Water Wars: A Western mindset divorced from Nature
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Our modern, Western relationship with Nature, and, crucially, with water, is broken. This is the crux of the issue. The ancestral knowledge Westerners have left behind in their pursuit for “progress” and “civilisation”, was inherently tied to the animistic religious traditions of earth worship, where nature presides over man. In this worldview, religious, scientific, political, ecological, and economic systems are one and the same, with the protection and preservation of nature being the common denominator. Today, TEK is being studied and researched within modern contexts. Although some academics argue that this is because indigenous communities are “the targets of ‘socially inclusive’ neoliberal policies and protagonists in global anti-capitalist movements” and that the position of these social (pro-indigenous) movements in mainstream development is often ambivalent” (Laurie et al. 2005). Regardless of the intention behind the modern movement towards embracing IKS, the knowledge has always been there and it is befitting that it be re-adopted. The resistance by Western corporate and political stakeholders to validate and implement this vastly wealthy data pool is caused by the modern disengaged relationship of man with nature. This needs to be acknowledged and repaired.
Man vs Nature: The disconnect
The relationship between the Judeo-Christian God and Man has long been debated and revolves around the interpretation of the Book of Genesis 1:26-28. The verse reads “and God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” One interpretation is that man is indeed given complete control over the earth to exploit it at will, whilst the other suggests that man is given stewardship over the earth. But in both of these academic interpretations, dominance is conferred to Man, and his accountability is dismissed. Monotheism’s doctrine of man over nature, of subduing nature, is unique amongst the world religions. This is the disconnect.
In the words of historian Lynn White, Jr in his 1967 paper in Science, this is where we find “the historical roots of our ecological crisis. By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects.” Further, when the ancestral faith systems were rejected, so were the goddesses. For the pre-monotheistic people, “nature was not just a treasure trove of natural resources, nature was a Goddess and the whole of the environment was sacred” (Berkes 2001:113). The misogynist tint of the monotheistic religions erased the image of the goddess, of Mother Earth, of Gaia. “Not only has TEK been oppressed and marginalised as primitive knowledge, but native women’s knowledge and practices, in particular, have been denigrated and made invisible” (Nelson and Shilling, 2018).
The roots of pre-Christian animism still shallowly lurk beneath the veneer of the modern vernacular. The daily acts of personifying inanimate objects, such as the naming of a car or a boat, conversing with a plant, requesting the rain to stop, and the sun to emerge for an outdoor event … all are animistic hangovers. Animism (from ‘anima’, ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ in Latin), is man’s first belief system and is the acknowledgement that everything is energy. It is the belief that everything is imbued with energy, spirit, feelings, awareness, thoughts, moods, needs, and wants, and can be communicated with, directly, by humans, as all beings are connected to this energy. This personification of inanimate objects, plants, and natural phenomena comes very easily to humans. It was the first spark of the notion of a soul – a notion then taken and shaped by every world religion to make their own. In every pagan tradition, from Aristotle to Zoroaster, animists believe that all things possess energy, or a soul or spirit, either intrinsically or because they are inhabited. Prehistoric religion saw humans as being part of nature as opposed to dominating nature. It was a belief in a power beyond, but not necessarily above, or greater, that was evidenced by the first religious act: the burial of the dead, and even more, burials with objects denoting belief in an afterlife. Animism manifests in different ways: in the worship of spirit animals; totem objects; river gods; sacred places; holy springs; guardian spirits; amulets; and animal cults, such as bear and reindeer. It culminates in hunting rites and in burial rituals, and in the need for an intermediary such as a priest or shaman (Johnson-Bell 2022).
Water Worship
Earth. Air. Fire. And water. Of all the elements, water is the most sacred and magical. Wells, springs, streams, oceans, and lakes have been central to all pagan cleansing, healing, and birthing shamanic rituals. Water has the power to elevate every human endeavour into an act of worship. Temples and shrines were often built near water. And some form of the sauna has been used by the Siberians, Sami, and Finnish since 10,000 years ago. The Balts constructed holy bathhouses for rituals from birth to funereal. Many Creation stories begin with the words "at first there was nothing but water". The Vikings allegedly used wells for human sacrifices, and Odin gained his wisdom from drinking at Mimir’s well.
Water has spawned deities in every pantheon since the dawn of time. Water worship replete with water deities is present in every indigenous cosmology; both ancient and active. Every indigenous culture, including the Native American Wappo tribe of the Napa Valley; the Columbian’s Quimbaya, Chibchas, and Kalina (Caribs) cultures; Pre-Columbian Ecuador and its Las Vegas culture; Argentina’s Tupi-Guarani cosmology with their Mboi Tu’i, god of the waterways; and the Caribbean’s Erzulie in the guise of La Sirene. For the Slavs, rivers and springs were the dwelling place of the rusalki or the souls of those who died unnatural deaths. These water portals were thought to be thresholds between the realms of the living and the dead. The Celtic druids erected their temples near water and used water in their rituals. But “the spiritual worship of water was wiped out in Europe with the rise of Christianity. The new religion called water worship pagan and denounced it as an abomination” (Shiva 2016: 136). In AD 960 the Saxon King Edgar issued a decree forbidding the worship of fountains (Shiva 2016). Still, so profoundly was the relationship with water flowing through the collective DNA, that the North European pagan customs were absorbed into Christian rituals and reinvented in the guise of baptism, hand washing, and much later, spas and medical retreats.
Fast forward a few centuries - and bringing the topic back to wine a bit... in a recent interview I had with Nicolas Joly, the French winemaking pioneer of the biodynamic movement, he argued this Western mindset was also created by the West’s adoption of Descartes’ Cartesian education, which teaches that the mind is separate from the body. “We lost our connection to nature and adopted an automated way of thinking”. He adds, “with the twenty-two different permitted additives or 'tastes', today’s wines are artificial and cut off from all links to the soil”.
LJB, Founder, The Wine and Climate Change Institute
All sources are cited on the TWACCI site for easy reference.