Mother Earth in Danger: Changing Conceptualisations of the Climate Crisis in Contemporary Esoteric Movements
摘要
Contemporary esoteric movements, such as Neo-Paganism, yoga, Neo-Shamanism, and others, have a shared and entangled global history through various points of interaction, through persons and religious themes. One such theme is the conceptualisation of Mother Earth (also referred to as Gaia) through a combination of knowledges produced in various religious traditions. As such, awareness and discourse about the climate crisis are nearly omnipresent in these communities. The concept of Mother Earth, however, is invigorated in multiple contexts and through multiple actors, among these the United Nations (UN) and various sustainability projects as well as present decolonial and anti-anthropocentric approaches in academic theory production—for instance, the writings of Donna Haraway and others. Both, esoteric and presumably secular actors, use the notion of Indigenous knowledge for their policies, ontologies, and practices. In this chapter, I will use yoga and Neo-Shamanism as two case studies that illustrate this entanglement of knowledge productions in relation to the climate crisis and technology. While most of these actors argue for a reconceptualisation of “technology”, they are hesitant to reflect on their own indebtedness in—and dependency on—technologies that cause the crisis, such as air travel and other forms of transportation and communication that are needed to create these global networks of religious actors. In these regards, esoteric movements detach from the secular actors they engage with, because of their hesitancy to criticise their immense classist power imbalances in relation to the Indigenous knowledges they claim to represent. This chapter will critically examine precisely this intersectional discrepancy within contemporary esoteric movements and their conceptualisations of Mother Earth and climate change.