From Esotericism to Embodied Ritual: Care for Country as Religious Experience
Religions February 23, 2024 Yin Paradies, Cullan Woods Joyce 5 citations
Ongoing colonization, genocide, ecocide, and climate change demand that spiritual practitioners in Australia deepen their engagement with Aboriginal perspectives. Eurocentric habits wrongly categorize Aboriginal sacred experiences as beliefs or hierarchical priesthoods, when in fact Aboriginal spirituality is embodied and practice-based, centered on caring for Country. Such care is an enfleshed, palpable enactment of spirituality, not a fetishized abstraction. Through examples like dadirri (deep listening) and death practices, the paper shows that tending to food, water, and air are contemplative experiences. Caring for Country layers Aboriginal religious expression socially, psychologically, interpersonally, and ritually.