Anna Wood
Ryne Beddard
RELI/PHIL438
Final project Image Synthesis
Bron Taylor: Taylor describes culture as “cross-fertilizing… eclectic bricolage… drawn from diverse cultural systems, religious traditions, and political ideologies” (Taylor, 14). Using water as a mechanism to convey this intermixing is similar to Tweed in “Confluences”, but I personally decided to use water iconography because water to me is very spiritual in nature as well as having important physical uses.
Imagery: The frame is loosely divided into four sections like a roundabout by four rivers that flow into one. Each river is representative of one of Taylor’s four categories of nature religion: spiritual animism, naturalistic animism, Gaian spirituality, and Gaian naturalism. Each of the readings I included fall somewhere among the rivers and come together to create one fluid depiction of nature religion.
Catherine Albanese: Albanese records the lifestyle and habits of the Hutchinsons who were a family of traveling singers who participated in “nature religion”. This form of nature religion emphasized “finding power, meaning, and value in nature and natural forms” and felt “every man’s a brother and our country is the world” (Albanese 3,11). Through living in harmony, cosmic environmentalism, rituals, and taming the wayward body, one could access more refined forms of spirit.
Imagery: circle of music notes and animals in the water (fish and bear). The complex sheet music is a display of mastery of the self (nonphysical) and the animals drawn to the water allude to the mastery over animals (physical realm). The bear was just nod to Grizzlyman, but the fish was deliberately placed between the rivers of Natural Animism and Gaian Spirituality because the Hutchinson family believed the spirit [to be] ona separate level than the material plane (Naturalistic Animism) and revered the environment and nature around them (Gaian Spirituality) (Albanese, 9-11).
William Cronon: Cronon’s “In Search of Nature” highlighted the eternal human entanglement with nature and how humans feel a “moral imperative” to return to, recreate, and preserve nature in a sinister cycle in which we worship our own construction. As a species we must learn that efficiency is not the point of life and nature always has a way of weaving itself back into undesignated places demonstrating that human attempts to tame wilderness through delineating nature from man is futile.
Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness” describes how the wealthy, male, European ideologies shaped the modern perception of wilderness which is built partly upon “creature feeling” and bewilderment; a feeling of excited terror. Wilderness is outlined by two terms: the sublime and the frontier. The sublime is the romanticism of nature, and the frontier is the particularly European/ American schema. Together, the two “[make] wilderness in their own image, frightening it with moral values and cultural symbols that [burden nature] to this day (Cronon, 72). Wilderness became sacred where one could be “reminded of one’s own mortality”, “return to being animal”, and test oneself to “withhold [that] power to dominate” (Cronon 73, 84, 87).
Imagery: Cronon's ideas from “In Search of Nature”, are manifested in the drawing by the entangled paths of rivers that are reminiscent of the infrastructure of a roundabout. It is nature but also human. Then, the rivers are shared by the figures in the drawing as nature is the "uncommon ground we all share" (Cronon, 56). A roundabout is not the most efficient path in the sense it is not a straight line and that is reflected in modern urban planning like parks or public spaces (53). Cronon's claim that nature and humans are inseparable create an impossible sacred ideal of nature.
Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness” expressed views most similar to Gaian Naturalism but I placed it between the streams of Gaian Naturalism and Gaian Spirituality because of the spiritual undertone of “creature feeling”. The only explicit person in the drawing is the angelic woman from the American Progress painting gracefully bypassing a waterfall and mountain range. The small figure is meant to reflect the adventurer in wilderness and the woman, the European/American ideals.
Georges Bataille:Bataille's claims have the potential to align with any of Taylor's categories because he is evaluating consciousness on such a distant scale. Firstly, he draws a strong line between animality and the "I". The level of consciousness on which animals operate is like that of water in water where nothing rises above, penetrates, or inhibits the flow of conscious energy. There is no doubt however that lifeforms have a consciousness or spirit, but the quality/ purity is variable. The "I" of the human spirit has attempted to define a supreme being since conception, and it is not only impossible but counterintuitive (Bataille, 33-34). Rather, the pure spirit as Bataille argues is not real (37). To be real is profane, but unreality is necessary in describing the ascension of consciousness. The dissolution of the sacred or unreal gives way to the real meaning the universe must all be consciousness.
Imagery:I represented Bataille's writing in the center of the swirling waters because I felt his passage covered the most territory and the lifeforms and action surrounding the inner sphere are secondary as is the animal spirit to the "I" and the "I" to the pure spirit. The mirror is representative of the degradation of consciousness from pure spirit and how we as humans " “perceive each appearance, subject, animal, mind, and world from within and from without at the same time, both as continuity with respect to ourselves and as object” (Bataille, 31).
Barbara Sostiata:Sostiata digs into the ethics, hidden meanings, and intricacies of traversing the desert to cross the Mexican-American border and the importance of water and touch. “Through their movements and devotional practices, they defy border policing and engage in the prefigurative creation of alternative worlds. This is how [they] access the sacred (Sostiata, 95). Through objects, people are able to communicate without spoken language, but it is powerful enough to recharge morale inorder to complete the journey. Adding to the water analogy, Sostiata claims “water is dangerous because it is the embodiment of flux, fluidity, and mal- leability. The state of water is always changing, calling into question the imag- ined stability of national identity” (89).
Imagery: The water spirit is drawing the immigrants to gather by the river and the pitcher pouring the water is black like the sun water. A skeleton hand holds the jug representative of the dead who had traversed the land before helping the current immigrants through spirit and manifestation of physical aid. Furthermore, the hand references Sostiata's use of touch as a sense of solace and hope that transcends physical borders. I placed Sostiatas imagery within the naturalistic animism river and between the spiritual animism river because of the material and immaterial records left by travelers whereby seemingly mundane objects relay an incredible amount of emotional records and hopeful investment. The belief in personal intentions and lifeforce align with that of natural animsm although
Yvonne Chireau: Chireau’s “Our Religion and Our Superstition Were All Mixed Up” detailed conjure which was more in line with spiritual animism, and healing rootwork which is more similar to natural animism. Conjure is a magical tradition used for “healing, protection, and self defence” (Chireau, 12). One method of conjure included the use of talismans or amulets which were imbued with intentions from conjure. In one depiction of a conjure woman, the practitioner “exercised complete control over [the individual]- soul and body… [they] feared and worshiped her” (18). As time went on the title of conjure doctor evolved into “hoodoos” and “rootworkers” all figures able to work with “unseen forces” or spirits (21). Black Americans commonly flowed between and adopted aspects of both Conjure and Chrsitianity as both were seen as “viable systems for accessing the supernatural world, and each met needs that the other did not” (32).
Chireau’s “Medical Doctors Cant Do You No Good” dives deeper into the treatment of ailments. One account noted that “nearly all Conjure doctors practiced [rootwork], and some of the root doctors practiced hoodoo (96). “For many blacks, the distinction between spiritual healing and other forms of healing was often blurred” so doctors had to have an extensive knowledge of both physical and spiritual realms because oftentimes the body was vulnerable to spiritual diseases.
Imagery: The stream is filled with life and it branches off into the veins of a human hand and arm showing the flow between divine and body. I put the roots on the natural animism side and the veins on the spiritual side but the roots and the veins draw from both streams. There is a cross talisman in the hand which the water passes by to show the flexibility of Conjure and Christianity.
Mary Douglas: Douglas claims “dirt is essentially disorder” and in an “effort to organize [our] environment” we reorder it “making it conform to an idea” (Douglas 2). Cleanliness is the human attempt to “relate form to function, to make unity of experience” but it is all relative (2). Purity is sacred so therefore dirt must be profane but “dirt” is subjective to its environment. It is simply the “rejected elements of [an ordered system]” (36).
Imagery: There is a water bottle caught in the stream. It’s water in water but its containment creates trash. The water pitcher across the picture however, is not seen as trash, but hope. I also included someone in the act washing their hands holding pearls. * soapy bubbles were too difficult to draw but I thought that pearls conveyed the same theme of purity and water. These images are amongst the Gaian Naturalism stream because the duality and interrelation between dirt and purity is revered but this text observes the material plane rather than the implications of the soul.
Roger Callios: The labels of pure and impure “do not originally connote an ethical antagonism, but rather a religious polarity. They play the same role in the world of the sacred as the concepts of good and evil play in the world of the profane '' (Callios, 34). Like that of Douglas’ premise on dirt, Callios tackles the nonphysical side of a similar concept, nothing is “good or bad by nature, but the direction it takes or is given” and everything is “susceptible to being directed either way without the possibility of permanently attributing such ambiguity to it
“(50).
Imagery: The fluidity of the stream mimics the fluidity of the sacred and the profane so I drew a virgin and a corpse in the water flowing together like that of baby Moses in a basket and the corpses that are now overloading the Ganges River in India. I placed these images in the river of Gaian Spirituality because this reading detailed the spiritual implications of purity on the sacred and profane while Douglas, although comparable, discussed the physical implications.
Thomas Tweed: Tweed also coincidentally uses the properties of water to create a metaphor for religion, but his work ended up being second to last that I thought to include in my project. As it turned out, his writing easily fit into my drawing. Tweed examines how religions are cultural flows that intersect and “intensify joy and confront suffering… [across] boundaries” (Tweed, 54). Firstly, he details figures in various religions that reinforce the “interrelatedness of all things” and how “reality is constantly changing” (55). Then, if each religion is made up of flowing currents, those with higher traffic have a wider breadth and are “enforced as orthodox”, whereas other religions may cross each other “creating new spiritual streams” (60). “It is impossible to disentangle the threads that embed persons in culture”, but those threads do not prevent an individual from traveling down a different river or crossing streams (65). “Suprahuman” figures are “defining features of religion…[that represent] sentiments like love or concepts like relativity” (68). Religions provide a way of life and a source of comfort in understanding the incomprehensible which on a worldwide scale are like a network of unique neurons and neural pathways.
Imagery: There are multiple streams( sects ) that lead to the large stream (orthodox) of spiritual animism and then to the circular river (it’s all the same). Across the page, in Merchant’s section I also included merging streams to show Tweed’s argument transcends boundaries. Within the river there are many people all connected by a golden net. This thread is symbolic of society and culture which gives each individual an identity and connection to others. They are bound to their positions, nonetheless, they all bathe in the same river. Tweed takes on the role of an observer in his writing but his acknowledgement of the role of suprahuman influences encouraged me to insert the net image in the stream of Spiritual Animism.
Caroline Merchant: Men become the “agents of transformation” through the classic biblical narrative of the fall from paradise caused by woman which is declensionist and “[results]in a poorer state of nature than in the beginning”(Merchant 133). The linear narrative gains power and influence with every application and is a consequence of convenience. Throughout history American language has posited the feminine as something to be tamed, redeemed, and then harvested. This heroic storyline for the masculine brought about the ideal of refinement, civilization, and enlightenment but this external to internal taming had drastic effects on the environment suppressing both non-human nature and human nature (147). Merchant posits that cooperative male and female action has great potential to rewrite this Edenic narrative to something far more constructive.
Imagery: Men and women digging new river paths showing man's role as plowing the land while also rewriting the narrative. NONlinear paths show non-linearity and the goal is not convenience or efficiency. There are mechanical construction machines which are a nod to Merchant's statement that man is a “machine capable of endless duration” (141). The balance of the male and female energies is akin to Callios but I wanted to display the creation of new roads so I placed the construction site to the left of Gaian Spirituality.
Overall, these writings come together to create one large picture of the nature of religion. Constantly evolving, flowing, fluctuating, and passing through everyone and everything it touches. While I initially divided the picture in four sections, there is no such thing as hard lined religions, each element is dependent on each other which comes together to reflect that it is all what you project onto it.