"There will be cues from the natural world that something is amiss."
September 10, 2024 9:08 AM Subscribe
Climate and Loss: Notions of Eco-Apocalypse in Zoroastrian Literature [PDF file] by Toby A. Cox of the Harvard Divinity School (Sino-Platonic Papers, Number 335, July 2023)
CW: It is a terrifying read.
From the article:
From the article:
Present-day Hamun Lake is believed to reflect the Frazdān Lake in the Bundahišn (Najari 179) or Lake Kayānsē in the Zand î Wahman Yasn (Saadi-nejad 7). If the former, it is described as having the ability to judge one’s moral qualities and is associated with Anahita, the Zoroastrian goddess of the waters and fertility (Saadi-nejad 7). “Frazdān Lake is located in Sīstān, it is said if a well-doer man throws something in it, the lake accepts it; in the case the man is not … the lake gives the thing back” (Najari 179).From the Denkard, 7.10:
[T]hat maiden, who is Gobak-abu, walks up to the water [...] ; she that is the mother of that testifying Soshyant who is the guide to conveying away the opposition of the destroyer. [...] [T]hrough giving birth she brings forth him who overpowers all, both the affliction owing to demons, and also that owing to mankind.From the article:
Through centuries of persecution, the Zoroastrian community clung to the hope this vision offered them — the hope that the final Saoshyant ultimately will lead the side of Ahura Mazda to victory in the last phase of the cosmic battle against evil, and the community will continue for eternity in a state of “perfect existence.”
What happens to that hope when the lake identified with the celestial one that is storing the seed of their savior disappears?
There is so much to say about this. First, a thank-you to runcifex because this could not possibly be more relevant to my interests.
It seems like an obvious question, how is religion thinking about climate change? But it's a surprisingly hard question to answer. If I were to look around at my local version of Protestantism, I'd say this group of religions isn't thinking about climate change at all, has in fact refused to conceptualize an environmental catastrophe. Christian eschatology is about battles and personalities, not the land. Maybe that is wrapped up in Christianity's portability, its virality; it can't be tied to what's happening in one particular country, one particular lake (or, we could say, it's too wrapped up in the political fate of one particular country that few of its followers live in or consider as a place with actual people living in it).
The Aral sea is a picture of human-driven ecological change in fast-forward. The satellite photography gives you pause; it makes you ask existential questions. It's different than, say, a rougher hurricane season. A difference in kind, rather than numbers or strength. In its individuality, it is easier to think with. You can see it. You think through a sea disappearing in the space of a single lifetime. It's graspable in a way that so much of the climate is not.
Eugene Thacker, in In the Dust of This Planet, draws a distinction between three different ways of thinking about the world. There's the world-for-us, the place we live, the place we "relate to or feel alienated from." But that's part of a larger entity, the world-in-itself--the material from which we try to build a world-for-us, although it may resist that work. But there is a third world lurking at the edges of our consciousness, haunting us: the world-without-us. "The world-without-us is the subtraction of the human from the world." What I find so odd is how much the perfect worlds religion pictures--whether streets of gold in Heaven, or in the case of this essay, the platonic ideals of the world before Ahriman started up all the trouble, and the place the world will come back to, its mountains flattened, its rivers turned to lava--are places without us. (Or, to turn to Laurie Anderson, "They say that Heaven is like TV...a perfect little world, that doesn't really need you.")
The world before and the world to come are strangely antagonistic--or maybe one should say agnostic--to our existence. ("as flies to wanton boys...") Where we are able to live is in the crazy chaos that comes from the "mixture," as this essay puts it. The fecundity of the non-ideal is our safe zone, but we are rushing the world to a horrifying perfection. We are building heaven out of carbon dioxide.
posted by mittens at 11:24 AM on September 10 [8 favorites]
It seems like an obvious question, how is religion thinking about climate change? But it's a surprisingly hard question to answer. If I were to look around at my local version of Protestantism, I'd say this group of religions isn't thinking about climate change at all, has in fact refused to conceptualize an environmental catastrophe. Christian eschatology is about battles and personalities, not the land. Maybe that is wrapped up in Christianity's portability, its virality; it can't be tied to what's happening in one particular country, one particular lake (or, we could say, it's too wrapped up in the political fate of one particular country that few of its followers live in or consider as a place with actual people living in it).
The Aral sea is a picture of human-driven ecological change in fast-forward. The satellite photography gives you pause; it makes you ask existential questions. It's different than, say, a rougher hurricane season. A difference in kind, rather than numbers or strength. In its individuality, it is easier to think with. You can see it. You think through a sea disappearing in the space of a single lifetime. It's graspable in a way that so much of the climate is not.
Eugene Thacker, in In the Dust of This Planet, draws a distinction between three different ways of thinking about the world. There's the world-for-us, the place we live, the place we "relate to or feel alienated from." But that's part of a larger entity, the world-in-itself--the material from which we try to build a world-for-us, although it may resist that work. But there is a third world lurking at the edges of our consciousness, haunting us: the world-without-us. "The world-without-us is the subtraction of the human from the world." What I find so odd is how much the perfect worlds religion pictures--whether streets of gold in Heaven, or in the case of this essay, the platonic ideals of the world before Ahriman started up all the trouble, and the place the world will come back to, its mountains flattened, its rivers turned to lava--are places without us. (Or, to turn to Laurie Anderson, "They say that Heaven is like TV...a perfect little world, that doesn't really need you.")
The world before and the world to come are strangely antagonistic--or maybe one should say agnostic--to our existence. ("as flies to wanton boys...") Where we are able to live is in the crazy chaos that comes from the "mixture," as this essay puts it. The fecundity of the non-ideal is our safe zone, but we are rushing the world to a horrifying perfection. We are building heaven out of carbon dioxide.
posted by mittens at 11:24 AM on September 10 [8 favorites]
elements, then, are seen not just as sacred creations but as extensions
⛲
posted by HearHere at 10:30 PM on September 10
⛲
posted by HearHere at 10:30 PM on September 10
« Older Reunion between injured cassowary chick and father... | 11 months - the status quo spreads Newer »
posted by y2karl at 9:40 AM on September 10 [2 favorites]