PATTERNING THE COSMOS: THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION AND CONNECTEDNESS WITH THE NON-HUMAN WORLD
PATTERNING THE COSMOS: THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION AND CONNECTEDNESS WITH THE NON-HUMAN WORLD

Summary/Abstract: In many cultures the human body can be viewed as a connecting pattern for negotiating bio-social and cosmological constructions. The human body provides a cartography of the cosmos and mediates between the visible and hidden worlds, the domestic and wild domains. The body provides a way of embodying the non-human and sacred Other, thereby enabling the cultivation of empathetic responses to the non-human world. This paper examines how the religious imagination of traditional cultures maintains connections with the non-human world. It explores how the religious imagination merges cosmological and experiential elements of human existence via sensuous engagement with the non-human world. In relation to shape shifting, the paper contends that this kind of sensuous engagement is biophilic since it is based on a reverence for the non-human world and a desire to merge with it, so that all bodily thought and action coalesce with the non-human world. In this way, the biophilic embodiment may be understood as a phenomenology of mimesis.

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