From Esotericism to Embodied Ritual: Care for Country as Religious Experience

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.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Colonisation, genocide, ecocide, and climate derangement are ongoing, unfurling, global tragedies. In so-called Australia, spiritual practitioners can respond to these crises by deepening their engagement with Aboriginal perspectives/practices. This paper contends that some Eurocentric habitual categorisations subtly misinterpret Aboriginal experiences of the sacred, such as identifying creation myths as beliefs comparable to post-Enlightenment representations of the sacred and identifying the performance of sacred activity with similar characteristics to separateness and priesthood. This leads to erroneous characterisations of Aboriginal ritual practices as being based on a strong hierarchy, distinctive castes, and esotericism. We argue that an embodied and practice-based sense of sacredness guides Aboriginal spirituality. As a living culture, Aboriginal ongoing care for Country provides an enfleshed, real, palpable enactment of human spirituality. We argue that Aboriginal spirituality has been fetishised to the neglect of a call to care for Country in the most ‘mundane’ sense of tending to food, water, air, etc., as embodied religious experiences. Delving into dadirri and death, we elucidate contemporary cases of practical care for Country that illustrate how being on, in, and with Country can be a contemplative experience. We conclude by outlining how caring for Country ‘layers’ the various expressions of Aboriginal religious experience socially, psychologically, interpersonally, and ritually.