From Neopaganism to Ecopaganism 1

If preserving the Biosphere intact becomes the foremost value of human cultures, everything in the culture must fall into a new arrangement. Whatever can be retained is altered to fit into an integral whole. Basic categories are recast, lines are redrawn.

Ecospirituality will become the ethos of the culture. Whatever forms it takes will be determined ultimately by what works. I assume that a 'pagan' element must predominate, as it seems that anything like West Asian monotheism (Judaism, Christianity. and Islam) cannot be functionally ecological, but how much any existing religion or spirituality could work is open to question. Anyhow, people adhering to existing religions are unlikely to turn an objective eye on the hindrances latent within them. But if they become seen to be hopeless, revitalizing reform movements may be able to alter them sufficiently to make their cultures ecologically functional.

But if you start with ecology as fundamental, you can find what seems to have had a positive effect in the past, and use that to develop the kind of spirituality or religion that is necessary. But every person has a cultural bias, and finally, it is what works for that person that counts. You can't just intellectually construct an ecological religion and expect many people to embrace it, even if it is designed to suit the prevailing zeitgeist as revealed in depth studies. A process of evolution should be expected to be necessary.

My cultural bias is late 20th century Western, Romantic, Countercultural, Anglophile and Germanic-- and Pagan, in a broad sense. And what I have developed of ecopaganism has come gradually from interactions with my subconscious imagination and from wide-ranging research. I don't claim any authority for myself or validity for my work, but I believe that there must be something in it worthwhile for some people. For all I know, nothing I have come up with is really original, but if it contributes somehow to a general development of ecological civilization, if only in a small way, it was worth the effort.