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Concept

Nature worship

Nature worship
Artist is Charles Sprague Pearce (1851–1914). Photographed 2007 by Carol Highsmith (1946–), who explicitly placed the photograph in the public domain. · Public domain · source

Overview

Nature worship, also called naturism or physiolatry, is any of a variety of religious, spiritual and devotional practices that focus on the worship of a nature deity, considered to be behind the natural phenomena visible throughout nature. A nature deity can be in charge of nature, a place, a biotope, the biosphere, the cosmos, or the universe. Nature worship is often considered the primitive source of modern religious beliefs and can be found in animism, pantheism, panentheism, polytheism, deism, totemism, shamanism, Taoism, Hinduism, some theism and paganism including Wicca. Common to most forms of nature worship is a spiritual focus on the individual's connection and influence on some aspects of the natural world and reverence towards it. Due to their admiration of nature, the works of Edmund Spenser, Anthony Ashley-Cooper and Carl Linnaeus were viewed as nature worship.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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  1. 4. It produces them and makes no claim to the possession of them; it carries them through their processes and does not vaunt its ability in doing so; it brings them to maturity and exercises no control over them;--this is called its mysterious operation. 52. 1. (The Tao) which originated all under the sky is to be considered as the mother of them all. 2. When the mother is found, we know what her children should be…

    Laozi, The Tao Teh King

    States what Nature worship is; the author is tied to Nature worship in the knowledge graph.

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  2. Our interpretation of vegetation cults is supported particularly by the conditions prevailing in the original home of totemism, Australia. These cults here occur chiefly in the northern districts, into which there were early Melanesian immigrations; towards the south, they have gained but a relatively small foothold. The more northerly regions, as we have seen, are the very ones in which plant totems also are…

    Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind

    States what Nature worship is.

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  3. It is very absurd to attempt a discourse of the essence of natural things, and not to understand what is the power and sphere of Nature. If Aristotle be credited, Nature is the principle of motion and rest, in that thing in which it exists as a principle and not by accident. For all things that are conspicuous to our eyes, which are neither fortuitous nor necessary, nor have a divine original, nor acknowledge any…

    Plutarch, Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3

    States what Nature worship is.

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Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Place in the tradition

Part of Pantheism.

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