Editorial
Editorial Introduction: Waters of Life. Aquatic Sacred Natural Sites
Celeste Ray
orcid.org/0000-0001-7376-8756
; Department of Anthropology Environmental Arts and Humanities Program Sewanee: The University of the South
Abstract
Pre-existing and required for all known forms of life, water uncoincidentally symbolizes
life cross-culturally. Called the universal solvent for its chemical properties, water
also represents purification and the remission of sin in religions worldwide. Nineteenth
and early twentieth-century social scientists sometimes dismissed religion as
encoding folk science (inherited rationales explaining the existence and workings of
the natural world and society). Today, we instead examine the folk science within
religion as part of Traditional Ecological Knowledge. Religion can enshrine best
practices for water use and subsistence within myth and ritual so that these will not
be forgotten (see Lansing 2012; Ray 2020).
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
267452
URI
Publication date:
21.12.2021.
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