Mother earth

The current researches on Taiwan Indigenous Literature are mostly from the perspective of minority writing back to observe the main stream. However, in this way the spiritual tradition in the indigenous culture is often ignored. Via the concept of “space” and “spiritual tradition”, this paper analyzes Miperepereper I Kalevelevan Aza Aris, written by female indigenous writer, Dadelavan Ibau, approaching to the space metaphor of myth, women and colonialism, and the system of medium’s bodily signs by which the group memory is reminded. Further, the comprehensive spirit and ceremonial writing in the text derive a different point of view from the worldviews of the Han people, their material culture and the interpretation of history. Regarded as a symbol of the indigenous groups, the spirit-oriented culture, through the complement and support of the past and present, will have a critical position in the study of the Taiwan Indigenous Literature.

Les décisions de justice qui confèrent une personnalité juridique à la Nature se multiplient à travers le monde. Cette notion, inspirée de philosophies éco-centriques, consiste à octroyer de véritables droits à des éléments de la Nature, qui deviennent ainsi des personnes juridiques à part entière, à l’égal de n’importe quelle personne physique ou morale. Cette proposition nouvelle est sujette à diverses interprétations, traduites d’autant de façons dans les droits nationaux. La question centrale qui est posée dans ce travail est la suivante : « Quelle plus-value cette notion apporte-t-elle en terme d’accès au droit de l’environnement ? ».
La deuxième partie entend dresser le tableau, esquisser le cadre juridique dans lequel cette question évolue. Elle répertorie les fondements juridiques qui peuvent être mobilisés lors d’une action en justice en matière d’environnement. En droit international dans un premier temps, puis dans les droits nationaux des trois pays sur lesquels nous avons choisi de nous attarder : l’Equateur, la Colombie et l’Inde. L’Equateur est le pays qui a le plus intimement intégré la notion de personnalité juridique pour la Nature puisqu’elle figure au sein même de sa Constitution. La Colombie consacre quant à elle la notion à demi-mots dans ses textes de lois, et à voix haute lors de décisions judiciaires. Alors qu’en Inde, c’est la décision qui précède la loi.
La troisième partie se concentre en détail sur les éléments qui différencient les pays qui adoptent l’idée de personnalité juridique pour la Nature et ceux qui ne le font pas. Trois sous-questions sont posées quant à l’octroi d’une personnalité juridique à la Nature. La première est de savoir si elle implique une définition plus large de ceux et celles qui peuvent en exiger la protection dans le chef des pays qui adoptent la notion. On remarque que l’intérêt à agir est considéré plus largement, entre autre parce que l’intérêt collectif est pris en compte et que tous les citoyens sont a priori concernés. En Equateur, il est possible de se présenter au nom de la Nature. En Colombie, de nombreux mécanismes ainsi que le droit à un environnement sain garantissent une grande implication des citoyens. En Inde, il existe un statut spécial de représentant et de citoyen ainsi qu’une interprétation large du droit à la vie. La deuxième sous-question concerne les juridictions susceptibles d'en assurer la protection. En Inde, un « tribunal vert » a été créé. Ailleurs, les juridictions demeurent plutôt classiques, mais s’emparent de ce concept nouveau. La dernière sous-question traite de l’existence de mesures originales. En Equateur, il est possible de demander l’inversion de la charge de preuve, des mesures de protection ne serait-ce qu’en cas de « doute », ainsi que des mesures au nom de la Nature elle-même. En Colombie et en Inde, la mesure réellement nouvelle est la mise sur pied d’un système de gardiennage ou de tutorat pour la Nature.

The Goddess of Laussel is carved into a limestone slab on a low relief in the
Laussel Cave in the Dordogne. The cave overlooks the Beune River in southern France. Her left-hand rests on a full abdomen that suggests a pregnant womb. In her right hand, she holds a bison or bullhorn * or crescent shaped moon that is engraved or incised with thirteen downward strokes. These thirteen notches may speak of a calculation or form of recording pregnancy and/or the thirteen phases of the moon as suggested by Alexander Marshack in The Roots of Civilization. He proposes that the thirteen notches are correlated to the first lunar calendar, as “it is also the number of the days from the birth of the first crescent to just before the days of the mature full moon.” (TROC: 335.) For people who counted moons, this process could have been “a menstrual or pregnancy record, or for a private period of initiation.” (TROC: 91.) For women who lived close to nature and the land, “it is not only coupled in its 28-day period with the cosmic rhythm of the moon, but also in phase with it (onset of menstruation one day before the full moon.)” (SOU: 214-215.)

An illustrated essay which explores iconography that may be related to the archetype of a fish- or snake-legged Mother Earth. Topics include Sirens, mermaids and melusines;  the Gnostic god Abrasax; the Zodiac symbol Pisces; the portrayal of Behemoth and Leviathan in Ethiopian magic scrolls; the Ouroboros; the Moon trump of the Tarot deck; the dragon and pearl motif; and, in the Book of Revelation, the Woman of the Apocalypse.

God & Apple Pie: Religious Myths and Visions of America
by Christopher Buck
Kingston, NY: Educator's International Press, 2015

Contents
Introduction, by J. Gordon Melton
Chapter 1: America: Nation and Notion
Chapter 2: Native American Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 3: Protestant Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 4: The Christian Right’s Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 5: Catholic Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 6: Jewish Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 7: Mormon Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 8: Christian Identity Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 9: Black Muslim Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 10: Contemporary Muslim Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 11: Buddhist Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 12: Baha’i Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 13: Conclusion: How Minority Faiths Redefined America’s World Role

Two sample chapters (by publisher's permission):
1.  Native American Myths and Visions of America (Chapter 2)
2.  Black Muslim Myths and Visions of America (Chapter 9)

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/God-Apple-Pie-Religious-Visions/dp/1891928155/

Introduction by J. Gordon Melton,
Distinguished Professor of American Religious History, Baylor University

Far from being an interesting additional topic for the religious dilettante, the discussion around the theological reality that is America, periodically bursts forth as an important item on the nation's agenda, from the place of prayer services in the White House, to the issuance of an annual government report on religious persecution, to the rise of contemporary terrorism. As one traces radical Islam, for example, one arrives at the writings of one Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian who spent some of his younger years in America, and came away with his own vision of a country mired in sin and decadence. He would posit America as the image of everything he hoped to escape in promoting the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Now, in all honesty, I must admit that over the years as I encountered all of the intriguing, even fascinating, ideas about America in the great cosmic scheme of things, I never got around to systematically gathering the different visions and trying to make sense of them in any detailed fashion. Thus, I have been more than happy to receive, and now with this modest introduction, pass along to my scholarly colleagues and the reading public the work of Christopher Buck.

During his years of observation and research, Buck has surveyed the spectrum of visions of America that have energized and motivated the America's religious community, and has selected from among them a sample that both (1) represents the spectrum of opinion about America and its importance, and (2) highlights the more important visions of America that have shaped and are continuing to shape the way we understand this country we call home. His work calls us to become self-conscious about the assumptions we use in our day-to-day movements that massage the ways we approach our neighbors, our colleagues at work, and the politicians for whom we vote.

Buck begins with the visions of America present at the founding of the nation, aspects of which still strongly permeate the culture today, and have found a new home among conservative Protestants in their innovative idea of Christian America. Amid the Protestant context, we often forget the role of the Roman Catholic Church, which became the largest religious body in America in the 1840s and is now three times larger than its nearest competitor. At the end of the nineteenth century, a controversy on Americanism would erupt around Catholic visions of their place in a changing world that would drive it from participation in the nation's public square for a half-century, and molded its reentrance after World War II.

And then there are all the other-than-Christian religions, from Ahmadiyya Muslims to Zoroastrians, all of which possess their its own vision of America that shapes their appropriation of life in the United States and guides their development as their place in the nation was challenged, then accepted, and most recently affirmed and even celebrated by the nation as a whole. We have watched as Buddhists have carved out a place as cultural peacemakers, Muslims have struggled with separation of religion and government, and Baha'is have tried to understand the communication of their founder, Baha'u'llah, with the presidents of the Americas collectively, and with 'Abdu'l-Baha's statements about the destiny of America in particular. All of this occurs in the ebb and flow of religious life. One day we envision the possible unity of America's religions only to be thrown up against the many harsh divisions, which motivates us once more to seek realms of agreement, which again highlights the array of issues that can drive wedges between those who accept the label "American" as part of their self-identity.

In conclusion, I can, as a scholar, reflect on the contribution that this book, Religious Myths and Visions of America: God and Apple Pie, is making to our understanding of the American mosaic and how various segments of the religious community have found their way to being American. As an informed citizen I welcome its information that allows me to empathize with and make informed decisions relative to those with whom I might align (or oppose) as I sally forth in the public square. And on a personal level, I welcome the author's invitation for me to meet anew the residents of my neighborhood, those who shop in the same stores I do, send their children to the same schools my grandchildren attend, and diligently work toward their own appropriation of the American dream.

J. Gordon Melton
Distinguished Professor of American Religious History
Baylor University

January 2015 — This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Il presente studio raccoglie in un repertorio sistematico e commentato le attestazioni relative a Gaia, Rhea, Demetra, Μεγάλη Μήτηρ / Μήτηρ τῶν θεῶν e Cybele presenti nell'epica e nella lirica greca arcaica (Esiodo, Iliade e Odissea, Inni Omerici, Ciclo Epico e poesia epica di età arcaica, poesia lirica); da tale raccolta sono emersi dati che finora, in studi di settore dal respiro molto ampio o, per converso, estremamente settoriali, non erano stati evidenziati o collegati o adeguatamente analizzati.

This paper summarizes our past researches of the pictorial representations of the Mother Earth myth and the separation of the basic iconographical types. Generally, the paper is not geographically cultural or chronologically limited. This means that we approach the phenomenon in its wider aspect, searching for its universal (transhistorical and transcultural) features. This is justified by the simple fact that the Mother Earth phenomenon itself possesses such a character, being universal for the bigger part of mankind. Yet, beside this principal openness, the focus of our research points toward the archaic cultures, i.e. those that had never, or not in a sufficient degree, entered the spheres of the cultures that are today regarded as civilizations. Here we have in mind the cultures of the Neolithic, the Age of Metals and the later centuries BC. We have divided the corpus of the pictorial representations of Mother Earth into several categories based not so much on the appearance but on the basic semiotic concept that generated them: namely (i) A female figure in a determined posture; (ii) Reduction and partition of the female figure; (iii) Geometrisation of the female figure; (iv) Zoomorphisation of the female figure; (v) Woman that appears from the earth.

Key words: Archetypes, Birth-Giving Goddess, Mother Earth, pictorial representations.

Summary
The impetus for this study is an unusual detail from the famous fresco composition The Lamentation of Christ from the Church of Saint Panteleimon in the Nerezi Monastery near Skopje, North Macedonia. In this scene the dead Christ lies in a rhombic field formed by the legs of the Virgin Mary, which are spread in thighs, angled in knees, joined at feet and fully covered by her skirt. The study also includes the figure of Rachel, shown in a similar pose, in the scene of the Massacre of the Innocents of Bethlehem from Marko’s Monastery near Skopje, as well as several representations of Gaia in the compositions of The Last Judgment from several churches in Ohrid and some other Balkan regions. The aim of the article is to trace the character, origin and meaning of the specific pose in which a woman is depicted with her legs in the form of a rhombus. The study attempts to discover the meaning of this iconographic element by analyzing the two essential components of the pose ‒ the  semiotics of the female legs, especially the spread ones, on the one hand, and the symbolism of the rhombus on the other. Its character and origin are revealed through comparison of the aforementioned artistic representations with analogues from other cultures throughout the world, and across diverse historical periods, stretching from prehistory to contemporaneity. There, the female body is in various ways combined with the figure of the rhombus: supplemented by a rhombus, completely metamorphosed into a rhombus or shown with legs that themselves form a rhombus. The study also includes the variants of the previously introduced combinations in which the rhombus is alternated with a vesica piscis - a vertical ellipse with pointed poles as a more realistic symbol of the open vulva, which confirms the female connotations of the rhombus. Special emphasis is given to the Christian representations that include a similarily shaped mandorla, for which, within the frames of their own canonical interpretations, certain implicit meanings related to the female principle are also proposed.

Keywords: rhombus, Medieval corporeality, semiotics of legs, female genitals, vesica piscis, mandorla, Byzantine iconology, Virgin Mary, Gaia, St. Panteleimon ‒ Nerezi Monastery (North Macedonia)

Резиме

Повод за ово истраживање је једна необична појединост на чувеној фресци Оплакивање Христа у цркви Светог Пантелејмона у манастиру Нерези код Скопља (Северна Македонија). У овој сцени мртви Христос лежи у пољу у облику ромба који формирају ноге Богородице, с раширеним коленима, спојеним сто- палима и у потпуности покривене њеном хаљином. У истраживање су укључени и фигура Рахеле, приказане у сличној пози, у сцени Покољ витлејемске деце у Марковом манастиру код Скопља, и неколико представа Гее у композицији Страшног суда. Циљ чланка јесте да се одреде карактер, порекло и значење специфичне позе у којој се жена приказује с раширеним бедрима и коленима, те спојеним стопалима, при чему њене ноге обликују фигуру ромба. Начињен је покушај да се открије значење овог иконографског елемента посредством анализе две главне компоненте ове позе – семиотике женских ногу, посебно раширених, с једне стране, и симболике ромба, с друге. До његовог карактера и порекла се долази поређењем поменутих ликовних представа с аналогијама присутним у другим културама које потичу из разних делова света и из разних периода, од праисторије до савременог фолклора. На њима се тело жене на раз- не начине комбинује с ромбом: допуњава се ромбом, у целини је трансформисано ромбом или је приказано с ногама које чине облик ромба. У рад су укључене варијанте поменутих комбинација у којима се ромб замењује с фигуром vesica piscis (рибљег мехура), у облику вертикалне елипсе са зашиљеним половима, што је реалистичнији симбол отворене вулве, што потврђује феминина значења ромба. Посебно су наглашене хришћанске представе које укључују мандорлу с истим обликом, за коју су предложена извесна имплицитна значења везана за женско начело, у оквирима њихових канонских интерпретација.

Кључне речи: ромб, средњовековна телесност, семиотика ногу, женске гениталије, vesica piscis, мандорла, византијска иконологија, Богородица, Геа, Свети Пантелејмон – Манастир Нерези (Сверена Македонија)

Die Ausstellung ist Ergebnis eines Kooperationsprojektes des Kunstgeschichtlichen Seminars der Universität Hamburg, der Forschungsstelle Naturbilder/Images of Nature, der Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg (SUB) sowie der Kunstsammlung der Universität Göttingen unter Leitung von Iris Wenderholm und Maurice Saß. Vom 22. Oktober 2017 bis 2. September 2018 wurden mehr als 100 Kupferwerke aus den Hamburger und Göttinger Beständen in der Kunstsammlung der Universität Göttingen gezeigt. In dieser Ausstellung stellte die SUB ihre Bestände zum Thema auch dem Hamburger Publikum vor.

Humanity is on the threshold of recognizing the fundamental error in its view of life and death. Both death as well as active life is necessary to the vital formation of a larger, more essential whole. In this paper, I apply the sociology of knowledge and change as it pertains to death and focus on ways in which we can step outside its traditional frameworks and limitations. I also discuss topics related to death such as birth, aging, sickness, and war, and examine cultural differences in attitudes toward death. I offer varying perspectives including the Buddhist view and from these draw implications and conclusions. I apply the lenses of contemporary social scientists such as Edgar Morin, Kenneth Gergen, Edward Stewart, Milton Bennett, Mary Catherine Bateson, E. Doyle McCarthy, Philip Slater, and Piotr Sztompka. To these I add other relevant passages from the writings and speeches of key thinkers on the topic of death, in particular, Buddhist philosopher, peacebuilder, and educator, Daisaku Ikeda. To construct a more humanistic and sustainable view of life, it is first of all crucial to establish a culture which perceives death in its larger living context as but one cycle in the expansive eternity of life.

Conference Theme Mother Earth, Mother Africa and Theological/Religious/Philosophical/Cultural Imagination As the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians celebrates thirty years of existence and impressive productivity, the fifth continent wide conference shall be held in Gaborone, Botswana in July 2-5, 2019. Given that the land is often constructed as female gendered and the oppression of women is interlinked with the oppression of the Earth; and given that it is widely acknowledged that we live in the era of global warming-which is humanly induced and of which many have also linked with anthropocentric religious/cultural/theological perspectives-the conference theme calls for research papers that interrogate the link between gender, land, race, class, colonialism, globalization and environmental sustainability. Research papers that are using various methods and theories; drawn from diverse religious, cultural, philosophical and theological traditions, are solicited to investigate the intersection of gender, religion and the environment, while analyzing the relationships between women and the land, herein past, present and future. Researchers may seek to describe, expose, interpret, reinterpret, theorize, reimagine the link between gender, religion and Earth oppression as well as propose liberating perspectives from traditions and sources of their choice such as African oral cultures, Quran, Bible, African creative works, World Religions, amongst others. Several volumes will be published, following the conference, as it is expected that contributors will receive and integrate constructive feedback from conference participants and through the process of peer reviewing. Interested researchers are invited to submit abstracts from any one of the following sub-themes:

O movimento romântico exaltou o natural e o irracional, a beleza e sublimidade da natureza selvagem e da noite, e a "Grande Deusa". Porém, a forma como o passado foi apresentado, representa mais os desejos dos modernos sobre os antigos, do que a representação do passado em si, a qual as evidências deixam mais dúvidas do que respostas. Para compreender o tear entre evidências históricas e fenomenologias sobre o tema, apresentaremos discursos oriundos do século XIX aos dias atuais, à saber: o resgate da deusa da natureza, de Apuleio, pelos românticos; a ideia dos acadêmicos no século XIX de que havia uma única grande deusa, representada e adorada como Mãe Terra; as descobertas arqueológicas de estatuetas femininas do paleolítico, neolítico, e da idade do bronze; o desenvolvimento do arquétipo da Grande Mãe na psicologia; a arqueologia de Leroi-Gourhan e a da polêmica Marija Gimbutas, que apresentou uma religião da Deusa, que se estendeu por toda a Europa, ao Oriente Próximo e à região do Mediterrâneo como um sistema ideológico coeso e persistente; e finalmente a perspectiva de Paolo Scarpi, à qual seria improvável que houvesse no neolítico uma ideia de divindade, portanto, o tema da "deusa mãe" seria um "mito" científico.

Palavras-chave: Paganismo; Mãe terra; Mito científico.

*Doutora em Ciências da Religião pela Universidade Católica de Pernambuco - UNICAP.

“Franks Casket” or the “Auzon Runic Casket” (7th century) has ever since been regarded as a reliquary, portable altar or whatsoever pious object else. Looking closer at the only biblical image, the adoration of the Magi, we find that our rune-master has filled the Christian with pagan contents. As we will show the chest is a hoard box from which a king handed out his gifts to his followers in his hall. The magic of runes and pictures means to fill the chest from which he rewards his followers and at the same to it is meant to procure a heroic life and, eventually death with resurrection into Valhalla.
The runic inscription is most cleverly calculated and could only be deciphered with the help of a special “Runic Calculator” designed for this purpose. Among others we detected a 10year solar and a lunar calendar over the same period of time, synchronized by a Metonic Cycle.

GOD & Apple Pie
Religious Myths and Visions of America

Two sample chapters (by publisher's permission):
1.  Native American Myths and Visions of America (Chapter 2)
2.  Black Muslim Myths and Visions of America (Chapter 9)

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/God-Apple-Pie-Religious-Visions/dp/1891928155/

From the Inside Flap;

GOD & Apple Pie
Religious Myths and Visions of America

Christopher Buck

Introduction by J. Gordon Melton,
Distinguished Professor of American Religious History, Baylor University

This book is about an unusual religious topic: the United States of America ("America").
"America" is, at once, nation and notion, country and creed, republic and rhetoric. This book is about Providence and principle--the relationship of the supernatural world to the world's superpower. "America" is not in the Bible, nor in the Qur'an. Yet "America" today pulsates with religious significance. "America" is a word that has taken on mythic proportions.

Eleven religions have been selected for their distinctive perspectives on America: (1) Native American religion (Iroquois); (2) Protestant Christianity (the Puritans); (3) the Christian Right; (4) Roman Catholicism; (5) Judaism (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist); (6) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons); (7) Christian Identity (White nationalists); (8) Nation of Islam (Black nationalists); (9) Islam (especially Radical Islamists and Progressive Muslims); (10) Buddhism (Tibetan and Soka Gakkai); and (11) the Baha'i Faith.

Over the course of American history, religious myths and visions of America tend to reflect an ever-changing American civil society, whether as a function of its social evolution or as a catalyst of it. The result is: Religions re-mythologize America. And: Religions re-envision America.

God & Apple Pie invites serious reflection on what it means to be an American, particularly from a religious perspective.

In the months leading up to the 21st UN Climate Change Conference, policy makers, pension trustees and academic thought leaders have been active devising new ways of fostering private capital stewardship and “green investment”.

In spite of pressures exercised by neoconservative circles in the United States and the European Union, Pope Francis insisted on the publication of a resolutely environmentalist encyclical calling for the preservation of “our Sister, Mother Earth”.

Neolithic Europe peaked in East central Europe between 5500-3500 BCE, five hundred years before the beginning of the Middle–Late Neolithic. In addition to the East central emergence, the Neolithic Age continued for another 2000 years in Crete and the Aegean islands until c. 1450 BCE. (Dates vary somewhat from place to place, such as Syria–Palestine Neolithic, 8000-4200 BCE.)

The mountain is one of the paradigmatic symbols of the primordial, unchangeable and eternal, thus becoming a personification/visualisation of the global memory of the surrounding environment and its inhabitants throughout the centuries. The purpose of this study is to elaborate some aspects of the complex mythology and symbolism of the mountain, using several Macedonian, Balkan and Slavic examples (the mountain as cosmic, i.e. primordial, elemental and equivalent, as an axis and pillar of the world, the mountain as a symbol of Sky and Heaven, the mountain as Mother Goddess, birth-giving goddess and hypostasis of the Goddess Earth, the mountain as a shrine, temple and home of the gods). This will be realised through an interdisciplinary dialogue emphasising ancient historical sources and archaeological finds and depictions, as well as through an exploration of toponyms, rituals and mythical stories (early and contemporary) regarding the mountain.

This paper is the expanded version of my 4th talk on Fr. Kappen’s Philosophy. It is based on his essay, “Vedic Orientations for a Relevant Ecosophy.” Kappen reads the Vedas in the light of the impending ecological catastrophe and points out three corrective principles to overcome the eco-crisis: the holistic, the matricentric, and the erotic-agapic.
For a revised version of this paper, see "Ecosophical Importance of the Vedas", in Sebastian Vattamattam, God Ungod Divine - Reflections on Sebastian Kappen’s Writings, ISPCK, Delhi, 2022

In her attempt to form an indigenous ideology of motherhood, Kim Anderson recalls a saying by her late “other mother/ auntie” regarding the history of the struggles of her indigenous people: “It all comes back to the three deadly c’s…Capitalism, Christianity, and colonialism!” These three c’s were the subject of Anderson’s reflections on native mothering, as empowering experiences for women, even in the presence of the three frameworks above. Anderson’s particular reflections on native mothering spiritualities, which were interrupted by Christian colonialism, gives us food for thought regarding the image of the Earth as a Mother. For firstly the Christian community must ask – how do we envision the Earth as a mother?

A Western concept of mothering images a woman expected to give endlessly and unselfishly, without thought of reciprocation. Such views are evidenced even in well-intentioned papal documents. Native mothering in contrast is supported by the native principle of reciprocity: that a mother must also be cared for and nurtured, and that one could not take endlessly from Mother Earth without detriment to her and the natural systems of life.

Moreover, whilst Western mothering in its isolated living can be a site of disempowerment, native mothering is acknowledged through ceremony and relating with the woman, as a metaphor for power: the power to create, sustain, and transform. Further, whilst menstruation is often seen as a curse in western worlds, native societies saw it as a reminder of the natural cycle of life. In consideration of these perspectives, this paper attempts to explore conceptual perspectives and uses of the language of “mothering”, “mothers”, “motherhood”, and the “feminine” in Catholic rhetoric, in turn affecting one’s views and ways of relating with Mother Earth. The paper hopes the explorations present implications regarding the reimagining of women’s bodies as sites of power, vulnerability, beauty, and respect.

This document provides a condensed overview of my book, A Jungian Approach to Engaging Our Creative Nature: Imagining the Source of Our Creativity.
From the book description:
Whatever that mysterious factor is that animates creative work– that gives rise to image, symbol, inspiration, guiding intuition and insights–our relationship with it is central to creativity. A Jungian Approach to Engaging Our Creative Nature: Imagining the Source of Our Creativity offers passage into a more fertile relationship with creativity’s mysterious source by performing that relationship. It engages the source in the middle ground of imagination, tending the images the source it offers of itself as relational overtures. Imagining the source is a mutual relational act.

A Jungian Approach adopts Jungian and Archetypal psychologies, which speak the soul’s native tongue of image, metaphor, symbol and myth. This speech, this style of consciousness, this poetic presence opens us to the source everywhere it lives.

Love and fidelity to our creative nature take us into the collective images, preoccupations and imbalances that alienate us. To heal these, we favor the archetypal feminine and attend our relationship with nature, cosmos, things and the body, the native dwelling of the living source.

This book is for those who stand at the threshold of their creative nature and those who have crossed it and simply must create to be whole. It is for those who desire to be more faithful to, and at home in, their creative nature. It is for those who seek a way to articulate their experience that deepens it. It is for those who seek not a set of procedures but a relationship out of which practical actions emerge organically.  It is for those who yearn for the source’s endless generativity to live more abundantly in their work. It is for those who seek epiphanies of the soul’s beauty that fan an undying fire. It is for those who hear the call to tend that fire, allowing it to spread until we see the soul everywhere and remember we are already home.

This book is dedicated to the source of our creativity, our heritage and our call.

The mountain is one of the paradigmatic symbols of the primordial, unchangeable and eternal, thus becoming a personification/visualisation of the global memory of the surrounding environment and its inhabitants throughout the centuries. The purpose of this study is to elaborate some aspects of the complex mythology and symbolism of the mountain, using several Macedonian, Balkan and Slavic examples (the mountain as cosmic, i.e. primordial, elemental and equivalent, as an axis and pillar of the world, the mountain as a symbol of Sky and Heaven, the mountain as Mother Goddess, birth-giving goddess and hypostasis of the Goddess Earth, the mountain as a shrine, temple and home of the gods). This will be realised through an interdisciplinary dialogue emphasising ancient historical sources and archaeological finds and depictions, as well as through an exploration of toponyms, rituals and mythical stories (early and contemporary) regarding the mountain.

In Indian thought, the earth has been accorded a divine status and is revered as a goddess. Given the reverence shown to earth in Indian culture, the unsustainable extraction of resources from the land is a contradiction. A discourse about the earth as a goddess who is divine and therefore indestructible often masks exploitation and neglect towards the corporeal earth. Along with this, forms of extracting resources from the earth are justified by narratives that can be traced to the historical conceptualization of the earth and woman in Vedic and Purāṇic thought. An earth-centered ethics that can be conceptually derived from an idea of reverence needs to exclude this subtle imbalance by distinguishing between inauthentic reverence to a mother goddess and authentic care towards the earth as an aging mother in her corporeal form.

FOR CITATION: SALEM, Hilmi S. (2019). No Sustainable Development in the Lack of Environmental Justice. Environmental Justice. 12(3): 140-157. DOI: 10.1089/env.2018.0040 ABSTRACT Environmental justice is defined in a broader sense as, ‘‘The fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.’’ In view of this definition, it is fair to say that no nation can achieve sustainable development if it lacks environmental justice. Sustainability or sustainable development is defined as, ‘‘The development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs.’’ Accordingly, it is really difficult to maintain sustainable development without having environmental justice. The acts of many governments (particularly those of industrial countries) have, unfortunately, resulted in poisoning of communities and lands, and in genocides of peoples and the environment. As we are concerned here with the environmental status in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), it is important to focus on the injustices and oppressions practiced by the state of Israel and its successive governments, army, settlers, and industries against the environment in Palestine. This article sheds light on the issues of environmental justice (injustice) and sustainable (unsustainable) development in the OPT, in view of the Israeli violations of international law and international treaties, as well as the local and regional agreements related to the environment. Israel, since it occupied the Palestinian territories in June 1967, has committed what is believed to be racism and genocide against the environment and its constituents (land, soil, water, air, and biodiversity). In view of the above, certain principles of environmental justice should be universally affirmed and adopted, taking into account the tremendous violations of the Israeli authorities against the environment in the OPT, in particular, and in Historic Palestine, in general. Keywords: Mother Earth, sustainable development, environment, environmental justice and principles, environmental injustices and destruction, environmental racism and genocide, Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, Historic Palestine, and Israel and its apartheid system

זהו מדרש על מגילת העצמאות, כחלק מפרוייקט "תלמוד ישראלי" בעריכת ישראל דב אלבוים

לחומרים ומידע נוספים על המאמר - היכנסו לקישור:
https://marianna.ruahmidbar.com/h-talmud-elbaum-b

For more materials and information on this item - go to the link:
https://marianna.ruahmidbar.com/en/e-talmud-elbaum-b

Abstract
In this paper, in order to understand if in Italian law there is some possibility of making effective the environmental protection with the recognition of Nature as a subject of rights, the author sets out to evaluate the basics, the steps that led to this conception in Ecuador and Bolivia. For this purpose, he examines the concept of Buen Vivir / Vivir Bien and how the Andean worldview influenced the laws of both Countries. Later, he analyses the rights of Nature. In particular, he observes that the rights of Nature cannot be subjective rights, but they can be protected by human beings, through the institution of representation and adequate actions available. Finally, he considers the ideas that the Italian legislature could draw from the Andean theories for environmental protection: inspiration to the legal systems of Ecuador and Bolivia, to recognize Nature as titulary of rights. This could provide an effective solution and solve the gaps in the protection in our legal system.

In times of greatest extremity, people cry out for their mothers. George Floyd, while being tortured and then killed by a white policeman, called out "Mama." Hearing this, many instantly wept in recognition, as this calling to the mother touched on the universal experience of infant helplessness, need for care and the hope for succor and intervention. In her remarkable poem "Weather," Claudia Rankine notes that the ongoing uprisings responding to systemic racism, police brutality and a gamut of related injustices are a continuing continuation of that crying out to a mother. This call is for the restoration of values of community, reciprocity, sharing, equity, caring, fairness, nourishment, love and continuance, which are very different from those of a father-first or patriarchal culture. Patriarchal values include authority, dominance, punishment and violent enforcement. These manifest broadly in the national symbolic father figure, Donald Trump. The 45th president stands his ground as a proudly unmasked proponent of white and male supremacy. His followers cheer the rule of someone with "balls"-tough, straight, manly and white, evincing a will to hurt, and with a sure sense of his own impunity. Trump famously bragged that if he shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, he would get away with it. I doubt he was thinking of that "someone" as being anyone like himself or his family. The same patriarchal values are manifestly operative in the death of George Floyd. The white policeman killed Floyd in full view of others. He must have known that a young woman was recording him. Nonetheless, he probably expected impunity as his birthright and because he was an official enforcer of the hierarchy.

Carnegie Mellon University

God & Apple Pie:
Religious Myths and Visions of America
Christopher Buck, PhD

November 17, 2017, 7:00 PM
Scaife Hall, Room 208

A Spirituality Development Month event

Sponsored by:
•  CMU Spirituality & Interfaith Initiatives
    (Division of Student Affairs)
•  CMU Council of Religious Advisors
•  Baha’i Community of Pittsburgh

This paper summarizes our past researches of the pictorial representations of the Mother Earth myth and the separation of the basic iconographical types. Generally, the paper is not geographically cultural or chronologically limited. This means that we approach the phenomenon in its wider aspect, searching for its universal (transhistorical and transcultural) features. This is justified by the simple fact that the Mother Earth phenomenon itself possesses such a character, being universal for the bigger part of mankind. Yet, beside this principal openness, the focus of our research points toward the archaic cultures, i.e. those that had never, or not in a sufficient degree, entered the spheres of the cultures that are today regarded as civilizations. Here we have in mind the cultures of the Neolithic, the Age of Metals and the later centuries BC. We have divided the corpus of the pictorial representations of Mother Earth into several categories based not so much on the appearance but on the basic semiotic concept that generated them: namely (i) A female figure in a determined posture; (ii) Reduction and partition of the female figure; (iii) Geometrisation of the female figure; (iv) Zoomorphisation of the female figure; (v) Woman that appears from the earth.

Key words: Archetypes, Birth-Giving Goddess, Mother Earth, pictorial representations.

Blessing the Source of Life harks back to the time when shrines were built near springs, the very literal sources of life for plants, animals, and humans.

The prayer “As we bless the Source of Life, so we are blessed,” based on a Hebrew metaphor which refers to a water source and set to music in a Jewish feminist context by Faith Rogow, has become one of the bedrocks of my Goddess practice.

In Minoan Crete, seeds were blessed on the altars of the Goddess and the first fruits of every crop were returned to Her. The ancient Minoans piled their altars high with barley, fruits, nuts, and beans, and poured libations of milk and honey, water and wine, over the offerings they placed on altars. Evidence of these actions is found in the large number of pouring vessels stored near altars.

FOR CITATION: SALEM, Hilmi S. (2019). No Sustainable Development in the Lack of Environmental Justice. Environmental Justice. 12(3): 140-157.
DOI: 10.1089/env.2018.0040 ABSTRACT Environmental justice is defined in a broader sense as, ‘‘The fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.’’ In view of this definition, it is fair to say that no nation can achieve sustainable development if it lacks environmental justice. Sustainability or sustainable development is defined as, ‘‘The development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs.’’ Accordingly, it is really difficult to maintain sustainable development without having environmental justice. The acts of many governments (particularly those of industrial countries) have, unfortunately, resulted in poisoning of communities and lands, and in genocides of peoples and the environment. As we are concerned here with the environmental status in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), it is important to focus on the injustices and oppressions practiced by the state of Israel and its successive governments, army, settlers, and industries against the environment in Palestine. This article sheds light on the issues of environmental justice (injustice) and sustainable (unsustainable) development in the OPT, in view of the Israeli violations of international law and international treaties, as well as the local and regional agreements related to the environment. Israel, since it occupied the Palestinian territories in June 1967, has committed what is believed to be racism and genocide against the environment and its constituents (land, soil, water, air, and biodiversity). In view of the above, certain principles of environmental justice should be universally affirmed and adopted, taking into account the tremendous violations of the Israeli authorities against the environment in the OPT, in particular, and in Historic Palestine, in general. Keywords: Mother Earth, sustainable development, environment, environmental justice and principles, environmental injustices and destruction, environmental racism and genocide, Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, Historic Palestine, and Israel and its apartheid system