, we can revive our river!

6. Adapted from a press release issued by the Santa Fe Watershed Association, 17 April 2007. The original press release is available at www.santafewatershed.org (accessed Jan. 2008).

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david groenfeldt While the citizens of Santa Fe are uniformly in favour of reviving the river, there is no consensus about how much the restoration of flow would be worth. Will individual households be willing to give up some of their customary allocation of water so that the river can flow? Estimates of the amount of water that the river would need to support a minimal flow range from 10 to 20 per cent of current total water use. Some of that water would be recovered through aquifer recharge, but the geology is complex, and no one really knows what proportion of infiltrated water could be recovered. And while many individuals would be willing to conserve water in exchange for a flowing river, what about future businesses and housing construction that need new water hook-ups? There are sound, rational responses to all these concerns, which are being advocated by the local environmental community (see Box 3). The strategy being pursued is to start with a very small amount of water for the river (only 5 per cent of average total annual use, equivalent to 12 per cent of average river flow) and then gradually expand this amount as conservation measures are implemented, and as the community becomes increasingly enthusiastic about the benefits of a flowing river. In the absence of either legal mandates requiring environmental flow, or a local culture that values nature for its own sake, the environmental strategy to revive the river must rely on education and awareness-building, as well as lobbying of local politicians and civic leaders, to enlist their support.

Limits of environmentalism Environmentalists have tried, and failed in the past, to revive the Santa Fe River. In 1995, they were able to convince the City Council to adopt a resolution declaring the city’s commitment to restoring regular flows in the river, but that resolution was no match against pressure from development interests. In spite of official intentions to revive the river, water savings gained through conservation programmes were utilized to support more and more housing development. For example, water savings obtained through a toilet retrofit programme over the past four years have been applied exclusively to support the water demands of new development, rather than for restoring flows to the river. Up to the present time (2007), the city of Santa Fe has allocated not a single drop of water to support an environmental flow. An old adage about Western US water is, ‘Water flows uphill towards money’. A corollary that seems to apply in Santa Fe is ‘Money prevents water from flowing downhill to the river’. In New Mexico, the legal system further prescribes that water use can be considered ‘beneficial’ only if applied to economically productive enterprises. Allowing water to flow in a river for the benefit of the river itself is actually illegal without first obtaining a special permit for such an unforeseen use. New Mexico’s legal system was obviously not formulated by environmentalists but neither is the state’s legal system itself the root problem. The water laws are underlain by the same materialist worldview that also finds expression in secular environmentalism, a view of rivers as ultimately destined to serve human needs. By excluding spiritual values from the debate

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animism, economics and sustainable water development over water management, and limiting the argument to issues reducible to physical cause and effect, the practical result is a bias towards resource exploitation that ultimately harms the environment. A potential correction of this bias, the precautionary principle (‘First, do no harm’) cannot muster enough traction to counter the clear short-term material benefits of exploiting rivers for economic development. Without the argument of spirituality to help them, secular environmentalists can only appeal to the principles of sustainability and long-term impacts. Faced with so many conceptual, legal and economic obstacles, it is not surprising that the Santa Fe River is normally a dry channel, with the entire flow impounded in the upstream reservoirs. Secular environmentalism can, in theory, overpower the arguments of short-term materialists with a long-term vision for river health and the many related benefits, including long-term economic growth. Some countries have incorporated this vision into water policies. Australia offers an inspiring example of a country that shares many features with America (a frontier culture born of European settlers carving a livelihood from a vast wilderness wrested from an indigenous population). Yet in Australia the principle of valuing river health has been incorporated into national and state-level water policies. As a general principle (adopted slightly differently in the various states and territories), a baseline flow is determined for each river, and abstractions for human use must respect that environmental allocation. During droughts, both the environmental allocation as well as human abstractions are reduced, but the principle of an environmental reserve still applies.7 The example of Australia suggests that secular environmentalism can lead to sustainable water policies, while the example of the Santa Fe River shows that material interests are not easily overcome. Perhaps Australia does not need animism as critically as does the city of Santa Fe. The animism that Santa Fe needs is a belief system that elevates the wellbeing of nature to a higher priority than society’s shortterm material gain. This type of practical animism does not necessarily require a shift in religious affiliation, but does imply an acknowledgement of non-material values approaching the level of religious belief. The story of the Santa Fe River’s path to restoration is still in process. Environmental success hinges on meetings and workshops, and experts responding to citizen concerns about having enough water for our own ‘needs’ and questioning why the river should have any base flow at all. Will the river remain thirsty, in unequal competition with human water consumers? Or will the community shift their paradigm from one of fearful protection against chronic water scarcity, to a paradigm of sharing the most precious gift – water – with nature, the source of that water? Secular environmentalism can potentially lead to a sustainable future for both the river and the community, but the path is fraught with legal, political and economic obstacles. An animistic

7. The environmental water provisions of the federal government, with links to each state policy, is described at the website www.water.gov.au/RiverandWetLandHealth/EnvironmentalWaterProvisions/ index.aspx?Menu=Level1_4_5 (accessed Jan. 2008). The interested reader can search the Internet for the “Intergovernmental Agreement on a National Water Initiative (NWI)”, the 2004 policy statement that defines the principles of environmental flow in Australia.

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david groenfeldt perspective would provide a clear and certain path to a living river. The river’s health would not need to be justified in terms of human benefit or long-term economic gain but would become a non-negotiable mandate. The only problem is that no one believes in animism anymore, or do they?

‘Practical’ animism and aesthetics Santa Fe is home to many artists, and many more art lovers and buyers of art. The greater Santa Fe area with a population of around 100,000 rivals Los Angeles and New York as an art market (in terms of total annual art sales). The concept of a value system that transcends materialism is at the core of Santa Fe’s collective psyche. How else does one justify spending tens of thousands of dollars for a piece of art (assuming that art is being purchased for reasons other than investment)? My point here is to single out the field of aesthetics as having a particular hold on the local Santa Fe psyche, and as being somehow related to the sort of spirituality that is glossed as ‘animism’. I am suggesting that the average person in Santa Fe, by virtue of living close to the world of art and artists, has been acculturated into a way of seeing that contains an aesthetic sensibility, and that this aesthetic sense is close enough to a spiritual sense that, for practical purposes, it can be considered almost ‘animistic’. Why does it matter whether Santa Feans share an aesthetic perspective that borders on the animistic? It matters greatly to the future of the Santa Fe River. The arguments of secular environmentalism can be readily rejected by developers, who want to exploit the river for their own material benefit. At the same time, the well-reasoned messages of secular environmentalism lack emotional power among even those who agree intellectually. But when the left-brain logic of environmental sustainability can combine with right-brain emotions about sacred values, an effective alliance can take shape. Whether the right-brain emotions are based on aesthetic conceptions of beauty, or animistic conceptions of river spirits, the practical results can be the same: valuing the health of the river as a priority concern for its own sake, apart from any material benefits. This is the practical result of animistic beliefs, and the point where the secular economic concept of ‘valuation’ joins with the animistic concept of honouring and respecting the natural world. This is where artists and appreciators of aesthetic beauty can join with shamans and adherents of animistic beliefs, in an alliance to protect the river.

Animating ourselves to action Perhaps animism is not optional but lies in our very beings as an often dim recognition of the spirit world. In spite of the forces of mainstream religions – which insist that animists have it all wrong – and the forces of rational materialistic science, which 250

animism, economics and sustainable water development insist that both animists and mainstream religions have it all wrong, there seem to be glimmers of animism in all of us. Everyone carries some bits of animistic, spiritual values whether on the surface for all to see, or hidden deep inside the psyche outside of conscious thought. Art and aesthetics offer a safe and societally endorsed means of tapping into these subliminal animistic sentiments. For the citizens of Santa Fe, where art is also the basis of the local economy, the realm of aesthetic beauty offers a natural entry point to an animistic valuing of the river for its own sake. But an appreciation of the aesthetic or the spiritual will not revive the Santa Fe River, or lead us to sustainable water management. The litmus test of whether nonmaterial values can qualify for the standard of ‘practical animism’ is the logic ascribed to water decisions. Is the rationale for putting water in the river one of material interactions (e.g. relying on surface flows to recharge groundwater aquifers), or non-material benefits (e.g. aesthetic beauty, recreation or spiritual responsibility)? While many residents of Santa Fe hold spiritual values as individuals that could qualify them as practical (if not practising) animists, few of those residents, and fewer still of the political leaders, are willing to stand publicly for those positions. Publicly the values invoked as the basis for water management decisions are predominantly legal and economic. Spirituality is private, whereas law and economics are the basis of public policies. The challenge for reviving the Santa Fe River, and for shifting the paradigm of river management from one of materialism towards more animistic principles, is the challenge of publicly acknowledging the values that are held privately and confidentially. Other than American politicians seeking religious votes, most people are probably more spiritual than they will publicly admit. Bringing water policies in line with spiritual values about nature and the sacredness of rivers will require less a shift in consciousness than a shift towards public honesty about private values. In this process we can learn much from indigenous cultures, who have retained a spiritual core of animism even after centuries of cultural and physical adversity. Both in the Puebloan culture region of the American south-west, and in the Australian Aboriginal traditions, there is wisdom that can help revive our innate animism, which may well be a prerequisite to reviving our thirsty rivers.

Bibliography Albuquerque Journal. 2007. ‘River Remains a Complex Issue’. Albuquerque Journal (28 January). Available at www.redorbit.com/news/science/818905/river_remains_a_complex_issue/index.html (accessed Mar. 2008). Blackbourn, D. 2006. The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany. New York: Norton. Daily, G., ed. 1997. Nature’s Services: Society Dependence on Natural Ecosystems. Washington, DC: Island Press. Dyson, M., G. Bergkamp & J. Scanlon, eds. 2003. Flow: The Essentials of Environmental Flows, Cambridge: IUCN. www.iucn.org/places/wescana/documents/flow1.pdf (accessed Jan. 2008). Groenfeldt, D. 2006. ‘Multifunctionality of Agricultural Water: Looking Beyond Food Production and Ecosystem Services’. Irrigation and Drainage 55: 1–11. Harvey, G. 2006. Animism: Respecting the Living World. New York: Columbia University Press.

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david groenfeldt Johnston, B., ed. 1994. Who Pays the Price? The Sociocultural Context of Environmental Crisis. Washington, DC: Island Press. Nicholson, S. & B. Rosen, eds. 1992. Gaia’s Hidden Life: The Unseen Intelligence of Nature. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books. Postel, S. & B. Richter. 2003. Rivers for Life: Managing Water for People and Nature. Washington, DC: Island Press. Turpin, T. 2006. Traditional Water Management in Sri Lanka and Its Relevance to the UK for Climate Change: Report to Trust. London: Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. UNESCO. 2006. Water and Indigenous Peoples, eds R. Boelens, M. Chiba & D. Nakashima. UNESCO: Paris. Worster, D. 1985. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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14 Blue, green and red: combining energies in defence of water Veronica Strang

There is a tendency in environmental discourses to classify relationships with water as either ‘spiritual’ or ‘commercial’. This chapter suggests that both are concerned with regeneration and productivity. What differentiates them more critically is a shift from relatively passive, low-key interactions with water to more actively managerial forms of engagement that materialize ideas about human dominion over nature and valorize concepts of growth. When unrestrained by concerns for sustainability, these more directive interactions with water result in spiralling intensity in production and the over-use of resources. There is a hope, expressed in this volume, that such material short-termism and a commitment to continual growth can be ameliorated or redirected by a re-embracement of spiritual values. However, sustainable resource use is not merely an issue of spiritual or aesthetic restraint versus the attainment of base desires, but also a wider moral and political debate. In largely secular societies it may more be useful to consider the potential common ground that can be found in a range of interactions with water. Based on long-term ethnographic research in Australia, this chapter is concerned with articulating the points of reconciliation between different groups.

Polarities In the past few decades, with the rise of a vocal environmental movement in many countries, it has become conventional to present indigenous groups’ relationships with water and those of (particularly Western) commercial water users in polarized terms, as if there were little or no common ground between engagements purportedly focused on spiritual issues, and those directed towards production and profit. Like

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veronica strang other dualistic visions, however, this ignores the complexities inherent in human– environmental relationships, failing to recognize the economic aspects of indigenous interactions with water (and thus their rights of ownership and use), and ignoring the spiritual and emotional dimensions of other groups’ engagements. Why has such a polarized vision become so entrenched in the popular imagination? There are various contributory factors. There is an underlying conceptual dualism, in which nature is conflated with ideas about pre-cultural, pre-historic ways of life, and culture with science and development. This is accompanied by a series of related dualisms, for example, emotional/rational, female/male and so on (see Descola and Palsson 1996). This fundamental duality is integral to the idea of humanity as separate from and superior to nature, and contains vestiges of evolutionary concepts in which ‘civilization’ represents ever-increasing distance from more ‘natural’ beginnings. There are political realities: indigenous communities, dispossessed of their land by colonial invasions and coerced into the adoption of new economic modes, have only been permitted to express largely ‘spiritual’ relations with their environment. In Australia, for example, Aboriginal land ownership was denied throughout the period of colonial settlement, until the Native Title Act in 1993 established that indigenous forms of property rights had indeed existed. Until then, unable to assert their ownership or maintain their own economic practices, Aboriginal communities necessarily focused more heavily on their spiritual connections to land and – most particularly – to the water places that occupy a central place in their religious cosmology. Another factor is the somewhat uneasy relationship that the environmental movement has often had with indigenous peoples. In their own way conservation groups make a powerful moral claim for the control of land and water resources, albeit with a view to protecting rather than exploiting these. Many indigenous communities see this as a further challenge to their rights, and in some cases a direct appropriation of their ancestral lands. As one Kunjen elder noted, when a national park was established alongside the Mitchell River in Australia’s Cape York: Soon as this Park Ranger coming in, ‘it’s a national park’, but we didn’t know nothing about it. We didn’t know that’s gonna be national park. You know, they never come and ask the Kunjen people … They just went on and do it! And we got a great big shock! That’s why we squealing for it now … They cover the whole country there, that national park, but that’s why I was spittin’ you know, because my great-grandmother, grandfather, my father country on the other side of the Mitchell, my country on side of the Mitchell, and my father’s father and mother: they walked that country all the time! … They [the Park Rangers] say ‘no we can’t we can’t go in there’. We go ‘Why? That’s where we bin staying all time’. (Colin Lawrence, Kowanyama)1

1. Unless otherwise indicated, all unpublished quotes in this article arise from taped research interviews carried out during ethnographic fieldwork.

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blue, green and red Environmental groups have sometimes been equally ambivalent about the aspirations of indigenous people. Where Aboriginal communities have made few demands for the restitution of their rights to use resources, or where these uses are sufficiently low-key not to compete with conservation aims, they have often been depicted romantically, putatively embodying an ideal of harmony with nature, deep ecological knowledge and sustainability (Ellen 1986; Brosius 1997). However, the focus of conservation groups has generally been on the protection of non-human species, and such idealizations tend to evaporate when confronted with contemporary indigenous communities’ desires to adopt new technologies and new forms of production. Tensions emerge, for example, in controversies about indigenous resource use in national parks, or when it is argued that indigenous forms of knowledge should be given equal weight in joint management schemes (see De Lacy 1997; Hall 2000). As Allen points out, a desire to see Aboriginal culture as representative of a pre-industrial mythical past denies its contemporary role in events: If Aboriginal economic and social relationships are portrayed in timeless, cyclical terms, and if Aboriginal culture is presented as being ancient (50,000 years old), then the connection with the present is lost … A second significant effect that comes from dealing with Aboriginal culture as if it is timeless and outside of history is to make it part of nature. Conceptualising Aboriginal culture in this manner preserves the fiction that a national park is a place where ecosystems and ecological relationships are protected from human use. Rather than seeing the landscape as the outcome of Aboriginal cultural activities, these are relocated as part of the natural relationships within the park. (1997: 149) The most powerful – and long-term – influence on representations of indigenous and ‘Western’ environmental relationships has been the growing realization that industrial societies’ untrammelled exploitation of resources has had increasingly severe effects on global ecosystems. Ambivalence towards the material and economic advantages of technological development has been echoed in a variety of discourses over time: in Luddite resistance to the Industrial Revolution;2 in ideas about ‘noble savages’ uncorrupted by new materialism (see Attwood and Arnold 1992); in anxieties about modernity and the dissolution of social cohesion (Berger et al. 1973); and in recurrent concerns about Westerners’ ‘alienation’ from nature. In these, the wellbeing of social and ecological systems is seen to be at odds with unrestrained development. Polarized representations of indigenous and spiritual relations with water, as opposed to commercially exploitative engagements with ‘resources’, therefore express a tension between what seem to be mutually exclusive aims. However, whether it is useful to position these representations in oppositional terms is another matter. It may prove more fruitful to consider not their differences, but their similarities. 2. The Luddites are generally depicted as ignorant barbarians, but it is worth recalling that history is written by the winners, and they could as well be represented as early critics of the social and environmental costs of technological development.

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Figure 1 Hazel Barr, Clara Yam and Maudie Yam beside the lagoon at Odnodh3 in North Queensland. (Photograph by author.)

Aboriginal engagements with water Aboriginal people in Australia feature prominently in representations of indigenous groups whose interactions with the environment centre on deeply affective and spiritual relationships with their homelands. Indeed, for many people they provide the quintessential image of indigenous spirituality. A history of colonial representations in which they were directly conflated with ‘nature’ rather than ‘culture’ (see Hornberg and Kurkiala 1998; Strang 1997) has now segued into a popular vision of Aboriginal culture as expressing exemplary ‘harmony with nature’ and sustainable resource use. But what has enabled indigenous communities to achieve such sustainability?3 It is generally acknowledged that, prior to the colonial invasion, Aboriginal groups in Australia maintained one of the most stable long-term economies in the world, existing successfully as hunter-gatherers in one of the world’s most arid areas for over 40,000 years. Their management of this environment had some ecological impacts over time, and there is much debate about the extent of these. Some analysts have argued, for example, that fire management practices, which involved burning dry scrub regularly to encourage ‘green pick’ for game, advantaged some animal and plant species at the cost of others and created a more open, ‘park like’ landscape. It has also been posited that Aboriginal hunting led to the extinction of various species of megafauna. Given the changes in climate, rising sea levels and so on that occurred during the same period, it is difficult to be certain how much environmental change was anthropogenic in cause. Whatever the degree of influence exercised by Australian hunter-gatherers, the relatively subtle, long-term alterations to the environment that 3. In the local language, Olkol, Odnodh means ‘red paint’ (i.e. body paint made from red ochre) but refers to a detail in a story about the ancestral Moon and Sun beings, which is a women’s story.

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blue, green and red occurred remain minimal in comparison with the much more radical and immediate effects of the European economic modes that were introduced subsequently. There are also major differences in their relative sustainability: indigenous groups managed the land and resources in such a way that, had they been left undisturbed, they could quite probably have continued in this mode fairly indefinitely. In practical terms, this sustainability was achieved by being consistently ‘low key’. Aboriginal Australians maintained a generally stable level of population, living in small, scattered language groups. Within a kin-based social system, clans were organized spatially, being linked to (and therefore efficiently dispersed across) particular tracts of land. Moving around their estates in regular patterns, these clans made use of resources as they became seasonally available, exchanging people and goods with neighbouring clan groups, and supporting more distant trading relationships with others. At certain times during the year, larger gatherings took place to enable collective forms of resource use, wider exchanges and the organization of major ceremonies. A hunter-gatherer economy has several important characteristics. First, it is holistic: it engages with a comprehensive range of flora and fauna within local ecosystems, and therefore has an interest in maintaining all of these. It relies largely on the environment to produce resources, with humans only acting on it in moderation through fire regimes, small-scale domiculture4 and a variety of subtle management techniques.5 Its major resource is environmental knowledge: the detailed lexicon of bush lore that allows groups to know what to harvest, where, when and how. For Aboriginal Australians, much of this knowledge is detailed in the ancestral stories and in the various art forms used to illustrate these, but in whatever form it is inter-generationally transmitted, such knowledge is essential to a successful hunter-gatherer economy. In terms of resources, of course, water places are by far the richest parts of any landscape, supporting major concentrations of flora and fauna, and they have therefore always been central to social and economic activities for Aboriginal people. They are commensurately important in religious terms. As described in more detailed ethnographies (Magowan 2001; Strang 1997, 2002, in press; Toussaint et al. 2005), and in other chapters in this volume (e.g. Bradley, Ch. 1), water is central in an Aboriginal cosmology. It is the substance in which the ancestral forces have been held since the Dreamtime, a ‘long ago’ era in which the ancestors emerged on to the surface, created all the features of the environment, and sank back down into the earth, where they remained ‘for all time’. Water is both the home of the Rainbow Serpent and a manifestation of it, and it is from the water sources scattered throughout the environment that spirit children are believed to ‘jump up’ into human mothers to take their place in the visible, material world that lies above the surface. Thus every individual has a spiritual ‘home’ from which their spirit arose, which is generally a water place of some kind, and it is to this place that their spirit must be ritually returned when they die. Human lives are 4. Domiculture entails the planting of fruit and medicine plants around regular camp sites. 5. For example, in harvesting wild yams, replanting the main tuber of the plant to ensure that the yams will be replenished.

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veronica strang therefore intended to echo those of the ancestors, in emerging from the land, acting on it and finally returning to it, to be reintegrated into the pool of ancestral force. As a Kunjen elder in Cape York explained, when an individual dies, senior family members have to ‘send their spirit home’ ritually to its totemic ancestor, through songs and dances relating the appropriate ancestral stories: They talk to you a while, before they bury you. They say make sure you go back to so and so place. And they sing out … your spirit goes back. Home back to that bird. So like my body, my spirit goes back to brolga and walk like a brolga … Yeah, they’d make that dance about brolga. They tell that person [spirit], you know, talk to that coffin. Say ‘make sure you go back to your tribal home, your elampungk’.[6] (Alma Wason, Kowanyama) In an Aboriginal cultural landscape water places are thus the major source of human spiritual being. However, the creative power of the ancestral forces in the water does not stop there: they also enable the environment to generate resources to support their human descendents. This is a partnership: in return for the proper care and management of clan lands, the ancestral beings will give the human inhabitants the resources that they need, and they can be asked to provide more of these via ‘increase rituals’ in which they are called on to generate particular resources. For example, in northern Queensland, at a place called Ulpun ampungk (or Watum Yard), the ritual scattering of leaves from a certain tree is said to bring rain, boosting the production of a range of resources. Similarly, at Kanarrg’na (Catfish Story Place), strewing bark from trees in a particular spot will cause the numbers of catfish in the waterholes to increase. When humans fail to care for the land properly, through rituals and ‘cleaning’ it with fire, or when harmful strangers trespass on it, these resources are withdrawn, and can disappear completely. Thus Aboriginal people inhabit a very sentient cultural landscape, imbued with the watchful presence of the ancestral beings, and responsive to human actions. The productivity of the environment, and its ability to provide for human needs, is reliant on ongoing ritual connections with the ancestors. For Aboriginal communities, therefore, environmental care is intimately bound up with spiritual beliefs and activities, and with a cosmology in which human lives are intended to replicate those of the ancestors in an ongoing cycle of renewal. As Morton observes: ‘Virtue in Aboriginal religion lies in the obligation to follow ancestral precedent, which involves keeping the stories and countries alive as part of a living tradition steeped in ritual sensibilities and regulations. The obligation is not disinterested: the traditions should repay the interest of the living’ (2000: 13). This is an intrinsically conservative belief system, concerned only to maintain a steady state (Morphy 1991, 1995; Strang 1997). Although there are underlying ideas about growth and development as a localized cycle of seasonal events, it has little 6. Elampungk is a Kunjen term referring to the individual’s spiritual ‘home place’. As ‘el’ means ‘eye’ and ‘ampungk’ means ‘home’, it translates more literally as ‘the home place of your image’.

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blue, green and red aspiration for expansion, maintains a fairly consistent population size, and therefore creates little pressure for the development of technologies that would permit a major intensification of resource use. Based on a belief that life will continue in the same way indefinitely, and that resources need to be managed to provide for this, it is inherently sustainable in both principle and practice. It therefore encourages values that prioritize forms of environmental management that will provide ‘for future generations’. The religious foundations of the belief system, the intimate knowledge of the landscape, and the dense encoding of meanings in it combine to generate a passionate concern for the long-term wellbeing of the land and most particularly its water sources. This deeply affective concern is expressed in an excerpt from Robert Bropho’s speech about a lengthy protest opposing the development of a Swan Brewery building on the site of a sacred spring. Under the building is the sacred spring. Under the building is the Waugal, our Rainbow Serpent. He is the creator of all waterways, of rivers, of creeks … Gutsy gutsy mob of people all putting up with the abuse, the cold, the wind, the rain, the day and the night, the pressures of the Government … everlasting criticism of us on radio, television, in papers, they never stop, but we’ll always be fighting against these things where sacred sites are concerned. (Quoted in Kleinert and Neale 2000: 57–8) Culture has considerable momentum even when circumstances change dramatically. The stability that Aboriginal communities enjoyed prior to colonial settlement has, over the past two hundred years, been massively disrupted, and the energies of Australia’s indigenous communities have been directed into survival, adaptation and the pursuit of civil rights and, more recently, land rights. However, throughout this they have sought to maintain their own cultural beliefs, knowledges and practices, and to retain the values that underpin these. Thus, even as they forge new social and economic practices, they have continued to espouse spiritual principles and to express a deep concern for the health and wellbeing of the environment. ‘Spiritual’ values are to some extent moral choices about what is important. Thus, in an Aboriginal cosmology, humankind and its needs do not sit far above the needs of the environment, but are placed in an equal, reciprocal relationship in which all aspects of everyday life – the social, the economic, the religious and the political – are closely meshed with all aspects of the local environment. In this more holistic engagement, human needs have to be brought into alignment with the needs of the environment, and it is thus philosophically discouraging to actions that are destructive to ecological processes. It is not surprising, therefore, that indigenous discourses contain an implied, and sometimes overt, critique of non-Aboriginal environmental management, which, in a mere two hundred years, has caused widespread damage to fragile ecosystems that were managed sustainably throughout the previous 40,000-plus years of Aboriginal control. Indigenous groups have been astute in constructing self-representations that build on romantic images of themselves as exemplary environmental managers. However, like the reductive representations imposed by others, this tends to obscure the holistic

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veronica strang totality of Aboriginal relations to place, and the relationship between modes of environmental engagement and religious beliefs. Spiritual connection to the environment and heartfelt concern for its long-term health is as much a product as a cause of indigenous modes of engagement with it. This raises the possibility that the development of such a deep spiritual connection to place is only possible within the permanence and holistic intimacy of the kind of environmental relationship conducted by huntergatherers. There is thus a further question about the extent to which similarly intense spiritual connection to the environment is attainable for other groups, even those, such as conservationists, who are eager to foreground spiritual issues.

Meaningful engagements Aboriginal environmental engagements usefully illustrate some core themes of meaning that are encoded in water: it is the source of spiritual being; as a generative force; as the basis for wealth and health. Although formulated in very different ways in other cultural contexts, these broad themes recur elsewhere. Persistently, across time and space, water has been associated with human spiritual being (Pocknee 1967; Bord and Bord 1985; Illich 1986; Astrup 1993) and resources have often been managed in accordance with these beliefs (Lansing 1991). Today, some groups continue to foreground spiritual beliefs and prioritize these meanings in their management of water, while for others the spiritual and collective meanings encoded in water have become a fainter backdrop, while ideas about water as a generative substance occupy the foreground and form the basis of visions of individual and familial productivity. In Australia, it appears that the population broadly shares assumptions about human dominion over nature. Most people have little hesitation in moulding their immediate environments to suit aesthetic and practical needs: for example, the family garden now constitutes one of the most popular art forms in everyday life. Water use per capita has risen steadily over the past couple of decades, despite some energetic ‘Waterwise’ campaigns, and much public resentment is created by the imposition of hosepipe bans and other limitations on water use. It would appear, therefore, that the emphasis is on the generative capacities of water to produce material things, even in a domestic context. However, this is not detached from the spiritual aspects of generation, which appear in a range of images and rituals. There are myriad images linking water and spirituality even in secular industrialized societies. Some vestigial religious practices remain: many people have their children baptized with water, sprinkle holy water on the coffins of their dead relatives, or undergo immersion in water to be ‘born again’. They may read bibles or listen to sermons in which images of water appear as manifestations of the Holy Spirit. If they have discarded even token religious observances, they will still be exposed to media in which holy water is used to bless places, effect exorcisms and defeat vampires. They will drink spring water for their health, and bathe regularly to maintain hygienic wellbeing.

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blue, green and red All around them, in commercial advertisements, in art and literature, water appears as a symbol of life, and as an allegory of the human spirit. Their languages – whatever these may be – are riddled with metaphors employing water imagery to describe processes of change and transformation, including those that refer to spiritual concerns. Thus rivers appear as metaphors of time and the human ‘life journey’, and the hydrological cycle is employed to conceptualize abstract ideas about spiritual movement from material to immaterial planes of existence (see Tuan 1968; Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Strang 2004). In many countries, the environmental movement routinely promulgates the message that ‘water is life’ in its pleas to protect river catchments and wetland areas. The image of ‘dry and dusty death’ remains an equally powerful alternative, with newspapers or radio and television programmes full of anxious stories about the ‘crisis’ brought about by water shortages and the potential demise of ecosystems and their dependent species. There is also a critical relationship between aesthetic and sensory experiences, and the development of emotional connections to places and to the elements of which they are composed. One of the universalities of human experience is a deep sensory engagement with water. It is a key ‘natural symbol’ (Douglas 1973; Giblett 1996) and, as various writers have noted, sensory experience is foundational to the creation of meaning (Howes 1991, 2005; Csordas 1994; Damasio 1999; Strang 2005a). Sensory experiences of water permeate many aspects of everyday life. All humans imbibe water continuously, with an awareness that they are largely composed of it and it is essential for their survival. Where they can, they immerse themselves in water, luxuriating in hot showers and wallowing in warm baths; floating in pools, rivers and seas. They make use of it to clean their bodies and homes and to water the garden. Water is a meditative magnet: people walk beside rivers, picnic beside lakes and fight for a view of the sea just so that they can gaze at its glittering surfaces and listen to its sounds. It is the most common centrepiece – the jewel in the crown – of landscape design (Symmes 1998). As I have noted elsewhere (Strang 2004), there is no readily discernible dividing line between the transcendent meditative states induced by these sensory and aesthetic engagements and those engendered by religious rituals around water. Rituals, such as praying in the woods or giving libations to ‘the Goddess’, have a formal intention to effect a transformation in consciousness, but it is difficult to say whether they achieve a greater ‘oneness with nature’ than more direct sensory interactions, such as floating in water, or watching the river flow by. Although apparently merely hedonistic, pleasurable recreational engagements with water, in dissolving boundaries, reportedly encourage emotional cathection and intellectual creativity, engendering a different state of mind. As a couple of tourists reported, after canoeing on a lake in Cape York: We decided just to enjoy the view because if you are too occupied with something in the big picture, then you lose suddenly the quietness … Today was really nice, enjoying the landscape, and peaceful and quiet … The really nice thing about water is the different sort of movements. It’s so different, you walk

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Figure 2 Tourists, Cornelia Hack and Christian Voight, at the Mareeba Wetlands in North Queensland. (Photograph by author.)

or you fly … It’s equal in the water. Everything is smooth, you can’t make a sharp turn …. It’s like when you’re sitting in a Chinese garden and just looking at the water … It calms you … It’s so different to go to a river or a lake or the ocean. Physically different. To just sit and relax and sit on the shore and look at the ocean. (Cornelia Hack and Christian Voight) Such responses are often cross-cultural. Thus a British composer compares the effects of engaging with water with those of making music: I think quite often people see the river as a meditative place … there’s some idea of solace in the river … people come to it to, in a way, reflect and to see their life as a whole, or to see life as a whole in some way, outside of a kind of scurrying about in daily life … And there seems to be quite a lot of translation of emotion, feeling that the river, the twists in the river are like kind of the twists in life in some way … [Swimming] is quite close to the experience of playing an instrument … They are fairly similar, in that it is about freedom, and you sort of lose … I think swimming is quite a healing thing, you can go in there and come out feeling so much better, and you kind of lose a sense of worry or restraint when you are swimming. And I think in way when you are playing an instrument, when you are improvising, it can be such a high, you just kind of fly off really. (Karen Wimhurst)7 Whether induced through formal ritual practices, or enabled through relaxed physical experience, these forms of engagement are central to people’s relationships with water. Both involve affective connection with the immediate environment and the

7. This interview was conducted during ethnographic research on the River Stour in Dorset (Strang 2004, 2005a).

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blue, green and red harmonization of mental, emotional and physical being, and both focus on water as the substance through which this is achieved. In this process, a critical role is played by a concept of aesthetics. Aesthetic appreciation is similarly a cross-cultural phenomenon,8 and is based on an idea of moral order: a judgement that things are ‘right’ and as they should be (Morphy 1994, 2005). A lake or river tainted by pollution cannot be as beautiful as a pure and unsullied water body. There is thus a useful conceptual overlap between aesthetic images of visual harmony and order, religious concepts of moral order, and conservationists’ ideas about ‘properly’ functional ecosystems. All envisage a world in which balance reigns and processes are flowing in accord with human and ecological generative needs. It is therefore unsurprising that where there is extensive recreational use of water, this tends to engender concern for the environment. For example, many of the people involved in river catchment groups have been encouraged to join them following recreational interactions with local waterways. Recreational uses of water take a variety of forms: fishing remains perennially popular (and entails considerable knowledge about the rise and fall of fish populations); sailing, canoeing, river walks, swimming and riparian picnics also encourage wildlife observation and an awareness of water quality and quantity. Critically, ‘recreation’ – as the term suggests – is not merely a form of play (although that is important), but also a process of renewal and revitalization based on a holistic sensory and aesthetic engagement with the environment that encourages affective connection with it (Strang 1996; Milton 2002). Although a long way removed from the intimacy of a life of hunting and gathering, these everyday forms of engagement provide some potential resonance between the experiences of all water-users and indigenous engagements with water, and open the door to consideration of deeper social and spiritual issues.

An agricultural account Indigenous communities and conservation groups in Australia have been particularly critical of farmers and their shift towards more and more intensive methods of production. Their doubts about the wisdom of such frenetic development are increasingly shared by the wider population. Agricultural intensification over the past century has certainly had major ecological effects: farmers have become so heavily reliant on the abstraction of increasing amounts of water from rivers and aquifers that some areas, such as the Murray-Darling Basin, are now in a state of ecological crisis. They are also dependent on the use of large amounts of fertilizer, which, leaching into water courses, has caused widespread weed and algal growth with major impacts on aquatic species. From the perspective of green groups and indigenous land managers,

8. There are complex ties between sensory experience and aesthetic appreciation, and these are usefully explored not only by Morphy (as cited) but also by Gell (1998).

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Figure 3 Flood irrigation of sugar cane in North Queensland. (Photograph by author.)

this constitutes an overly exploitative use of resources in which social and ecological sustainability are sacrificed to short-term gains. It is, in other words, a highly selective engagement with water, in which environmental costs are externalized. Whatever view one takes of the current situation, it is important to understand how it has been created. Why have increasingly unsustainable farming practices emerged? Is the relationship really as one dimensional as it is portrayed? On the surface, commercial uses of water seem far removed from deeply spiritual interactions with it, but there are several reasons to question this assumption. First, economic activities are only one dimension of people’s engagements with water. While some water-users do indeed make strenuous efforts to reframe water as ‘resources’, ‘supplies’, ‘assets’ and ‘commodities’, they are by no means immune from the powerful meanings that have been encoded in water throughout history and in all cultural contexts. Perhaps more importantly, ‘productive’ uses of resources are part of a wider, more complex relationship with water and its various meanings. Although presented as a purely commercial form of engagement, farming has its own set of meanings and values in which spiritual and emotional concerns are by no means absent. To consider these, it is useful to explore the social and cultural issues that have influenced the farming community over time. Prior to European contact, there was some very small-scale horticultural activity in Australia, supplementing gathering and hunting in indigenous island communities, but farming on a larger scale was established only with the efforts of European colonists to create larger permanent settlements. Quite apart from the reality that they did not have sufficient knowledge to subsist on local resources,9 the settlers were already committed to 9. It appears from early diaries that in some instances explorers starved in ‘the bush’ when surrounded by foods regularly utilized by Aboriginal people.

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blue, green and red economic methods developed in a European context. Back in their mother countries, population growth had stimulated numerous technological developments and more intensive food production. However, this process had not been entirely successful in meeting increasing levels of demand, leading directly to the hegemonic colonial expansions aimed at acquiring more land and resources. Accustomed to the robust soils and generous waters of a temperate European environment, the early settlers in Australia attempted to transplant familiar farming methods into a new ecological context. Even when confronted with the realities of a frequently arid environment and more fragile, friable soils, they persisted, in part because they saw no alternative, but also because the introduction of their own technologies of production constituted an important part of their aspirations to bring ‘civilization’ to the New World. Raised on Christian ideas about the superiority of humankind, they felt that to subsist ‘hand to mouth’ on native flora and fauna was to live like animals or ‘savages’, at the mercy of untamed nature. Integral to their cosmology was a dualistic vision of nature and culture, and a belief that the triumph of the latter was what elevated humans in spiritual terms and separated them from other species. Such a fundamental alienation between humankind and ‘nature’, foundational to European religious beliefs, may be said to dispose societies towards dominion rather than partnership. In the early days of colonial expansion, however, such dominion was seen as not only desirable, but also morally imperative. It was therefore incumbent on the early settlers to enact these principles in establishing what they regarded as successful forms of production. Their strenuous efforts to do so permitted the colony to support a steady increase in population, simultaneously creating a perpetual need to maintain levels of production sufficient to feed the incomers. Australia therefore rapidly conformed to the patterns of environmental management that had already been established in more densely populated parts of the world, in which population growth and technological advancement were mutually stimulating. For much of the colonial period an open-ended and expansive idea of growth was not seen in negative terms, being framed instead as a positive process of enriching the country and developing its potential. This positive vision of agricultural development persisted in the early part of the twentieth century. Farmers and graziers continued to ‘tame’ what they saw as hostile ‘wilderness’, containing it with fences and yards, and installing bores and dams to extract and impound its water sources. From the farmers’ perspective, this channelled water resources into the production of foods vital to the wider population’s survival and wellbeing. Their very identity centred on a role as ‘primary producers’: the heroes who generated the most essential of products, and on whom the rest of the community relied. This role was strongly emphasized during the two world wars, in which their ability to produce and send food to European allies (whose systems of production were in crisis) was a life-saving part of the war effort. Following the Second World War and the emigration from Europe that this encouraged, the population in Australia enlarged exponentially. Most of the newcomers were located in the urban centres clustered along the coast, which were totally reliant on inland rural areas for agricultural production. During the same period, the national

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Figure 4 Remzi Mulla inspecting mango tree irrigation on his farm in North Queensland. (Photograph by author.)

economy globalized, increasing its links with distant markets, and dependence on them. Farmers were therefore subject to dual pressures for further intensification – more local mouths to feed, and more external markets to trade with – and they did their best to keep pace, assisted by major public investments in irrigation infrastructure. On the Brisbane River, for example, they created the ‘salad bowl’ of Queensland; further north, in wetter and warmer regions, ‘fruit bowls’ and sugar estates were established; to the south, a more Mediterranean climate permitted the establishment of a major wine industry; and in the Murray-Darling Basin, farmers produced many thirsty but profitable crops. This energetic growth and development continued to be seen in positive terms, as progress towards a strong and mature economy. Throughout this history, intermittent droughts had created temporary halts in agricultural production and consequent economic hardship, but it was only in the latter part of the twentieth century that the true scale of the ecological crisis in Australia emerged. By then there was a catalogue of problems: the irreversible salination of large areas of land following years of irrigation; soils eroded and degraded by overgrazing; the loss of aquatic species in the waterways absorbing silt and nutrients from intensive farming; and, most critically, a realization that there was simply not enough water to sustain the further intensification of agriculture without risking a major ecological debacle. For the first time urban water consumption created direct competition for farming allocations and, in a globalized economy, the farmers discovered that, with the potential for cheap food imports, their productive efforts were increasingly expendable. This was a harsh realization for a community that, since the earliest days of settlement, had been central to the economy and to Australia’s cultural identity, representing the heartland of the nation, and its productive capabilities. For farmers to lose their heroic status and, worst of all, to be recast as ‘environmental wreckers’ has been a deeply affecting social loss. Of course they have fought back, keen to assert the rightness of their beliefs, and to persuade the wider population that, despite consid266

blue, green and red erable evidence that many of their practices are unsustainable, they are caring and responsible environmental managers whose activities should be valorized. However, they are now confronted with a largely urban population that is highly cognizant of the ecological problems emerging in Australia, and that (after a long drought) sees the overuse of water resources as a major social and political issue. There is a powerful green movement that has little hesitation in decrying intensive forms of land use. And, as previously observed, there is an increasingly vocal indigenous community that is deeply concerned about the wellbeing of the environment, and inclined to lay the blame for ecological problems squarely on those who have most directly appropriated their land. The disjunction between these views and the farmers’ ‘shaken but not stirred’ belief in the worth of their generative activities represents a deep divide in Australia, one in which reconciliation cannot occur without some recognition of the common values that they share. It is undoubtedly valid to critique the farmers’ and other primary producers’ values and priorities, and what appears to be a disregard for the long-term environmental consequences of their resource management. However, consideration of the meanings and values that they attach to their activities suggests that farmers’ use of water, while it is explicitly commercial, is not amoral or bereft of spiritual meaning. There remains, for them, an underlying theme of social responsibility – almost a ‘sacred duty’ – in producing sustenance for the wider population. This perceived moral good, and the difficulty of letting go of an identity in which it is central, create a powerful incentive to respond with denial to scientific evidence about the ecological costs of persisting with industrial farming practices. So too, of course, does a desire to protect a particular economic status quo. Farmers’ incomes depend on water, and it is central to their abilities to ‘make a living’. But ‘making a living’ is not just about money:10 it is about agency and value, and generative ability. In a wider commercial domain water appears as the ‘lifeblood’ of the whole economy. A recent campaign for more efficient use of water resources in Australia led with the phrase ‘Water is Gold’. Thus, albeit in a different idiom, even in commercial terms, water is still encoded with meanings, as the source of life, as a symbol of wealth and health, and as the basis for generation and regeneration. These meanings permeate discourses about its use, whether the focus is on the spiritual expression of human and environmental regeneration, or on the centrality of water in generating products and profit. One might even say that these meanings actively support the impetus to use water to produce more and more wealth, at least in a short-term vision that externalizes the environmental costs of doing so. For farmers, order is achieved by utilizing water resources to meet social and economic goals. But these goals have shifted considerably over time: farming practices, and the role and identity of farmers, have to be situated within a much larger spiral of growth and development in which the needs and expectations of the population as a whole require ever more intensive exploitation of natural resources. It is these 10. It is perhaps useful to bear in mind that money is, in itself, a condensed symbolic measure of value.

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veronica strang pressures, as much as a desire for profit, that spur farmers to intensify their activities and externalize the environmental costs. What this brief historical account reveals is that there are no demons in the equation. In essence, farmers have invested their identity in a role as the producers of lifegiving, economy supporting foods; they conform to the work ethics of their cultural background, and they retain many vestiges of its historical religious and moral beliefs. Their particular beliefs and values, like those of the indigenous community, have had considerable momentum, even in a changing context. For nearly two hundred years, farmers in Australia have been encouraged to see their activities as positive expressions of human abilities to generate and regenerate food and wealth. In performing this role, they believe they have met social, economic and – in the terms of their own cosmology – spiritual needs. To them, a capacity to ‘feed the world’ through the use of water is a form of ‘Deep Blue’, and a shift to lower-key modes of food production – although these may be more ecologically sustainable – would be perceived by most of them as a step backwards. Farmers therefore have a genuine dilemma, and some very deep-seated reasons for maintaining and indeed intensifying their current practices. Critiques of these practices are more likely to engender change if they are coupled with active support for farmers in finding better ways to maintain a strong identity as environmental managers and as ‘primary producers’.

Seductive ideologies Insights into the positive visions of exponential growth that underlie farming also give us some idea why this vision is so seductive in more general terms, and why it provides the basis for an entire ideological stance. Like the farmers themselves, the governments that regulate their activities are also both constrained and inspired by a responsibility to facilitate growth, and have a sense of the moral value of doing so. The most basic concern of any government is to ensure that its population has enough – and sufficiently affordable – food and water, and that its material needs are met. In theory, it also has a responsibility to balance these needs with the longer-term protection of the country’s ecological health, but this invariably takes second place to more immediate exigencies, and to the political advantages of providing increasing affluence. As a government employee (requesting anonymity) put it, ‘the environment doesn’t vote’. Australia, like many Western nations, has for the past decade or so been led by right-wing governing parties, whose ideologies prioritize wealth creation rather than broader social and ecological concerns. There is a dominant discourse in which ‘growth’ is imbued with positive connotations: ‘new life’, ‘generative power’, ‘strength’ and simply ‘more’. These meanings are so entrenched that they have become normalized, making alternative critiques (for example of growth as a ‘cancer’, or consumption as ‘destruction’) seem aberrant and deliberately contrary. In such a polarized debate, genuine questions about the feasibility of maintaining growth-based practices are

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blue, green and red obscured and doubts about sustainability are allayed with assurances that economic rationalism will drive the development of social and ecological ‘efficiencies’. There are many complex reasons why these particular ideological principles have come to dominate activities, which there is insufficient space to explore here, but whatever ameliorations are achieved by better technology and more efficiency, the further expansion of human populations and resource consumption is unlikely to produce sustainable outcomes. Of course this is precisely what Jonathon Porritt and other green activists have been saying for several decades: it is only now, with the looming threat of irreversible climate change and increasingly alarming ‘natural’ events, that the contradiction between unrestrained growth and sustainability has become central to mainstream debates. Real change to these priorities can only come with a sustained public commitment to greater environmental protection. Australia is deeply divided in this regard. There are widespread demands for the stricter regulation of water management, and for the safeguarding of ‘environmental flows’, and some efforts have been made to improve irrigation efficiency and to manage domestic demand to ease the pressure on ecosystems. However, many people still cling to a belief that the solution is to redirect or harvest and store more water, with pipelines and dams, so that growth can continue. It seems that citizens, like their leaders, are to some extent only semi-willing passengers on the juggernaut of a growth-based economy, simultaneously enticed by its images of wealth and disturbed by its potential consequences.

The red and the green Environmentalists are by no means the only critics of growth-based competitive economies. There is also fierce opposition from a range of left-wing groups, who see these economic modes as exploitative of less advantaged human populations, and abhor the widening inequalities that they have produced (Ward 1997). Water is a particularly revealing prism, providing insights into the realities of social and economic relationships. As the literature on hydropolitics makes plain, conflicts over water touch on fundamental relations of power (see Lowi 1993; Bennett 1995; Donahue and Johnston 1998; Blatter and Ingram 2001; Reisner [1986] 2001; Strang, 2005b). What could be more abusive of human rights than a denial of access to life itself? And what could be more empowering than to gain control over this? Human rights to water are now enshrined in the UN constitution: however, these remain under threat in a variety of ways as water resources are increasingly enclosed and commodified. Social and economic divisions are particularly evident in debates about water privatization, in which it is plain that the control of water by elite groups will vastly enrich these, while potentially denying access to others. Internationally, there have been numerous (and often violent) conflicts on this issue – for example in Bolivia – which suggest that there is further strife ahead as water resources are ever more tightly enclosed.

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veronica strang In Australia, indigenous populations were disempowered first and foremost by the appropriation of their water resources, illustrating a reality that the control of water is the most essential step in any colonial enterprise. The graziers who settled much of the country focused their activities on water sources across the landscape, knowing that these were essential to the development of their own economic activities. Two hundred years later, the introduction of water trading has added a further level of enclosure. It is proving to be a significant advantage to some land owners, providing them with increasingly valuable ‘assets’, but this has also generated some fierce political opposition, most particularly with the emergence of speculative ‘water barons’ who have rapidly emerged to buy up water allocations and irrigation infrastructure.11 This has sparked an important debate about the ownership of vital resources and how wealth is distributed in capitalist economies. There are some obvious contradictions between the exclusivity integral to any enclosure and privatization of water, and the protection of equal access to it. At the moment, mainstream politics leans heavily towards the idea that greater social and economic justice entails not so much sharing or redistributing wealth, but the increasing of it all round through growth and development. Those who are attuned to both human and ecological needs therefore have a difficult message to promulgate, arguing not only for a more equitable distribution of resources, but for an overall reduction, or at least a slow-down, in resource use and consumption. There is some sympathy, however, for such a message among left-wing activists, whose concepts of equality are not confined to humankind. Their major aim is to protect the basic rights of all to have access to clean water and food, and they hope, in general, to encourage a more equitable distribution of resources. Such aims are by no means incompatible with a moral concern for the rights of nonhuman species, or with an aim to achieve greater equality in evaluating human and ecological needs. In more spiritual terms, discourses in which the environment is sanctified cohere readily with an acknowledgement of the sacredness of human life.

Concluding alliances It would appear that there is some important common ground between groups who put forward spiritual and ecological critiques of unsustainable engagements with water, and those who oppose its enclosure and privatization on the moral basis that this fails to uphold universal human rights. It is worth recalling that, although its major concern has been to question the right of humankind to override the needs of the environment, the green movement emerged directly from political movements committed to social equality, focused on postwar democratization, civil rights 11. One of the most controversial outcomes has been Cubbie Station’s building of massive dams (so large they can be seen from space) in the headwaters of the Darling River, and its accumulation of a large number of water allocations.

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blue, green and red and feminism. With the adoption of a more detached ‘scientific’ vision of ecological management, the environmental movement has come somewhat adrift from these roots, but there is, as noted previously, rising appreciation among many of its constituent organizations that cultural diversity and biodiversity need equal protection, and that social and ecological issues are not separable. This is useful progress, and it is matched by similarly expanding appreciation of this inseparability in activist groups focused on social issues. Although extreme poverty and its desperations have often demanded stop-gap measures, development groups are increasingly concerned to ensure that greater efforts are made to provide solutions that are both socially and ecologically sustainable. This more holistic approach greatly improves the potential for the building of stronger alliances between the red and the green. Growing appreciation of the interdependence of social and ecological processes also opens the door to more productive alliances with indigenous communities. Closer engagement with the holistic intellectual framework of Aboriginal groups has the potential to assist environmental and social activists in escaping the narrowing cul de sac of ecological materialism. Although the discourses of environmentalism have become dominated by a more managerial view, the movement still contains, at is heart, an original concern to equalize the relationship between humans and their environment. This provides some common ground with the many indigenous communities, linked in international networks, who are intensely protective of ancestral lands and water, and who foreground spiritual and moral issues in – ideally – reciprocal and equal human–environmental relationships. In both cases, there is greater acknowledgement of the needs (and rights) of the environment. While water and all the non-human species it supports have no ‘voice’ in the debates, other than that ascribed by humans, the moral concept that these and the habitats on which they depend have ‘rights’ is one that resonates quite readily with an indigenous vision of a more egalitarian human–environmental relationship. Indeed, it could be argued that the ancestral beings personify and thus embody the rights of other species. There are also some benefits to indigenous communities in strengthening alliances with green groups. Closer collaboration would help to replace romantic visions of indigeneity with a more grounded understanding of the ideas and practices that actually enable sustainability in indigenous economic modes. Indigenous traditions focused on maintaining local cycles of social and economic activity can guide environmentalists’ attempts to engage local communities in environmental management. And there is some philosophical coherence in the principles of sustainability underpinning indigenous practices and ideas about how to improve sustainability in larger economic modes. There are already firm alliances between green groups and government departments and non-governmental organizations that specialize in scientific ecological approaches. However, reflecting the dominance of a worldview in which culture and nature are polarized, these are quite separately established from those whose remit is concerned with social issues. Environmental groups have little or no contact with

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veronica strang the latter. If the aim is to encourage more sustainable practices, this needs to change. Environmental groups, by building alliances with both ‘social’ and ‘environmental’ agencies, can help to encourage a more integrated approach. As noted above, the general population is largely sympathetic to environmental concerns, but disinclined to change its habits. Environmentalists have tended to rely heavily on images of Armageddon to engender public concern about ecological problems. However, this approach can be counter-productive. Confronted with too alarming a prospect, many people respond with denial, rather than undertaking changes that admit that catastrophic scenarios could become a reality. Changes in behaviour might be better encouraged by focusing on the social and spiritual meanings encoded in water. Although these meanings have become somewhat subsumed by secular everyday activities, they are still powerful and pervasive. Pulled into the foreground, they can serve to remind water-users that they are dealing with the most vital of substances: the source of life and health for humans and all organic organisms. With these meanings placed centre stage, it is more difficult to ignore wider social and ecological needs. The greatest challenge for environmentalists, of course, lies in forging alliances with primary producers in a relationship that has long been adversarial. Considerable efforts towards reconciliation have been made in this regard in Australia, with the formation of regional and local resource management organizations that are designed to bring stakeholders together in collaborative partnerships. Further progress could be made if green groups were more willing to consider the historical realities that have moulded current farming values, beliefs and practices, and to recognize the internal and external pressures that impede change in the farming community. What farmers need, rather than a critique of practices that they have little power to change, is much wider public support for real changes. Environmental groups can help to engender this. In Europe, for example, pressure from green activists has encouraged an increasing trend to provide financial support to farmers not just as producers, but also as environmental managers. This is not useful if it simply removes unsustainable forms of production to other parts of the world, but if it results in more ecologically sensitive farming practices, it has some positive potential. Thus there is a need for environmental groups to discern the more complex beliefs and values, and the moral imperatives that underlie what appear to be wholly ‘commercial’ engagements with water. There is some potential common ground, conceptually, in visions of the environment as a productive resource, whether production involves generating food for human societies, or generating biodiversity. Both perspectives potentially underpin support for ecological processes. A more informed understanding may release both groups from the polarized positions that they currently occupy and achieve more ‘productive’ exchanges of ideas and values and maybe, over time, even an alliance. This account suggests that there are, in fact, many points of contact that would enable stronger alliances between the green, the blue and the red, and even between groups who have had equivocal and at times adversarial relationships. Like all conflict resolution, this depends on achieving deeper understandings of ‘the other’, respecting

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blue, green and red alternative experiences and perspectives, and articulating common aims and values. Given the dominance of economic rationalism as a guiding principle in contemporary societies, there is a great need for groups to combine their energies to uphold the broader social and ecological issues that are marginalised by commercial considerations. The creation of a full spectrum of alliances is thus a matter of urgency.

Bibliography Allen, H. 1997. ‘Conceptions of Time in the Interpretation of the Kakadu Landscape’. In Tracking Knowledge in North Australian Landscapes: Studies in Indigenous and Settler Ecological Knowledge Systems, eds D. Rose & A. Clarke, 141–52. Casuarina: North Australia Research Unit. Attwood, B. & J. Arnold, eds. 1992. Power, Knowledge and Aborigines. Special edition of the Journal of Australian Studies. Clayton: La Trobe University Press in association with the National Centre for Australian Studies. Astrup, P. 1993. Salt and Water in Culture and Medicine. Copenhagen: Munksgaard International Publishers. Bennett, V. 1995. The Politics of Water: Urban Protest, Gender and Power in Monterrey, Mexico. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Berger, P., B. Berger & H. Kellner. 1973. The Homeless Mind. New York: Vintage. Blatter, J. & H. Ingram, eds. 2001. Reflections On Water: New Approaches to Transboundary Conflicts and Cooperation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bord, J. & C. Bord. 1985. Sacred Waters: Holy Wells and Water Lore in Britain and Ireland. London: Granada. Brosius, J. 1997. ‘Endangered Forest, Endangered People: Environmentalist Representations of Indigenous People’. Human Ecology 27: 97–110. Csordas, T., ed. 1994. Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Damasio, A. 1999. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace. De Lacy. T. 1997. The Uluru-Kakadu Model: Joint Management of Aboriginal-owned National Parks in Australia. Covelo, CA: Island Press. Descola, P. & G. Palsson, eds. 1996. Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Routledge. Donahue, J. & B. Johnston, eds. 1998. Water, Culture and Power: Local Struggles in a Global Context. Washington, DC: Island Press. Douglas, M. 1973. Natural Symbols. London: Random House. Ellen, R. 1986. ‘What Black Elk Left Unsaid: On the Illusory Images of Green Primitivism’. Anthropology Today 2(6): 8–12. Gell, A. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Giblett, R. 1996. Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hall, M. 2000. ‘Tourism, National Parks and Indigenous People’. In Tourism and National Parks, eds R. Butler & S. Boyd, 57–71. London: John Wiley. Hornborg, A. & M. Kurkiala, eds. 1998. Voices of the Land: Identity and Ecology in the Margins. Sweden: Lund University Press. Howes, D., ed. 1991. The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Howes, D. 2005. Empire of the Senses: the Sensual Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg. Illich, I. 1986. H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness. London: Marion Boyars. Kleinert, S. & M. Neale, eds. 2000. The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson, 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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veronica strang Lansing, S. 1991. Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lowi, M. 1993. Water and Power: The Politics of a Scarce Resource in the Jordan River Basin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Magowan, F. 2001. ‘Waves of Knowing: Polymorphism and Co-substantive Essences in Yolngu Sea Cosmology’. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 29(1): 22–35. Milton, K. 2002. Loving Nature: Towards an Ecology of Emotion. London: Routledge. Morphy, H. 1991. Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Morphy, H. 1995. ‘Landscape and the Reproduction of the Ancestral Past’. In The Anthropology of Landscape, eds E. Hirsch & M. O’Hanlon, 184–209. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Morphy, H. 1994. ‘Aesthetics is a Cross-Cultural Category’, debate held in the Muriel Stott Centre, John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 30 October 1993. In Aesthetics is a Cross-Cultural Category, ed. J. Weiner. Manchester: Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory. Morphy, H. 2005. ‘Aesthetics Across Time and Place: An Anthropological Perspective on Archaeology’. In Aesthetics and Rock Art, eds T. Heyd & J. Clegg, 51–60. Aldershot: Ashgate. Morton, J. 2000. ‘Aboriginal Religion Today’. In The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, eds S. Kleinert & M. Neale, 9–16. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pocknee, C. 1967. Water and the Spirit: A Study in the Relation of Baptism and Confirmation. London: Darton, Longman & Todd. Reisner, M. [1986] 2001. Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water. London: Pimlico. Strang, V. 1996. ‘Sustaining Tourism in Far North Queensland’. In People and Tourism in Fragile Environments, ed. M. Price, 51–67. London: John Wiley. Strang, V. 1997. Uncommon Ground: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental Values. Oxford: Berg. Strang, V. 2002. ‘Life Down Under: Water and Identity in an Aboriginal Cultural Landscape’. Goldsmiths College Anthropology Research Papers, no. 7. London: Goldsmiths College. Strang, V. 2004. The Meaning of Water. Oxford: Berg. Strang, V. 2005a. ‘Common Senses: Water, Sensory Experience and the Generation of Meaning’. Journal of Material Culture 10(1): 93–121. Strang, V. 2005b. ‘Taking the Waters: Cosmology, Gender and Material Culture in the Appropriation of Water Resources’. In Water, Gender and Development, eds A. Coles & T. Wallace, 21–38. Oxford: Berg. Strang, V. forthcoming. ‘Water and Indigenous Religion: Aboriginal Australia’. In The Ideas of Water, eds T. Tvedt & T. Østigård. London: I. B. Taurus. Symmes, M. 1998. Fountains, Splash and Spectacle: Water and Design from the Renaissance to the Present. London: Thames & Hudson. Toussaint, S., P. Sullivan & S. Yu. 2005. ‘Water Ways in Aboriginal Australia: An Interconnected Analysis’. Anthropological Forum 15(1): 61–74. Tuan, Y. 1968. The Hydrologic Cycle and the Wisdom of God: A Theme in Geoteleology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Ward, C. 1997. Reflected in Water: A Crisis in Social Responsibility. London: Cassell.

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15 Neglect and reclamation of water as sacred resource Michael York

Water is the central element essential to life as we know it. The human body is from 50 to 65 per cent water, while over 70 per cent of planet earth’s surface is aquatic. In fact, the oceans constitute more than 97 per cent of the world’s water, making earth when seen from space our solar system’s ‘Blue Planet’. Another 2 per cent of the planetary water is frozen into the ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica. What this means is that our freshwater lakes, rivers and underground water sources producing the water we drink and use for our bodily sustenance and health, as well as to irrigate the food crops on which we depend, is not more than 1 per cent of the world’s total water supply. Without water, we die. It is a central vehicle for both human life and the life of the planet. Its sustainable management is paramount for human and terrestrial existence. This very importance is recognized today with the growth of ecological awareness, but has also been traditionally reflected in the spiritual significance of water in ancient religion. In pre-Christian earthen religion, for example, water is intimately associated with both wisdom and intoxication. While he survives as the god of the seas, the Roman Neptune’s Indo-European hypostasis that gave rise also to the Vedic Apām Napāt and Irish Nechtan suggests the notion of ‘fire in water’: both the lightning behind the fructifying rains and the potent spirit within an alcoholic beverage (York 1995b: 267ff. 528). Neptune’s Greek identity is Poseidon, the ‘lord’ (posei) of da (the ‘earth’). These various mythological associations reveal not only the conjugal relationship between water and earth but also the connection of cognitive insight with alternate perception. Patrick Curry distinguishes between propositional, factual, scientific knowledge, on the one hand, and tactical, strategic, metic wisdom, on the other. Divinatory ‘wisdom is not abstract but metic; it is intimately related to place; and its ultimate repository is myth’ (Willis and Curry 2004: 123; see also pp. 106, 114). The meta-

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michael york phor for metic wisdom in Hellenic religion and beyond is water. In Greek mythology, the Oceanid Metis (‘wisdom’) is the first wife of Zeus. Turning herself into water, she is consumed by the chief of the gods, who subsequently gives birth to Athene, the goddess of wisdom, from his head. The hermeneutic of this myth suggests that water here symbolizes the entheogenic potential for obtaining (giving birth to) understanding beyond the norm. Metis is both water and wisdom, and her consumption by the ultimate hero allows a sanctification of ‘intoxicated insight’ to balance the ‘measured insight’ of reason and empirical observation. For the proto-Indo-European, both forms of insight were deemed to be necessary; both form a binary duality that expresses the balance of a healthy individual – an understanding that has been lost in the cultural history of the West through the emphasis on exclusive singularity by the Judeo-Christian tradition. Without the effort to expand intuition through a neptunian awareness, the health of the West and the world may be profoundly stalemated. The increasing loss today in appreciating water sacrality has multiple implications, from the environmental consequences for the planet to the emotional/psychic impoverishment of the human being. We therefore have before us three basic questions: what are we doing; do we want it the way it is; and is there another way to do what we want or, at least, are doing at present?

What are we doing? In Part I of this book, Penny Bernard, John J. Bradley, Dieter Gerten and Melissa K. Nelson discuss in various ways the role of sacred waters as sources of spiritual and cultural power. In particular, they reveal the ubiquity of creation myths that begin with water as the primordial substance, the fons et origo of the earth and the life that comes to inhabit the emergent world. Around the world, water is the underlying source in creation myths and stories. The related earth-diver tales are found among many indigenous peoples, with variants surviving in both the tortoise-Kurma and boar-Varaha avatars of Vishnu recorded in the Hindu Purānas. The basic idea in these is that the earth is originally retrieved from the depths of the waters. What is often not noticed, however, is that even the biblical book of Genesis suggests, rather than a strict creatio ex nihilo, that the waters were pre-existent and not created by God.1 Clearly, the Genesis tale is derivative in part from the Mesopotamian creation myths that begin with Tiamat, the chaos personification of the saltwaters, and her consorts Apsu and Kingu.2 While there is a portrayal of the ambivalent, even negative, nature

1. ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters’ (Genesis 1.1–2). 2. For an analysis of Tiamat, see York (1995a: 36, 72, 371, 500ff.).

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neglect and reclamation of water as sacred resource of the oceans, we can nevertheless see the atavistic perception of water as primordial and sacred. It is fundamental to existence itself. Water appears in many roles: as springs, lakes, rivers, the seas, precipitation, ice and snow; sometimes positive, sometimes negative. Bradley’s exploration of the Yanyuwa song cycle that follows the hydrological cycle from an underground source to the sea and finally through evaporation and rainfall to a freshwater lake is illustrative of the feedback loop process described by complexity theory. Water, in itself ambiguous and ambivalent, is generative and nurturing of spontaneous self-organization or order. While the ancients intuitively grasped this process and regarded water as a result as sacred, in the reductionistic and mechanical world of today that treasures linear efficiency and is devoid of the extravagance of the magical, honouring the sacred is no longer a norm. From ancient times, wells and springs were revered as loci of enchantment and power. Much of this practice was absorbed and continued by the Christian Church. The loss of this atavistic understanding is a characteristic of the modern world: ignored and forgotten, the ancient water sources are disappearing. One illustration of this process is to be found in Killarney, an Irish town that once boasted the presence of three or four holy wells. Our Lady’s Well on Bridge Street, which dates to the time of the Druids, and is reputed still to receive special pilgrimages on 15 May, is the only one that now remains (MY Travel Guide n.d.). Another revered well once existed not far from the town centre but is now seen only as a discarded niche in a low wall surrounding a house. A neighbour pointed out to me a recently built house across the street on a rise and surmised that its construction had apparently cut the water source to the well. Further, in the town hall car park, there was St Mary’s Well dating from 1302. Over the years I have noticed its encroaching neglect and the accumulation of rubbish in and around it. The last time I visited Killarney, which had the addition of a newly constructed shopping centre, the entire well was no longer to be found. The Killarney illustration gives us a sober answer to the question ‘What is it that we are doing?’ A further situation is the restoration of the spa complex in Bath, England. By being exclusively or blindly rational and secular in their approach to the project, the town council unleashed, according to Margaret Stewart, the former and ousted custodian of the Cross Bath, a counter-energy that has become an embarrassing let alone expensive fiasco (see Bowman 1998). The opening of the now privately owned Thermae Bath Spa, which incorporates the Cross Bath, finally took place in 2006, three years after its planned opening, which was celebrated with a gala appearance by te Three Tenors. In other words, from a metic perspective, water is not always passive. The tutelary spirit has been offended, and delay after delay and setback have followed. In Bath the aquatic element is personified as the goddess Sulis Minerva. Once again, we can witness the spontaneously evolving fusion of (in this case, thermal) water and wisdom. The fire-in-water union is pure neptunian. One could ask, was it any wonder that Athene and Poseidon contested over the Athenian Acropolis? Ultimately, the two figures descend from the same hypostasis. The neglect of ancient water sources is not confined to Ireland alone. It can be witnessed throughout the Western world, and locating the old wells in the City of London, for instance, reveals the same loss. In other parts of the world, we sometimes

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michael york find a different scenario. An example can be found in the holy city of Varanasi (Banaras) in India, perhaps the oldest living city in the world. Hindu tales relate the role of the Gyan Vapi, the ‘well of wisdom’, which has existed in Shiva’s favourite city since even before the descent of the Ganges River to earth. Found within a pavilion between the Gyan Vapi Mosque and the Vishwanath (Golden Temple) of Shiva in the city’s centre, the well is still honoured by pilgrims and city residents who, in exchange for a rupee, are given three ladles of its water to drink. The name of the sacred site alone betrays yet again an unforgotten link between water and knowledge. In the West, however, with a pervasive ignorance of the natural mantic gift of insight and understanding that is embodied in water when approached as something holy and sacred, the consequential repercussions are multiple. Droughts in the Sahel of Africa and India’s Gujarat; devastating floods in Africa, Asia, Europe and elsewhere; loss of fishing areas; global warming and rising sea levels: all these may be traced at least in part to mismanagement of the planet’s resources, a mismanagement that is encouraged when humanity ceases to appreciate and value the intrinsic sacrality of water and the elements. Consequently, Sarah Phelan (2006) can report on Project Censored’s top ten stories that the major news media in the US refused to cover in 2005. The third of these is: ‘World Oceans in Extreme Danger’. Phelan writes about governmental attempts to map out the ocean floors in an effort to secure mineral, petroleum and dwindling fishing rights while simultaneously denying that the Arctic is melting and the sea levels are rising as a result of global warming. In fact, in the past forty years, the upper half-mile of the ocean has warmed demonstrably (see Whitty 2006). Perhaps the most cogent recent coverage of the human community’s being outof-sync with the issue of global warming and the imminent catastrophic consequences thereof is former US Vice President Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. For water itself, there is a conflict between its allocation for industry, agriculture and public supply, on the one hand, and its conservation for purposes of biodiversity, on the other. What is frequently not recognized is the indirect benefit for people in general through the maintenance of functioning ecosystems. Approximately 3 per cent of the world’s water, that which is not stored in the oceans, ice caps and aquifers, circulates through the hydrological cycle: precipitation → infiltration → transpiration → surface-run-off → evaporation → condensation → precipitation (Lenntech n.d.). The hydrological cycle is the vitally important ecosystem that functions as the water cycling system between the earth and the atmosphere. Hydrological functions are assisted by natural ecosystems. When these last are damaged or destroyed, the earth’s hydrological cycle is harmed and weakened as a result. Mike Acreman (2004: 6) compares the 700 litres of water used daily by an American for such domestic purposes as drinking, cooking and washing with the 29 litres per day for a typical Senegalese. Water conservation is one aspect of the problem; industrialization and changing levels of public awareness, as we see in Killarney, are another. The answer to the question ‘What are we doing?’ should be clear. We are damaging the sustainability of renewable resources. Water, of course, is only one part of the problem but an important and central part nonetheless. According to T. Estrela et al. (1996), merely a 1.5–2.0 °C rise in temperature in the Mediterranean region could

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neglect and reclamation of water as sacred resource produce a 10 per cent reduction in rainfall and a 40–70 per cent reduction in renewable water sources. Similar imbalances and distortions to the hydrological cycle and natural ecosystems such as the food webs in both saltwater and freshwater life zones would not be confined to the Mediterranean area alone. What we are doing as a species is an act of suicide.

Do we want it the way it is? This is the most difficult question of all. It is the central query behind virtually every religious orientation. While it might seem logical that the human species does not desire its extinction, our persistently mindless behaviour would seem to speak otherwise. Of the four basic religious perspectives, the Abrahamic desires salvation – primarily an otherworldly form of redemption. The dharmic faiths postulate a nihilistic or transcendental escape from the wheel of life. By contrast, the Pagan position is one that desires a good life in this world, a goal that more or less could be ascribed to the secularist understanding as well (York 2003: 166ff.). But desiring a good life mandates self-responsibility for the planet in which this good life is to occur. All other factors being equal, from a Pagan and secular perspective, one’s own wellbeing is dependent on the wellbeing of the earth. But with half of the planet’s population embracing an Abrahamic religious orientation of one sort or another, on a fundamental level the world divides between those whose concern is with sustaining ecological balance and those whose primary concern is otherworldly. To be sure, the spiritual-religious affiliations of people as people are not as black and white as the above analysis suggests. There are liberal Protestants and liberally minded Roman Catholics, as there doubtlessly are Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, who consider environmental protection and maintenance as vitally significant pursuits. These may not be the primary concern in general but nevertheless an important consideration in answering the question ‘What do we want to do?’ It may be instead the military–governmental–corporate alliance that clouds the issue to such an extent that the question itself is not recognized or perceived only dimly at best. In the race towards ever increasing commodification, however, most of us are no less culpable, Christians, Pagans, secularists alike. We buy the goods that are produced, hankering after the latest innovation or improvement. If we blame capitalistic commercialization for the pollutions, exploitations and seductive globalization, are we not ourselves as insatiable consumers to blame? As for the military, we have here a steadily increasing lethal technology whose use both decimates populations and destroys the environment. But the military complex is itself a tool. It is only when the military is the government that it truly becomes blameworthy. This leaves us with the government itself. Unless the military has in some way seized the government, it takes its orders from the government. And if we now say that our governmental leaders and congresses are myopic, greedy, stupid, conniving liars, exclusively self-serving, out-of-control and sinister, we are still ourselves to blame for having elected them or for tolerating them or both.

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michael york So the answer to what it is that we really want can only be suppositional. Nevertheless, I suggest that we want a planet whose abundance is equitably shared: a planet that is nurtured by fresh water for as many as possible and whose seas brim with marine life. In other words, we do not want the degraded world that we have become and that is fast becoming worse. If we could but wake from our culturally, educationally and governmentally induced lethargies and slumber, we would surely know that global warming, atmospheric pollution, desiccation, destructive inundation and decline in potable and usable water are not what we desire. I have been fortunate to have drunk from the hot springs in Bath’s Pump Room, from waters at the source of the Seine (the Fontes Sequanae), from Chalice Well in Glastonbury, from Gyan Vapi and from springs in Goulnacappy, Ireland and Vilnius, Lithuania. As a devotee of thermal waters, I have bathed in Bath, Aix-en-Provence, Truth-or-Consequences (New Mexico), Hot Springs in Arkansas, Pyramid Lake (Nevada), India’s Rajgir and Japan’s Yunomine Onsen, among many others. ‘While sacred in their own right, sacred springs also draw attention to the sacredness of water itself ’ (Witcombe 1998). However, perhaps the fullest appreciation of water as an absolute necessity rather than as a sacred vehicle has been gained for me through attending the Burning Man Festival at Black Rock, Nevada. Overlapping with the American celebration of Labor Day, a temporary city is set up for a week in one of the most inhospitable areas of the planet: not even insects live here. ‘When people first settled the west, they avoided this area due to the rough conditions. It was not fully explored until John C. Fremont mapped it out in 1843’ (Burningman n.d.). In 2006, there were approximately 37,000 attendees, with soaring desert temperatures by day and closer to frigidity by night. Everything one is to consume or drink must be brought to the site by festival goers themselves, including water for drinking, washing and bathing. Water – bring at least 2 gallons a day for drinking for each day, plus 2 gallons a day for showers, cooking, cleaning, etc. There are no showers or water on site. If you plan to stay for 5 days, you should have around 20 gallons per person. I know this sounds like quite a bit, but it is better to leave a few gallons in Black Rock City for the clean-up crews than to debate whether or not you can shower. Water. No really, you are going to need more than what you have in your mind. Water. No really, one or two showers a day can be really refreshing. Water. … caffeine will dehydrate you even faster than you will guess. If you are drinking coffee, sodas or alcohol you need to compensate for the dehydrating effects. Water. Really, 20 gallons seems like way too much until you are out there for the 3rd day and are running out. Remember, when you flush a toilet you consume 1.5–3 gallons per flush. Water. I am not kidding, our campsite brought several hundred gallons and we ran out. Plan accordingly. You need water to wash dishes, disinfect and to rinse. You need water to cook, you need water to drink, you need water for

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neglect and reclamation of water as sacred resource showers, water to wash your feet. If you have a camp with 20 people you can easily use 200 gallons for non-drinking purposes. If you end up with extra water on Monday you can leave any sealed 1 gallon containers at center camp. Dropping off 20 gallons of pure artesian water is considered a really nice thing to do. (Ibid.) This stress on water in between the mention of other necessary items campers should bring (torches, lanterns, zip-lock bags, toilet paper, spray bottle, squirt gun, etc.) becomes the most central. With the experience of Burning Man and Black Rock City itself, this emphasis became soberly clear. Ada Lee Chester et al. (2004) reported that for the 2003 event, ‘Burning Man made potable water available for participants for a fee …, but the growing need within the Project infrastructure prevented us from continuing this service’. For the event itself, using non-potable water, water trucks spray the road surfaces for dust abatement. For many, these passing trucks became daily bathing opportunities despite the possible health risk signalled by the organizers. Water, and clean water at that, is fundamental for human survival. Confronting the lack of water in the communal life of Black Rock City is one more route by which a person might gain both an appreciation of the pragmatic need of water and its very sacredness. Consequently, while Sylvie Shaw (this volume, Ch. 8) explores the watery depths beneath the ocean’s surface, or Douglas Ezzy (this volume, Ch. 7) engages with the animistic streams of Mount Wellington and the Derwent River in Hobart, the waterbased, Pagan spirituality described by Andrew Francis (this volume, Ch. 4) is also accessible through aquatic absence. Do we want it the way it is with the prospect of universal water rationing such that Nevada’s Burning Man may provide a hint of a future likelihood for our world as a whole? Do we want the steady erosion of our planet’s ice caps? Do we want the loss of fishing stock, the destruction of coral reefs, the pollution of our rivers, the degradation and evaporation of our lakes, the disappearance of springs and holy wells? While a negative answer might seem the logical response, the continuance of incommensurate human behaviour across our planet appears to speak otherwise. Throughout the Western world, if not elsewhere as well, the enriching connection between the spirits of the sea and lives of the people of the Pacific archipelagos described by Katerina Teaiwa, or the spiritual sea ethic of Rachel Carson outlined by Susan Power Bratton in confronting the numinous zone between land and sea, is declining and disappearing. Echoing this ethical view, Melissa K. Nelson (this volume, Ch. 4) focuses on the urgent significance in protecting and reclaiming ancestral rivers and lakes for the sovereignty and cultural survival of the Ojibwe, Taos Pueblo and Winnemem Wintu peoples. Her emphasis on the spiritual relationship these three tribes have with ancestral waterways underscores the key to the problem in solving the neglect of water sacrality and its possible reclamation, and this is water’s underlying function as vehicle of transmission. Certainly, seafarers, explorers and migrants have employed the oceans, rivers and lakes as a means to travel and, whether advertently or inadvertently, gain knowledge. But Vivienne Crowley (this volume, Ch. 10) touches on a central aspect that I wish to

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michael york stress when she illuminates the interconnection between the human unconsciousness and the watery world of sea, river, healing springs and wells. Water is the metaphor and vehicle for wisdom. The dumbing down of human awareness and aspiration is a direct consequence of our loss of sensitivity to water and the demise of the sacred spring as a font of metic wisdom. In our post-Weberian world of disenchantment, we have lost intuitive understanding and the sense of the magical. It may be a chickenand-egg situation: have we lost contact with a dynamic numinousness because we have lost contact with water as a healing agent, or have we lost our ancient springs and holy wells because we no longer have an innate feeling for the miraculous? It would seem that both go together. But if so, both might also be restored simultaneously. The route to wisdom is through water, and the route to aquatic protection and sacredness is through wisdom. In other words, water is wisdom, and wisdom is the appreciation of the centrality and sacredness of water. As we have seen in the hydrological cycle and the self-organization generated by the feedback loop process, water wisdom is its own cure. With each and every regained insight, no matter how incremental and seemingly insignificant, we move closer to being able to answer sanely and even wisely the question of what is it that we really want to do. A neptunian enlightenment will make it steadily more possible to answer that question as, in our deeper sources of self-honesty, we already know we must. In our heart of hearts, we are aware that we do not want things as they currently are.

Is there another way? If there is another way to do what we want or are already doing, part of the answer must lie with reclamation, specifically water reclamation. Much of this last involves the management of wastewater, its cleansing through chemical and biological processes (use of barscreens, settling tanks, bacterial micro-organism use, nitrification, filtration, microfiltration, chlorine contact, ultraviolet technology, reverse osmosis and/or geothermal desalination) and its return to the natural environment in a safe and useable condition. In short, wastewater is transformed into a resource as reclaimed water. For instance, potable water reuse facilities in the United States involve surface water augmentation (e.g. Tahoe-Truckee in California, Nevada’s Clark County, the Upper Occoquan Sewage Authority of northern Virginia and the Tampa Bay Fisheries’ Wastewater Reuse Project in Florida), or aquifer injection (e.g. the West Basin Municipal Water District of Los Angeles, Water Factory 21 of California’s Orange County, Wastewater Resources, Inc. at Scottsdale, Arizona and the Fred Hervey Water Reclamation project of El Paso, Texas).3 Some other significant areas of change include the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, the Water Reclamation Facility of the University of Florida in Gainesville, the Water

3. See Singapore Water Reclamation Study (2002).

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neglect and reclamation of water as sacred resource Reclamation Facility of Elko in Nevada and, further afield, the Singapore Water Reclamation Study concerning Planned Indirect Potable Reuse, the Kwinana Water Reclamation Plant in western Australia, and the Mikawashima Water Reclamation Center and Morigasaki Water Reclamation Center in Tokyo, Japan. Not all water reclamation projects are successful, however. In Mexico City, for instance, a high degree of diarrheal and enteric diseases have been detected in children living in a water reclamation area (Cifuentes et al. 2002).4 Nevertheless, although improvements are continuously necessary, reclaiming wastewater as a resource is an important start in the process of undoing aquatic degradation and damage to the environment. A significant area of water reclamation is river reclamation. Rivers, along with lakes and aquifers, are significant sources for potable water. River management plays a direct role in water reuse. For instance, unplanned indirect potable reuse, such as we see in the Rhine, Thames, Mississippi, Yangtze and Mekong rivers, may occur whenever an upstream water-user discharges wastewater effluent into a river, lake or aquifer that is used as a water supply for a downstream user. By contrast, direct potable reuse is practised in Windhoek, Namibia and involves the addition of reclaimed water to the potable water distribution system. A central issue with river ecology concerns the building of dams. The Sadd el-Kafar (‘the Dam of the Pagans’) was constructed by the ancient Egyptians around 2800 BCE for purposes of crop irrigation. Dams, however, are among the most controversial of topics for today’s ecologists. While ‘[dams] can store water during the wet season and release it during the dry season or when needed for irrigation or hydro-power generation’ – reducing flood risks, improving agricultural production and securing water supplies, there has also been a consequential loss of fisheries, coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion. ‘These problems have led to calls for more environmentallybased water management, which works with nature rather than against it’ (Acreman 2004: 9). The World Commission on Dams 2000 report stressed the principle of equity in consideration of dam construction: ‘decisions made concerning dams should not be biased towards any particular group, and all key stakeholders should perceive the process and outcomes to be fair and legitimate, which requires transparency in the procedures and decision making criteria’ (ibid.: 10). One suggested solution, although not without its drawbacks concerning hydropower, irrigation, domestic and industrial supplies, is the maintenance of wetland ecosystems through managed periodic flooding release that can contribute toward arable land, fisheries, fish migration, livestock grazing, groundwater recharge, nutrient cycling, sediment transport and biodiversity. But the damming of rivers is only one aspect of river ecology. The discharge of polluted effluent is another. Rivers have served as sewers for humanity since the beginnings of urban living if not earlier. One notorious example was the River Walbrook in Roman Londinium, on the east bank of which the Temple of Mithras was constructed 4. Cifuentes et al. (2002) inform us that ‘Unsafe sewage disposal and fecal-oral transmission of pathogens are responsible for otherwise preventable enteric diseases and 3.2 million deaths every year [worldwide]’.

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michael york in the mid-third century CE. By the Middle Ages, the Walbrook had become a huge stinking sewer pit choked with rubbish. In 1383, an Act of Parliament decreed that anyone with latrines over the Walbrook would have to pay two shillings a year toward the clean-up of the Thames into which it flowed. The tributary was covered permanently in 1440 (see East London History n.d.). ‘In 1846 the river Walbrook in London, which was covered over by buildings and unventilated, harboured such a quantity of noxious gases that it exploded – producing a tidal wave of sewage that swept away three houses in nearby Clerkenwell’ (Science Museum 2004). To this day, beneath central London, there are to be found springs, wells and small streams, such as the Neckinger, Fleet, Tyburn, Lea and Effra, that feed into the Thames but are buried and hidden as sewers and drains. The Walbrook flows into the Thames today as the Walbrook Sewer near Cannon Street Station.5 It is the Thames itself that furnishes an example of what might be done to reclaim our rivers. With the industrial revolution and the construction of tanneries, factories, slaughterhouses and other industries, let alone the overflow of domestic cesspits, fish life had disappeared from the tidal Thames by 1849. The last recorded salmon upstream of London Bridge dates to 1833. In 1858, the Houses of Parliament on the river’s banks had to be closed because of the stench from the Thames, prompting the building of the city’s first sewage treatment plant. With the third cholera outbreak in 1853–4 and the linking of the epidemic to the river, awareness concerning the ending of pollution began. ‘By the 1950’s, the combined effect of sewage effluent, industrial discharges and thermal pollution from power stations and gas works, produced a River that was virtually dead’ (The Harts n.d.). Following the Thames Survey Committee’s 1961 report, river clean-up programmes were launched in 1963. Salmon reappeared in the river by 1974. Not only have the Salmon returned: in the last 25 years some 120 species of fish have been recorded in the River Thames including 20 species of freshwater fish, 14 euryhaline fish (fish that can tolerate both salt and fresh water) and 86 marine fish. These include Smelt (perhaps the most unusual and internationally recognised as rare), Bass, Twaite Shad, Sea Lamprey and Allis Shad all of which need a clean river for part of their life cycle. Their presence in the River is of great ecological value. Furthermore, the tidal Thames supports over 350 species of invertebrates, 38 species of bird and 300 plant species. (Ibid.)

5. Note, however, ‘Visiting the Thames where the Walbrook is documented to join it revealed no outfall. There is an opening that is covered by a heavy cast hatch. No water flows from it. The Walbrook certainly in its ancient route is no longer. It is lost and no longer flowing, at least on this occasion. In a sense then the source of the Walbrook is not some up welling in the earth but the maps and books that document its route. As London developed the Walbrook, fair and sweet water became foul with sewerage. Today it seems it is probably joined into a sewer and diverted, as no doubt it has been many times in its history’ (Carey 2003: 15; see www.insanerantings.com/hell/comics/ongoing/hb181ann2. html [accessed Jan. 2008]).

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neglect and reclamation of water as sacred resource However, there remain problems for the Thames. On 3 August 2004, for instance, torrential storms in central London caused 600,000 tonnes of untreated sewage and water from road surfaces and roofs (urban run-off ) to flow into the river with the loss of over a hundred thousand fish in a single day (National Maritime Museum 2004; see also Meikle 2004). Controlling stormwater run-off continues to be a major consideration for river regeneration the world over. This and the removal of dams to restore the natural flow of a river can often be lynchpins in the success of a reclamation project. Obstacles to progress, however, may stem from a lack of interest from public authorities, the nonavailability of sufficient funding, a disproportionate control by drainage and flood engineers, and the placement of rivers as boundaries leading to the consideration that the responsibility is with one’s neighbours.6 Nevertheless, various degrees of success are to be located in reclamation projects involving the Hudson, Detroit, Klamath, Napa and Salt rivers among others in North America. While the Hudson River reclamation project is in its early stages, irrigation of the Salt River Valley began about 1867.7 Some more recent endeavours from other parts of the world include the retransformation of Love River, Cianjhen River and Hojing Creek by Kaohsiung City in Taiwan; attempts for the Zhu Jiang (or Pearl) and Zhangweixin rivers in China;8 and, in India, the reclamation of the Vaigai River in Tamil Nadu and the State Government’s proposal to beautify the banks of the Musi in the Old City of Hyderabad. In several of these instances, however, reclamation refers to commercial development rather than river renewal. Following the publication of the Brundtland Report by the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland 1987)9 as well as the publication of Caring for the Earth: A Strategy for Sustainable Living (IUCN/UNEP/WWF 1991), the adoption of Agenda 21 in 1992 by the Earth Summit (UNCED) in Rio marked a turning point in the way people think about water and resources. The critical issue has been the conflict between conserving biodiversity and providing food and water to starving, thirsty people. The central principle to have emerged is that the lives of people and the environment are deeply interconnected. In today’s recognition, it is 6. For a discussion of these points in connection with river reclamation on sections of the River Ravensbourne and the River Cray, see: www.londonlandscape.gre.ac.uk/waterways.htm (accessed Mar. 2008). 7. For the Salt River Reclamation Project near Phoenix, Arizona, see in particular Smith (1986). Concerning regeneration of a natural site, this is the most questionable and involves the Arizona Dam (washed away in a 1905 flood), the Granite Reef Diversion Dam and three additional dams. For a digest, see Dudley (n.d.). The Salt River Project, along with those of Milk River, Newlands (Truckee), North Platte and Uncompahgre (Gunnison), resulted from the passage of the National Reclamation Act in 1902 to ensure stable water supplies for purposes of commercial farming in the arid western United States. Reclamation today carries a different significance and has more to do with ecological restoration (Dudley n.d.). 8. For the river reclamation of the East China Zhangweixin River (Wudi County, Shandong Province) that empties into the Bohai Sea, see China Daily (2003). 9. See also www.comune.rovereto.tn.it/UploadDocs/603_Rapporto_Brundtland.pdf (accessed Jan. 2008).

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michael york ecological processes that are understood to maintain the fitness of our planet for life: they are what provide our food, the air we breathe, medicines and much of what we understand as ‘quality of life’ (Munro 1995). One important environmental effort has been directed towards the clean-up of the Ganges River in India and, in particular, in the holy city of Varanasi. While the Ganga Action Plan launched by the government of India in 1985 has largely been a failure, more grassroots efforts began in 1982 with the citizen-based Sankat Mochan Foundation working with the San Francisco-based Friends of the Ganges,10 who established the Campaign for a Clean Ganga (Swatcha Ganga Abhiyan). The chief mahant of the Sankat Mochan Temple, Veer Badra Mishra, himself a hydrologist and civil engineer, has worked with experts from the University of California in Berkeley on an alternative refuse-treatment plan for the city, 80 per cent of the river’s pollution being caused by untreated sewage flows being pumped directly into the river’s waters. In the early 1980s, using the lucrative proceeds from the popular Hanuman temple, of which he was in charge, Mishra began to install a sewer system throughout the city, much to the disruption of ordinary life for Varanasi residents. There was also a concerted effort to reduce the disposal of human and animal bodies directly into the river, and, as I have myself been a regular visitor to Varanasi since 1981, I have noticed a decided reduction in the number of body parts to be found floating in the river. Nevertheless, the combination of heavy monsoon rains flooding the sewage pipes, the cessation of electricity for large portions of each day, governmental intransigence and opposition from various vested interests has prevented successful reduction of fecal coliform counts and the high possibility of water-borne disease transmission (cholera, hepatitis, typhoid, amoebic dysentery, etc.). The hoped-for solution at this point lies with the creation of large oxidation ponds to replace sewage treatment plants and in not being dependent on an erratic electricity supply for their functioning. The Ganges River situation is particularly noteworthy because of the religious sanctity it holds for hundreds of millions of people. More than 60,000 people bathe and pray each day in the river along the seven kilometre stretch of Varanasi. It is offensive to many of these to refer to the Ganga Mata (Mother Ganges) as polluted. Nevertheless, stressing the spiritual connectivity of water universally and of the sacred river in India in particular, Fran Peavey, president and founder of Friends of the Ganges, has said, ‘When you turn on your tap, that water may have once been in the Ganges. There is no new water; it just gets recycled’ (Brehm 1998; see also Sankat Mochan Foundation 2004). But if the Ganges is a pre-eminent illustration of hydro-spirituality and one that suggests a future course toward a reappreciation of water sacrality, as the example of beautification attempts along the Musi River in Hyderabad reveals, another significant catchphrase for today’s ecological reclamation efforts is ‘riverfront rebirth’. This consideration has been bringing people, economic development and a reconnection with the waterfront back to many Western neighbourhoods and towns such as 10. Two other Friends of the Ganges groups are to be found, respectively, in Australia and Sweden; see Brehm (1998).

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neglect and reclamation of water as sacred resource Providence, Rhode Island and San Antonio, Texas and, in Hudson County, New York, the Saw Mill River reclamation initiative in Yonkers and the Pocantico River restoration in Sleepy Hollow.11 By the mid-twentieth century, the Woonasquatucket and Moshassuck rivers in Providence had become stagnant in a manner reminiscent of the Walbrook in medieval London. Virtually lost to sight through pipes, the rivers had been covered with highways, railway tracks and parking lots. Local residents referred to this as ‘the world’s widest bridge’. Visionary architect William Warner had to battle with developers and construction projects that were hoping to build even further and over the asphalt cover to the rivers. Eventually he was able to launch the Waterplace restoration project in 1996. For seven years: the civic-scale restoration project, spearheaded by Warner, has uncovered the rivers, redirected their flow, and built walks and parks along the water’s edges. … Today, Rhode Island’s capitol stands as a beacon of urban revitalization – an example of how to beautify without bulldozing, how to preserve and still prosper. Warner’s vision is seen as an excellent example of river ‘daylighting’, the practice of uncovering water flowing under built urban surfaces. (McWilliams 2003) This ‘rediscovery’ of the Providence River is a prime example of another way of doing what we really want (Green Futures n.d.). The Providence River Relocation Project has entailed the reclamation and redirection of the Woonasquatucket and Moshassuck urban rivers. River relocation is controversial and infringes in the minds of many on the sacrosanct inviolability of nature and the natural flow. In this case, however, a waterway was buried and all but forgotten and lost. The project has been able to create a new urban amenity in place of previously blighted downtown areas. It serves primarily the pedestrian and cyclist, who are able to enjoy the 1.5 miles of auto-free river walks in peace and quiet below street level and beyond sight of the roads. The project has revitalized the city centre, brought contiguous historical neighbourhoods closer together through the construction of twelve new bridges and created public access-inspired art programming. In addition, there are: ‘pedestrian walkways, small parks and plazas; and construction of a new urban park with restaurant, amphitheatre, fountain, boat

11. The Providence environmental success is discussed in http://clinton3.nara.gov/CEQ/earthday/ ch12.html (accessed Jan. 2008). The other communities mentioned in this ‘Ten Communities: Profiles in Environmental Progress’ report include: Los Angeles (curbing stormwater run-off, clean-up of the San Fernando Valley and the work underway for the San Gabriel Valley); Denver (restoration of the Clear Creek and South Platte River watersheds); Tampa Bay (the recovery of Tampa Bay); Boston (the restoration of Boston Harbor); New Jersey coastal communities (reduction of contamination and beach-closings); Tulsa, Oklahoma (controlling stormwater run-off ); Cleveland, Ohio (revival of the Cuyahoga River); Chattanooga, Tennessee (concerning the banks of the Tennessee River); and Salt Lake City, Utah (the Gateway District but also the Jordan River corridor restoration along the Wasatch Front).

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michael york landing and multiple pedestrian connections, as well as three docking sites for boat traffic accommodated by uniform bridge clearances and dredging’ (University at Buffalo 2005). The Providence project was inspired by the reclamation and renewal of Boston’s Black Bay a century and a half earlier. This last took approximately sixty years and involved filling in the polluted mudflats of the bay, bringing the tidal flow of the Charles River under control and creating the riverfront Esplanade Park. However, in his 1 May 2001 Budget Address, Providence Mayor Vincent A. Cianci, Jr, signalled that there was still work to be done in Rhode Island. Referring to the dioxin contamination upstream in North Providence that merited ‘Federal Superfund’ financial assistance, the mayor specifically mentioned the Woonasquatucket from Olneyville Square to Providence Place and the Providence River from the financial district to the Cranston border: Today, we in Providence have the same opportunity [as with Boston’s Black Bay] to transform our city, to reclaim the magnificent shoreline that has been polluted by a century of industry, to build a much better city at the head of Narragansett Bay. What a wonderful gift this will be to the generations of Rhode Islanders who will benefit from our foresight and determination. (Cianci 2001) This continued regeneration of Providence has been linked with the ‘New Cities’ development initiative of the ‘Providence Renaissance’ (City of Providence 2000).12 This last will extend the Waterplace Park renewal as ‘an artistic masterpiece: a curving waterway of canals, street lights, brick and stone steps, platforms for benches, restaurants, and small rotundas’ (McWilliams 2003).13 One key idea behind the Providence River reclamation and associated urban restoration is to make the transition from city to river ‘completely porous’. But there is an additional feature to the Providence rejuvenation that is especially relevant to a Pagan-sympathetic person who cherishes this-world, corpo-spirituality, numinosity, multiple and gender-differentiated understandings of godhead and, especially, nature – along with the traditional mythological registers associated with

12. ‘The three New Cities are Narragansett Landing, a 200-acre development on waterfront land that is currently occupied by oil and gas storage facilities; The Promenade, a 175-acre development in an old mill district, directly across Route 95 from the new Providence Place Mall; and Westminster Crossing, a 163-acre development on air rights over Route 95, and to either side of the highway as it cuts through the city in a trench’ (City of Providence 2000). Mayor Cianci proclaims, ‘With the New Cities, we will clean hundreds of acres of polluted property. We will also develop 200 acres of new green space – parks, playgrounds, greenways and marinas’ (ibid.). 13. For another ‘rediscovered river’ see National Building Museum (2004). The Anacostia forms from the confluence of two major streams at Bladensburg, MD and flows into the Potomac River in the District of Columbia. The Anacostia Waterfront Initiative and the river’s renewal are ‘part of a growing trend across the country to capitalize on once abandoned or abused riverfronts’ (ibid.).

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neglect and reclamation of water as sacred resource these (see York 2002: 140–43; 2003: 67, 157ff.). The culminating celebration of the Waterplace development is the inspiring summertime productions of WaterFire. WaterFire provides live entertainment in the form of vessels gliding silently along the river while black-cloaked figures illuminate braziers surrounded by water. The braziers run through the center of the river, acting as a lane divider for boat traffic while illuminating the canal during the festival. This spectacle and civic happening is a community event, with an irresistible allure to visitors. (McWilliams 2003) In this citywide celebration of the rivers in Providence, we return yet again to that ancient association of fire and water: the fire-in-water that is suggested by the IndoEuropean root *(s)nēp- (‘to bind, connect; to flow’) that links the names of the Roman Neptunus, the Irish Nechtan and the Sanskrit/Avestic Apām Napāt/Apąm Napå – all water figures connected additionally to wisdom (York 1995a: 267, 528ff.).14 Derivative associations of the aquatic-igneous combination include both the thunderbolt generated from the rain cloud and the occasion of inspired poetry. For the ancients, this last is a product of a mysteriously brilliant essence embodied in water. We are back to the aboriginal cult of sacred springs and holy wells. Wisdom and the enhancement of memory are what are gained through a drink from Mimir’s Well in Nordic legend. It is the same if one is fortunate enough to sip from Varanasi’s Gyan Vapi. Such revered watery associations stem from an intuitive link understood atavistically by humans to exist between pure water that issues direct from the earth and ‘luminous glory’, namely, the wisdom of enlightenment. In fact, ‘[in] many cultures, water appears as a reflection or image of the soul’ (Witcombe 1998). Consequently, the reclaiming and restoration of the world’s ancient springs and sources might provide a cyclical route to a refound inspired understanding grounded in appreciation of the significance of sacred topography. The holy well is both cause and consequence. Through the magic of water we might be able to regain the wisdom of appreciating and protecting and preserving water. This is that feedback loop process or iteration that is central to complexity theory. Through a spiritual sensitivity that becomes increasingly attuned to nature and her natural flows – including that of water – we might be able to break the homeostatic lock-in that keeps us culturally blind to the sacred in-and-of nature.15 Water itself is regenerative. I experienced this first-hand during one of my sojourns to India. It was the festival of Shiva Ratri, and I had joined the thousands of devotees waiting in the Gyan Vapi courtyard adjacent to the mosque who wanted darshan of the sacred lingam of Kashi Vishvanath in Varanasi’s Golden Temple. I had miscalculated in thinking that no one could or would lose their place in line to pour Ganges water directly into the Gyan Vapi well as part of their accustomed pūjā worship. 14. Whether the *(s)nēp- radical relates as well to the Greek naphtha is not certain. Huehnergard (2000: 2065) sees this last as a derivative of a common Semitic noun (npţ). 15. For a succinct ‘Glossary of Chaotic Terms,’ see Brady (2006: 163–7).

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michael york Consequently, I drank the sacred waters. This was a colossal mistake, and subsequently I became violently ill with giardia and amoebic infection. Fortunately I recovered, but I also learned in time that the well purifies itself; the waters will regenerate. Eventually, the E. coli and other parasites from the Ganges River that have been poured into the well do not survive there. The waters will replenish themselves allowing one to drink yet again from the well without the likelihood of becoming ill. One must, alas, avoid the Gyan Vapi in the days immediately after the huge throngs of Shiva Ratri worshippers have passed by its pavilion, but its sacred waters do return to potability through a natural, albeit to me also a miraculous, process. The cult of springs, therefore, I wish to argue. is central to a rediscovery and rerespect of water as something not only vitally important but also centrally sacred. SPRING of water has always something about it which gives rise to holy feelings. From the dark earth there wells up a pellucid fluid, which in its apparent tranquil joyousness gives gladness to all around. The velvet mosses, the [swordlike] grasses, and the feathery ferns, grow with more of that light and vigorous nature which indicates a [fullness] of life, within the charmed influence of a spring of water, than they do elsewhere. (Hunt 1903) Likewise, in advising the building shrines and making of offerings where springs appear from the earth, Seneca says: ‘We worship the headwaters of great streams; the spot where the giant river breaks forth suddenly from its hidden source has its altars. Hot springs are worshiped by us; and the darkness or unfathomable depth of certain pools renders them sacred’ (Epistulae Morales 41.3). To understand the ancient worship of water, ‘it must always be remembered that primitive man associates motion of any sort, whether it be that of a swaying branch or dashing cataract or purling stream, with animate life – with spirits’ (Burriss 1931). The honour of a source has been frequently if not universally associated with spirits, numina and deities. In Celtic Ireland, the figure often connected to a holy well is Brigit (Motheral n.d.). Both goddess and Christian saint, her name is possibly cognate with the Sanskrit brihati meaning ‘brightness’, once again underscoring the inherent luminosity of water (York 1995a: 10ff.). She is the tutelary goddess of the British Brigantes, who has also given her name to the Brighid River in Ireland, the Brent in England and the Braint in Wales. The Irish Brigit has been specifically identified with Caesar’s Minerva, the goddess who was also equated with the Sulis of Aquae Sulis (Bath) (ibid.: 330 n.131). The Irish tales name the father of Brigit as the Dagda (the dago devos or ‘good god’; Ruad Rofessa the ‘mighty one of great knowledge’), but we remain uncertain as to who her mother is. Among the Dagda’s paramours, however, are the Morrîgan, who straddles the Unius River at the time of their union, and Boand, the eponym of the Boyne River. Elsewhere, however, Boand is named as the wife of Nechtan, the guardian of the well of Segais. Only Nechtan and his three cupbearers were reputedly allowed to approach the sacred well of wisdom, but: ‘Boand … through pride and defiance of the taboo, went to the spring herself and as a result lost an eye, arm and leg. Fleeing in

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neglect and reclamation of water as sacred resource shame, the goddess was pursued to the sea by the three waves which had robbed her of her former beauty – thereby inaugurating the river Boyne’ (York 1995a: 267ff.). Otherwise, from her union with the Dagda, Boand is known as the mother of Oenghus, the revered Mac Ôg or ‘young son’. Consequently, the Nechtan myth as it survives probably represents a later patriarchal inversion. The normal sequence in Gaelic legend is one in which sovereignty or the terra mater as guardian of the spring first appears to the hero and king-to-be as an ugly hag who transforms into a beautiful woman by the adventurer’s kiss. As a lord of knowledge, Nechtan may be ultimately identifiable with the Dagda as Ruad Rofessa. In the original and uninverted version of this tale, we can surmise that drinking the water of the sacred source (the kiss) allows the drinker the knowledge to come unto his own and become rightful ruler of his domain. The final suggestion for us today is to rediscover our holy wells and sacred springs; end the neglect of them; reclaim, protect, preserve and cultivate them; and, through the accompanying insight and metic wisdom that we might acquire by doing so, regain the sovereign responsibility for our ecologically sustainable and deep blue earth.

Bibliography Acreman, M. 2004. ‘The Water Crisis’. In his Water and Ethics: Water and Ecology, 6–7. Water and Ethics, Essay 8. Paris: UNESCO. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001363/136355e.pdf (accessed Jan. 2008). Bowman, M. 1998. ‘Belief, Legend and Perceptions of the Sacred in Contemporary Bath’. Folklore 109: 25– 31. Also available at www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2386/is_v109/ai_21250628/pg_6 (accessed Jan. 2008). Brady, B. 2006. Astrology: A Place in Chaos. Bournemouth: Wessex Astrologer. Brehm, D. 1998. ‘Indian Priest uses Engineering Training to Clean up Ganges’. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, News Office. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1998/ganges-1209.html (accessed Jan. 2008). Brundtland, Gro H., ed. 1987. Our Common Future: The World Commission on Environment and Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burningman. n.d. ‘Items to Bring to Burning Man’. www.arfarfarf.com/burningman/items.html (accessed Jan. 2008). Burriss, E. E. 1931.Taboo, Magic, Spirits: A Study of Primitive Elements in Roman Religion. New York: Macmillan Company. Carey, M. 2003. ‘The Game of Cat and Mouse’. Hellblazer: Black Flowers 181. Chester, A-L., S. Clark & P. Parker. 2004. ‘Afterburn Report, 2004’. Burning Man, http://afterburn.burningman.com/04/dpw/logistics.html (accessed Jan. 2008). China Daily 2003. ‘River Reclamation a Priority’. China Daily (17 December). www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/ doc/2003-12/17/content_290971.htm (accessed Jan. 2008). Cianci, V. A., Jr. 2001. ‘2001 Budget Address’. www.insidepolitics.org/speeches/CianciBudget2000.htm (accessed Jan. 2008). Cifuentes, E. 2002. ‘Diarrheal Diseases in Children from a Water Reclamation Site in Mexico City’. Environmental Health Perspectives 110(10) (October): A619–A624. Also available at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CYP/is_10_110/ai_94537497 (accessed Jan. 2008). City of Providence. 2000. ‘New Cities: The Dawn of a New Era’. www.providenceri.com/NewCities/index. html (accessed Jan. 2008). Dudley, S. C. n.d. ‘The First Five: A Brief History of the Salt River Project’. www.waterhistory.org/histories/ reclamation/saltriver/ (accessed Jan. 2008).

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michael york East London History. n.d. ‘Lost Rivers of London’. www.eastlondonhistory.com/bazalgette.htm (accessed Jan. 2008). Estrela, T., C. Marcuello & J. A. Iglesias. 1998. Water Resources Problems in Southern Europe – An Overview Report. Copenhagen: European Topic Centre on Inland Waters, European Environmental Agency. Green Futures. n.d. ‘Urban Rivers Advocates Forum’. www.greenfutures.org/projects/coop/nov2001.html (accessed Jan. 2008). Huehnergard, J. 2000. ‘Proto-Semitic Language and Culture’. In The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edn, 2056–9. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin. Hunt, R., ed. 1903. ‘Well Worship’. In Popular Romances in the West of England, 3rd edn, vol. 2. London: Chatto & Windus. www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/prwe/prwe143.htm (accessed Jan. 2008). International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). 1991. The World Conservation Strategy: Living Resource Conservation for Sustainable Development. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN/UNEP/WWF. Lenntech. n.d. ‘The Hydrological Cycle’. www.lenntech.com/hydrological-cycle.htm (accessed Jan. 2008). McWilliams, B. 2003. ‘Providence Reclaims Rivers’. Architecture Week (16 July). www.architectureweek. com/2003/0716/design_3-1.html (accessed Jan. 2008). Meikle, J. 2004. ‘The River Thames: A Poisoned, Polluted Problem?’ Guardian (27 August). www.guardian. co.uk/waste/story/0,12188,1292083,00.html (accessed Jan. 2008). Motheral, D. n.d. ‘Sacred Water’. www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/7080/wellstext.html (accessed Jan. 2008). Munro, D. A. 1995. ‘Sustainability: Rhetoric or Reality?’. In A Sustainable World: Defining and Measuring Sustainable Development, ed. T. Trzyna. Sacramento and London: California Institute of Public Affairs and Earthscan for IUCN – The World Conservation Union. www.interenvironment.org/cipa/munro. htm (accessed Jan. 2008). MY Travel Guide. n.d. ‘Pilgrimage to Our Lady’s Well’. www.mytravelguide.com/attractions/profile78731905-Ireland_Killarney_Pilgrimage_to_Our_Lady’s_Well.html (accessed Jan. 2008). National Building Museum 2004. ‘DC Builds the Anacostia Waterfront’, http://nbm.org/Exhibits/current/ DCBuilds.html (accessed Jan. 2008). National Maritime Museum 2004. ‘100,000 Fish Die as Storms Cause Thames Pollution’ (Thames Estuary Partnership Archive), www.nmm.ac.uk/server/show/conWebDoc.17331 (accessed Jan. 2008). Phelan, S. 2006. ‘Censored! The 10 Big Stories the Nation’s Major News Media Refused to Cover Last Year’. San Francisco Bay Guardian (6–12 September): 15ff., 20, 22. Sankat Mochan Foundation. 2004. ‘An Introduction to the Sankat Mochan Foundation and its Challenging Work to Clean the Ganga’, www.friendsofganges.org/files/XQ8GA8F6LA/GANGAGANGA.doc (accessed Jan. 2008). Science Museum. 2004. ‘Making the Modern World: Stories About the Lives we’ve Made’, www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/stories/the_industrial_town/06.ST.02/?scene=3 (accessed Jan. 2008). Singapore Water Reclamation Study. 2002. Singapore Water Reclamation Study: Expert Panel Review and Findings, www.pub.gov.sg/NEWater_files/download/review.PDF (accessed Jan. 2008). Smith, K. L. 1986. The Magnificent Experiment: Salt River Reclamation Project, 1890–1917. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. The Harts. n.d. ‘Floating Down the River: The River Thames – Its Pollution and Cleanup’, www.the-riverthames.co.uk/environ.htm (accessed Jan. 2008). United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). 1992. Agenda 21. New York: UNCED, United Nations General Assembly. University at Buffalo. 2005. ‘Providence River Relocation Project: Creating a Place for Community and Art’, http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/bruner/project.asp?entry=633 (accessed Jan. 2008). Whitty, J. 2006. ‘The Fate of the Ocean’. Mother Jones (March–April), www.motherjones.com/news/ feature/2006/03/the_fate_of_the_ocean.html (accessed Jan. 2008). Witcombe, C. 1998. ‘Water and the Sacred’, http://witcombe.sbc.edu/sacredplaces/water.html (accessed Jan. 2008). Willis, R. & P. Curry. 2004. Astrology, Science and Culture: Pulling Down the Moon. Oxford: Berg.

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neglect and reclamation of water as sacred resource York, M. 1995a. The Divine Versus the Asurian: An Interpretation of Indo-European Cult and Myth. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. York, M. 1995b. The Emerging Network: A Sociology of the New Age and Neo-pagan Movements. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. York, M. 2002. ‘Contemporary Pagan Pilgrimages’. In From Medieval Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism: The Social and Cultural Economics of Piety, eds W. H. Swatos & L. Tomasi, 137–58. Westport, CT: Praeger. York, M. 2003. Pagan Theology: Paganism as a World Religion. New York: NYU Press.

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Eco-logue And in me you find peace Adrianne Harris

Bottom of the tide If you like fish, or enjoy eating fish, perhaps these questions might inspire you to seek out the answers. Do you know where the fish came from? Do you know where the juveniles were born and raised and where they go when they become adults? Do you know how long they live? How fast they grow? Do you know how to tell a male from a female? Do you know what they eat? When they eat it? Do you know their migratory paths over the seasons? Do you know how to catch one? Do you know how they are killed? Do you know how to clean them and prepare them to eat? Do you know how to store and preserve them? Do you know how to honour the gods for their sacrifice? Do you know what threatens their future and their environment? How do you feel eating them if you played no part in their death? This essay attempts to answer some of those questions and provides an ethic, an environmentally sensitive approach to the contentious issue of hunting and killing for food. It suggests that fishing can be a powerful way of connecting to the cycles of nature, and to life itself. Whether standing on the beach, immersed in water, or out on the open expanse of the seas, the idea of connecting to water grounds the Pagan fisher. Acknowledging the cycle of life and death, being aware of the tides, the moon and the cycles of both, the Pagan fisher becomes actively involved in death, taking responsibility for death as a way of connecting to life. A Pagan perspective of fishing naturally incorporates the tools and practices of magic, for example, through the use of visualization and the manifestation of will. The combination, over a lifetime, of early formative experiences of water and fishing within a Pagan mythological framework and view of the world, has led me to the evolution of an ethic, a set of principles for actions, as reflected in my behaviour. This behaviour includes the building of kinship with, and stewardship for, the creatures of the water and their environment through careful observation

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adrianne harris and connection to place over time, as well as through involvement in the conservation arena.

The beach I am standing, almost waist deep, in cold, salty water. It is almost light; the sun has not yet broken over the horizon in the east. This morning there are very few clouds in the sky, thin tendrils of potential moisture fanning out across the now grey sky. There is a slight onshore breeze: just enough to add a crispness to the morning air; not enough though to make me leave the beach in search of calmer air. Seabirds drift along the shoreline, scanning the depths of the channels hidden behind the breaking surf. Occasionally one dives, returning to the surface, taking flight with a triumphant streak of silver in its beak. Other birds circle further out beyond the breakers, watching the movement of a school of small baitfish. I watch the birds carefully, and where they travel. Birds are excellent indicators of the location of sea life, especially the small baitfish. They let me know that larger fish may not be too far away. The tide has been building since the early hours of the morning, and will be at its fullest shortly after daybreak. The sea will rest briefly then, calm, still, the slack or dead time in the tide. Then it will turn and return to the sea. The moon is waxing to become full in a few days. She is often the only companion on the beach in the morning, before slipping over the Western horizon to give passage to the sun. Alone on the beach, I wade through the water, and with a flick of the wrist and a push of my shoulder, I use the ten-foot fibreglass rod to cast the weighted, baited rig into a channel that I identify by the way the waves and the birds behave on the beach. The line releases quickly and smoothly from the spool. I walk backwards to shallower water that now laps at my knees. One turn of the handle on the reel and the bail arm releases and sets the line. A few more turns and the line is tight in the water. I am standing, immersed in the element of water, connected to both land and sea. Just as I add salt to water to consecrate a sacred space for magical work, here I become a living consecration of earth and water. The land is my altar, with saltwater cleansing the whole. As I wait, contemplating the cold on my legs, the breeze on my cheeks and the weight in my arms, the sun quietly breaks over the horizon. If you do not look in the right spot, at exactly the right time, then this act of daily magic could easily be missed. This is the cracking of dawn: a perfect moment in time for stillness and contemplation. Each new day brings with it the potential for new possibilities, new chances, new opportunities. It is an awe-inspiring sight to see the new day start. Perhaps today will be the day that the Gods, and the fish of the sea look favourably on my endeavours. Perhaps today, if the tides, the time and the season all align, I will be rewarded with a catch to sustain me. Still waiting at the edge of the great ocean, reflecting on the nature of the deep, connecting to the divine. Water laps at my ankles, and there is a slight movement of line across my finger, movement at the tip of the rod, bending towards the sea

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eco-logue momentarily. My senses become acutely attuned to the line and the connection in the water. Was it the movement of the rig on the ocean floor, or some slight interest from a fish toward the bait? Seconds later, and thud, thud: two short tugs on the line. The rod bows further down. I set the hook and the fight begins. There is a short fight along the beach and, as the fish tires, I walk backwards up the beach to allow the fish to surf in with the small breakers on the edge. Then I catch a small glimpse of silver in the surf, long and slender. A whiting. I wind in the rod, take the whiting and remove the hook from its mouth. I take my knife from the sheath on my hip and slit the fish’s throat, then break its back. Over time, I have found that this is the quickest and most respectful way to kill the fish that I catch. As I only need one whiting for dinner, I pack up my rod and head for the cleaning table. Scales of fish caught by other hunters lie around the cleaning tables, each with their own unique story to tell. I pick up signs of other fish that are being taken and that adds to my body of knowledge about the area. I scale the whiting, respectfully thanking it for giving its life so that I might survive. I thank the gods for success in the hunt and honour my ancestors, who were also fishers, with the tales I tell.

The turn of the tide Over time, the connection to the ocean and its tides, to the phases of the moon and to the fish of the sea, becomes deeper and stronger. This is not just a place to go fishing but a place to become a part of, to understand, to know and to work in. And so it is from a deep connection to the sea that an ethic that guides behaviour, and consequently attitude, begins to emerge for the fisher. This ethic is reflected in the behaviour and talk of the fisher and in the conscious mindfulness with which one approaches the act of fishing. If the ocean helps sustain life, then an ethic, a code of behaviour, a mindful approach, naturally reflects that notion of sustainability. A respectful kinship develops between fisher and the sea.

The abyss The ocean is often calm right before the dawn. The swell abates, the breeze dies off and a glassy complexion reflects the greyness of the pre-dawn sky. A great stillness descends all around. But beneath the black mirror, deep, deep, below the familiar surface of the ocean, is the ocean floor. It may be sandy, rocky, covered in coral or weeds. Without an intimate knowledge of this part of the ocean, or without the aid of depth-sounders or similar equipment, it is not always clear how far away the ocean floor is below the bottom of the boat. A great expanse below, one would be easily lost in the depths; or danger lurking just below the surface, ready to rip the boat open. Whales, lost containers, planks of wood, plastic bags, dead floating carcasses 297

adrianne harris lurk around the edges, further danger for those who would risk their lives at seas in such tiny craft. Romantic as the notion is of living life at sea, the reality is somewhat different. And when the boat slips over the horizon, the land to the west disappears, it is easy to lose your bearings. It is easy to become lost, to lose your way home. With no land in sight, held in the rising and dipping swell, it is easy to feel vulnerable. No longer arrogant, egotistical, but instead so very small, vulnerable and alone on the surface of the ocean. Tiny and insignificant. And you know that, small and vulnerable as you are, wrapped in the tiny, thin metal shell of the boat, somehow, despite the fear, you are connected to the water, part of the whole expanse of life, part of the greater whole. And you know in that moment that you never feel more alive and interconnected than you do when you are on the ocean. Senses change and are heightened. A quiet comes over the angler; a peace, a meditative state descends. Still, yet acutely aware, ready to strike at any moment. As above, so below. Waiting, contemplating, connecting to the sea, I respond to myriad possibilities to be found in the depths below, to the tuna, trevally, snapper, kingfish, bream and flathead. To the red rock cod, Maori wrasse, latchet, pearl perch and the bonito. To the flounder, sun and moon fish, mackerel and the chicken lipped fish – the morwong. While I wait, I reflect on the magnificence of the sea and the way it sustains life by providing food for the other sea creatures as well as those terrestrially based. A respect develops for the sea and its inherent nature. Skills are honed, the environment is understood better, attunement to the tides and the phase of the moon becomes second nature. A seasonal appreciation of the movement of the fish becomes evident. To be a fisher is not just to ‘chuck a line in’, but is to establish a respectful kinship with fish and with place. In many of the encounters with water written by fishers you will notice the descriptions of the natural landscape, the colours of the sun, the sky and the moon on the water. These stories are written by humbled fishers, by those who would seek to dominate the sea, but instead return changed themselves.1 The sea does that. It changes and challenges your expectations and yourself. I am lucky enough to have had many humbling experiences of water, of oceans, lakes and rivers when I was a child. These experiences affected me deeply and made me think about my relationship with the sea and with hunting, and about what I was doing on the water. Of course I still have these experiences, each one important in shaping my understanding of my place in the ocean and my place in all of nature. These experiences have a way of catching you, reminding you of the beauty and the power of the sea. I remember a fight with an unknown fish many, many years ago, when fishing with my father in Botany Bay. Finally I saw a glimpse of blue, and the distinctive shape of the blue groper. A member of the beautiful wrasse family, a large fish, this one was at least 5kg. I brought the fish in to the side of the boat and it was scooped up with

1. For some examples of the stories mentioned see Pollard (1977).

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eco-logue the landing net. There it sat on the bottom of the boat, blue and beautiful. A majestic creature in the sea, now helpless on the bottom of the boat. I wanted to let the fish go immediately, but as a small child it was pointless to argue with my father, who sent the fish to the confines of the keeper tank at the back of the boat (this is a way of keeping fish alive when captured). After a few hours of pleading with my father to let the fish go, he agreed. The magnificent blue groper would be returned to its natural environment. When the time to finally release the groper, my heart sank momentarily thinking it was too late, that the fish had not been returned to the water in time. But with a flick of its tail and kick of its head, the fish returned to the depths. The memory of the blue groper, and the feelings it gave rise to in me, will never be forgotten. That fish pierced my heart and taught me a deep compassion and empathy for the life of fish. It was the beginning of kinship.

Towards an ethic If connection to life is one aspect that drives the behaviour of the fisher, then the idea of sustainable harvest is another. These two aspects in combination are the foundations of an ethic towards fishing and hunting. The ocean sustains me, so I respectfully take only what I need to eat for my dinner at that time. The practical aspects are played out in the observation of ‘right behaviour’ in the marine environment. From the understanding of the perspective of the individual, the field of vision then expands to consider the idea of sustainability of the oceans as a whole. The ethics of Australian fisherfolk have changed dramatically over the past few decades. Even in my lifetime I can see a different attitude towards sea creatures reflected in the behaviour of fishers themselves, in the activities of their clubs, and in policies and initiatives undertaken by the conservation movement and larger government regulatory bodies, such as state fisheries departments. Stories of old tell of fishers using heavy tackle and taking an unfair advantage in tactics used and the number and size of fish taken. Now the stories are of light gear, a fairer fight and the skill of the fisher being paramount instead of just the ‘catch at all costs’ methods. The new stories tell of catch and release, of respect for the fish and the fight, and of hope for the long-term survival of all fisheries for all generations to enjoy long into the future. The dialogue about the marine environment is changing.

Hiroshima never again Growing up in the early 1980s meant living with the threat of nuclear annihilation, at any minute. If you believed the propaganda, the world was at five minutes to midnight and destruction of the planet seemed inevitable. Kids of my generation worried about the nuclear winter, the darkness, the fallout. The fish of the ocean would also be lost, 299

adrianne harris the rivers and oceans polluted with radioactivity. But in the 1980s the fish of the oceans had very little voice in the conservation arena. I would be the only protester walking down George Street with a banner painted with fish at Hiroshima Day Rallies. However, so far in this century, fish conservation is increasingly entering mainstream consciousness, with more people engaging with the issue of sustainability and protection of species that have been overfished or threatened. Groups such as the Killarney Stop the Salmon Driftnets Campaign (Stop Now 2005) are increasingly giving the sea creatures a voice on land. This campaign is an inspiration as fishers and conservationists are working together to stop the drift-netting programme. Not long ago the wholesale rape and pillage of waterways was the norm by both commercial and recreational fishers. We have come some way, but there is still a way to go before true sustainability is reflected in the entire world’s fishing communities and industries. When I cook my dinner tonight, I can tell you the tale of the whiting, of the journey of the whiting, and of the fisher. I know what threatens its habitat and long-term survival. I know how to work for its protection. And if you listen, you will hear the ethic of kinship and sustainability reflected in the tales that fishers tell, just as the tides reflect the movement of the moon and the seasons.

Postscript At the time of writing this, my local fishing area have been declared contaminated with dioxins. Fishers who catch any fish west of the Sydney Harbour Bridge have been advised not to eat any of their catch. Fishers who fish east of the Sydney Harbour Bridge may eat 150g of harbour fish per month. Fishers who continue to hunt in these waters do so under a catch and release advice. The introduction of the restriction on the consumption of food caught in the harbour disconnects the hunter who hunts for sustainability and life in these fishing grounds. Having made a sacred connection to place over time, to have connected with the element of water, it is distressing to see what the modern industrial world has done to such a fundamental connection to life. I mourn for what I have lost, but continue to seek ways to maintain to connection and to seek out and explore new hunting grounds.

Bibliography Pollard, J. 1977. The Scream of the Reel. North Sydney: Jack Pollard Publishing.

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Stream, river, pool and sea By word and deed we honour thee Flowing waters, strong and free, As we do will, So mote it be. AF

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Index

Aboriginal country 17–19, 21, 25–9 marae nullius 28 sea country 30 terra nullius 28 water places 254, 257–8 Aboriginal culture 254–6, 259, 271 ancestors 6, 18, 22, 28, 257–8 bush lore 257 cosmology 30, 257, 259 Dreamtime 19, 22, 32, 257 environmental care 256–8 environmental knowledge 257–9 fire management 256, 258 kinship 19–22, 28, 31 kujika 31–2 Law 19, 31 oral tradition 31 Rainbow Serpent 23, 27–8, 32, 257, 259 religion 259 representation 256, 259 ritual 25, 258 romantic construction 255–6 song cycles 20, 22–8 song lines 29 sustainability 259 Aboriginal land 28, 29, 32 management 258 ownership 254 spiritual connection to 254, 260 land rights 259 activism 141, 151, 205, 228, 269

aesthetics 261–3 Agenda21 285 agriculture 2, 42, 166, 196–7, 199, 239–40, 263, 266, 278 algae 70, 110, 162, 166–8, 170–71 ancestors 6, 18, 49n, 49–51, 53–4, 56, 63, 72, 121, 258, 297 Amakhosi amakhulu (Great Ancestors) 50n ancestral beings 18–19, 72 ancestral cultures 2 Hawaiian 121, 226 Native American 72–3, 76 Pacific Islands 107–8, 111, 113, 116, 121 animals 22, 28, 30, 34–5, 38, 43, 52, 58, 60, 71–2, 76, 79, 99, 117, 124, 149, 206, 216–17, 228, 239, 241 ancestors 102, 116 Islam 199–200, 207 kinship 74–5, 216, 226 threats to 2–3, 137, 197, 246, 256 wellbeing 200 animism 127, 130, 132–3, 237–8, 245–6, 249–51 water 241, 245 anthropocentrism 129–30, 205–6 aquaculture 2, 137 aquifer 77, 132, 246, 251, 263, 278, 282–3 Australia 4, 115, 249, 253, 260, 264 early settlers 265 farmers 267–8 indigenous issues 268, 270–71 reconciliation 272

303

index baptism 42, 260 Barlow, M. 3 Bath 277, 280 beach 25, 50, 89–90, 93–5, 98–104, 122–3, 129, 142, 153, 159, 162, 165, 167, 172–4, 214, 221, 295–7 Bergman, C. 149 Bernard, P. 6, 101 biodiversity 2, 78, 143, 153, 163, 268, 283, 285 biophilia hypothesis 78 Blake, T. 219 Blake, W. xiii Blue Gold 3 blue theology 195–212 activism 205 ecotheology 8, 195, 198–200, 203n, 204, 207–9, 211 ecofeminist theology 198, 207 feminist theology 8, 195, 198, 201–2, 207, 211 praxis 207 body 1, 43, 50, 153, 197, 224, 229, 275, 286 Bourdieu, P. 143 Bradley, J. 6 Bratton, S. P. 8, 143, 281 Buddhism 199–201, 203, 203n, 206, 241, 279 Buddha-nature 206 ecology 199–201, 206 Burning Man Festival 280–81

Cobb, J. 204, 206, 208 Pilgrim Place 209 collective unconscious 180–81 colonialism 17, 108–9, 163, 165, 169, 254–6, 264–5, 270 Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation see CSIRO coral reef 2, 111, 113, 137, 170–74, 281, 297 creation 201, 209 Babylonian account 95–7, 99–101 stewardship 205 theology 201 Crowley, V. 8, 281 Csikszentmihalyi, M. 224 CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) 135 Culture Moves! 108, 118–21 dam 3, 78–9, 81–2, 128, 197, 239, 241, 246, 265, 269–70, 283, 285 threat to indigenous land 82 dance 107, 112–5, 121, 258 Banaba 112 Hawaii 109, 112 hula (Hawaii) 109 Kiribati 112–13 Melanesia 115 Pacific 115, 117, 120–21 Polynesia 112 Samoa 118 dead zone (ocean) 142 death 11, 38, 39, 44, 45, 91, 94–97, 101, 129–35, 139, 142, 188, 261, 295 deep blue religion xiii, 10, 12, 103, 141–2, 149, 268 defined 1, 12, 103, 140 deep ecology 141, 198 disease 58, 283, 286 diving 7, 12, 60, 72, 137, 141, 145–8, 152–3, 157, 276, 296 dolphin 26, 37, 50, 104, 148, 226 dreaming 12, 35, 49–56, 64, 93–4, 116, 149, 180, 182, 187, 192 Aboriginal 19, 22, 32, dredging (environmental damage) xx drought 138, 249, 278 dualism 254, 265 Duke Kahanamoku 219–20

Carson, R. 8, 159, 281 A Sense of Wonder 161, 165 Silent Spring 176 The Edge of the Sea 161–2, 164, 167–9 The Sea Around Us 162 spirituality 161 Under the Sea Wind 169 cave 52, 92, 163–4, 171 Celts 33, 160–62, 290 Gundestrup Cauldron 39 mythology 38, 40, 45 spirituality 37–41, 161, 290 water 37 childhood 138, 151 Christian Research Association (Australia) 141 Christianity xiv, 35, 41–4, 61, 113, 118, 122, 130, 146, 198, 204, 209, 241, 279 Church 277 Christian ideas 265 history 160–62 pilgrimage 161–2 relationship with nature 200 theology 197–8 coast 149–51, 153, 160, 162, 164–6, 169, 171–6

Earle, S. 12 echinoderm 170 ecoerotic 148 ecofeminism 198

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index ecofeminist theology 198, 207 ecological reclamation 286 ecology 7, 15, 67, 81, 174, 199, 203n, 204 economic development 238, 286 economics 78, 202–3, 206, 210, 239, 251, 254, 257, 264, 267 ecological economics 9 economic rationalism 273 ecosocial capital 144 ecospiritual capital 144 ecosystem 1–2, 7, 100–101, 148, 166, 170–71, 173, 197, 241–2, 255, 257, 259, 261, 263, 269, 278, 283 health 4–5, 8, 33, 79, 133, 203, 237 ocean 133, 137–8, 142–3, 153 services 77 ecotheology 198–201 ecotone 171, 174 edge (boundary space) 163–5, 171 education (water) 2, 164, 173–4, 209, 248, 274 eel 87, 91–2, 97 environmental activism 151–2, 255, 271–2; see also activism environmental flow 4–5, 240, 245, 269 environmental management 259 environmental sustainability 250 environmentalism 237, 244, 248, 269, 271 secular 238, 244, 249 spiritual 244 ethic(s), water 2, 71, 128, 132, 135, 143, 149–50, 161, 173, 175, 205, 216, 226, 227, 281, 295, 299 Europe 41 European Union Water Framework Directive 4, 240 Ezzy, D. 7, 127, 281

Pagan 295 recreational 144, 295–9 fishing (and fisheries) 2, 4, 145, 151, 175, 246, 278, 283 drift-netting 300 magic 295–6 overfishing 137 folktale (water) 44 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations see FAO Fortune, D. (The Sea Priestess) 99, 102 Francis, A. 6, 281 Gaia hypothesis 79 Ganges River 278, 289–90 clean up 286 Genesis 95n, 96, 200, 276 Gerten, D. 6, 101 global warming 2, 135 globalization (neo-globalization) 107, 266 Gluckman, M. 59 God (Abrahamic religions) 200–202, 207, 276 God’s love 200–201 gods and goddesses 41, 261, 290, 296 fertility 38 Greco-Roman 40 Greek 59, 275–6 Irish 38, 290 Norse 130 Roman 275 Shiva 278, 289–90 Slavic 38 Tiamat 89, 95–6, 99, 276 Vishnu 276 water 39, 261 Goethe, J. W. von 45 Gooch, M. 11 Gray, J. 114–16, 118, 121 Gray, Y. (Sunameke Pacific Island Performance) 114–16 Greco-Roman world 35, 275 grief 153 Groenfeldt, D. 5, 9

faith 12, 133, 140, 147, 150, 189, 197, 201, 207–9, 279 FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) 137 farm(ing) 3–4, 9, 70, 240, 263–8, 272, 285n feminist theology 201 Ferris, M. 8 Festival of Pacific Arts 122 fish 89, 91, 110, 295–6, 298 blue groper 299 eel 87, 91–2, 97 jelly fish 123 metaphor 91, 179, 191–2 shark (Tiger Shark) 23–5, 28 fisher 298, 300 commercial 144–5, 175

Hardin, G. 3–4 Harris, A. 295–300 Harvey, G. xxx, 123, 127, 132–3, 238 Hau’ofa, E. 107, 114 Hawaii 69, 109–10, 121, 148, 218–19, 226 hula 109 Kaona (relationship) 121 surfing 226 hedonism 261

305

index Hening, G. (Surfrider Foundation) 217, 219, 225 Hinduism 199, 276, 278–9 river 241 Hobart 7, 127, 132, 281 Homer (Odyssey) 37 Hutton, R. 41 hydrological (water) cycle 278

Jung, C. 102 alchemy 181 archetypes 100, 102, 181, 183–5, 189 collective unconscious 179–81, 183, 186, 192–3 deity, transcendental 181 environmental dissociation 102 individuation 92, 181–2, 185, 189–91 interconnectedness 102 mythology 181 psyche 181 sea 179 self 189 symbol 181 unconscious 180–84, 186, 188, 190–92 water 181

India 278 Varanasi (Banaras) 278 indigenous 254–9, 270 alliance 271 culture 2, 69 food 70, 73–4, 110, 295 knowledge 255 memory 79 music 28, 30, 68, 75, 108 oral tradition 123 people 254–5 property rights 254 rights 254, 259 river 78 sea (respect) 145 spirituality 256 water (significance) 84, 253 Indigenous People’s Kyoto Water Declaration 241–3 initiation 46, 71, 93–95 184, 185, 190 Inkosazana 49 interconnectedness 1, 6, 13, 19, 98, 102, 104, 113, 146, 190, 191, 200, 222, 261, 285, 298 interdependence 271 International Monetary Fund 202 International Union for Conservation of Nature see IUCN Invocation xvii International Water Secretariat 3 irrigation xi, 196–7, 209, 239–40, 246–7, 266, 269–70, 283, 285 Islam 199, 203–4, 206–8, 241, 279 ecology 206 Qur’an and ecology 200 island 110 Banaba xii, 111–12 Gilbert Islands 112–13 Hawaii 69, 109, 121, 148, 218, 226 Kiribati 112, 122–3 Samoa 108, 118 121–3 IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) 285 Izangoma (Zulu diviner) 49

Kiribati (Republic of) 112 Banaba 112 LaBedz, G. 228–30 lake 75–6, 77, 80, 283, 298 Larson, J. 34 Latour, B. xiii Levinas, E. 128, 132, 134 Leopold, A. (land ethic) 175 liberation theology 203, 207 lived religion (Orsi, R.) 149, 214 Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkein) 130–31 Lovelock, J. 79 manatee 149 marine environment 138, 143–5, 151, 161, 164, 193, 299 marine protected area 138, 143 MAU Dance Theatre 108 Melanesia 115 memory 79, 289 mermaid 6, 42–5, 49–50, 52, 59–60, 62, 74 missionaries 58, 109, 112–13, 218, 222 Mitchell, E. 1 Mother Earth 237 Mother Nature 216 Mother Ocean 223, 226 Mount Wellington (Tasmania) 127, 132, 281 Muir, J. 175–6, 229 mystical experience 8, 13, 102, 146, 163, 169, 184, 220 mythology 9, 95, 102, 276 Babylonian 95–6, 99, 101 Celtic 37–8, 40, 291 creation story 71–2, 96 Echo and Narcissus 35

Judaism (Torah) 199, 241

306

index Greek 34, 36–7, 129, 276–7 Hebrew 96n Irish 38, 179 Melusine 44 Native American 75, 80 nereids 43 Norse 36, 130, 289 Okeanos (ruler of the oceans) 37 Pagan 34, 295 Poseidon (sea god) 37, 277 river 36, 45 Roman 34 sea 37 Tiamat 89, 95–6, 99 water 6, 34, 46, 95 water beings 70 women 37–39, 43 Yggdrasil (World Tree) 38 Zulu 64

Neibuhr, R. 208 Nelson, M. K. 6–7, 281 Nelson, R. 142 Northern Territory 17 Nussbaum, M. 131 nymphs (nympholepsy) 42–3 ocean xiv, 10–11, 70, 77, 90–91, 93n, 103–4, 108–11, 116–17, 145, 148, 237, 242, 275–7, 281, 296–8 Atlantic Ocean 71–3, 75–6, 129, 210 care 174, 242 ethic 4, 299 fish 299 health 70, 298–9 Mother Ocean 223, 226 mystery 12 mythology 37, 72, 74 Pacific Ocean 107 threats 2–3, 5, 137, 278, 300 wilderness 12, 150 Oceania 107, 110–11, 124 Oeschlaeger, M. 197 oracle 35 Orsi, R. 149, 214 over-fishing 2

Native American Church 71 Native American Water and Culture Conference (New Mexico) 241 Native Americans Anishinaabeg nation 6–7, 67 creation story 71–2 food (wild rice) 74 Great Mystery 79 Lakota 70–71 land claims 81–3 language 71 Medicine Wheel 79 music 68 water drum 75 mythology 75, 80 Ojibwe 69, 71, 73, 76–7, 83, 281 oral tradition 71–2 Paiute 70 Pit River Indian Tribe 81, 83–4 Pomo 80 Shoshone 70 spiritual traditions 67 Taos Pueblo 281 totem 73–4 Turtle Island 72 water 68–71 Wintu 70, 78 Winnemem tribe 81–2, 84, 281 Zuni Pueblo 70 Native Title Act 1993 (Australia) 254 nature religion 1, 5, 9, 11–2, 109, 213–15, 140, 149, 220, 222, 228, 230 aquatic 213–30

Pacific Islands 281 Pacific Islanders 123 Paganism 33, 41–2, 46, 109, 111, 123, 127–8, 228, 279 athame 99 ethics 123 pagan sites 41 water 130, 134 Wicca 8, 94 Papua New Guinea 114–16, 123 Peavey, F. 286 pilgrimage 39, 90, 161–2, 222, 278 Plumwood, V. 135 pluralism (religious) 207 Point Break 216 politics 270 pollution 2, 81, 103, 142, 196, 205, 279, 284, 286 ocean 297–8, 300 Sydney Harbour 300 pool 50–54, 61, 64 precautionary principle 249 pre-Christian religion 275 Europe 34, 161 Price, J. 214, 224 process theology 204, 206 Providence River Relocation Project 287–9

307

index psyche 181

vein of mother earth 78 Woonasquatucket River 287 rock pool 92, 150, 163 Roman culture 35–7, 40, 162, 275, 283, 289 romanticizing (indigenous cultures) 255 romanticism 45

quality of life 144, 153, 239–40, 286 rainbow 52, 54, 57, 59–60 recreation (water) 263 religion 147, 197, 237, 279 Aboriginal 259 Abrahamic 140, 276, 279 Buddhism see Buddhism Christianity see Christianity defined 214 deep blue see deep blue religion Islam see Islam lived religion 149 nature religion see nature religion religious roots of American environmentalism 176 water 197 Rigby, K. 129 ritual 6–8, 11–12, 39–42, 46, 90–92, 97, 99, 103, 150, 161, 183–5, 210, 221n, 223 Aboriginal 22, 25, 258 initiation 94 Native American 71 sea 90, 92, 95, 116, 150, 183 surfing 90, 99, 220, 223 water 34–5, 116, 261–2, 241, 262 Wiccan 183–4, 188–90 Zulu 59, 61–3 river 5, 36, 40, 67, 77–8, 101, 129, 240, 261, 282–5, 287, 298 ecology 283 flow 4–5, 240, 245, 269 health 4–5, 240, 246, 249–50 Hudson River reclamation 285 McLeod River 81 management 283 metaphor 261 Mississipi-Missouri 76 Moshassuck River 287 Murray-Darling Basin 263 Pholela River 52–3 protection 261 restoration (reclamation) 249, 283, 285, 287 Rio Grande 241, 244 river of life (metaphor) 79 Salt River reclamation 285n Santa Fe River 245–8 Styx River 36, 129 Thames 284–5 thirst 243, 249 threat 4

sacred space 5–6, 11, 15, 79, 87, 90–92, 98–9, 101–4, 123, 186, 296 Wicca 185, 189–90 Safina, C. 2, 143 salinity 266 salmon 38, 91, 179, 192, 284 saltwater 114, 139, 148 Saltwater Feet 114, 118 sand 166, 170, 174 sand dunes 172–3 Santa Fe 250 Santa Fe River 245–51 Santa Fe Watershed Association xi, 5, 9, 246–7 Scharper, S. 198, 204, 206–7 scientific research 146–7, 166, 271 scrying 100 sea 277, 281–2, 296–8 addiction 93 birds 142, 296 cave 163 ethic 2, 143, 281, 297, 299–300 fishing 296–7 level 256, 278 sea-carer 138, 153–4 sea snake 18 spirituality 150 wave 152–3 seal 148, 153 seaweed see algae self, the 189 Shaw, S. 7–8, 281 Shiva, V. 3–4 Shiva Ratri festival 289 shell 72–3, 76, 160, 162, 168–71, 298 shellfish 142, 168–9 shore 163, 173 Sierra Club 229 snake 52 social capital 143–4 soil erosion 266 song cycles 20, 22–8 spiritual activism 150 spirituality xiv, 145–6, 176, 215, 237, 251, 253 Aboriginal 260 connection to land, place 260

308

index seekers 215 spiritual experience 161, 225, 227 spiritual power 2 transcendent 162 surfing 222, 228, 230 water 237 South Africa 4, 49 spring 6, 35, 42, 260, 280, 282, 289 cult of springs 290 Sri Lanka 239 stormwater 285 Strang, V. 9 Sunameke 118 surf culture 219 identity 223 surfing 93, 99, 137–8, 215, 220 as religion 216, 224, 228 films 216, 221, 223, 230 ritual 223 soul surfing 150, 215, 217, 219–221, 226–9 spiritual experience 225, 227 spirituality 222, 228, 230 subculture 215 Zen 221–2, 224, 229 Surfrider Foundation 217, 219, 228n Sumer 95 sustainability 84, 255, 257, 299–300 swimming 92, 122–3, 136, 140, 151–2, 148– 9, 157, 166, 192, 219, 239, 242, 262–3 Taylor, B. 8–9, 12, 213 Teaiwa (meaning) 112 Teaiwa, K. M. 7, 281 Teaiwa, T. 111 The Endless Summer 221 The Secret of the Golden Flower 180–81 The Ultimate Guide to Surfing 217 theology 197 ecofeminist 198 evangelical 198 liberation theology 203, 207 Tiamat 89, 95–7, 99, 102, 277 tide xiv, 173, 296–7 tragedy of the commons 3 transpersonal dimension 179, 191 trauma 151–2 Turner, V. 11 unconscious 89–92, 94, 96n, 96–7, 101–3 underworld 182 United Nations 196–7, 269, 285 Earth Summit (1992) 285

FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) 137 International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade 196 United Nations Committee on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights 3 United Nations International Decade of Water for Life 3, 197 UNESCO Scientific Advisory Committee for the International Ecohydrology Programme 9, 237 universal rights to water 196 value(s) 9, 44, 69, 71, 94, 108–9, 129, 142, 160, 162, 209, 222, 238–40, 267–8 Aboriginal 259 economic 250, 253 environmental 160 intrinsic value 245 river health 249 spiritual 173, 237, 248, 250–51, 253, 259 vitality 6, 12, 93, 137, 140 wastewater 282 water 282 activism 81–3 conservation 248, 278 gods 39 holy (holiness) 67, 71, 197, 205, 241, 260, 278, 280–82 humility 7, 75, 92, 139, 225n, 238 intimacy xiii, 169 lifeforce (spirit) 241 management 238, 249, 267, 269, 282 mother 70, 139 metaphor 12, 13, 68, 91, 161, 180, 182, 261, 282 mythology 46 Native American 73 nymphs 36, 43 relationship 128, 253 religion 197, 213 resource 213, 244, 248, 267 reverence 117, 145 Bali (water) 239 rights xiii, 244, 270–71 ritual 6, 97, 116–17, 183, 185, 210, 218, 241, 261 offerings 40, 261, 290 sacredness 10, 84, 103, 195, 290 scarcity 196, 249 secular view of 240–41 sensory engagement 261 spirituality 5, 139, 260

309

index supply (drinking, sanitation) 195–6, 278 symbolism 261 totem 73–4 use 260, 267 Wicca 129, 131, 179 worship 42, 46 water (hydrological) cycle 10, 77 waterfall 54 WaterFire 289 watershed 75–6, 78 WaterSpirit 210 water trading 270 Water Wars 3 wave 13, 18, 77, 92–3, 98–100, 123, 137, 145, 148–9, 167, 217, 222–6, 230, 234 Aboriginal cosmology 18, 28, 30 web of life 207 well (sacred) 42, 193, 197–9, 277–8, 280–82, 289–90 Ireland (holy well) 277, 289–290 neglect (loss) 277 Wendt, A. 107–8, 123 Western culture 129, 133–5 alienation from nature 255 dualism 149, 255 environmentalism 255 imagery 37 imagination 42 science 239 scientific thought 147 understanding 31 values 253 wetlands 2–4, 77, 175, 235, 240, 243, 283

whale 145, 297 whale hunting and slaughter 151 Wicca 8, 94, 99, 131, 183–5, 188–90 cosmology (water) 129 Witch 94 teenage Witches 133 wilderness 12, 30, 46, 141, 144–5, 150, 172, 175–6, 206 Wilson, E. O. 78 wisdom 282 women 82, 140, 144, 196, 200–202 feminist theology 202 Hawaii 109 mythology 37–9, 43 oppression 205–7 Pacific 115–18, 201 womb 197 Zulu 57, 59, 62–3 World Bank 196, 202 World Commission on Dams 283 World Commission on Environment and Development 285 World Health Organization 195 World Water Forum 67, 241 Worster, D. 245 Yanyuwa people 17–32 York, M. 9–10, 96 Zulu diviner 49 religion 58 ritual 59, 61–3

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