Paradise on Earth
Feraferia and the Landscapes of the Mind
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.24207Keywords:
Feraferia, Contemporary Paganism, Ecospirituality, Utopia, Earth Mysteries, Goddess Worship, EcosexualityAbstract
Feraferia, ‘a love culture for wilderness’, is a contemporary Pagan religion that celebrates humans’ erotic union with Nature. It was the brainchild of artist, Frederick Adams (1928–2008), who in 1956 had a vision of a universal goddess and subsequently devoted himself to the divine feminine as a ‘Maiden Goddess of the Wilderness’ called Korê. Formally incorporated in 1967, Feraferia became the second Pagan church in US history, and it is still active today. Herein I examine Feraferia through an ecocritical lens, with a particular focus on the role of trees, the anthropomorphisation of nature envisioned as a young female body, ecosexuality, and the construction of henges; circular structures aligned with local topography, used as seasonal and astronomical calendars wherein ritual magic and ‘faerie enchantment’ are employed in order to heal and revitalise the natural world. I demonstrate that Feraferia’s enchanted approach to the world resonates with contemporary ecological activist thought, particularly ecofeminism and ecosexuality. I conclude that many of Feraferia’s ecospiritual concepts have value today because they can heighten conscious awareness of human situatedness within the real physical world, both on our own planet as well as within the wider surrounding space of our part of the universe.
References
Adams, Fred. 1967. ‘The Mother God of Crete’. http://feraferia.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=222:the-mother-god-of-crete-&catid=61:founders-writings&Itemid=99
———. 1968a. ‘Feraferia – A Nature Religion’. http://feraferia.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=67:feraferia-a-nature-religion-fred-adams&catid=61:founders-writings&Itemid=99
———. 1968b. ‘Introduction to Feraferia’. http://feraferia.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=79:intro-to-feraferia&catid=36:the-fey&Itemid=73
———. 1970. ‘Feraferia – A New Approach to the Dawning Maiden Age of Aquarius, Part One’. http://feraferia.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=220:a-new-approach-to-the-dawning-age-of-aquarius-&catid=61:founders-writings&Itemid=99
———. n.d. ‘The Nine Royal Passions of the Year: Seasonal Celebrations of Cosmic Love Play’. http://feraferia.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=120:the-nine-royal-passions-of-the-year&catid=61:founders-writings&Itemid=99
Adler, Margot. 1986. Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers and Other Pagans in America (New York: Penguin).
Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Serena, and Lindsay Hagamen (eds.). 2015. Ecosexuality: When Nature Inspires the Arts of Love (N. P.: CreateSpace).
Animal Diversity Web. n.d. https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Phytala/classification/#Phytala
Bachofen, Johan J. 1969. Das Mutterrecht: Eine Untersuchung über die Gynaikokratie der alten Welt nach ihrer religiösen und rechtlichen Natur (Bruxelles: Culture et Civilisation).
Barnhill, David L. 2011. ‘Conceiving Ecotopia’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 5.2: 126–44. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v5i2.126
Berry, Geoff. 2013a. ‘Guest Editor’s Introduction’, Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism 17.3: 195–99. https://doi.org/10.1080/14688417.2013.866317
———. 2013b. ‘Afterword: The Utopian Dreaming of Modernity and its Ecological Cost’. Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism 17.3: 281–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/14688417.2013.866318
Bremmer, Jan. 2014. Initiation Into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (Berlin: De Gruyter).
Burkert, Walter. 1987. Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
Calame, Claude. 1997. Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece: Their Morphology, Religious Roles, and Social Function, Trans. Derek Collins and Janice Orion (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield).
Carson, Jo. 2015. Celebrate Wildness: Magic, Mirth and Love on the Feraferia Path (Fairfax: Natural Motion Pictures).
Clifton, Chas S. 2014. ‘Sex Magic or Sacred Marriage? Sexuality in Contemporary Wicca’ in H. Bogdan and J. R. Lewis (eds.) Sexuality and New Religious Movements (New York: Palgrave MacMillan): 149–63.
Cronon, William 1995. ‘The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature’, in William Cronon (ed.) Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York: W. W. Norton & Co.): 69–90.
Crowley, Aleister. 1975. The Book of the Law (Montreal: 93 Publishing).
Dames, Michael. 2017. Pagans Progress (London: Strange Attractor Press).
Eller, Cynthia. 2011. Gentlemen and Amazons: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, 1861–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Ellwood, Robert S. 1971. ‘Notes on a Neopagan Religious Group in America’, History of Religions 2.1: 125–39. https://doi.org/10.1086/462645
Fellows, Andrew. 2019. Gaia, Psyche and Deep Ecology: Navigating Climate Change in the Anthropocene (London: Routledge).
Feraferia, and Richard J. Stanewick. 1969. ‘How to Perform the Phytala’. http://feraferia.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98:how-to-perform-the-phytala&catid=45:daily-practice&Itemid=65
Foucault, Michel. 1986. ‘Of Other Spaces’, Diacritics 16: 22–27. https://doi.org/10.2307/464648
Frazer, James G. 1922. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (London: Macmillan).
Goldwasser, Orly. 1995. From Icon to Metaphor: Studies in the Semiotics of Hieroglyphs (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht/University Press Fribourg).
Graf, Fritz. 2003. ‘Lesser Mysteries: Not Less Mysterious’ in M. Cosmopoulos (ed.) Greek Mysteries: The Archaeology and Ritual of Ancient Greek Secret Cults (London: Routledge).
Graves, Robert. 1962. The White Goddess (Faber and Faber: London).
Hedenborg-White, Manon. 2020. The Eloquent Blood: The Goddess Babalon and the Construction of Femininities in Western Esotericism (New York: Oxford University Press).
Henty, Liz. 2022. Exploring Archaeoastronomy: A History of its Relationship with Archaeology and Esotericism (Oxford: Oxbow).
Holzer, Hans. 1972. The New Pagans: An Inside Report on the Mystery Cults of Today (New York: Doubleday).
Holzer, Hans. 2002. Witches: True Encounters with Wicca, Wizards, Covens, Cults, and Magick (New York: Black Dog and Leventhal).
Hutton, Ronald. 1999. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Kelly, Aidan (ed.). n.d. Gardnerian Book of Shadows. https://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/gbos/gbos38.htm
Konik, Inge, and Adrian Konik. 2019. ‘Unearthing Ecosexuality: Archaeological and Genealogical Reflections on the Origins and Future of a Movement’, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 24.6: 76–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2019.1684702
Latour, Bruno. 2010. ‘An Attempt at a “Compostitionist Manifesto”, New Literary History 41. 53: 471–90. https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2010.a408295
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space (Malden: Blackwell).
Magliocco, Sabina. 2019. ‘The Taming of the Fae: Literary and Folkloric Faeries in Modern Paganisms’, in S. Feraro and E. Doyle White (eds.) Magic and Witchery in the Modern West: Celebrating the Twentieth Anniversary of ‘The Triumph of the Moon’ (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan): 107–30.
Mankey, Jason. 2015. ‘American Paganisms—Feraferia’ in Raise the Horns. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/panmankey/2015/07/american-paganisms-feraferia/
Meyer, Marvin M. 1999. The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Sacred Texts (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press).
Michell, John. 1972. The View Over Atlantis (London: Abacus).
———. 1973. City of Revelation: On the proportion and Symbolic Numbers of the Cosmic Temple (London: Abacus).
Monbiot, G. 2013. Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding (London: Allen Lane).
Moylan, Tom. 1986. Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination (London: Methuen).
Mueller, Michelle. 2022. ‘Feraferia’. World Religions and Spirituality Project. https://wrldrels.org/2021/12/20/feraferia/
Naess, Arne, and George Sessions. 1984. ‘Basic Principles of Deep Ecology’, in Andrew Fellows (ed.), Gaia, Psyche and Deep Ecology (New York: Routledge): 173.
Sadovsky, Sonja. 2015. ‘Pathways to Paradise: An Interview with Jo Carson’. http://www.sonjasadovsky.com/pathways-to-paradise-an-interview-with-jo-carson-part-1/
Saguaro, Shelley. 2013. ‘“The Republic of Arborea”: Trees and the Perfect Society’, Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism 17.3: 236–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/14688417.2013.859093
Soja, E. W. 1996. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real and Imagined Places (Malden: Blackwell).
Sprinkle, Annie, and Beth Stephens. 2021. Assuming the Ecosexual Position: The Earth as Lover (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
Stevens, Henry Bailey. 1949. The Recovery of Culture (Ashingdon: The C. W. Daniel Company).
Stout, Adam. 2008. Creating Prehistory: Druids, Ley-Hunters and Archaeologists in Pre-War Britain (Malden: Blackwell).
Tully, Caroline. 2018. The Cultic Life of Trees in the Prehistoric Aegean, Levant, Egypt and Cyprus. Aegaeum 42 (Leuven: Peeters). https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1q26z76
———. 2019. ‘The Artifice of Daidalos: Modern Minoica as Religious Focus in Contemporary Paganism’, in Dylan M. Burns and Almut-Barbara Renger (eds.), New Antiquities: Transformations of Ancient Religion in the New Age and Beyond (Sheffield: Equinox): 76–102.
———. In Press. ‘Power Undressing: Revealing the Goddess in Contemporary Occult Religion’. Pomegranate: International Journal of Pagan Studies.
Turcan, Robert. 1997. The Cults of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Blackwell).
Urban, Hugh. 2006. Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Valiente, Doreen, and Evan John Jones. 1990. Witchcraft: A Tradition Renewed (Phoenix: Custer).
Von Stackelberg, Katharine T. 2009. The Roman Garden: Space, Sense and Society (Hoboken: Taylor and Francis).
Walsh, Brian. 2013. ‘Robert Graves’ Fabrication of the Celtic Tree Calendar’. https://www.spiralnature.com/spirituality/graves-frabrication-of-the-celtic-tree-calendar/
Williams, Tom, and Liz Bellamy. 1983. Ley Lines in Question (Kingswood: Worlds Work).
Zell-Ravenheart, Oberon (ed.). 2009. Green Egg Omelette: An Anthology of Art and Articles from the Legendary Pagan Journal (Franklin Lakes: New Page Books).
Laurel Zwissler. 2018. ‘In the Study of the Witch: Women, Shadows, and the Academic Study of Religions’ Religions 9.105: 13. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9040105
