In regard to PaGaian cosmology: it is not a ‘theism’ of any kind – not an ‘a-theism’ nor a ‘pan-theism’ or a ‘panen-theism’: nor do I describe it as a ‘thealogy,’ though some may. It is about a Place – this Cosmos, this Earth – not a Deity. I prefer the term “Cosmology”: it is a study of, or engagement with, our Place, which is dynamic, a Verb, not a Noun – it is an Event. I understand myself as a student of the Poetry of the Universe. I think that ‘theology’ was meant to be poetry: that is, some of its writers understood it was metaphor … what else could it be as it reached to articulate the Great Mystery of Being? But mostly what it became was the description of a dead butterfly pinned in a glass case, not a butterfly that is alive and flitting about the garden – in the act of being. This Place, this Cosmos, in which Earth is, in which we are, may itself be conceived of as deity – or at least as ‘source’ of being, however one may choose to express it: and all attempts to describe this reality may be understood to be metaphor … metaphor is all we have for an alive, dynamic, diverse reality.

The point of celebrating Seasonal Moments, is not only the alignment of food production with place, but also the alignment of story with place – conversation with the awesome place in which we find ourselves: its terror and its beauty. Having grown up in the Southern Hemisphere with a Northern Hemisphere and Christian story of place – and one that used exclusively male metaphors, I knew a profound alienation from my place – that was personal, communal and ecological. The re-membering and creating of a Poetry that could express relationship with my Place – my self as a Place, and indeed as a Place (that is, of substance) and belonging in a Place – became an essential quest. It was a quest for new language in my heart and on my lips, to express sacred relationship with my place … and in my context, it did not yet exist. It is still only beginning.

A new language enabled the ceremonial practice of that sacred relationship, and in that process I learned so much: on Her lap, She taught me and others. It is a self-knowledge in its layered and complex dimensions, as our Place of Being is … the self who is particular, the self who is deeply related, and the self who directly participates in the sentience of the creative Cosmos. It is a self who is founded in where we are: regional, Earth and Cosmos – inseparable. A practice of ceremony that celebrates the whole cycle of EarthGaia’s sacred journey around Sun – Where we are – may teach a person, grow a person, within the dimensions of real time and space[i] – the place from which true action may arise.

an excerpt from A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony, Glenys Livingstone Ph.D., 2023, p. xvii.

NOTES:

[i] Ecofeminist philosopher Charlene Spretnak also names the foundation of existence as the “Real,” which is different from popular notions and clichés about “the real world”: see The Resurgence of the Real: Body, Nature and Place in a Hypermodern World (New York: Routledge, 1999).