Living Mountains

Exploring sacred mountains around the world, these lectures examine whether bonding and reverence to a mountain is intrinsic to the mountain, constructed by people, or a mutual encounter. Chapters explore mountains in England, Scotland, Wales, Italy, Ireland, the Himalaya, Japan, Greece, USA, Asia and South America, and embrace the union of sky, landscape and people to examine the religious dynamics between human and non-human entities.

We take as our starting point the fact that mountains physically mediate between land and sky and act as metaphors for bridges from one realm to another, recognising that mountains are relational and that landscapes form personal and group cosmologies. Our lectures fuse ideas of space, place and material religion with cultural environmentalism and take an interconnected approach to material religio-landscapes. They fill the gap between lived religious traditions, personal reflection, phenomenology, historical context, environmental philosophy, myths and performativity.

In defining material religion as active engagement with mountain-forming and humanshaping landscapes, our research and ideas presented here provide theories that are widely applicable to other forms of material religion.

Space, Place and Religious
Landscapes: Living Mountains

9 LECTURES / 5 SESSIONS

Thursdays: 16:00 – 18:00 GMT
25 February and 4, 11, 18, 25 March

When you register you will be sent a confirmation
email with a code which will offer 35% off the book.

These Keynote lectures will be held virtually on Zoom.
Attendance is FREE but you must register using the links below.

Speakers and Registration Links:

THURSDAY 25 FEBRUARY

Frank Prendergast:
The archaeology of height – cultural meaning in the relativity of Irish megalithic tomb siting
Anna Estaroth:
How the shadow of the mountains created sacred spaces in Early Bronze Age Scotland
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcvfuqtqD8jEtfPB19IfJjpnkZ89zRjBImI

THURSDAY 4 MARCH

Jon Cannon:
Time and place at Brentor: Exploring an encounter with a 'sacred mountain'
Darrelyn Gunzburg:
Building paradise on the Hill of Hell in Assisi: Mountain as reliquary
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0lcOCtpjwjGdCPYERLCbxJkHG6Xc5s27Yw

THURSDAY 11 MARCH

Bernadette Brady:
Mountains talk of kings and dragons, the Brecon Beacons
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0ld-6gqjsuEtx-OAWpqer1QhQDKm-rwjlF

THURSDAY 18 MARCH

Fiona Bowie:
Mountains as sources of power in seen and unseen worlds
Amy Whitehead:
Appalachian animism: Religion, the woods, and the material presence of the mountain
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZctcuquqDwqG9Db3d8gMOYp_0RBS8kYNQpv

THURSDAY 25 MARCH

Lionel Obadia:
Are Himalayan peaks sacred?: The paradoxical and polylogical construction of mountains
Alan Ereira:
The Black Line of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta; a Red Line for a mountain
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAufuytpzwpHtaIIkNEZQ5rsmBlvDYyCqB6