Oikos Oikos. Michael Moynihan

Transcription

1 O Odinism Odinism refers to the modern reconstruction and revival of pre-christian Germanic heathenism centered on the pantheon of ancient northern deities in which the god Odin (variously called Ódinn, Woden, Wodan, etc., in the different older Germanic languages) is a principal figure. Odinism is only one of a number of generic designations that might be used by practitioners to describe their beliefs; the term Ásatrú ( loyalty to the gods, a modern coinage derived from Old Norse) is in equally widespread use today. Odinism may in some instances refer to a less ritual-oriented and more philosophical variant of Germanic heathenism than Ásatrú, or one that places a marked importance on racialism, but such distinctions are rarely consistent or precise within a sub-culture that generally eschews dogmatism. Odinism is a polytheistic religious system that also emphasizes the reverence of past ancestors, the acknowledgment of archaic wisdom contained in mythological tales, respect for ethnic heritage and the continuance of folk traditions, and the maintenance of a heroic bearing toward life s challenges. Some prominent practitioners have described Odinism as a nature religion ; this is not surprising given that in all its important aspects cosmology, outlook, and practice strong connections to the natural world and its forces are evident. A central feature in Odinist cosmology is Yggdrasil, the World Tree (usually conceived of as an ash or yew), which symbolically connects the nine worlds that are variously inhabited by gods, giants, humans, and other beings. A number of animals also live within the tree; their activities seem mythically to represent the dynamic interactive forces of what could be termed the greater multiverse. It was also on the tree of Yggdrasil that Odin hung himself in a ritual of self-sacrifice, thereby gaining his powerful understanding of the mysteries of the runes: primordial Germanic linguistic, cultural, and magical symbols, many of which directly relate to aspects of the physical world (various rune names refer to trees, animals, and natural phenomena). In Germanic creation mythology, the first human beings were created when Odin and his brothers took two trees, Askr and Embla, and bestowed consciousness upon them. Odinism posits a cosmos full of divine and natural energies, operating both within Midgard (from Old Norse, Mi gar r), the world inhabited by humans, as well as in transcendent domains where the gods and other nonhuman entities reside. The gods travel freely between these worlds and thus can and do interact with humans. Gods and humans are also subject to their position within both a personal and a collective Wyrd (from Old Norse urdr), or fate ; this does not predetermine every lesser action, but rather exerts influence upon the overall course of life. Although it is believed that the distinctive essence or soul of a human being will depart for another realm after death (various specific possibilities are described in the mythological literature), the primary emphasis of the religion is not other-worldly; instead it focuses upon right conduct in the here-and-now. Virtues such as honor, courage, and hospitality are highly valued, and an awareness of humankind s place in the natural world is also cultivated. While there are differing beliefs as to the exact nature of the gods, the latter are generally seen as real and knowable, and their mythological depictions simply as means to illustrate or understand various aspects of their character and function. The primary deities fall into two clans or groups, the Æsir and the Vanir. The Æsir consist of Odin, Frigga, Thor, Tyr, Balder, and others; they are often associated with important societal functions such as war, sovereignty, and law. Certain atmospheric events may also be associated with these deities (e.g., the thunder and rain caused by Thor wielding his mighty hammer in the heavens, hence his importance to the peasantry as both a defensive protector and a fertility god). Of the Vanir gods, Frey and Freyja are the best known. These deities generally exhibit stronger connections to earthly realms of fertility and sensuality, both of which are important categories to many Odinists. Fertility is not only recognized in relationship to agricultural crops and a healthy natural environment, but also in the continuance of familial lineages which are central in a religion emphasizing ancestral culture and ethnic heritage. Sensuality is welcomed as a vital and stimulating ingredient for the full enjoyment of human existence. In addition to gods and humans, other entities such as elves, dwarves, and land-wights (from Old Norse landvættir) receive important consideration. These beings may be acknowledged in rituals, and in some cases offerings of food or drink are made to ensure their good favor. Landwights are the unseen residents of a given geographical location, capable of bestowing blessings or misfortune on the humans who live in their proximity. In the Viking period in Iceland their importance was such that an early law ordered boats to remove the fearsome carved dragon heads from their prows as they approached shore, so as not

2 Odinism 1219 to frighten these spirits; a modern vestige of this tradition still exists whereby ships entering Icelandic harbors are officially requested briefly to lower their flags as a gesture of respect to the land spirits. In addition to living in harmony with the ethical principles of the religion, organized rituals and feasts are celebrated by Odinists at varying times throughout the year. The primary religious festivals can be located at specific points of the seasonal solar or agricultural calendar; these include mid-winter (Yule) and mid-summer, as well as specialized occasions in the spring and fall. Other formal rituals are performed for specific purposes, or to honor specific deities. The general term blót (from the Old Norse word for sacrifice ) is used to refer to any one of the aforementioned ceremonies. Such a sacrifice is frequently symbolic in nature, and usually features a libation in the form of mead or ale. The most appropriate location for major ceremonies is generally considered to be outdoors, a tendency that resonates with historical accounts of various ancient Germanic tribes practicing their rites in sacred groves. The implements utilized in Odinist rituals drinking horns, hammers (potently connected to Thor; many Odinists also wear a talismanic hammer pendant to indicate their allegiance to the religion), carved wooden staffs, wooden or metal bowls are fashioned from natural materials, ideally by the practitioners themselves. A small branch cut from a living tree is commonly used to sprinkle mead as a blessing on the participants of a ceremony, and at the conclusion of a ritual any remaining libation will often be poured onto the ground as an offering of respect for the land-wights. A further ceremony is a sumbel, a structured session of ritualized drinking in which participants offer up toasts to deities, heroes, human ancestors, or spiritual principles. It might also be an occasion for making personal boasts or oaths. While the formats of rituals vary between groups, generally they are studiously reconstructed from archaic references in older Germanic literature (usually Old Norse and Scandinavian sources, as these contain the largest body of pre-christian lore), often combined with aspects of folk traditions that have survived into more recent times and appear to have a basis in older beliefs. A balanced scholarly study of the emergence of Odinism in the modern era has yet to be written, but various stages can be discerned. Although the revival of interest in ancient Germanic culture can already be seen in the seventeenth-century Swedish Storgoticist movement and the figure of Johannes Bureus ( ), more concrete indications are evident in late eighteenth-century Germany, when specific efforts were made to stir popular interest in the newly rediscovered religion of Odin and the elder Germanic deities. Among Sturm und Drang intellectuals, the philosopher J.G. Herder ( ) extolled the legacy of the pre-christian Germanic north as an important ingredient for building an organic national culture. A 1775 book called Wodan, der Sachsen Held und Gott (Wodan, the Hero and God of the Saxons) by H.W. Behrisch ( ) declared Odin the light of the world and loftiest exemplar for the modern Germans of Saxony, and urged them to rediscover the true nature of their beginnings in the sacred darkness of the northerly forests. A century later, the burgeoning Germanic national romanticism coalesced into pan-germanist and völkisch movements with visible alternative religious elements. By the early 1900s, overtly neo-heathen groups had established themselves. These included the Armanenshaft, led by the Austrian mystic and author Guido von List ( ), and the Germanische Glaubens- Gemeinschaft, led by the German painter Ludwig Fahrenkrog ( ). This flowering was relatively short-lived, however, as the incipient National Socialist regime would eventually curtail or forbid nearly all such groups, forcing them to go underground or disband. An Australian lawyer and writer, Alexander Rud Mills ( ), appears to have been the first person publicly to promote Odinism in the English-speaking world. By the 1930s Rud Mills was advocating a movement firmly opposed to Christianity and featuring a strident anti-jewish component, and in 1936 he published a substantial handbook detailing the philosophy and rituals of this highly idiosyncratic Anglecyn Church of Odin. Despite issuing publications over a period of three decades, Rud Mills never found any significant support for his efforts, and his work has largely faded into obscurity. In the aftermath of World War II, with lingering public perceptions that National Socialism had been a pagan movement (an inaccurate perception, as official Third Reich policy endorsed positive Christianity ), over twenty years would pass before Germanic neo-heathenism began to flourish again, and now in new areas. In the United States a number of small groups emerged unbeknown to one another, such as the Odinist Fellowship, formed by Else Christensen in 1971 (and influenced to some degree by the preceding efforts of Rud Mills), the Viking Brotherhood, formed by Stephen A. McNallen in , and the Northernway, founded by Robert and Karen Taylor in The Viking Brotherhood would later develop into the Ásatrú Free Assembly, the first national Odinist organization to gain any momentum in America. During the mid-1980s the A.F.A. went into a hiatus out of which emerged two significant and still active groups, the Ásatrú Alliance and the Ring of Troth before reconstituting itself as the Ásatrú Folk Assembly. In England similar initiatives had arisen independently, such as the Committee for the Restoration of the Odinic Rite (later shortened to the Odinic Rite) established in 1973 by John Yeowell; a variety of other groups have also sprung up there over the last quarter-century. In Iceland, the home of the Old Norse sagas, Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson ( ) formed the Ásatrúarfélag in 1973 and succeeded in having heathenism

3 1220 Oikos legally recognized. Other small groups have been active since at least the 1970s in most Scandinavian countries. Beyond the growing list of national Odinist organizations, many smaller, localized independent associations exist, as do untold numbers of solitary practitioners. Odinism remains largely a sub-cultural phenomenon, although in recent decades it has gained increasing recognition in the wider landscape of neo-paganism and new religious movements. In contrast to some other branches of neo-paganism, Odinist groups may tend toward traditionalist viewpoints, and in certain instances this can include strong racial beliefs. A number of organizations believe that the religion is most suited for the descendants of its original, ancient practitioners; this has been described as ethnic or folkish Odinism or Ásatrú, and does not generally imply supremacist notions. Other groups are vocally universalistic, and would not concede the legitimacy of any ethnic criterion in regard to prospective members. Distanced from both views are those who interpret the religion foremost as a racial, or even racist, vehicle. In order to draw a distinction from mainstream Odinist or Ásatrú groups, some racially motivated practitioners may refer to themselves as Wotanists (according to racialist ideologue David Lane, the name Wotan is an acronym for Will of the Aryan Nation ). Groups associated with this hard-line position have a constituency consisting primarily of incarcerated males, and tend to be volatile and incapable of maintaining significant longevity. Most mainstream heathen groups avoid taking overt political positions, and will tolerate a wide range of personal beliefs among their membership. Libertarian values of personal freedom are commonly found among practitioners, and are often viewed as being in line with older Germanic attitudes. Most groups promote ecological awareness; some have encouraged their members to become involved with environmental activities, or have organized campaigns to protest the destruction of historic sites in England and elsewhere. Although the religion is sometimes viewed as heavily emphasizing masculine deities and virtues, the importance of and lore concerning the female goddesses is often underscored in contemporary Odinist literature, and a number of women have taken on leadership roles in both the U.S. and Iceland in recent years. These developments, along with the diversity of socio-political beliefs found among its practitioners, all point toward the long-term viability of Odinism or Ásatrú in the postmodern age. Michael Moynihan Behrisch, Heinrich Wolfgang. Wodan, der Saxon Held und Gott. Dresden: Hilscher, English edition: Waterbury Center, VT: Dominion, Flowers, Stephen E. Revival of Germanic Religions in Contemporary Anglo-American Culture. Mankind Quarterly XXI: 3 (1981), Gardell, Mattias. Gods of the Blood. Durham: Duke University Press, Harvey, Graham. Contemporary Paganism. New York: New York University Press, Kaplan, Jeffrey. Radical Religion in America. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, McNallen, Stephen A. Rituals of Ásatrú, 3 vols. Breckenridge, TX: Ásatrú Free Assembly, 1985; Payson, AZ: World Tree, Turville-Petre, E.O.G. Myth and Religion of the North. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, See also: Elves and Land Spirits in Pagan Norse Religion; Fascism; Heathenry Ásatrú; Neo-paganism and Ethnic Nationalism in Eastern Europe; Paganism and Judaism; Paganism A Jewish Perspective; Paganism Contemporary; Trees (Northern and Middle Europe); Trees Sacred. Oikos Oikos is a Greek word used to describe a variety of often overlapping structures and the basis for a number of compound words central to classical Western thinking. Its basic translation is house. In ancient texts it can refer to a physical dwelling, but also to a family, clan, a smaller economic unit including land, owners, animals, slaves and servants, as well as products. Ancient Greek sources often oppose it to or distinguish it from the term polis, which describes a more public, potentially urban relational civic structure. In most ancient sources, though gender roles could at times involve some slippage, the polis was often described as the designated realm for masculine civic and legal activity and the oikos as the proper realm for women s activity, dedicated to the production and management of land, humans, animals, food. It is important to remember that oikos in those times did not refer to a one family nuclear household, but is better compared to a small family business that was often overseen by a woman. The compound oikonomos signifies a steward or manager of the system of the oikos, who would often be a slave (see for example Jesus parables). This term has found application both in the Christian notion of (creation) stewardship and in modern economic science. Oikonomia can describe any kind of management structure or plan, on large and smaller scales. Thus it could refer to ancient state management, the notion of a divine plan within creation (oikonomia theou), as well as the management of a variety of economic units. The term s application is clearly anthropocentric, centering on human structures of organization of communal and civic life and anthropomorphic concepts of divine agency.

4 Olson, Sigurd F Ecology, the anglicized version of a neo-greek compound oikologia is not a classical Greek term and has come into its own only in the twentieth century. Though the idea of relational being of natural systems is ancient, ecology as a science or conceptual framework is a latecomer. In some recent theological and ethical texts the term oikos, oikonomia, oikumene (the known inhabited world) and ecology have been redefined so as to refer to the community of all creation. Writers have employed it as a tool for the necessary rethinking of what stewardship of creation in times of ecological crisis might mean. Countering the narrowing of modern capitalist notions of economy reduced to market dynamics, these texts attempt to recast oikonomia theou/divine economy (linked to the notion of the kingdom of God) as congruent with the ecology of the planet. If the household of God s creation includes all planetary life, it should be lived in with reverence. Though at bottom an anthropocentric theological concept, authors employ it to urge humans to see themselves less as the crown of creation than as parts of a divinely created whole that cannot be endangered without seriously compromising life as we know it on planet Earth. Marion Grau McFague, Sallie. The Body of God: An Ecological Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, Meeks, Douglas. God the Economist: The Doctrine of God and Political Economy. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, Torjesen, Karen. When Women Were Priests: Women s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, See also: Christianity (2) Jesus; Haeckel, Ernst. Olson, Sigurd F. ( ) Sigurd F. Olson was one of America s most beloved nature writers and most influential conservationists of the twentieth century. Best known as the author of The Singing Wilderness and eight other books, Olson also played an important role in the preservation of a number of national parks, seashores, and wilderness areas. Born in Chicago on 4 April 1899, Olson spent most of his childhood and youth in northern Wisconsin, where he discovered a love of nature. He was the second of three sons raised by the Reverend Lawrence and Ida May Olson, Swedish immigrants who met and married in the United States. His parents were devout Swedish Baptists, and Olson was raised in a strict household. One time, for example, Lawrence Olson discovered Sigurd and another son playing with a chess set, and he threw it into the fire. While attending college at the University of Wisconsin in Madison at the end of World War I, Olson nearly committed himself to becoming a missionary. The night before he was publicly to declare his intent, however, he climbed the roof of the YMCA building where he lived, stared out over Lake Mendota, and struggled with his decision. He realized that his interest in becoming a missionary had more to do with exploring wild places than with saving souls; in the morning he resigned from the church organization he had been chosen to lead, and in effect broke from the faith of his parents. For years afterward, Olson was obsessed with discovering a sense of meaning and mission to replace what he had lost. Eventually, he found what he was looking for in the wilderness canoe country of northern Minnesota and Ontario. He moved to Ely, Minnesota in 1923, and taught in the local high school and junior college, eventually becoming dean of the college. During the summers he guided canoe parties through the wilderness, and he noticed that the wilderness often had as profound an effect on his clients as it did on him. They laughed more, sang songs, played practical jokes. They watched the sunset and the moonrise, and listened to the roar of rapids and the soft sighs of wind in the trees. Like Olson, they became re-connected to the grand, eternal mystery of creation. Olson came to believe his mission in life was to share with others what he had found in the wilderness, and to help lead the fight to preserve it. Science, technology and materialism were turning many people away from the religious truths and practices that had given spiritual sustenance, he argued, and offered nothing in their place. The result was a widespread, if often vague, discontent, partially hidden underneath fast-paced lives, yet also nourished by that same fast pace that left little time for reflection. Olson believed that the silence and solitude and noncivilized surroundings of wilderness provide a physical context in which people can more easily rediscover their inner selves. Just as important, wilderness gives people a chance to feel the presence of a universal power that science can never explain, but that brings meaning to their lives. Wilderness offers [a] sense of cosmic purpose if we open our hearts and minds to its possibilities, he said at a national wilderness conference in It may come in... burning instants of truth when everything stands clear. It may come as a slow realization after long periods of waiting. Whenever it comes, life is suddenly illumined, beautiful, and transcendent, and we are filled with awe and happiness (Olson 1966: 218). Olson spread his philosophy in nine books, in many magazine and newspaper articles, and in countless speeches and conversations across the United States and Canada. He read and thought deeply about the works of

5 1222 Open Land Movement others who were searching for meaning in the modern world such as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Lewis Mumford, Aldous Huxley, Josef Pieper, and Pierre Lecomte du Noüy but was able to get across his deep message about the spiritual values of wilderness mostly by writing about simple things: the sound of wings over a marsh, the smell of a bog, the memories stirred by a campfire, the movement of a canoe. By the 1970s Olson was a beloved environmental figurehead whose name and image invoked strong feelings. Often photographed with a pipe in his hand and a warm, reflective expression on his weathered face, he was not just a hero but an icon. His books were read on public radio, his portrait was taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt for Life magazine, he received the John Burrough s award for nature writing, and earned the highest honors of four of the major national environmental groups for his leadership role in preserving wilderness across the United States and Canada. He died of a heart attack on 13 January 1982, while snowshoeing near his home. David Backes Backes, David. A Wilderness Within: The Life of Sigurd F. Olson. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, Olson, Sigurd F. The Spiritual Need. In Bruce M. Kilgore, ed. Wilderness in a Changing World. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1966, See also: Huxley, Aldous; National Parks and Monuments (United States); Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre; Wilderness Religion. Open Land Movement Open land has been a dream of back-to-nature visionaries at least since the time of the Diggers and Levelers in England. Proponents of that dream have often envisioned a nature-oriented society far from the degradation of urban life, one in which all would thrive in a state of nature. Often the vision has taken form as an open-door intentional community and in many cases that has led to inundations of problematic residents. One of the first open-land communities was Celestia, founded in Sullivan County, Pennsylvania, in 1850 by Peter Armstrong, who opened the land to all seeking refuge from the sinful world in a place where they could await the Second Coming of Christ, which was understood to be imminent. A halfcentury later the Christian Commonwealth Colony ( ), in Georgia, flung its doors open to all; its founders sought to establish a perfect Christian socialist society on Earth in an agricultural setting, but the colony never could rise out of poverty. In the 1960s and early 1970s, dozens, perhaps hundreds, of open-land communities appeared. Gorda Mountain, in the Big Sur region of California, was opened to all by its owner Amelia Newell in 1962 and grew to a population of around 200 before pressure from neighbors brought it to a close in In the meantime, Huw Williams and others had opened Tolstoy Farm in Washington, and the flamboyantly countercultural Drop City, founded outside Trinidad, Colorado, in 1965, welcomed all who would share its egalitarian poverty. The following year Lou Gottlieb threw open his Morning Star Ranch in northern California, believing that people have an inherent deep spiritual relationship with the Earth and thus should live close to the land, to nature; it attracted hundreds of residents and became the focus of extended battles with the local authorities who finally succeeded in bulldozing its makeshift structures in the early 1970s, although Gottlieb preached the gospel of open land for the rest of his life. Experiments in open land have endured, as many other 1960s-era and later communes have continued to embrace all who would come. Timothy Miller Fairfield, Richard. Communes USA: A Personal Tour. Baltimore: Penguin, Miller, Timothy. The 60s Communes. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, See also: Back to the Land Movements; Diggers and Levelers (and adjacent, Diggers Song); Hippies; New Age; New Religious Movements. Ortiz, Simon J. (1941 ) Simon J. Ortiz, Acoma Pueblo, was recognized in 1993 with a Lifetime Achievement Award for literature at the Returning the Gift Festival of Native Writers. In addition to his own work as a poet, fiction writer, and essayist, he has edited books and journals devoted to promoting contemporary native writing. Throughout his work, and in the course of promoting the work of others, Ortiz has remained emphatic about the relationship of contemporary native literature to oral tradition, defining it as a form of cultural and spiritual continuity. In 1981, in Towards a National Indian Literature, Ortiz defined contemporary native writing as an element of native oral tradition, linking it with ceremony, song, and prayer narratives as cultural acts of bringing about meaning and meaningfulness. Invariably, this linkage with tradition, ritual and ceremony, also requires for him a recognition of an indigenous ecological worldview that sees the people and the land as a single entity. In his introduction to Speaking for Generations he stated,

6 Oshmarii-Chimarii 1223 The young are frequently reminded by their elders: these lands and waters and all elements of Creation are a part of you, and you are a part of them... This belief is expressed time and time again in traditional song, ritual, prayer, and in contemporary writing (1998). In 1976 and 1977, Ortiz published Going for the Rain and A Good Journey as two separate volumes of poetry, but actually they comprised parts of a 400-page manuscript of poems he had already written by that time. Another piece, Fight Back, combining poems and prose narratives was published in Finally, in 1992, these three texts were united in Woven Stone with an extensive introduction by the author. This volume best represents Ortiz s explicit themes outlined above, as well as the range of his poetics. The first section contains numerous songs, coyote stories, and ceremonial poems celebrating birth, all life on the planet, and the relationship of a person to place. The second section returns to coyote, as well as other animals treated as guides and spiritual brothers. Ortiz also includes poems specifically designated as prayer. But perhaps most significantly, Ortiz depicts the poet-traveler as becoming increasingly unhealthy in both body and spirit the farther he journeys away from home, with a psychic, spiritual, and physical reintegration occurring not only for him but for other tribal people upon homecoming. In the third section, Fight Back: For the Sake of the People, for the Sake of the Land, Ortiz opens with Mid-American Prayer and then divides the poems and prose narratives of this section into two parts: Too Many Sacrifices and No More Sacrifices. While reciting the destruction of native peoples and their lands, Ortiz also emphasizes endurance and the possibility of change and rebirth based on the reintegration of all people with the living land. Ortiz continued this life s work theme in After and Before the Lightning in 1994, focusing on the land and the people, not in the warm climate of the Pueblo region, but in the snow and ice of the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Patrick D. Murphy Ortiz, Simon J., ed. Speaking for the Generations: Native Writers on Writing. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, Ortiz, Simon J. After and Before the Lightning. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, Ortiz, Simon J. Woven Stone. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, Ortiz, Simon J. Towards a National Indian Literature: Cultural Authenticity in Nationalism. MELUS 8:2 (1981), See also: Lakota; Memoir and Nature Writing; Trickster. Oshmarii-Chimarii (Mari El Republic, Russia) A revival of indigenous nature religion in the Volga River region in the 1990s was spearheaded by Mari religious organizations in the Mari El Republic (one of twenty-one republics within the Russian Federation). The Mari are a Finno-Ugric people who make up less than half of the population of some 780,000 in this Central Volga basin republic. The neo-pagan community Oshmarii-Chimarii (White Mari Pure Mari) was established in 1991 with a center in the republic s capital, Yoshkar-Ola. Though its founders had intended it to become an All-Mari religious organization, the community has so far failed in this ambition, but it continues to sponsor and arrange various public events, and a Council of Karts (Mari priests) holds its meetings under its auspices. The revival of Mari paganism developed hand in hand with the growing nationalist movement of the 1980s and early 1990s. The largest Mari nationalist organization, the Mari Democratic Union (Marii Ushem), was formed with the goal of reviving and promoting Mari language and culture throughout Russia, but by 1992 the union s leaders were advocating an enlargement of Mari representation in republican and local power structures. In early 1991, a radical faction of this movement, Kugeze Mlande (Ancestors Land), initiated a revival of Mari paganism. This faction was dissolved in March 1995 and replaced by Sorta (Candle), an educational neo-pagan organization led by academics and intellectuals. These urban activists have tended to combine their religious goals with political aspirations aimed at national consolidation and resistance to Russification. Some have tried to systematize and unify pagan teachings in order to develop a consistent national religion, free of those elements (such as animal sacrifice) that seem less attractive to the general public. In contrast to the intellectual-led and politically motivated urban-centered paganism, the revival of Mari paganism in the countryside was led by local priests (karts), some of whom could claim to have maintained an unbroken connection to ancestral traditions. Large public rituals had in fact been conducted by Maris as late as the 1880s, and family and communal prayers were kept up in sacred groves and ritual knowledge transmitted into recent decades, despite persecution in the Soviet era. Traditional Mari paganism comprises a mosaic of locally based beliefs and practices. Mari paganism holds environmental awareness and harmony with nature among its central moral imperatives. A 1991 act of legislation has resulted in the protection of some three hundred sacred groves and prayer sites by the republican authorities, and public prayers involving sacrifice of horses, bulls, rams, and fowl, have been conducted at these groves since that time. Prayers and rituals have been conducted in many Mari villages and at the grave of the sixteenthcentury Mari hero, prince, and priest Chimblat in Kirov

7 1224 Otherworlds province. An All-Mari harvest festival gathering occurs every five years. Nowadays, Maris pray for protection of their culture, natural environment, health, and the people s spirit. A similar movement has been growing among Maris outside the Mari El Republic, especially in neighboring Bashkortostan. According to a 1994 sociological survey, pure pagans account for 7.9 percent of the Mari people in the Mari El Republic, while another 20.7 percent practice both paganism and Christianity. The proportion of pagans among Mari in the Urals region, Bashkortostan, and Tatarstan, where they had fled from forcible Christianization, are even higher. Women dominate among the pagans and the dual-believers (respectively, 69.2 and 63.6 percent). Many dual-believers also attend pagan services. By contrast, Mari intellectuals frequently view Christianity with hostility, seeing it as a religion of slaves. Yet both old and new Mari pagan beliefs integrate certain Christian ideas, such as apocalypticism and references to Christian prophets (such as Elias), apostles (Peter and Paul), and even Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, in their prayers. A restoration of pagan traditions in the Mari El Republic is patronized by both the republican and local authorities. The republican Ministry of Education approves school textbooks which teach traditional Mari folklore. Certain Mari scholars represent the Mari El Republic as an oasis of pagan traditions. They advocate making the republic a culture-historical reserve, which would involve the establishment of a center for the study of folk culture, the organization of folklore festivals, arrangement of scientific-practical conferences, promotion of traditional arts and crafts, support for ethnographic folklore groups, and the like. Plans are underway to build the main All-Mari religious sanctuary in a suburb of Yoshkar-Ola, together with an ethnographic museum, educational center, and hotel. A guidebook published by the republican authorities claims that the Maris are the only people in Europe who maintained the pure faith of their ancestors and did not renounce their old gods. It argues that devotion to the traditional spirituality has been responsible for Mari national self-awareness and for the maintenance of the Mari language and ethnic customs. Victor A. Shnirelman Adrian Ivakhiv Cordier, Bruno de. The Finno-Ugric peoples of Central Russia: Opportunities for Emancipation or Condemned to Assimilation? Central Asian Survey 16:4 (1997), See also: Neo-paganism and Ethnic Nationalism in Eastern Europe; Paganism-Mari (Mari El Republic, Russia); Russian Mystical Philosophy. Otherworlds Religions are often understood to be concerned with realms beyond everyday life. Spiritual, heavenly or supernatural realities are sometimes considered central to definitions and experiences of religion. The location of matters of central importance (perhaps ultimate reality ) beyond everyday life is definitive for some theologically understood religions. Similarly, in translating other people s religious language with words like spirit or sacred it is often implied, at least, that religion concerns transcendent realities and states. That is, according to some religious and academic authorities, religion is about spirituality not embodiment, heaven not Earth, divine will not human desire. Whether or not such systematizations of religions reflect the understanding, experience and motivations of ordinary religionists may be debated. Certainly, however, all cosmologies indicate concerns both about ultimate concerns and about nature or this world. For example, classical Christian teachings about heaven, purgatory, Earth and hell imply a range of daily and ceremonial interactions with the mundane or secular world that are worthy of consideration, especially in our attempt to understand the meaning and role of nature in Christian and Western thought and experience. In a wide range of worldviews and lifeways, this world and the relationships that take place here are of central importance. The terms otherworld and otherworlds (sometimes capitalized) might seem to similarly privilege the extra-ordinary, supernatural, or transcendent above the ordinary, natural or daily. However, close exploration of discourses of other-worldly reality challenge such understandings. Even if the otherworld is the home of ancestors, elves, fairy-folk or spirits, such locations are neither distant nor alien. Ancestors are neighbors, and sometimes more intimate than that: a wide variety of indigenous peoples consider children to be ancestors reborn. Even saints remain in communion with the faithful, but, unlike ancestors, seem less interested in family life. The realm of faery and its various inhabitants (elves, gnomes, dwarves, boggarts as well as fairies themselves) are otherworlds contiguous with ordinary nature. For example, in W.B. Yeats evocative poem The Stolen Child, the clear difference and opposition between human and other-worldly realities, moralities and desires is firmly located in the recognizable geography of Ireland s County Sligo. The otherworlds of Irish and Norse cosmologies are the alterities of the everyday as inseparable and as near/ far as one s own shadow. Perhaps the otherworld is also like those metaphorical or psychological shadowy parts of our own inner lives: necessary to a full understanding of ourselves but rarely referred to explicitly. It might also contribute to debates about cosmologies in which the world is divided into human domains and elsewhere

8 Ouspensky, Pyotr Demianovich 1225 (e.g., the forest, bush, wilderness in which wild animals and wilder spirits are in control). Indeed, wilderness is constructed (not found) very differently in urban modernity than elsewhere, especially as a romantic location for awesome and/or holistic rather than demonic and purifying experiences. The otherworld is part of the ecology of souls if this phrase can be used as Terence McKenna intends (i.e., without evoking a duality in which body is denigrated in favor of disembodiment). Instead it should suggest the interdependent coexistence of all manner of living persons (e.g., trees, birds, animals, humans, the little people, and sometimes rocks and clouds). Irving Hallowell s dialogue with Ojibwe led him to refer to the relationships of human and other-than-human persons. As the alterity of the ordinary, of everyday nature, or of the taken-for-granted world, otherworlds define the world as a richer place than the realm of daily life. They enchant, and require responses that maintain and even reinforce the boundaries between here and there. They also enable understandings of events as intentional acts rather than allegedly impersonal, mechanical or accidental processes. Thus the enchantment of otherworlds permits and generates magic and fate. That is, for example, seeming accidents may be considered to result from insults to otherworld persons. Some otherworlds are post-mortem destinations for humanity. These include not only the various heavens or hells (or transcendent realms) but also those neighboring spaces, contiguous to this world, which might also be home to deities and others. The land of youth and the land of women are locations for particular after-lives, but can be visited by the living (heroes or fools at least). More generally, however, otherworlds are the specific homes of other-than-human persons such as elves, faeries, dwarves, giants, and so on. They too might visit thisworld, sometimes for less than neighborly purposes. Even the rich and diverse ecologies of middle Earth do not exhaust the nations of living beings. Academic discussion of otherworlds and their inhabitants often assumes the unreality of otherworlds and proceeds to wonder why humans invent such places and inhabitants, such fantasies and fears. Sometimes they interpret alleged encounters with otherworld visitors as references to psychological process. More recently, however, scholars such as Edith Turner have been willing to accept the reality of encounters with spirits in healing rituals at face value, and then struggled to find appropriate ways to tell academic colleagues that native or insiderly cosmologies and discourses have validity. So what are faeries, dwarves and so on? Some people will insist that they are exactly what they are said to be. A popular contemporary understanding is that such beings were once more widely encountered, but retreated into wildernesses in the face of either Christian demonization or of more recent industrialization. In many cultures worldwide, reference is made (in narrative, ritual, iconography or conversation) to little people. Eschewing the Victorian notion that such beings evidence memories of earlier races, and their literalist diminishment into childhood fantasies, it is clear that such beings are generally spoken of circumspectly. Little people avoids naming persons who might otherwise visit, and who might be far from cute and diminutive. Thus we are thinking of feared persons, or at least those who are less than welcome everyday. If nothing else, this indicates that the world is not always encountered as a nurturing place. We are confronted by much that challenges our own needs and desires. Otherworlds are areas of life that resist human control, even in imagination. Meanwhile, that offerings are made to them suggests that respect is necessary and rewarded, indicating that otherworlds are enticing and seductive, and that life can be more than it seems. Graham Harvey Hallowell, A. Irving. Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View. In S. Diamond, ed. Culture in History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1960, Reprinted in Graham Harvey, ed. Readings in Indigenous Religions. London: Continuum, 2002, chapter 1. McKenna, Terence and Zuvaya McKenna. Dream Matrix Telemetry. Gerrards Cross: Delerium Records, 1993, DELEC CD2012. Purkiss, Diane. At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins and Other Troublesome Things. New York: New York University Press, Turner, Edith. A Visible Spirit from Zambia. In David E. Young and Jean-Guy Goulet, eds. Being Changed: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1994, Reprinted in Graham Harvey, ed. Readings in Indigenous Religions. London: Continuum, 2002, chapter 6. See also: Faerie Faith in Scotland; Lost Worlds; Magic; Middle Earth; Polytheism. Ouspensky, Pyotr Demianovich ( ) P.D. Ouspensky is known today chiefly as the author of In Search of the Miraculous, his definitive account of fellow Russian mystic and esoterist G.I. Gurdjieff s teaching which has subsequently become a classic of late twentiethcentury mystical literature. In it Ouspensky documents his first meeting with Gurdjieff in Moscow 1915, their relationship through the years of war and revolution which marked the period, to his break from Gurdjieff in 1918, which began a process of separation as both fled from Russia, becoming refugees in Turkey until Ouspensky

9 1226 Ouspensky, Pyotr Demianovich came to London in 1921, where he stayed until the outbreak of World War II, when he settled in the United States. Although best known for this work, Ouspensky was in his own right a leading Theosophist who was at the center of the philosophical and occult subcultures that flourished in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg. His pre-gurdjeffian publications, especially Tertium Organum, synthesized and popularized late nineteenth-century Russian mystical and literary traditions in early twentieth-century Russia. Written in 1911 and published in New York in 1922 it quickly became a bestseller and gave him a worldwide reputation. Outside Russian artistic circles, it also influenced many American writers, including Jean Toomer, Waldo Frank, Gorham Munson, and Kenneth Burke, and through them modern literature. Most significantly, his notion of the living world is an entire organism shaped Aldo Leopold s important ethical argument for conservation (Ouspensky 1949: 299). In Tertium Organum Ouspensky outlined a suprarational logic that was meant to surpass the Organon of Aristotle and the Novum Organum of Francis Bacon, and help lead to mystical insights. The key to this effort was his contention that in mysticism there is a new method (Ouspensky 1949: 230) and his identification of mysticism with knowledge received under conditions of expanded receptivity (Ouspensky 1949: 251). Indeed, Ouspensky later wrote that he believed he had gained access to mystical states through experiments in yoga, prayer, fasting, and breathing nitrous oxide and ether (Ouspenksy 1930: 315). It was during the period of these experiments that Tertium Organum was written (Ouspensky 1930: 323 4). Central to his perception was his experience of a world in which everything is connected, in which nothing exists separately (Ouspensky 1930: ), and where all things were dependent on one another, all things lived one another (Ouspensky 1930: 323). As a consequence, he believed, in this world, there is nothing dead, nothing inanimate, nothing that did not think, nothing that did not feel, nothing unconscious. Everything was living, everything was conscious of itself (Ouspensky 1930: 323). Ouspensky concluded, our world is merely our incorrect perception of the world: the world seen by us through a narrow slit (Ouspensky 1949: 242). Grounded on this perception, Ouspensky urged his contemporaries to regard the different forms of consciousness in different divisions and strata of living nature as belonging to one organism and performing different, but related functions, than as separate, and evolving from one another (Ouspensky 1949: 299). This led to an understanding similar to that found in the more holistic ecological positions of today. Such ecological descriptions of natural systems (for example, a forest in which there are trees of different kinds, grass flowers, ants, beetles, birds, beasts this is a living thing too, living by the life of everything composing it, thinking and feeling for all of which it consists (Ouspensky 1949: 186)) is one of many found throughout Tertium Organum. While his understanding has become common coin in later environmental movements through the agency of Leopold, for Ouspensky it was only a small part of a more complex relationship between two interdependent entities, Man and Nature. He encapsulated his mystical perception in one of the most lyrical passages of Tertium Organum, a passage which exemplified Ouspensky s dictum that in all conditions of encompassing nature... lies... the sensation of a compete oneness with nature (Ouspensky 1949: 275):... in the procession of the year; in the iridescent leaves of the autumn, with their memory-laden smell; in the first snow, frosting the fields and communicating a strange freshness and sensitiveness to the air; in the spring freshets, in the warming sun, in the awakening but still naked branches through which gleams the turquoise sky; in the white nights of stars in all these are the thoughts, the emotions, the forms, peculiar to itself alone, of some great consciousness: or better, all this is the expression of the emotions, thoughts, and forms of consciousness of a mysterious being Nature (Ouspensky 1949: 179). However, Ouspensky argued that only in man this unity is apparent (Ouspensky 1949: 298). In later publications, he introduced a less-influential image of nature which built upon and clarified this earlier vision, that of the Great Laboratory which controls the whole of life (Ouspensky 1930: 44). Ouspensky argued that all the work of the Great Laboratory had in view one aim the creation of Man (Ouspensky 1930: 51), and that out of the preliminary experiments and the refuse of the production there were formed the animal and vegetable kingdoms. What was meant in this instance was something other than a justification of anthropocentricism, for what Ouspensky meant by this was that the task of the Laboratory was to create a form evolving by itself (Ouspensky 1930: 50). Indeed, Nature made attempts at creating self-evolving beings before man (Ouspensky 1930: 59); Ouspensky thought that both ants and bees came from the Great Laboratory and were sent to Earth with the privilege and the possibility of evolving (Ouspensky 1930: 60) but failed when they having begun to alter their being, their life and their form... severed their connection with the laws of Nature (Ouspensky 1930: 62). All this implied that our species too may fail and be disposed of by nature unless the directive of evolution was pursued. All forms of consciousness in him can exist simultaneously (Ouspensky 1949: 298) to transform this from a possibility to an actuality is what in a broad sense Ouspensky meant by evolution. Yet it was

10 Ovid s Metamorphoses 1227 precisely because with us was everything from a mineral to a God (Ouspensky 1930: 118) that such self-evolving beings have failed, for in uniting in potential the single organism of living nature, self-evolving beings had to contend with the eternal cycle of recurrence and the continuation of being through which nature perpetuates itself. Paradoxically, nature s aim of the creation of selfevolving beings is underpinned by impeding that evolutionary effort, so that movement from potentiality to actuality must be in a sense anti-nature. Here, as in other publications after Tertium Organum, it is difficult to distinguish where Gurdjieff ends and Ouspensky begins, and it could be argued that Ouspensky s greatest influence lies in his popularization of Gurdjieff s teaching as he received it. Nevertheless, when Ouspensky wrote, the desire of God in man... is based on his separating himself from the world, on his opposing to the world his own I and on his recognizing as reality all apparent forms and divisions (Ouspensky 1930: 18), he outlined not only his own vision of the interdependent relationship between nature and man and their respective roles, but also sought to bring together his sometime contradictory imagery of nature. David Pecotic Carlson, Maria. No Religion Higher Than the Truth : A History of the Theosophical Movement in Russia, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, Ouspensky, P.D. Tertium Organum: The Third Canon of Thought A Key to the Enigmas of the World. Nicholas Bessarboroff and Claude Bragdon, trs. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949 (1st edn, 1920). Ouspensky, P.D. A New Model of the Universe: Principles of the Psychological Method in its Application to Problems of Science, Religion, and Art. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Reyner, J.H. Ouspensky: The Unsung Genius. London: George Allen & Unwin, See also: Alchemy; Gurdjieff, Georges Ivanovitch; Leopold, Aldo; Russian Mystical Philosophy; Western Esotericism. Ovid s Metamorphoses Greek and Roman poets and philosophers shared a concern for the permeable boundaries that divide nature, humankind, and god. This theme can be found in Homer, where gods become human and humans are transformed into animals, and in Plato, where the human task is to resolve the conflict between animal and divine potentialities within the self. The interplay between nature, humankind, and god is seen most vividly in Ovid s masterpiece, The Metamorphoses (published in the year 8). In these stories the Roman poet Ovid (43 B.C.E. 17 C.E.) wove together a large number of Greco-Roman myths around the theme of change: All things are mutations Heaven and Earth and all that grows within it, and we among the changes in creation (Ovid, Book XV: 427 8). The Metamorphoses is a cosmological poem aiming to tell the shifting story of the world from its beginning to the present hour (Ovid, Book I: 31). Stories from Ovid s encyclopedia of transformation have become standard parts of Western culture, showing up in the visual artists, in poetry, in psychology, and even in the natural sciences. The transformative power of nature was recognized by Epicurean natural philosophy through observation of developmental processes in nature. However, Ovid expanded the idea of transformation far beyond the boundaries of Epicurean empiricism. The stories he presented include transformations across the differences separating god, humankind, and nature. Often these tales explain natural phenomena by providing mythological stories about the origin of things. In Ovid, metamorphoses often happen as punishments or rewards that fit the deeds of the one transformed. For example, Semele, the lover of Jupiter, was burned to ashes by the power of Jove s love; self-loving Narcissus was turned into a plant; and the arrogant Niobe was turned into a stone. In addition to punishment or reward, the transformative power of desire provides the motive force for Ovid s stories of meddlesome gods and immodest humans. Like Euripides and the Athenian tragedians, Ovid was fascinated by the destructive power of Dionysus. But Dionysus (or Bacchus), associated by Ovid with Liber, the god of wine, is only one of the gods who had the power to transform. Ovid also focused on the power of Jupiter (Jove), Juno, and Apollo. But Ovid was perhaps most interested in the transformative power of Venus, goddess of love. Venus is of further importance because she was the mother of Aeneas, founder of Rome, whose story was most famously told by Ovid s predecessor, Virgil. Selected Myths Synopses: Deucalion and the Flood Jove s anger against the tyrant Lycaon led him to become angry with the whole human race. Jove and Neptune covered the Earth with water, killing all humans except Deucalion and his bride, Pyrrha. Deucalion and Pyrrha then created the new race of humans by transforming stones into flesh. Daphne and Apollo Apollo, the archer, insulted Cupid, whose arrows were the cause of love. In retaliation, Cupid shot Apollo with an