How might we, as embodied beings, cultivate a connection with the wider socio-ecological environment in which we are inescapably embedded? This question is not only significant for both 4E cognition and various religious movements, but also for addressing the climate crisis which directly confronts our embeddedness in the environment. Many nature religions, such as Wicca, provide cognitive frameworks and structured practices which foster an immersive connection between body-minds and their environment. The experience-oriented practices of Wicca have been previously identified as facilitating interpretive drift (Luhrmann 1989), or a gradual change in perception, patterns of noticing, and meaning-making resulting from engagement in embodied ritual practices. This paper will explore these practice’s role in promoting interpretive drift toward nature connectedness and identification. It will investigate two key cognitive strategies which enable this: conceptually blending nature and the body, and practices of enactive sense-making embedded in ecological settings. Additionally, it will explore how engagement with environmentalist activities is subsequently promoted through cultivating nature connectedness and identity in an embodied, embedded, and enacted fashion.
A central tenet in Wicca is the personification of nature through deities. We can understand these deities as a conceptual blend which allows nature to be engaged on a human scale (Fauconnier and Turner 2003), integrating the abstract concept of nature and the concrete familiarity of embodied personhood. Framing nature in embodied terms reshapes the relationships it affords, allowing one to conceptualize their embedding within natural processes in new embodied ways. For example, the seasonal processes of cyclical regeneration are symbolically framed in bodily terms of conception, birth, aging, regeneration, and death of deities (Crowley 2019). This conceptual blend also allows tangible engagement with an otherwise abstract nature through embodied practice, as embodied nature deities suggest to practitioners “that access to divinity could be as close as their flesh” (Kraemer 2016, p. 151). By framing nature as embodied, practices of engaging nature through the body can better foster a connection between individual body-minds and their environment. Yet, if both nature and individuals are framed as embodied, a critical question arises: where does one body end and the other begin? If both are body-like, and individual body-minds are inescapably embedded in their environment, this mutual embodiment allows feelings of natural connection to grow into a shared identity or feeling of oneness with nature–blending the boundary of body-mind and environment into an ecological self-identity.
The connection of embodiment and natural embedding can also be found in another foundational motif in Wicca: the four classical elements of air, fire, water, and earth. Central to Wiccan ritual practice, these are understood as being present in both the individual and the environment, and are considered to have both concrete sensory and abstract affective qualities. Various practitioner guidebooks contain exercises involving active engagement with natural settings as a means of becoming familiar with the four elements and the concepts associated with them. These exercises help develop an embodied understanding of the elements through sensory and affective immersion in the environment. For example, we find various practices involving traveling to natural settings, immersing one’s feet in earth or water, actively observing its sensations, and meditating on ideas associated with these elements such as emotional groundedness or fluidity. Other practices involve active noticing of ecosystems and hydrological cycles as symbolic representations of environmental interdependence and connection (Cunningham 1991; Starhawk 1997; Lipp 2024). These practices exemplify enactive sense-making, where meaning and self-identity emerge through embodied interactions with the environment (Varela 1991; Thompson 2007). These embodied interactions with air, fire, water, and earth not only develop an understanding of their symbolic and sensory qualities, but also deepen one’s connection to the environments in which these elements manifest. Significantly, because the individual and nature have been co-identified via a shared framing of embodiment, this embodied interaction with nature can also enact a self-identity which does not partition itself from its embedding environment. In other words, these practices allow the enactment of a shared identity with nature.
Wiccan practice facilitates interpretive drift toward nature connectedness and identification through symbolic association of one’s embodiment and natural embedding, and through sensory and affective exploration of this via enactive sense-making practices within natural settings. This parallels studies highlighting the link between practices of emotional engagement, association of symbolic meaning (Lumber et al. 2017), and active noticing (Richardson et al. 2022) with increased nature connectedness and identification. By cultivating this through embodied activity, Wicca also encourages environmentalist activity as a fundamental embodiment of its spiritual practice. This correlation between nature connectedness, identification, and environmentalism is likewise supported by studies proposing nature connectedness and identification as significant factors in the formation of collective political identities which predict environmentalist activity (Mackay et al. 2019, 2021). Wicca therefore not only encourages practitioners to embrace a shared identity with nature through activity of the body, but also to enact this identity through movements both embodied and political–not only walking among and tending to plants, but also actively protecting them by “marching to protest an unsafe nuclear plant” (Starhawk 1979, p. 12).
By connecting the self, body, and nature through conceptual blending and enactive sense-making embedded in natural settings, Wicca provides fertile ground for the investigation of cognitive practices which encourage nature connection and identification. It also provides an opportunity to explore how such practices can contribute to a propensity toward environmentalist activity. By centering the body-mind’s embedding in nature, these practices engage a core tenet of both 4E cognition and environmentalism: we are not so separate from the environment, and should proceed accordingly.
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.