The CPS Steering Committee looks to the role of environments in constructing religious identity and the roles of ontological scaffolds and praxis. How do inner and outer environments, individuals and communities engage pilgrimage in light of critiques of spiritual tourism? Can new understandings of ontology be forged against the legacies of the singular detached self on its journey? Reclaiming Nordic indigenous heritages in diasporic contexts brings its own challenges to relational dynamics of environment at the personal and social level. What dangers exist in commodification and decontextualization of sacred practices? How do social environmental discourses of “sin” and “sexual purity” condition the journey of queer communities to locate themselves as oppositional sources of power? Can AI and LLM move from computing ‘environments’ to other-than-human status themselves as interlocutors? Where is agency within and among ‘natural,’ ‘social, and ‘AI’ environments? We will seek to explore possibilities and problematics in this area.
This paper explores the intersection of nature and spirituality in contemporary pilgrimage practices, particularly within modern Pagan and eco-spiritual movements. While traditional Pilgrimage Studies have largely focused on human rituals, this research highlights the often-looked involvement of the more-than-human world and its role in shaping spiritual experiences. By examining alternative spiritual practices, including modern Paganism and nature-based rituals, the paper investigates how nature is actively engaged and a sacred participant in the pilgrim’s journey. Drawing on frameworks such as Graham Harvey’s neo-animism and Susan Greenwood’s magical consciousness, the study emphasizes the transformative and participatory dimensions of these journeys. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the paper offers new perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies, Neo-Paganism, and eco-spirituality, challenging traditional religious frameworks and contributing to a heightened ecological consciousness.
I propose that Western Goddess Spirituality provides a blueprint for Sámi-Americans who wish to reclaim and rebuild pre-colonial spiritual practices. The blending of multiple traditions – comparable to how Western Goddess Spiritual traditions operate - presents a path forward for Sámi-Americans who don’t know where or how to start. This is not without its potential difficulties, however, as the blending and co-opting of multiple traditions runs the risk of appropriation and exploitation leading to the commodification and decontextualization of sacred practices. The benefit in this method, however, is the ability to create a Sámi-American specific approach that respects both cultural continuity and acknowledges the difficulties in recreating a distinctive Sámi spirituality in North America.
Contemporary Pagan and Witchcraft communities, like queer communities with which they often overlap, take their names from reclaimed slurs. These identifications reflect a shared opposition to hegemonic, Christian-influenced discourse. While Paganism is a diverse religious category that can include openly politically conservative and nativist traditions, in the Anglophone west there are important convergences between Pagan alternative religious movements and LGBTQ+ activism, both in their developmental histories and in their current manifestations.
From the beginning, contemporary Paganism has connected sexuality to sacred joy, a sexual theology which makes possible, though does not guarantee, LGBTQ+ inclusion. Pagan communities reflect a variety of ideologies around sex and gender, from traditional gender complementarities, through feminist essentialism and same-sex ritual symbolism, to theories of gender construction and sexual fluidity. Generational models, following progressive politics, have evolved from heterosexist gender complementarity, through separatism, to radical queerness.
Artificial Intelligence stands at the center of debates around Pagans & Magicians and the use of Technology. In interviews, my interlocutors were mixed. There are the enthusiastic users, happy to employ AI as an assistant to enhance their art- whether that be of a clerical or magick nature. On the other side, there were those who worry about the potential implications of an increased AI presence - including a displacement of human artisans and human material creators within the occulture. By examining literature on relational ontology and sources on relational ethics from a Heathen perspective, I will show that an ordered relational ontology must include AI, or at the very least must be prepared to include it. As progenitors, we are responsible for Artificial Intelligence and we must guide it, as a parent guides a child.