Madeline’s Reviews > Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America > Status Update

Genius loci: the protective spirit of a place

“In antiquity, every spring, every stream, every tree, every hill had its own genius loci, its guardian spirit. By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feeling of natural objects.”

“the plight in which post-industrial revolution man has now landed himself is one more demonstration that man is not the master of his environment, not even one supposedly armed with a warrant issued by a supposedly unique and omnipotent God with a human like personality, delegating to man plenipotentiary powers. Nature is now demonstrating to us that she does not recognize the validity of this warrant.” Toynbee

Arnold Toynbee and Lynn White wrote essays in which they said there was a religious dimension to the environmental crisis.

Worldwide ecological problems due in part to the rise of monotheism.

“Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it” Genesis, ch 1, verse 28 - biblical sanctioning for humans to assert their dominance over nature

Ecological religious framework: some conservationists/ecological folks have been called “druids” bc of their purportedly polytheistic approach to nature

Interesting note on how “religious texts” within paganism expand far beyond the notion of bibles into the world of science fiction, mythology, and even ecology writing like Terry Tempest Williams, Edward Abbey, or John Muir.

“The occult world offers to the individual a free market of ideas. What this resembles, and not by coincidence, is the intellectual democracy of the scientific and academic communities.”

“Occultists continually affirm that certain experiences do not cease to exist simply because there is place for them in our customary order.”

“The groups within this book are largely non-authoritarian. The pagan view is one that says that neither doctrine nor dogma nor asceticism nor rule by masters is necessary for the visionary experience and that ecstasy and freedom are both possible.”

Paganism: the subject of this book. A religious movement that usually means the pre-Christian nature religions of the West.

Similar to anarchy, communism, etc. in terms of being misunderstood/misused in popular culture