‘There’s Divinity in Everything Here’

Contemporary Pagan nature sanctuaries across the United States feature practices such as ecosystem restoration, species preservation, and green burial. Pagans ritualize these practices in ways that both express and constitute reverential or intimate relations between humans, soil, plants, rocks, nonhuman animals, and spiritual beings. Their nature sanctuaries also express particular relationships with the more-than-human world through creating various kinds of sacred spaces, including shrines and altars. Because they are separated from most visitors’ daily lives, these sanctuaries work for many visitors as portals to a different state of consciousness in which human and nonhuman nature are experienced in powerful ways. This paper will explore the ritualized ways that environmentally conscious practices are promoted and engaged with at these sanctuaries. I will focus particularly on two sets of tensions: 1) leaving spaces wild and domesticating them and 2) natural burial and ecosystem restoration that brings species back to life. These varied practices reveal different ways of understanding ‘nature’ and ‘the wild’.