Goddess Spirituality and Nature in Aotearoa New Zealand

Authors

  • Kathryn Rountree Massey University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.v7i2.141

Keywords:

green philosophies, nature religions, goddess spirituality, Maori religion

Abstract

Participants in Goddess spirituality in New Zealand share two fundamental characteristics: their feminist political stance and their deep sense of connection with, love for and concern about the natural environment. Eschewing the essentialist formulation of women/nature, men/culture, they wish to dismantle all such dualisms, to advocate the embracing of Green philosophies and practices by all people, and to promote a worldview that honors the sanctity and inter-relatedness of all life. To some extent, these ideas have much in common with indigenous Maori ideas about nature, even though each belief complex is uniquely embedded in its own culture and unique relationship to landscape and history. Nonetheless, Goddess spirituality’s ideas about nature have a great deal more in common with worldviews that perceive the ‘natural world’ as entirely animate and intimately connected with humanity than they do with the ideas of modern capitalist societies, which reduce nature to an inanimate resource available for human exploitation.

Author Biography

  • Kathryn Rountree, Massey University

    Kathryn Rountree is senior lecturer in social anthropology at Massey University and author of Embracing the Witch and the Goddess: Feminist Ritual-makers in New Zealand (Routledge 2004). As well as publishing widely in academic journals on aspects of feminist witchcraft and Goddess spirituality, she has written texts on academic writing and a series of educational books on New Zealand prehistory and early Maori settlement. Recent research and publications have focused on Goddess pilgrimages and embodiment, and on competing discourses in relation to archaeological sites in Malta and Turkey.

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Published

2007-03-08

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Rountree, K. (2007). Goddess Spirituality and Nature in Aotearoa New Zealand. Pomegranate, 7(2), 141-156. https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.v7i2.141