CO-SPONSORSHIP: Esotericism Unit and Religion and Ecology Unit

Ecology and Esotericism

During a paper for the Religion and Ecology Unit at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the AAR, Bron Taylor noted with regret that the world's major religious traditions—with some exceptions—have not embraced environmentalism or serious attention to the ecological crisis. By contrast, it seems, many new religious movements and esoteric groups seem to have embraced environmentalism as a matter of religious concern. What is it about these new and esoteric religious movements that enable them to embrace environmental concern in a way that the major religious traditions apparently cannot? We welcome papers for a co-sponsored session with the Esotericism Unit and the Religion and Ecology Unit on ecology and esotericism. Possible subjects could include but are not limited to:

• Esoteric cosmologies that locate divinity within the natural world rather than as a transcendent reality,
• The moral status of nonhumans in esoteric and new religious movements,
• The sacredness and moral status of the natural world in New Age, Wiccan, Pagan, and Neopagan communities,
• The intersection between new and esoteric religious groups and the radical environmental movement.
• The viability (or lack thereof) of new and esoteric religious groups as effective political actors.
• Analyzing esoteric or new-religious movements that are more conducive to greening than world religions
• Esoteric ecological communities as spaces of freedom and liberation
• Elemental symbolism, paranormal experiences in nature (e.g tree spirits, UFOs/UAPs, familiars) and their ecological significance.
• How esoteric traditions intersect with posthumanist and speculative realism theories, particularly in their exploration of the agency of nonhuman and material entities.
• Analyses of esoteric cosmologies or ontologies that propose alternative conceptions of nature or the nonhuman world  (e.g., nature as a living organism, the interconnectedness of all beings, or the sacredness of nonhuman entities) as potential resources for rethinking human-nature relationships in the face of ecological crises.
• Studies of esoteric communities actively engaging with issues of environmental justice, including their responses to the disproportionate impacts of climate change on marginalized communities.