Immersed in the Ecological Body: Enactive Sense-Making and Identity Formation in Wiccan Practice

The connection between body-minds and their embedding in the environment is a primary concern of 4E cognition, nature religion movements, and environmentalism. Wiccan practice presents a unique opportunity to explore the intersection of these concerns through its centering of the connection of body-mind and nature. Two cognitive strategies found in Wicca will be examined: correspondence of embodiment and environmental embedding through the conceptual blend of nature deities, and practices of enactive sense-making in natural settings. In combination, these facilitate interpretative drift toward connection and identification with nature. This subsequently leads to an increased propensity toward environmentalist activity, another central tenet of Wiccan spiritual practice. Taken together, Wiccan practice not only offers fertile ground for the exploration of embodied, embedded, and enactive cognition in religious practices, but also how these may also intersect with environmentalist concerns.