Campbell - Transcendentalism and Private Ritual

As everyone knows, Henry David Thoreau was one of the leading figures in the Transcendentalism movement in the United States during the eighteenth century. Living his life working odd jobs and writing books, Thoreau felt that many people suffer from a lack of connection with nature and, in order to change this suffering, we must revert back to prioritizing the natural world within our own humanness. In my American Religion class a few weeks ago, we talked about how Thoreau would take his students out on adventures in the great outdoors to experience nature themselves, rather than just reading about these experiences in books. This idea - along with most of Thoreau's philosophical stances - really resonated with me and reminded of this Primal Religions class. Thoreau found value in what many contemporary Americans tend to overlook or neglect: an innate connection with the natural world around us. Similar to Thoreau's vision, primal peoples enjoyed a close relationship with nature and the synergistic essence of this relationship.

For primal peoples, understanding the surrounding world was not only a sacred act - it was a contingency upon which their entire survival relied. Without a thorough grasp on the movement of the seasons, on the behaviors of the animals, and on the cycles of the Earth, our primal ancestors would not have survived the frequently harsh environments which Mother Nature has provided. Primal peoples learned how to domesticate plants and animals for their own use; they cultivated crops and raised cattle for food, they cut down trees and tanned animal skins for clothing and shelter. Primal peoples were advanced in the expertise of knowing the natural world in which they thrived. Furthermore, these peoples practiced an unwavering respect for the beings around them, living and non-living alike. Whatever they used from the Earth was used properly and primal peoples were never greedy in the resources that nature had given them. With this mutually copacetic relationship between mankind and nature devolved a system of ritualistic and spiritualistic beliefs and practices. The reverence that these primitive peoples held for the natural world were reflected in the habitual procedures which they undertook within their daily lives. Holidays that defined the seasons were marked with a supernatural understanding of the cycles of life and death, and sacrifices were a commonplace facet in respecting the gods and goddesses who oversaw the natural order of the world.

Fast forward thousands of years later, Henry David Thoreau lived humbly and simplistically, largely relying on the land - and the help of good friends - for survival and sustenance. He completely enveloped himself within the natural world for most of his life, writing about his experiences in major philosophical works, particularly the well-known Walden. This text chronicled Thoreau's years spent in a quaint cabin at Walden Pond, just outside Concord, Massachusetts. Within this novel, Thoreau described his deepening connections with and understanding of nature's structures and functions, cycles and seasons. He also emphasized the importance of mankind in finding their place within the natural world once again, just as our primal ancestors had lived. I think that Thoreau and these primal cultures were definitely onto something. The natural world has so much to offer humans and, because we are apart of this natural system, we should be encouraged to see what it has to offer.