The esoteric, occult, and magical roots of deep ecology have become increasingly interconnected with the growing popularity of witchcraft practices, neopagan worldviews, and explicitly spiritual climate activism and environmentalism.  These developments include specific foci on particular ecological concerns and crises, but such trends are equally exemplified by transdisciplinary dialogues in which holistic scientific perspectives intersect with diverse systems of belief. This special panel seeks 15-20 conference presentations to explore these connections and their influence on, reception by, and expression through popular culture in any and all of its manifestations.  

While the term “ecology” originated in the nineteenth century work of German natural philosopher Ernst Haeckel, he and his contemporaries were considerably influenced by esoteric worldviews, and earlier conceptions of naturphilosophie had enormous significance, relevance, and impact in the development of modern and contemporary life sciences.  Materialist worldviews have never completely dominated Western scientific inquiry into organic life, and nonmaterialist ideas have been persistently popular in diverse configurations.  Examples have included Haeckle’s own monism, the various vitalist theories popular throughout European Romantic and volkisch phases, and manifold resurgences of animatism and animism.  Conceptions of holistic interconnection and pervasive “living nature” have continued to hold intuitive appeal and remain present within the popular reception of science and its representation across genres of fiction. 

The New Age movement has embraced ecospirituality and environmentalism, and so have numerous streams of occult movements and magical activisms.  All of these in turn have produced a plentiful array of popular representations that range beyond the mainstreaming of concepts such as Lovelock’s “Gaia Hypothesis” into the normalization and even the wide acceptance of morally weighted claims concerning the unacceptability of species extinction, the obviousness of human impact on planetary ecology (particularly the climate, but also complex ecosystems), the inherent value of specific complex ecosystems (particularly when under threat, such as rainforests), and the valorization of ecological endeavor as heroic.  Simultaneously, opponents of such trends (sometimes in general and sometimes in particular) have frequently identified esoteric, occult, and magical contributions to these perspectives and critiqued them through their rejection of these influences; examples include the demonization of reverence for nature and the planet as idolatrous; the rejection of anthropocentric worldviews as antihumanist; the embrace of nonmaterialist biological theories evaluated (in some cases accurately, in others not) as dangerously adjacent to ethically and scientifically rejected ethnocentrisms and alleged pseudosciences; claims regarding resource expenditure and population dynamics are readily tied into conspiracy theories concerning depopulation plots reminiscent of famine plots and plague-plots of yore, with various global, liberal, and allegedly green agendas depicted as covers for the deployment of nefarious elite schemes to achieve total control over planetary resources and labor; the consideration of nonhuman sapience simultaneously an object of fascination, wonder, sentiment, and satirization.

Mainstream examples of esoteric, occult, magical, mystical, and spiritual expressions of ecology in popular entertainment fiction are many and varied.  They range from the easily memed ubiquity of Captain Planet to the cultural impact of The Princess Mononoke to the unprecedented audience response to James Cameron’s Avatar to the recent successful film adaptation of Dune, all of which are multigenerational in influence and reception, to the more niche but still dramatic popularity of representations of the “Gaia” hypothesis such as SimEarth, as well as the plethora of speculative fiction in which ecological concerns (or their esoteric, occult, and magical analogies and allegories) are either prominent or dominant.  Such trends across speculative fiction subgenres have indeed become frequent enough to produce “climate fiction” and to inform the formation of new subgenres such as solarpunk and lunarpunk.  The defense of ecological systems against human exploitation and predation has characterized much children’s and young adult fiction as well as adult speculative fiction.  Of particular note is occult anarchist magician Alan Moore’s authorship of the comic book series The Saga of Swamp Thing, from 1984 to 1987, which not only introduced mature esoteric ecological cosmology into that medium for the first time, as well as being the first major comic to ignore the Comics Code Authority after being denied its approval, but became sufficiently influential and successful as to inspire DC’s Vertigo imprint, which provided the initial vehicle for Neil Gaiman’s explicitly esoteric comic book titles and graphic novel production.   While esoteric, occult, and magical tropes in fictional media are often more relevant in symbolism than in content, the representation of holistically interconnected ecosystems as sapient and often self-regulating remains a fascinating example of fictional trope that is entirely esoteric in its content but frequently is not explicitly coded as such by audiences in the way that, for instance, explicit depiction of the spirits of plants, animals, and places might be.  This makes ecological representation a significant vector for the transmission of esoteric worldviews into genres that ordinarily eschew magic and the occult. 

Such animistic concepts are also so easily recognized, however, that the explicit embrace of esoteric, occult, and magical concepts in conjunction with environmental and ecological activism is unsurprising, as such concepts increase in mainstream popularity and acceptability.  The specialized focus of praxes such as the “Reclaiming” witchcraft popularized by authors such as Starhawk in the 1980s has proceeded through the increasing accessibility of esoteric herbalism, occult naturalism, and the magic of “green witchcraft” into “Green Hermeticism” and even more broadly into “Dark Green Religion.”  Academic investigation of these trends has developed from their examination in the context of pagan studies to focused scholarship on the intersection of witchcraft and ecospirituality in the context of ecological thought, such as the recent seminar at the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for Applied Ecological Thinking, and ecospirituality in general has sufficient impact to have elicited research by psychologists of worldview and belief.  

Perhaps most explicit in its direct appeal to popular representation and impact is the “deep ecology” movement itself, informed by esoteric roots from its inception and recently the subject of the documentary film Deep Ecology.  Green politics and ecofeminism have been openly expressed in contemporary magical activism on the massive scale of #WitchTok.  While the concept of “ecosophy” has afforded multiple interpretations, including the “ecological wisdom” or “ecological harmony”  of Arne Naess as the founder of Deep Ecology, as well as the monistic, pluralistic, non-holistic, rhizomatic ecological conception of Felix Guattari, it has also continued to develop toward increasingly accessible and mainstreamed “spiritual ecology.”  This broad movement encompasses such influences as the reception of ecological features of indigenous worldviews, esoteric cosmologies such as that of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, ecospiritual elements in Engaged Buddhism, and the Traditionalist environmentalism of King Charles III.  Its further developments have interconnected with esoteric engagement with sacred plant medicines, shamanic practices, environmental magic, post-human occultism, and mycospirituality, continuing to reach past the mainstream into the budding florescence of the “New Weird” in fiction (occasionally washing back into popular reception such as Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach, adapted as Annihilation) and experiments with entheogenic spirituality where magic, mysticism, science, and psychology mingle.

Like organic life proliferating relentlessly given the opportunity, the subtle growth of esoteric ecological thought has spawned manifold expressions and representations of practice so pervasive as to flourish into an interrelated ecosystem of their own, and so this special panel welcomes presentation proposals in any way related to this increasingly complex expression of esoteric, occult, magical, mystical, and spiritual engagement.  All relevant proposals will be considered and all suitable proposals will be accepted regardless of their number; should more be received than can fit into this single special panel, more related panels will be proliferated in order to organize all proposals into the most effective arrangement.  No proposal will be rejected due to arbitrary considerations of compatibility with others submitted for this or any other special panel.  Please direct all questions pertaining to this CFP, as well as requests for the main Esotericism, Occultism, and Magic CFP, to the Area Chair, Dr. George J. Sieg at georgejsieg@gmail.com .  If you prefer text or speech, he can be reached at (505) 440-2105.