mother Earth

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Horticultural interpretation of the Iroquois mother earth in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau, Quebec. According to the creation story of the Haudenossaunee tribes, it emerged from the remains of the "heavenly woman" that the good spirit buried in the earth so that living beings never have to go hungry.

Mother Earth called in the religious sense different conceptions of the earth (in terms of environmental , land , natural or Planet ) as one holy totality with various supernatural - transcendental attributes . In many languages ​​of the world the earth is understood as feminine and the sky as masculine. However, it does not follow from this that the idea of ​​“mother earth” is a religious universal.

The term has changed meaning several times and is still used today in various readings that can only be understood from the respective context:

  1. There are numerous names from various historical religions, ethnic beliefs , folk religiosity and natural philosophy that can be translated with the term "mother earth". They all stand for the conception of a diffusely personified holy earth (in the sense of the physical environment) as the animistically inspired source of all life, which was worshiped religiously and cultically by people with very different rituals and customs.
  2. The forced confrontation with the conquest of the Euro-Americans in North America led the Indians in the 19th century to the formation of the expression Mother Earth (Mother Earth) as a strategically important collective term to describe the most diverse forms of spiritual worship of nature, which in some way relate to the earth ( in the sense of land and living space) had to unite under one term. Strategic because in most cases the term was only used as a striking metaphor in communication with the intruders and had no religious meaning itself.
  3. For many re-traditional North and South American Indians of the present, the Mother Earth philosophy that emerged in the 19th century (in the sense of a common Indian, earthly spirituality ) is an identity-creating term .
  4. The environmental movement in the last third of the 20th century expanded the Indian collective term to include other indigenous peoples and made the “somehow holy” mother earth (in the sense of the entire biosphere ) a mystical-romantic, transfigured symbol for sustainable interaction with the world. This was originally profane , but subsequently led to new spiritual connections.
  5. The masterminds of some esoteric movements in the West (especially Neopaganism ) placed the conception of a pantheistic earth deity (mostly in the sense of a planet endowed with spirit) as a new religious personification in their constructed worldviews .

Worldviews that focus on worshiping the earth are sometimes referred to as chthonic . This also applies to modern theories such as the evolutionary Gaia hypothesis .

Differentiation to "Earth Mother" and "Mother Goddess"

The terms Earth Mother and Mother Earth are often used synonymously in ethnological or religious studies literature. However, some authors differentiate between the earth goddess or mother goddess in the sense of a divine personification of the earth, who is attributed human-like traits, will and agency, and "mother earth" as a pantheistic or animistic conception in the sense of an earth endowed with spirit or divine power ". A clear assignment to the soulful earth or earth goddess is difficult in very many cases, since both aspects often play a role.

Classic requirement: The diffuse personification

The most elementary religious concept, which can be found in all religions, is based on the universal assumption of a human soul: From this follows the idea that all other beings should be animated just like humans. The extension of this thought to inanimate natural phenomena such as rocks, water, mountains, etc., which is known from recent hunter cultures , is known as animism . Just as the phrase about mother nature is an image that almost inevitably arises from everyday reality, the transfer of the idea of ​​the animated nature of all natural phenomena to the entire earth is obvious. The philosophical examination of this idea led to the further development of these ideas:

  • If the earth (or synonymously the entire cosmos) is thought of as the divine “primordial ground” of the world, as a “diffuse, divine principle” without human ( anthropomorphic ) properties, the idea is pantheistic .
  • If a personification is made with the image of human-like properties (shape and behavior), the idea of ​​a separate earth goddess "standing above the earth" arises who only represents the earth or who created it.

As clear as these two definitions may appear, the range between sacred and profane mother-earth conceptions is as varied (and often contradicting), which often do not allow a clear classification.

Prehistoric and Historical Religions

“I want to sing about the earth, the all-mother, who firmly founded, the oldest of all beings. It nourishes all creatures, all who walk on the divine earth, all who stir in the seas and all who fly. They all live from their abundance. […] Greetings, mother earth, wife of the starry sky. Kindly donate heartwarming food as a reward for my song. [...] "

- Homeric Hymns : To All Mother Earth (7th - 5th centuries BC)
Gaia with the god of eternity Aion and their four children, who embody the seasons, between a bare and a green tree. Roman mosaic, first half of the 3rd century

This excerpt from the Homeric Hymns describes the human-like ( anthropomorphic ) Greek earth goddess Gaia as a "non- anthropomorphic " personification of divine power in the form of the earth that can be experienced by the senses, for which there is some more evidence from Greek and Roman antiquity . Despite the common human figure of the earth mother, the Greco-Roman goddesses Gaia / Tellus and Demeter (from γῆ μήτηρ, gễ mếtêr , "mother earth") / Ceres are still regarded as "the divine earth itself", whose body produces life in that it sinks back after death.

The theory that there was a loving and reverent shyness of human beings of the fertility of the earth in the late collector and early farming cultures, which determined religion and cult to a large extent, is largely undisputed among the explorers of religion in the Paleolithic, who were often dependent on speculation . However, it cannot be proven whether this resulted in the worship of Mother Earth and which norms of action were associated with it.

In historical religions, “Mother Earth” as the female principle and “Father Heaven” as the male principle is a typical dual pantheistic concept: The couple is often considered to be the creator of the world. Mother Earth was worshiped in particular in Eastern Orthodoxy.

Ethnic religions

“ Grandfather and Father Uakan-Tanka , and Grandmother and Mother Maka, the earth. Think of these four relatives, who in reality are all one, […] Uakan-Tanka […] who flows forever and communicates His power and His life to everyone. "

- Black Elk , Oglala-Lakota

In numerous traditional religions of so-called indigenous peoples - especially among field farmers - the worship of an earth that was regarded as divine occurs or occurred; Here, too, she was sometimes difficult to distinguish from Earth Mother Goddesses. She is referred to here as a “fertility-maintaining female manifestation of spiritual energy”, often referred to as “Mother Earth” or “Grandmother Earth”. The term “earth” includes not only the earth, but also the waters, all living beings, the air and all known natural phenomena including all spirit beings within them.

The Yoruba also consider the earth mother Ajala to be the creator of human heads , but not worshiped as a deity. Rather, it embodies the principle of cosmic harmony.

Due to the popular Pan-Indian Mother Earth philosophy, the term is mostly associated with the North American Indians . In North America in particular, however, the idea of ​​an animated earthly unity was originally extremely rare. It was only the confrontation with Euro-American culture that led to a change in terminology, as will be explained in detail below (→ The identity-creating term )

North America: Before the European Landings

Before the European expansion , there was the classic mother-earth-worship with great probability among some soil-cultivating tribes (although not in a prominent role) such as the Iroquois and Yuchi , the Pawnee ( Tirawahat , "the universe and everything in it") and the earlier agricultural Absarokee ( Awaisahké , "mother earth").

Among hunters and gatherers, who more often worshiped forests and animals, the idea of ​​Mother Earth is rarely found or they do not play a central role. This applies to the Cheyenne , who used to farm before they were nomadic. For them the earth embodied the female-material principle, the sky the male-spiritual principle. The neighboring Lakota had a similar view, some of whom were also arable farmers until the 18th century (see quote from Black Elk ). In the mythology of the Okanagan from the northwest, the earth is the ancestor of all humans. She was first the human-shaped primordial mother from whom the god "Old-One" created the entire earth, whose body parts became the parts of the earth on which people now live.

Middle and South America

Medicine man of the Kogi people from Colombia, whose religion is based on the belief in "Aluna", the spiritual "motherly" power of the earth.

From the Caribs comes the idea of ​​the earthquake as a dance of mother earth , which was also the invitation for people to dance themselves.

In the Andean region, the concept of the pantheistically deified mother earth " Pachamama " is an autochthonous (originated there) phenomenon. The image of Pachamama as a small, wrinkled old woman that is common today only emerged through the influence of the western world. Before that, Pacha was a sexless principle for the universal cosmic fabric of the world. The expansion Mama was created in the course of European colonization by linking the principle with Christian devotion to Mary .

Basically, the indigenous Andean inhabitants of Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru still believe today that they have to treat the earth carefully in order to make it mild and gracious. For this, “her” is sacrificed with a celebration of thanks to give her new strength. The blood of sacrificed animals is given to her to appreciate her care for the animal population and to experience future fertility. Sprinkling should prevent the seed phase from being influenced by harmful influences from the soil and the interior of the earth. Rain rituals should also help to drive away the dry period. The life principle of the Ayni is closely related to the belief in Pachamama, which derives the practice of mutual support from the conviction of the connection between all energies and living beings. The demand for reciprocity implies that everything one has received from the earth or other people should be given back and prevents a monopoly of resources.

The belief in Pachamama reflects - in summary - the deep roots of the indigenous Andean people with the land and their dependence on the forces of nature. In worshiping Pachamama, people express reverence for creation and life.

The Bolivian President initiated a modernized form (→ Evo Morales "International Mother Earth Day" ) . In Bolivia as in Ecuador, Pachamama, in the sense of a life in harmony with nature (→ Sumak kawsay , “good life”) even has constitutional status; However, implementation is difficult not only in the private sector, but also in the cooperative sector.

North and Central Eurasia

In the so-called Siberian cultural area - which stretches from Lapland to the Sea of ​​Okhotsk - there used to be exclusively nomadic reindeer herders and hunters. Although the earth played no role there as a religious symbol of soil fertility, the idea of ​​a holy mother earth is documented among some peoples, for example among the Chanten and Mansi in the form of the Mongolian (non-anthropomorphic) mother earth Gazar Eje , the ancient Turkish earth goddess Yer Tanrı and the principle of careful handling of living plants in some other Turkic peoples of North Asia. The life-giving mother goddess is also known to the northern European Sámi , but of secondary importance. Overall, animal and hunting deities play a more important role in northern and central Eurasia (e.g. the old Turkish Toprak Ana or the Mongolian Gazar Eçe , which roughly correspond to Diana ).

South and Southeast Asia

Ritual objects for the festival in honor of Mother Earth at the Tulu- Adivasi in Southwest India

In India, Shakti denotes the female elemental force of the universe. The myriad of Indian goddesses are considered to be anthropomorphic forms of this force. In the Indian folk religions and some tribal religions of the Adivasi , however, diffuse ideas of a holy earth are associated with it, which is venerated as a mother and which go back to pre-Hindu times.

In the tribal religions of Indonesia there are numerous notions of earth goddesses who, together with a sky god, always form the "original parents" of the world. In most cases they are thought of as human-like personifications. An older form of worship is known from the Ngada from the Indonesian island of Flores, in which Déva and Nitu are seen not only as heaven and earth deities, but also as "visible heaven" and "real earth".

Australia

In Central Australia, people used to believe that a child's soul rose from a certain hole in the ground on a holy stone when a young woman passed it.

Popular piety and natural philosophy

“My tears are meant for you, my damp mother earth, damp earth that you nourish and water me, scoundrel, sinner, incomprehensible! Because while walking my legs kicked you. And I spat out sunflower seeds. "

- Prayer of forgiveness from northern Russia

In the popular piety of the Christian countries - especially clearly in the Slavic countries - one finds the divine principle of Mother Earth as an apparently very old motif. The Armenians, for example - the oldest Christian people in the world - still call the earth "the mother material from which man is born".

Religious customs are particularly long-lived in religious research, so that they often allow conclusions to be drawn about ideas that prevailed before the influence of younger religions. At the beginning of the 20th century, Albrecht Dieterich investigated earth mother customs around the world and discovered numerous rituals related to a direct worship of the earth as a divine being, also in Europe; such as the laying down of a newborn baby on the bare ground, documented from Roman times to modern times; the offerings to earth at births in Lithuania; the laying down of the dying on earth in some German areas (and in India). For him the roots of religious thought became visible here.

Based on the pre-Christian belief, the idea of ​​two complementary ( dichotomous ) basic principles existed in European natural philosophy until the 19th century : here the maternal natural principle in the sense of a malleable, unhistorical and unconscious matter; there is the fatherly spirit principle in the sense of the formative, developing and conscious designer.

Balts and Slavs

Among the historical Baltic people there was the idea of ​​the earth goddess Žemyna , who stood in opposition to the sun god Jarilo , whose rays woke them from their sleep and who mated them; In ancient Slavic mythology , the earth mother Mokosch and the sky father Svarog are found in a similar way. These ancient gods were symbols of even older animistic or pantheistic ideas. While the gods had to give way to Christianity, the elementary forms of worship have been preserved until very recently: So with the Slavs, the earth is Mat'-Syra Zemlja or Mat 'Zemlja for short - the "damp mother earth". Her body is the stones, her bones the roots, her veins the trees and herbs and her hair the grasses. Even under Christian influence there was again an increasing "humanization" related to the Mother of God. As a basis, however, very specific customs remained, such as the appeasement formulas when harvesting medicinal herbs or the custom of using earth to cleanse one's hands of sins, some of which have been preserved in the popular piety of the Old Believers in Russia to this day.

Indians: The strategic collective term

The lower figure of the Holding Hands Centennial totem pole in Sitka National Historical Park, made by Donnie Varnell, a Haida carver. Flanked by male and female salmon, it represents mother earth, which he linked to the Haida mythology as a Pan-Indian symbol. Varnell is famous for using anime or comic- style images in his totem poles .

"The earth is my mother, and I want to rest on her bosom."

- Tecumseh (1768–1813, Shawnee chief, quote from 1812)

This quote probably goes back to the influence of Chief Tecumseh's brother Tenskwatawa , who appeared as a cultural innovator and demanded "the worship of the earth" from his followers. It is the oldest known quote from an "Indian" mother earth idea. The popular Mother Earth philosophy of the North American indigenous peoples came into being through the confrontation with the “whites”: The very different animistic ideas were almost always directed towards specific parts of nature and not its entirety. The expansion to the whole earth arose from the impotence against the injustice of the land acquisition and was used in this context as a striking and emotional metaphor in communication with the conquerors.

The American religious scholar Sam Gill showed in 1987 in his book Mother Earth that the term only emerged as a common Indian idea through the confrontation with the Europeans and their apparently “earth-changing” way of life. For the Lakota (and many other North American tribes) the earth was considered not to be owned and therefore not for sale, as it is the source of all resources. Reducing this basic attitude to the term “mother earth” is understandable.

The fact that "Mother Earth" has matured into the central figure of the North American indigenous peoples over time cannot be denied, but it does raise the question of whether it was initially a religious symbol or "just" a strategic expression in communication the conquerors.

The meaning of supernatural feminine beings and the position of women were very different in North America, although the worship of motherhood is everywhere here and the transference to earth can be viewed as an ancient Indian archetype . Nevertheless, there were many differences regarding this veneration (biological fact, social meaning, ideological interpretation, religious-ritual integration or metaphysical transference).

As the Austrian ethnologist Christian Feest shows, the sanctity of the land - symbolized by “Mother Earth” - had political and religious aspects from the start. The term emerged out of necessity as the lowest common denominator of the religious diversity of North America. He subsumed the most diverse spiritual references to the earth, to the land or to different natural phenomena - as irrelevant as they were in part - under this collective term. Thus, for the first time, a common motif was created that allowed the multitude of different tribes to speak to the intruders with one voice.

Indian: The concept that creates identity

Drawing by Navajo Wayne Wilson: The picture shows a vision the artist had at a Hozhooji ceremony. This traditional ceremony serves to maintain the balance of all living creation within Nihima Nahasdzaa (Mother Earth) and Yadilhil Nihitaa (Father Heaven).

"[Credit to] all the strong dominant grandmothers of all tribes who did not let the spirit of Mother Earth die and who did not fail to whisper it in our ears over and over when we were little."

- Ed "Eagle Man" McGaa (* 1936), (neo-) traditional Oglala author

The drastic and partly forced cultural change (see for example: Residential School ) led the Native Americans to a rapid loss of traditional knowledge , to a decline or at least to a considerable fragmentation and alienation of the original religions and cultural ones , at the latest by the end of the 19th century Uprooting . By the end of the Second World War, many Indians who had moved to the cities or had served in the war, increasingly made the experience that the majority society did not perceive them as members of different tribes, but only as " the Indians". This led to a common Indian feeling of solidarity, which began to establish itself there after these people returned to the reservations and which led to the formation of an (additional!) Cross-tribal sense of identity, which is known as Pan- Indianism (→ also pan movements ). The “Mother Earth philosophy” plays a central role in this.

The Sioux authors Ohiyesa (early 20th century) and Vine Deloria jr. (1970s) made the strategic term a sacred symbol with their writings. In addition, the English ethnologist Edward Tylor , the American Hartley Burr Alexander and the Swede Åke Hultkrantz mistakenly elevated the mother-earth idea to the universal, North American concept and thus made a significant contribution to establishing this idea as a seemingly traditional tradition among many indigenous people in North America . Today, however, it is usually defended by its followers as a real tradition (see also: indigenization ) . The environmental movement , which has existed since the 1970s, promoted this development by making the Indians "guardians of mother earth".

Environmental movement: the mystical-romantic transfigured symbol

"Mother Earth" sculpture in front of the Schopfloch Nature Conservation Center

“Mother Earth is a living and dynamic system, composed of the invisible community of all life systems and living beings, interconnected, independent and complementary, forming a community of fate. Mother earth is considered holy in the worldview of the nation and the indigenous, indigenous, smallholder peoples. "

- Preamble to the "Law of the Rights of Mother Earth"

The fictional or at least drastically manipulated speech by Chief Seattle from 1855, with which the Indian-spiritual mother-earth concept is linked with the topics of the environmental movement, continues to enjoy great popularity . It was distributed worldwide by the WWF , among others . “The” Indian is elevated to an ecological role model in the sense of a noble savage and Mother Earth becomes a mystical-romantic, transfigured stereotype .

The idea of ​​a maternal earth is not only a motive for nature conservation, because human mothers are also often respected, but always have to provide their services at the request of their children and without consideration. This claim also applies to chthonic (earthy) cultures. In ancient Asia Minor, for example, it was said “that the earth goddess Cybele has to be raped again and again in order to force her to be fertile.” The thinking of soil-building ethnic groups with the concept of earth mother was primarily anthropocentric and not eco- centric, because Safeguarding one's own survival naturally comes first for all living beings. So all cults in connection with the earth first served the well-being of humans and not a disinterested protection of the environment “as such”.

The thesis of the "eco-spiritually thinking indigenous people" repeatedly leads to controversy.

  • The opponents of the thesis argue with actions of indigenous peoples that can lead to considerable impairment of an ecosystem, such as the burning of grasslands or slash and burn, as well as the extermination of animals such as the ratite Moa by the Maori or the ground sloth by the first Caribs. The “cliff hunt” for herd animals - in which the game was panicked and driven onto the edge of a cliff - is also popular. Premodern peoples would not have known any rational, sustainable nature conservation concepts, but only mechanisms that served people.
  • Proponents counter this by saying that there are many examples in which the supposedly irrational, mythological-religious protection strategies have preserved natural conditions much longer than all modern concepts. They conclude that the direct experiential depending on the country and its resources was life-determining and reflected therefore inevitably in ideologies had who sought a balance between people and the environment. There are also a number of modern environmental protection projects in which indigenous tribes play an important role.

Although the term mother earth is mainly used as a mystical, transfigured metaphor in the environmental movement and has no direct religious symbolism, there are also efforts that are linked to a spiritual meaning. The best-known example is the mother-earth rhetoric of the Bolivian government under its indigenous President Evo Morales :

After the failed UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2009, Morales invited to an alternative world conference of peoples on climate change and the rights of mother earth on International Mother Earth Day (which was previously called Earth Day ) . Thereupon he was named “World Hero of Mother Earth” by the General Assembly of the United Nations . The conference with more than 30,000 participants from more than 140 countries took place from April 20-22, 2010 in Cochabamba (Bolivia). A ten-page “Agreement of the Peoples” was drawn up in 17 working groups, in which it says among other things: “We propose to the peoples of the world the recovery, revaluation and strengthening of the traditional knowledge, wisdom and practices of the indigenous peoples, which are reflected in the way of life and the model of 'Vivir Bien' (Good Life) confirmed by recognizing Mother Earth as a living being with whom we stand in an indivisible, reciprocal, complementary and spiritual relationship. ”Following the conference Morales for Bolivia the “Law of the Rights of Mother Earth” (Law Nº 071 of the Republic of Bolivia, 2010 - see quote). The religious significance is evident in both documents. With the resolution on a world climate treaty dated December 12, 2015 at the climate conference in Paris , the term Mother Earth is included in the preamble of an internationally binding document.

As part of the revitalization, the mother-earth image of the environmental movement is partly having an effect on neo-traditional indigenous people (whose original way of life no longer exists): Some people now find their new religious identity in the stereotype of the nature-loving “child of mother earth”. Such ideas are, however, “taken out of context”, because they no longer serve to explain the world, no longer meet the religious needs of an intact ethnic community and no longer reflect the reality of life, as was the case in earlier times; Here, Mother Earth becomes a "largely meaningless religious idea".

Esotericism: the new religious personification

Neo-pagan altar with mother-earth figurine

“We must [...] become aware that Mother Earth (or Gaia) herself is a highly developed spirit that animates the planet. She is now impatiently awaiting her long-awaited ascent into the fifth dimension. […] However, before it can ascend, it must cleanse its planetary body of all the pollution of the past, the destruction and the debris that humans have accumulated on its surface. [...] "

- Lawrence and Michael Sartorius in their book "The New Earth"

While indigenous peoples originally each associated with the symbol of "Mother Earth" their very own ideas, relatives laid Western culture new meanings into it, the Sun did not exist before: either the idea of a (supposedly) radical Biocentrism (as provided by the environmental movement and its critics) or as a “dazzling”, newly designed spiritual- esoteric concept.

The pantheistic idea of ​​a holy, soulful earth - often called Gaia - is often used in the New Age and other pagan new religions ( e.g. in neo-shamanism ). It plays a particularly important role here as the source of all divine power. The human being is only one being among many in the universally animated, deified nature. Politically, these currents are dubbed ecological-national .

Since part of the modern esoteric scene is a market with competing providers who serve the increasing demand for the search for meaning, this must also be reflected in the various teachings: The "goods" should be quickly available and easily understandable and tailored to the needs of the users. This has led to a large number of currents in which elements of the most diverse religions (often those from which the greatest “mystical fascination” can be expected) were torn from their historical and sociological context in order to then combine them into new teachings. With this superficial and unreflected “patchwork process”, it is not surprising that misinterpretations of serious theories (see for example: Gaia hypothesis , morphic field ) , popular bestseller theories with highly speculative content (see for example: Michael Harner , Carlos Castaneda , Ufoglaube ) , but also forgeries can be accepted.

Mother Earth in early Christianity?

In connection with the Mother Earth issue, the “translations” of the Essenes ' scrolls were controversially discussed by the Hungarian philosopher Edmond Bordeaux Székely, who got access to the “ Essenes' Gospel of Peace”, which was supposedly kept secret by the Vatican , and who “mainly reconstructed it through inspiration tried. ”In these texts, which are said to belong to the Dead Sea Scrolls and thus belong to the ancient Jewish religion and early Christianity , according to Székely, for example:“ Mother Earth is in you and you are in her. She gave birth to you, she gave you life. It was she who gave you your body, and one day you will give it back to her. You will be happy when you get to know her and the realm of her splendor. ”Or“ […] the power of your mother earth stands above everything. It determines the fate of all human bodies and all living beings. The blood that flows within us comes from the blood of our mother earth. ”The earth mother is mentioned here in the same breath as the heavenly Father. As to the authenticity of this translation, Dieter Potzel (editor of the online journal Der Theologe ) asks whether it is actually based on older sources. According to Patrick Diemling , this is a new revelation that has arisen in modern times and is not legitimate. He writes: “Despite the imitation of biblical language, contextual influences can be read from these texts without difficulty for the scientist. Out of ignorance, however, a surprising number of laypeople regard neo- apocrypha such as the Essenes' Gospel of Peace as authentic witnesses of the early Christian tradition.

See also

literature

  • Albrecht Dieterich : Mother Earth - An attempt on popular religion. Second edition, BG Teubner, Leipzig / Berlin 1913.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieterich, p. 17.
  2. ↑ Manfred Kurt Ehmer: Goddess Earth: Cult and Myth of Mother Earth. Zerling, Berlin 1994, p. 12.
  3. ^ Wilhelm Kühlmann : Pantheismus I, published in: Horst Balz et al. (Ed.): Theologische Realenzyklopädie , Volume 25: "Ochino - Parapsychologie". Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 1995/2000, ISBN 978-3-11-019098-4 . P. 628.
  4. ↑ a b c d Karl R. Wernhart: Ethnic religions - universal elements of the religious. Topos, Kevelaer 2004, ISBN 3-7867-8545-7 . Pp. 10-24, 144.
  5. ↑ Walter Hirschberg (Gre.), Wolfgang Müller (Red.): Dictionary of Ethnology. New edition, 2nd edition, Reimer, Berlin 2005. p. 25 (Animism).
  6. ↑ Bruno Illius: Shamanism: The concept of "detachable souls". In: The concept of the soul in religious studies. Johann Figl, Hans-Dieter Klein (eds.), Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-8260-2377-3 . Pp. 96-97.
  7. ↑ Markus Porsche-Ludwig, Jürgen Bellers (ed.): Handbook of the religions of the world. Volumes 1 and 2, Traugott Bautz, Nordhausen 2012, ISBN 978-3-88309-727-5 . Pp. 974-977.
  8. ↑ Christoph Einiger u. Charles Waldemar: The most beautiful prayers in the world .: The faith of great personalities. Cormoran im Südwest Verlag, Munich 1996, ISBN 978-3-517-07900-4 .
  9. ↑ Dieterich, pp. 40, 80.
  10. ↑ Klaus Mailahn: The fox and the goddess: Findings about a sacred animal of the great mother. Disserta, Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-95425-770-6 , p. 23.
  11. ↑ a b c d Joachim Radkau: Nature and Power - A world history of the environment. 2nd edition, CH Beck, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-63493-2 . Pp. 101-103.
  12. ↑ Geo Widengren : Religious phenomenology . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1969. pp. 125-126.
  13. ↑ Andrei A. Znamensky: The Beauty of the primitives. Shamanism and the Western Imagination. Oxford 2007.
  14. ↑ Black Elk, Hans Läng (authors) and Joseph Epes Brown (eds.): The holy pipe. 9th edition, from the English by Gottfried Hotz, Lamuv, Göttingen 1996, ISBN 978-3-921521-68-7 , pp. 24, 33, 43, 47.
  15. ^ A b c d Suzanne J. Crawford (Ed.): American Indian Religious Traditions: AI. Volume 1 of American Indian Religious Traditions: An Encyclopedia . Dennis F. Kelley, ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara (USA) 2005, ISBN 978-1-57607-517-3 , pp. 563-566.
  16. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Christian F. Feest : Animated Worlds - The religions of the Indians of North America. In: Small Library of Religions , Vol. 9, Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-451-23849-7 . Pp. 55-59, 101.
  17. ↑ Thomas Bargatzky : Ethnology: an introduction to the science of the primary productive societies. Buske, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-87548-039-2 , p. 170.
  18. ↑ David Krieger et al. Christian Jäggi: Nature as a cultural product: cultural ecology and environmental ethics. Original edition 1997, Springer, Basel 2013, ISBN 978-3-0348-7771-8 , pp. 277-278.
  19. ↑ a b Dieterich, p. 13.
  20. ↑ Thomas Mooren: When religions meet: Believe and believe differently in a global world. LIT-Verlag, Vienna / Zurich / Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-643-90593-2 , p. 63.
  21. ↑ Johannes Winter: Religion in the Andean countries - Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador. In: Markus Porsche-Ludwig, Jürgen Bellers (Hrsg.): Handbook of the religions of the world. Volumes 1 and 2, Traugott Bautz, Nordhausen 2012, ISBN 978-3-88309-727-5 , pp. 467-471.
  22. ↑ Juha Pentikäinen (Ed.): Shamanism and Northern Ecology. In: Religion and Society. Vol. 36, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 1996, ISBN 3-11-014186-8 , pp. 153-182.
  23. ↑ Klaus E. Müller: Shamanism. Healers, spirits, rituals. 4th edition. CH Beck, Munich 2010 (original edition 1997), ISBN 978-3-406-41872-3 , p. 18.
  24. ^ Ralph Tuchtenhagen: Religions in Norway. In: Markus Porsche-Ludwig, Jürgen Bellers (Hrsg.): Handbook of the religions of the world. Volumes 1 and 2, Traugott Bautz, Nordhausen 2012, ISBN 978-3-88309-727-5 , pp. 327–328.
  25. ↑ a b Dieterich, p. 14.
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