permaculture

["Don Titmus" <ujgs2@4dirs.com>]

Toby and all,

re Any other theories as to why Pc gatherings and courses often have a New 
Age flavor?

We are of the Earth and cannot seperate ourselves from it and every thing 
around us. We seem to forget We (humans) are animals too !!! As PCers we 
design relationships, connections, and guilds into every part of our 
homesites. We therefore cannot seperate ourselves from Spirit (God/dess, 
Great Spirit, Creator et al).

The "New Age" folks get this better than some of the other "religions" and 
being open to spirit they may adopt a "Findhorn" practice in the garden. Or 
practice Feng Shui, or any other spiritual practice that Feeds the Whole - 
body. mind, Spirit.

Don


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Toby Hemenway" <toby@patternliteracy.com>
To: "permaculture list" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 8:57 PM
Subject: Re: [permaculture] permaculture spirituality (was: Message from 
thecurrent President)


> On 1/24/07 6:51 PM, "Tracie Boellner"  wrote:
>
> > Too many points to respond to that really aren't relevant to this list, 
> > so I
> > won't bore anyone with it.  My apologies for posting my original response 
> > to
> > the list.  It was a kneejerk reaction, and I should have kept it to 
> > myself.
> >
> > Still searching for the facts,
> > Tracie in Michigan
> > ----- Original Message -----
>
> Actually, I want to thank Tracy for posting her response. Mollison has 
> been
> very emphatic about trying to build that "wall of separation" between
> permaculture and any specific spiritual belief system. He, and a lot of
> others (myself included) feel that connecting Pc with a particular set of
> spiritual beliefs, while strengthening its appeal to that group, would
> diminish its ability to be universally adopted by those with other 
> beliefs.
> But there has gotten to be a fairly strong link between Pc and Earth-based
> or New Age spirituality. I've met plenty of permaculture practitioners who
> are devout Christian, Jewish, or other faiths, but rarely do they 
> explicitly
> express permaculture in spiritual terms. But I've been to plenty of Pc
> gatherings that are strongly pagan/wiccan/New Age. (full disclosure: I'm
> pantheist/Buddhist myself, if I've gotta give a name to it). Starhawk's
> Earth Activist Training, for example, is a Pc certification course that is
> strongly imbued with Earth-based spirituality. I don't know of any 
> Christian
> or Jewish PDCs. So why has Pc become linked with New Age beliefs?
>
> The light went on with Tracy's post. If you'll pardon my returning to my
> horticulture/agriculture theme: Horticultural societies, according to
> anthropologists, tend to view all of nature as imbued with spirit. For 
> them,
> God is in the rocks, the water, the plants. In most cases, a different 
> (but
> ultimately interlinked) spirit is responsible for each place, each 
> element,
> each plant. Agricultural societies, on the other hand, tend to see spirit 
> as
> coming from someplace out of this physical world, usually a sky god or set
> of gods not connected with a particular place on Earth. Permaculture is an
> attempt to create a contemporary horticultural society; at least that how
> I'm thinking of it these days. So although it can appeal to a wide variety
> of people, it is going to have a large following among people who have a
> horticulturalist's view of spirit. That means it's going to be difficult 
> to
> keep that wall of separation up. Horticultural practices and ethics will
> naturally be drawn to (and may even inspire) a horticulturalist
> spirituality. An important task for those of us who have an Earth-based
> spirituality is not to create a sense of exclusion of other beliefs.
>
> That's actually a natural thing for pagans. The Romans, for example, 
> usually
> allowed the people they conquered to continue worshipping their own gods.
> Being polytheistic they naturally accepted the idea that there would be 
> more
> gods than the ones they worshipped. Each group could have its own as long 
> as
> they also recognized the Roman gods. They did become intolerant of Jews 
> and
> Christians because these monotheists would not accept the Roman gods, 
> which
> the Romans felt would both anger the gods and create political problems.
> Polytheists tend to be pretty tolerant in this way; monotheists, less so.
>
> Any other theories as to why Pc gatherings and courses often have a New 
> Age
> flavor?
>
> Toby
> __________________
> Learn permaculture in a tropical food forest in Belize this February.
> Details at http://patternliteracy.com
> __________________
>
>
>
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