Sacred natural site
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A sacred natural site is a natural feature or a large area of land or water having special spiritual significance to peoples and communities. Sacred natural sites consist of all types of natural features including mountains, hills, forests, groves, trees, rivers, lakes, lagoons, caves, islands and springs. The interest in sacred natural sites, from the perspective of nature conservation, lies in the component of biological diversity that they harbor.
Sacred natural sites and religion
Sacred natural sites are just one of many domains where religions or belief systems interact with nature. Most if not all religions have mythology, cosmology, theology or ethics related to earth, nature and land. Contemporarily, such connections are increasingly being revived or rearticulated through ethical positions expressed for example in statements that many of the mainstream faiths have produced, setting out their relationship to the natural world and their responsibility towards the planet.
Sacred sites associated with living cultures always have institutions and rules associated with them. These institutions are usually religious or spiritual in nature and may be distinct from other parts of society, while in some communities of indigenous and traditional peoples, sacred site institutions are closely integrated within society with little distinction between the sacred and secular, the religious and civil.
The vast majority of sacred natural sites were arguably founded by indigenous or folk religions and spiritualities, but many were subsequently adopted or co-opted by mainstream religions. There is consequently a considerable 'layering' and mixing of religious and other spiritual or belief systems. Within the larger mainstream religions there are many if not more autonomous or semi-autonomous sub-groups. While fifty per cent of the world's population profess to belong to either Christianity or Islam and many others are Hindus or Buddhists, 80 per cent of all people ascribe to a mainstream religion, a large part of which continue to adhere to at least some traditional or folk religion. Sacred natural sites are thus connected to a wide range of socio-cultural systems and institutions, some more complex than others, and to different dynamics of change and cultural interaction.
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