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Ancient stone carving of a woman standing beside intricately decorated circular patterns and floral motifs, with ruins in the background.

Sacred places

idea

Why Indian Buddhism has gardens, not monasteries

Wishing trees, jewels, unfading flowers – what place do these sensual pleasures have in the ascetic life of Buddhist monks?

by Simran Agarwal

Tree with colourful rags and trinkets tied to branches, overlooking a scenic lake and green landscape in the background.

Sacred places

idea

Paganism is a potent force in Ireland’s conservation movement

Long-held beliefs in an ‘Otherworld’ inhabited by wrathful fairies are now driving a resurgence in Irish eco-activism

by Juju Lane

Photo of a rocky path winding through a grassy landscape with cloudy skies and distant hills in the background.

Sacred places

idea

Nan Shepherd delved into a queer erotic kinship with nature

In the Highlands, Nan Shepherd found an erotic kinship with nature: ‘The Living Mountain’ a core text for queer ecology

by Melissa Matthewson

Photo of a burnt forest landscape under cloudy skies with a person and child in colourful clothing in the foreground.

Sacred places

idea

Our children will need to find the beauty in our burnt planet

How will our children find beauty in a world rapidly breaking into what observers call a spectacle of unremitting loss?

by Stephen J Pyne

Photo of an overhead view of a swimmer in a lane of a clear blue swimming pool with lane dividers.

Sacred places

idea

I swim to think and to stay afloat in an ever-wetter world

‘The Beames my Bones, my flesh the plankes’: in pools, I glimpse the future of our terrestrial bodies in an ocean world

by Steve Mentz

Photo of a sunlit forest trail with a person walking on a rocky path surrounded by tall trees.

Memoir

idea

My three decades alone, basking in the company of a mountain

I live alone in a mountain cabin. Is my solitary life an indulgence, a form of madness or a route to spiritual fulfilment?

by Susanne Sener