permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>]

Some very nice points, Harold. I completely agree that Pc should not be
coupled to any religion and that it is not well served by presenting it as a
relative of earth spirituality. It gets a little sticky since Pc is grounded
in ethics, but when those ethics are presented as care for the earth and
people, rather than a set of thou shalt nots or the eightfold path, we can
avoid gluing Pc onto any specific set of beliefs.

I take issue with Mollison's statement about western North America being a
hotbed of woo-wooism in Pc. A scan down the 15 or so principal teachers of
Pc in the west shows only one or two who incorporate devas and elves into
their courses. Just about all of the others are pretty vocal about not
invoking any spiritual beliefs; some are relentless about it. And I know
plenty of teachers from Australia and Britain, to single out a couple of
countries unfairly, who include a hefty pinch of fairy-dust in the their
courses. So that's just Bill doing his America-bashing (along with bashing
anything else in his path!).

And I'd be hesitant to call Lughnasadh, or the other harvest and calendrical
celebrations "religious," though of course they could be forced to be such
depending on who's holding the celebration. They are more cultural or
bioregional celebrations based on the passing of the seasons. Every culture
in the world that is still tied to planetary cycles celebrates the harvest
or the sun-cycles. (Lugh, contrary to the festival announcement, is not a
sun-god; he was an early Celtic warrior whose name is found on many towns,
such as Lyon.) 

The line between a harvest celebration and a religious ceremony is a blurry
one. Many of the early European celebrations, for example, were co-opted by
the Christians; Lughnasadh, later called Lammas (for loaf-mass) was altered
from a celebration of the first ripening of wheat to the consecration of the
season's first bread for Communion; it then nearly died out. And most of us
know about Easter and Christmas overlying the equinox and solstice. Beneath
all of them are celebrations of the cycles experienced by the whole earth
and all of humanity, so they have no intrinsic religious orientation, but
are signs of thanks from all who live from the earth and sun's gifts. We're
all sun worshippers of some kind.

Toby
www.patternliteracy.com

   


> The Issue:                   Permaculture and Religion
> 
> The Practices at Issue: Promoting a private religious event as a Vancouver
> Permaculture Network (VPN)public event
> Including religious ritual in Permaculture Events