Wicca, Esotericism and Living
                    Nature: Assessing Wicca as
                          Nature Religion

                          by Jo Pearson
                        The Open University
          This article was first presented as a paper at the recent
              International Association for the History of Religion
              (IAHR) XVIII Quinquennial Congress, held in Durban in
              August 2000. The theme of the congress was 'History of
                                  Religions: Origins and Visions'.
          For the first time, the IAHR congress included a series of
                                                        sessions on
                  Nature Religion, organised by Bron Taylor and also
                                                including papers by
                Graham Harvey, Tim Jensen, Bron Taylor, and Michael
                                                                York.
                              ABSTRACT
        'Living Nature', whereby "Nature is seen, known, and
      experienced as essentially alive in all its parts, often
        inhabited and traversed by a light or hidden fire
      circulating through it", is one of the four fundamental
        characteristics of the Western Esoteric Tradition
      identified by Antoine Faivre (1994:11), and delineates a
        certain Hermetic view of the world. In this paper we
          consider Alexandrian and Gardnerian Wicca (as
      practiced in the UK) as a current manifestation of the
      Western Esoteric Tradition, outlining Wicca's magical
      heritage and indicating the affinities between Wicca and
      esotericism. We then proceed to an investigation of the
        application of central esoteric doctrines concerning
      nature in contemporary Wicca, in order to assess Wicca
                        as nature religion.
    During the 1970s, environmentalism itself
    became a kind of religion, significant in that
    it points, according to Seyyed Nasr, 'to the
    need in the souls of human beings for the
    religious understanding of nature eclipsed in
    the West by modern science and neglected
    until quite recently by the mainstream
    religions' (1996: 194-5). This turning of
    environmentalism into religion has affected
    not only traditional religions but also the
    development of Wicca and Paganism, and
    so-called 'nature religions'. 'Nature Religion'
    is a relatively recent academic construct
    under which a variety of religions have been
    grouped including, for example, Paganism,
    eco-spirituality, and indigenous religions. It
    is also popular with Wiccans --103 out of
    the 120 (86%) Wiccans represented in my
    1995 survey told me that they regarded their
    religion as 'nature religion'.
   
    Yet at present, 'nature religion' is a contested
    designation, and is, like Wicca and
    Paganism, an emerging field of study. The
    current academic use of the term 'nature
    religion' stems most often from Catherine
    Albanese's usage in her book Nature
    Religion in America (1990), in which nature
    religion is defined as beliefs, behaviours and
    values which make nature a 'symbolic
    centre'. Whilst recognising the value of the
    construct in bringing to light the diversity of
    religious practices which do take nature as a
    symbolic referent, Albanese's term has been
    criticised as too broad to be of practical use.
    Bron Taylor suggests instead that we use
    phrases such as 'the natural dimension of
    religion', or 'nature influenced religion' to
    distinguish those religions which see nature
    as important but not sacred, and keep 'nature
    religion' exclusively for reference to
    religions which regard nature as sacred.
   
    But what exactly do we mean by this
    phrase, 'nature as sacred'? What is 'nature as
    symbolic centre'? The questions so far seem
    to miss a whole dimension of the religious
    understanding of nature, and to dismiss the
    difference in perception between nature
    (small 'n') and Nature (capitalised); or, as
    Seyyed Nasr would have it, fail to grasp that
    'nexus between the order of nature as
    ordinarily understood and the Divine
    Nature, Infinite and Eternal, that
    encompasses the order of nature and is yet
    ubiquitous at every point of cosmic
    manifestation' (1996: 104).
   
    Wiccans do regard nature as sacred, as we
    shall see later in this paper. However, their
    response to nature is often confused,
    revealing both intimacy and distance as they
    shape nature with the Wheel of the Year,
    sacred circles and ritual to suit their own
    needs for relationship with the earth. The
    nature/culture duality thus persists in nature
    religion, reflecting a turn to nature as a
    source of revitalisation, attempting to re-
    engage with a nature from which
    participants feel estranged, to re-enchant the
    natural world which has been exploited and
    dominated. Since Wicca is not a salvation
    religion, it does not reject the world or the
    everyday reality of living in the world, but
    seeks rather to enhance life on earth. Earthly
    existence is not regarded as fundamentally
    sinful or binding, with a need for salvation
    or escape. But how much one takes this as a
    need to defend and protect the earth is open
    to question.
   
    Whilst Wicca claims an almost primordial
    relationship with nature and markets itself
    as 'green religion', the disjunction between
    sign and signified remains very real. Nature,
    as Nasr reminds us, 'is not only a symbol of
    spiritual realities but is those realities not by
    a reduction of the spiritual essences to
    material forms but by an inner identity
    among those who share the primordial
    perspective between the symbol and the
    symbolized. Hence, in such worlds nature
    herself is the supreme cathedral. Her order is
    the Divine Order and her laws divine laws
    without there being in any sense a
    naturalism or animism in the pejorative
    sense of those terms ' (1996: 21). Do
    Wiccan attitudes and practices concerning
    Nature, then, reflect this perspective, a
    perspective reflected in esoteric influences
    or, as Wouter Hanegraaff has suggested
    with reference to the New Age, does Wicca
    'produce merely shallow caricatures of
    profound teachings'? (1998: 31).
    The Categorisation of Wicca
   
    As a brief aside, it might be worth touching
    on the ways in which Wicca is categorised
    at this point in the paper. Wicca occupies a
    somewhat ambiguous position vis à vis
    contemporary religiosity, yet it has appeared
    to be easily assimilable to the so-called
    'sociology of the occult', the New Age
    Movement, and NRMs, as well as new
    designations such as 'revived religion' and
    'nature religion', which may in time prove to
    be more applicable as terms of
    categorisation. There are forms of witchcraft
    which claim to predate the emergence of
    Wicca in England, most notably Traditional
    and Hereditary witchcraft. However, since
    there is no evidence to support these claims,
    we follow Ronald Hutton's assertion that
    Wicca is the classic, earliest known form of
    modern witchcraft (Hutton 1999).
    Concentrating on the combined
    Alexandrian/Gardnerian version of Wicca as
    it has emerged in the UK in the 1990s, I
    have assessed Wicca as a form of esoteric
    spirituality, which I regard as an appropriate
    category for this specific type. In particular,
    I engaged with the field of western
    esotericism as delineated by Antoine Faivre
    and, following him, Wouter Hanegraaff. It
    is as a means of taking this research further
    that this paper seeks to question the
    application of esoteric doctrines on nature
    within this specific branch of Wicca.
    Academic Understandings of Esotericism
   
    Antoine Faivre, the foremost scholar in the
    field of western esotericism, defines
    esotericism as a form of thought expressed
    through exemplifying currents, rather than a
    specific genre (1994: 4). Faivre identifies
    six components of esotericism, which he has
    identified from the corpus of writings
    attributed to Hermes Trismegistus:
    correspondences, living nature, imagination
    and meditations, experience of
    transmutation, the praxis of concordance,
    and transmission (ibid.: 10-15). Of these,
    the first four are essential to a definition of a
    tradition as esoteric whilst the latter two
    Faivre considers to be 'relative' elements,
    frequently occurring in combination with
    the four fundamental characteristics but
    unnecessary to the categorisation of a
    practice as esoteric (1994: 14). Due to the
    constraints of time, this paper will engage
    only with the four fundamental
    characteristics, which contain esoteric
    doctrines concerning nature. Indeed, we
    should remember that the division of these
    characteristics into four is artificial, merely
    an academic device; rather, they need to be
    read as one.
   
    Real and symbolic correspondences are
    believed to exist throughout all parts of the
    universe, both visible and invisible: '[t]hese
    correspondences, considered more or less
    veiled at first sight, are intended to be read
    and deciphered. The entire universe is a
    huge theater [sic] of mirrors, an ensemble of
    hieroglyphs to be decoded. Everything is a
    sign; everything conceals and exudes
    mystery; every object hides a secret' (Faivre
    1994: 10). The fifth characteristic, the
    praxis of the concordance, is understood as
    a 'consistent tendency to try to establish
    common denominators between two
    different traditions or even more, among all
    traditions, in the hope of obtaining an
    illumination, a gnosis, of superior quality'
    (Faivre 1994: 14). This characteristic is
    taken to its extreme in the discourse of the
    perennialists who postulate the existence of
    a primordial tradition which overarches all
    other religious or esoteric traditions of
    humanity. This philosophia perennis
    became the 'Tradition', constituted by a
    chain of mythical or historical
    representatives including Moses, Zoroaster,
    Hermes Trimegistus, Orpheus, the Sibyls,
    Pythagoras and Plato. The sixth
    characteristic is transmission, which refers
    to the possibility or necessity of teaching
    being transmitted from master to disciple
    following a pre-established channel.
    Inherent in this characteristic is the
    insistence that 'a person cannot initiate
    himself any way he chooses but must go
    through the hands of an initiator', and that
    both the initiator and the initiate must be
    attached to an authentic tradition (Faivre
    1994: 14-15). But, Faivre warns, the
    presence of correspondences alone does not
    necessarily indicate esotericism, for
    doctrines of correspondence can be found in
    many philosophical and religious currents.
   
    The notion of correspondences was also, of
    course, popular in fin de siècle writings, for
    example, Baudelaire's sonnet,
    'Correspondences' which, 'reassigns to the
    poet his ancient role of vates, of soothsayer,
    who by his intuition of the concrete, of
    immediately perceived things, is led to the
    idea of these things, to the intricate system
    of "correspondences"' (Fowlie 1990: 29).
    Freeman (1999: 139) points out that Arthur
    Symons, in London: A Book of Aspects
    (1909), works along similar lines, 'picking
    his way through what Baudelaire termed
    'des forêts de symboles' in order to perceive
    deeper truths'. In accordance with the theory
    of correspondences, the cosmos is regarded
    as complex, plural and hierarchical, and
    nature, or living nature, thus occupies an
    essential place within it: 'Nature is seen,
    known, and experienced as essentially alive
    in all its parts, often inhabited and traversed
    by a light or hidden fire circulating through
    it' (ibid.: 11). This spiritual force permeating
    nature is exemplified in the Renaissance
    understanding of magia naturalis, a
    'complex notion at the crossroads of magic
    and science' by which both knowledge of
    the networks of sympathies and antipathies
    that link the things of Nature and the
    concrete operation of this knowledge is
    indicated.
   
    It is the imaginative faculty in humans that
    allows the use of intermediaries such as
    symbols and images 'to develop a gnosis, to
    penetrate the hieroglyphs of Nature, to put
    the theory of correspondences into active
    practice and to uncover, to see, and to know
    the mediating entities between Nature and
    the divine world' (ibid.: 12). The
    imagination is therefore regarded as far
    more than mere fantasy-it is the 'organ of
    the soul, thanks to which humanity can
    establish a cognitive and visionary
    relationship with an intermediary world',
    what Henry Corbin called the mundus
    imaginalis. The eventual consequence of
    working with the first three characteristics is
    the experience of transmutation. The
    alchemical term 'transmutation' is used to
    define the initiatory path of development by
    which 'the esotericist gains insight into the
    hidden mysteries of cosmos, self and God'
    (Hanegraaff 1995: 112). As transmutation
    implies a change in the very substance of a
    thing or person (As opposed to mere
    'transformation', which implies a change
    more or less limited to outward appearance),
    there is, according to Faivre, no separation
    between knowledge (gnosis) and inner
    experience, or between intellectual activity
    and active imagination (1994: 13).
    The Importance of Historical Continuity
   
    The six characteristics, according to Faivre,
    are not doctrinal but serve rather as
    receptacles into which various types of
    experiences are distributed. Although the six
    components can be positioned unequally,
    the first four must all be simultaneously
    present in order for something to be
    considered esoteric. Yet this alone is not
    enough. According to Hanegraaff (1995:
    121), it is also crucial that we demonstrate
    how the original contents and associations
    of esotericism that originated in the
    Renaissance are reinterpreted. Following
    and developing Faivre's work, Hanegraaff
    defines an esoteric tradition as an 'historical
    continuity in which individuals and/or
    groups are demonstrably influenced in their
    life and thinking by the esoteric ideas
    formulated earlier, which they use and
    develop according to the specific demands
    and cultural context of their own period'
    (1995: 118). Hanegraaff outlines the
    historical perspective of esotericism as a
    'container concept encompassing a complex
    of interrelated currents and traditions from
    the early modern period up to the present
    day, the historical origin and foundation of
    which lies in the syncretistic phenomenon of
    Renaissance hermeticism' (1999: 4). He
    goes on to trace this esotericism through the
    later developments of alchemy,
    Paracelsianism, Rosicrucianism, kabbalah,
    Theosophical and Illuminist currents, and
    'various occultist and related developments
    during the 19th and 20th century' (ibid.: 4)
    many of which, I have argued, are the direct
    precursors of Wicca. So how has
    contemporary Wicca, after Hanegraaff
    (1995: 118), used and developed the esoteric
    ideas formulated earlier according to the
    specific demands and cultural context of
    their own period? And how did Wicca come
    to be regarded as Nature Religion in the first
    place?
    How did Wicca come to be regarded
    as Nature Religion?
   
    Perhaps the most obvious answer to this
    question lies in Wicca's associations with
    contemporary Paganism. 'Pagan' has often
    been taken to refer to 'country-dweller', an
    interpretation which seems to have
    developed mainly with the Romantic
    literature of the 19th century and Victorian
    urban growth. However, as Robin Lane Fox
    and Pierre Chuvin have pointed out, most
    town-dwellers were in fact pagan at the time
    the term 'pagan' was coined. Thabit ibn
    Qurra, a Sabian from Harran (835-901CE)
    praised ancient paganism to the Caliph of
    Baghdad with the following words, which
    clearly have nothing to do with a rustic
    existence:
    Who else have civilised the world, and built
    the cities, if not the nobles and kings of
    Paganism? They have filled the earth with
    settled forms of government, and with
    wisdom, which is the highest good. Without
    Paganism the world would be empty and
    miserable (Scott 1985: 105).
    Furthermore, Freeman (1999: 11) stresses
    that 'the majority of major Victorian poets
    and artists confronted the modern city with
    a marked lack of enthusiasm-it was a filthy
    and dehumanising environment and poor
    soil for their sensitive plants'. He cites
    Browning's willingness to provide
    representations of Renaissance urbanisation
    whilst largely avoiding the Victorian
    conurbation, and the artistic radicals of the
    1860s (such as Swinburne, Rossetti and
    William Morris) who forsook their own time
    for a largely imaginary past.
   
    According to the Census of 1851, the
    English urban population outnumbered the
    rural for the first time. Between 1821 and
    1841, the population of London rose by
    20%, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield
    increased by 40%, while Bradford rose by
    an incredible 65% (Williams 1975: 188). As
    Nick Freeman has pointed out, 'no London
    memoirist from the Victorian period (or
    indeed, ever since) can resist lamenting the
    disappearance of the 'countryside' in and
    around the city' (1999: 13). The growing
    interest in the environment, and the urge to
    leave behind the towns and cities and enter
    once more into communion with 'nature' as
    'the countryside' encouraged popular usage
    of the term 'pagan' as one who dwells in the
    rustic areas. Ronald Hutton, overstating the
    case somewhat, suggests that the growth of
    urban areas during the Victorian era caused
    'an almost hysterical celebration of rural
    England' from the 1870s onwards. Pan as
    great god of nature became one of the most
    prevalent ancient images to be drawn upon.
    We might cite as examples Arthur Machen's
    1894 novel The Great God Pan, and Saki's
    The Music on the Hill (1911), both of which
    feature Pan as a central figure, whilst
    Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the
    Willows (1907), and J. M. Barrie's Peter
    Pan made Pan accessible to children.
    Russell (1990: 137) interprets Pan, god of
    wild nature, as a deliberately chosen symbol
    of opposition to Christianity among
    occultists, due to Christian associations of
    Pan's characteristics (cloven hooves, horns)
    with their image of the Devil. Certainly this
    is true of the infamous Aleister Crowley,
    whose Hymn to Pan provoked storms of
    outrage when it was read out at his funeral
    in 1947. At the same time, enthusiasm for
    Gaia as Mother Nature and Mother Earth
    was such that by 1900, 'the poetic vision of
    the English, when contemplating the rural
    world, was dominated as never before by
    the great goddess and the horned god'
    (Hutton 1996: 9), and the great goddess
    (Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter) and
    the horned god (Herne, Pan, Cernunnos)
    have remained deities of central importance
    within today's Wicca and Paganism.
   
    That there is little evidence for the kind of
    mass appeal Hutton describes does not
    detract from the engagement of poets and
    authors with the country/city opposition, and
    this certainly influenced the development of
    Wicca. However, we should not forget that
    it is the very growth of the city which
    accounts for what is primarily urban Wicca,
    at the same time as it provides a focus for
    discontent and an opposition to idealised
    nature. We can see in Wicca a nostalgia for
    something never known, and might do well
    to question the role of imaginative fiction in
    turning people on to nature. In an urbanised
    life, does Tolkein's description of the woods
    of Lothlórien in The Fellowship of the Ring
    (1954), for instance, provide a more real
    experience of the magic of a woodland than
    a walk in the real woods? It is, I think, a
    valid question but not one I intend to answer
    at the present time.
   
    In terms of recent decades, Vivianne
    Crowley has outlined a change in emphasis
    within Wicca from nature veneration to
    nature preservation in her chapter 'Wicca as
    Nature Religion' in Nature Religion Today.
    Crowley asserts the centrality of the
    veneration of nature, which is 'considered to
    be ensouled, alive, 'divine' The divine [being
    seen] as a 'force' or 'energy' and as manifest
    in the world of nature' (1998: 170). She
    further points out that the processes of
    nature-'conception, birth, mating,
    parenthood, maturation, death'-are portrayed
    in the seasonal myth cycle known as the
    Wheel of the Year; thus, '[t]hemes and
    symbols drawn from nature are central to
    Wiccan belief and practice' (ibid.: 170).
   
    Initially, we are told, Gardner's Wicca was
    described as a fertility cult rather than as
    'nature religion' but, as the opening
    declamation of this paper shows, direct links
    existed between the Wiccan perception of
    the goddess and the world of nature. The
    late Doreen Valiente, Gardner's one-time
    High Priestess and collaborator, pointed out
    that Wicca is concerned, not so much with
    literal fertility as with vitality, and with
    finding one's harmony with Nature. 'What
    witches seek for in celebrating these
    seasonal festivals is a sense of oneness with
    Nature ... People today need this because
    they are aware of the tendency of modern
    life to cut them off from their kinship with
    the world of living Nature ... They want to
    get back to Nature, and be human beings
    again' (in Crowley 1998: 173-5).
   
    This cutting off from nature as a part of
    modern life has certainly had its part to play
    in attracting people to Wicca in the last 30
    years, largely as a result of environmental
    awareness. 'A nature religion implies a
    nature to worship', claims Crowley, and 'in
    the 1970s environmental pollution became
    the rallying cause. Nature was on the
    agenda' (1998: 176). With this influx of
    environmentally aware people, the ethos of
    Wicca began to evolve from nature
    veneration to nature preservation: 'Wicca
    had moved out of the darkness, the occult
    world of witchery, to occupy the moral high
    ground-environmentalism' (ibid: 177).
   
    But going behind environmentalism, back to
    this need to feel again that contact with
    nature which, according to Valiente, makes
    us 'human beings', how does Wicca interact
    with nature? Both Crowley and Valiente
    point to the most obvious interaction, that of
    ritual, and particularly those rituals which
    make up the mythic cycle of the Wheel of
    the Year. Certainly, the Wheel of the Year
    with its eight sabbats reflects the turning
    cycle of nature, but to what extent does the
    Wheel turn the seasons instead of the
    seasons turning the Wheel? There are some
    Wiccans who celebrate Imbolc, for example,
    only once the first snowdrops have
    appeared; but chaotic nature has her own
    timing, and is not regarded as conducive to
    modern life and its responsibilities. The
    practicalities of getting a group of people
    together thus takes precedence over nature's
    timing of the seasons, and in order to
    facilitate Wicca a grid of external
    references-the eight-spoked Wheel of the
    Year-is dropped onto nature. Thus, Wicca
    imposes correspondences rather than
    allowing correspondences to emerge from
    living nature and then reading them back
    into it, and these correspondences become
    merely standardised lists, memorised
    information rather than any true gnosis
    gleaned from the hieroglyphs of nature
    through imagination and meditation.
   
    Such formalisation may provide a means to
    increased intimacy with nature for some
    practitioners, but it surely operates as a
    distancing mechanism for many others, and
    it certainly removes from Wicca the
    influence of its esoteric heritage. If
    figurative language and ritual are used
    always to point to something beyond human
    experience-if a walk in the woods always
    necessitates a glimpse of dryads and
    nymphs, if rituals always necessitate a
    yearning towards the divine-does this then
    risk removing the awe and wonder from
    nature herself? The Wiccan circle, it is
    claimed, exists as a space 'between the
    worlds', between the divine realm and the
    human. An over-emphasis on that which lies
    beyond, that which is above, i.e. the divine,
    may therefore miss the means by which that
    beyond might be approached, decoded, and
    known (in the sense of gnosis), i.e. through
    nature, through that which is below. Too
    much 'heaven' and not enough 'earth'
    encompasses far more than a superficial
    response to the environmental crises
    affecting both us and nature. As Nasr goes
    to some lengths to point out:
    There is need to rediscover those laws and
    principles governing human ethics as well
    as the cosmos, to bring out the
    interconnectedness between man and nature
    in the light of the Divine, an interaction not
    based on sentimentality or even ethical
    concern related to the realm of action
    alone, but one founded upon a knowledge
    whose forgetting has now brought human
    beings to the edge of the precipice of
    annihilation of both the natural order and
    themselves (1996: 223).
    Activism, it seems, is not enough -- Wicca
    needs to go deeper and have a knowledge
    base of the natural order to which it so often
    only pays lip service. So, to paraphrase
    Hanegraaff's question posed earlier in this
    paper, does Wicca produce merely a shallow
    caricature of profound teachings? How is
    living Nature actually manifest in Wiccan
    understanding and practice?
   
    How does Nature manifest itself
    in Wiccan understanding?
   
    The veneration of nature in Wicca, the
    concern for the earth as deity, and the
    pantheism of seeing the divine in all of
    nature has led Wiccans to maintain an
    attitude of reverence for the wild, untamed
    countryside on the one hand, and of sadness
    or revulsion at human estrangement from
    this ideal, living in towns and cities away
    from the land, on the other.
   
    For some Wiccans, veneration of nature and
    identification as 'Wiccan' and/or 'Pagan'
    manifests as a romantic attachment to the
    countryside, a dream of living away from
    the towns and nurturing a closer relationship
    with nature. For a few, direct action against
    the destruction of the environment-at road
    protests, proposed building sites,
    Manchester Airport's second runway, or
    simply to protect an old tree-is the favoured
    means of expressing their concern for nature
    and their belief that nature is divine,
    ensouled, or, at the very least, alive. Others,
    however, see nature as all-inclusive,
    regarding all that we do as 'natural' for we,
    as humans, are also part of nature. However,
    it remains a fact that most Pagans live in
    urban areas, and very few depend directly
    upon the land for their living: as Jeffrey
    Russell (1991: 171) pointed out, 'most are
    urban, as is usually true of those who love
    nature (the farmers are too busy fighting it)'.
   
    Wiccan use of nature imagery appears to be
    on a cosmological scale rather than located
    in a particular environment. There appears
    to be a resistance to putting boundaries
    around nature, yet at the same time British
    Wiccans try to link themselves with the
    energy of the land at quite a local level.
    However, this only goes so far-few seem to
    involve themselves with road protests and
    other areas of environmental activism, and
    Wicca is thus not heavily represented at
    environmental protests. A Wiccan view was
    expressed by a priestess in her early 30s,
    who told me:
    I do resent the occasional implication that
    unless you've spent time up a tree to protect
    it, you are not a true Witch Craft is one
    thing, eco-activism is another I do not think
    they automatically go hand in hand
    (Hweorfa, 15th October 1998).
    Dalua, a Norwegian Gardnerian/
    Alexandrian High Priest, told me (personal
    comment, October 1998), 'I personally
    prefer not to go as far as, for example,
    Starhawk has done, making the Craft into
    some sort of action group for political,
    environmental or humanitarian purposes (in
    most cases we have good choices outside of
    the Craft)'. Environmentalism as a part of
    Wiccan spirituality, then, is not high on the
    agenda. It seems to be regarded as quite
    distinct from religion.
   
    However, the portrayal of nature in Pagan
    and Wiccan rituals is often nothing more
    than imagery-of idealised nature, or of
    cosmological nature. This romantic ideal on
    the part of urban Wiccans has little in
    common with the reality of living on the
    land, where nature is anything but romantic.
    The Pagan/Wiccan ideal of nature thus often
    seems to stem from a genuine desire to be in
    harmony with nature and, to an extent, to
    preserve nature, whilst at the same time the
    cosmology suggests that nature is but a
    reflection of a greater divine reality. This is
    in keeping with the Hermetic maxim 'As
    above, so below', yet the impact of
    environmental awareness and activism begs
    the question as to whether Wiccan attitudes
    towards nature are relevant to the esoteric
    concept of 'living nature', or whether they
    are merely a religious rendering of secular
    concerns. In any case, the concept of 'nature'
    is itself diffuse and fractured, and it may be
    for this reason that Wiccan attitudes to
    nature as sacred incorporates nature as the
    universe/cosmos, nature as deity, and also
    human as part of nature. The refusal to place
    boundaries around a constructed 'nature'
    necessarily leaves the observer with the
    impression of a confused and ill thought-out
    response to the natural world.
    Conclusion
   
    To return to the role of imaginative fiction
    which I mentioned earlier, I would like to
    read you a passage from a book called Lolly
    Willowes, or The Loving Huntsman by
    Sylvia Townsend-Warner, published in
    1926. In this book, Lolly has moved to
    Great Mop. She is a witch, not a Wiccan,
    since Wicca per se did not exist at this time
    (although Margaret Murray's book The
    Witch Cult in Western Europe (1921)
    certainly did, and Townsend- Warner may
    well have read this). Lolly doesn't attend the
    sabbats because they are not sophisticated
    enough, they don't give her what she needs,
    and instead she goes to the essence of
    witchcraft which, for her, is nature. In this
    passage, she has been joined in Great Mop
    by her nephew, Titus. It is a rather long
    passage, but I make no apologies for that: I
    think the whole passage is relevant and
    helps to illustrate the points I have made in
    this paper.
    When they went for walks together he
    would sometimes fall silent, turning his
    head from side to side to browse the warm
    scent of a clover field. Once, as they stood
    on the ridge that guarded the valley from
    the south-east, he said: 'I should like to
    stroke it'-and he waved his hand towards
    the pattern of rounded hills embossed with
    rounded beech-woods. She felt a cold
    shiver at his words, and turned away her
    eyes from the landscape that she loved so
    jealously. Titus could never have spoken so
    if he had not loved it too. Love it as he
    might, with all the deep Willowes love for
    country sights and smells, love he never so
    intimately and soberly, his love must be a
    horror to her. It was different in kind from
    hers. It was comfortable, it was portable, it
    was a reasonable, appreciative appetite, a
    possessive and masculine love. It almost
    estranged her from Great Mop that he
    should be able to love it so well, and
    express his love so easily. He loved the
    countryside as though it were a body.
   
    She had not loved it so. For days at a time
    she had been unconscious of its outward
    aspect, for long before she saw it she had
    loved it and blessed it. With no earnest but
    a name, a few lines and letters on a map,
    and a spray of beech-leaves, she had trusted
    the place and staked everything on her trust.
    She had struggled to come, but there had
    been no such struggle for Titus. It was as
    easy for him to quit Bloomsbury for the
    Chilterns as for a cat to jump from a hard
    chair to a soft. Now, after a little scrabbling
    and exploration,he was curled up in the
    green lap and purring over the landscape.
    The green lap was comfortable. He meant
    to stay in it, for he knew where he was well
    off. It was so comfortable that he could
    afford to wax loving, praise its kindly
    slopes, stretch out a discriminating paw and
    pat it. But Great Mop was no more to him
    than any other likable country lap. He liked
    it because he was in possession. His
    comfort apart, it was a place like any other
    place.
   
    Laura hated him for daring to love it so. She
    hated him for daring to love it at all. Most
    of all she hated him for daring to impose
    his kind of love on her. Since he had come
    to Great Mop she had not been allowed to
    love in her own way. Commenting, pointing
    out, appreciating, Titus tweaked her senses
    one after another as if they were so many
    bell-ropes. He was a good judge of country
    things; little escaped him, he understood the
    points of a landscape as James his father
    had understood the points of a horse. This
    was not her way. She was ashamed at
    paying the countryside these horse-coping
    compliments. Day by day the spirit of the
    place withdrew itself further from her. The
    woods judged her by her company, and
    hushed their talk as she passed by with
    Titus. Silence heard them coming, and fled
    out of the fields, the hills locked up their
    thoughts, and became so many grassy
    mounds to be walked up and walked down.
    She was being boycotted, and she knew it.
    Presently she would not know it anymore.
    For her too, Great Mop would be a place
    like any other place, a pastoral landscape
    where an aunt walked out with her nephew.
    (Townsend-Warner, [1926], 2000: 159-
    162).
   
    Now, I do not intend to suggest that there is
    a male/female divide in responses to nature,
    though for all I know that may be the case.
    Neither do I want to suggest that all
    Wiccans respond to nature in the way that
    Titus does. Rather, the passage highlights
    two different responses to nature, perhaps
    one to nature with a small 'n', and one to
    Nature with a capital 'N'. Undoubtedly,
    some Wiccans respond to nature as Titus
    does, and some do not. It is a vexing but
    nevertheless exciting fact that Wiccan
    covens and practitioners are extremely
    different from each other, and therefore
    generalisations are not easy to either
    discover or to sustain. Yet, in studying
    particular forms of Wicca, we cannot help
    but take note of those questions which do
    not appear to be being asked, of those areas
    which seem to be taken for granted. Nature,
    I would argue, is one of these areas. As I
    have suggested, the Wiccan response to
    Nature is often ill thought-out and confused,
    and as academics we must ask those
    questions which are not always necessarily
    welcome. In this paper, I have asked far
    more questions that I have provided
    answers. In so doing, I hope to have opened
    up another area for debate, and to perhaps
    answer some of my own questions where
    time and space allows, in published form.

References Cited

Albanese, Catherine (1990), Nature Religion in America: