I cannot wait to go back to New Orleans, and hopefully help to build something for the city, the way the city has already built a home in my heart.
Getting Involved
One can learn a lot from voluntourism and ecotourism websites. On the Volun-Tourism website, I learned that New Age publisher Inner Ocean pairs with the company Brilliant Voices to bring tourists to help conserve the environment and culture of Maui, including its spiritual practices. What a great place to feel good about traveling to! Mainstream travel guides never used to mention magico-religious rites as destinations, and if they did, it was only a listing of re-creations of “native rituals” geared solely toward nonbelieving tourists.
But things have changed! Even the upscale travel magazine Condé Nast Traveler, as part of a larger Pico Iyer article on travel to the holy land, inset a companion article that includes such information as how to make contacts to visit Candomblé terreiros in Brazil. I can’t say I’ve ever seen this before. Frommer’s New Orleans guide helped me distinguish ahead of time the voodoo sites that are the real thing and not just tourist traps, and they turned out to be right on the money.
Search the Internet for similar offers. If you are a student, check with your college to see what … may be available for funding your stay at an ecotourism or voluntourism location.
You don’t have to be in a movie star’s tax bracket to help out, either. Remember those free pictures my husband took? I’m a writer; I can publicize ecotourism—and that’s what I’m hoping to do with this piece. What talents do you have to contribute? And anyone at all could get involved with Travelocity voluntouring grants. Travelocity provides opportunities to apply for $5,000 grants for the purpose of “voluntouring.” Their very Pagan-
looking mascot, the Roaming Gnome, says “Make it Earth Day, Every Day.” Search the Internet for similar offers. If you are a student, check with your college to see what grants or internships may be available for funding your stay at an ecotourism or voluntourism location. You might even earn college credit and some work experience in the deal.
As Priestess Sallie Ann Glassman says, “It is the duty of human beings to repair, rebuild and transform the world.” We who belong to Earth-centered religions need to get right on it.
Resources
Dougherty, Margot. “Divine Destinations.” Condé Nast Traveler. September 2010. 78–80.
Herczog, Mary. Frommer’s New Orleans 2009. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, 2009.
International Ecotourism Society. http://www.ecotourism.org/.
Iyer, Pico. “The Magic of Holy Places.” Condé Nast Traveler. September 2010. 77–78.
New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation. “Voluntourism.” New Orleans Online. http://www.neworleansonline.com/neworleans/voluntourism/index.html.
Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. “World Religions; Neo-pagan Religions.” Religious Tolerance.org. http://www.religioustolerance.org/witchcra.htm.
Travelocity.com. “Travelocity: Voluntourism.” http://www.travelocity.com/TravelForGood/ca-guide.html.
Volun-Tourism International. “Supply Chain: Brilliant Voices, Brilliant Volun-Tourism!” http://www.voluntourism.org/news-supplychain23.htm.
Rev. Denise Dumars, M. A., is a college English instructor and writer who lives in L.A.’s beautiful South Bay. She holds seasonal rituals with her Fellowship of Isis group, the Iseum of Isis Paedusis, and participates in many Southern California Pagan events. She is currently working on a new nonfiction book and a novel.
Illustrator: Christa Marquez
Making Space Sacred
Jhenah Telyndru
In the ancient past, our ancestors may have looked with reverent awe out over the primeval landscape and saw the essence of divinity in all things. From the gentle murmur of a life-sustaining spring to the awful destructive energies at work in a hurricane gale, the often-capricious nature of Otherworldly forces revealed themselves in the very fabric of the world. Perhaps these ancestors began leaving offerings of food or intentionally created items in places where these energies were felt to be most powerful—especially beautiful vistas, strangely shaped stones, or deep foreboding cave mouths that filled them with an unnamable dread. These offerings may have been tokens of thanks for a bounty of food, a successful childbirth, or for surviving another winter. Or perhaps gifts were presented in hopes of keeping malevolent forces at bay, to ensure a positive outcome in the hunt, or to secure rest for the spirits of the departed.
In time, as civilization developed and humanity settled in cities and forged grand empires, people’s reverence for the gods and ancestors grew as well. Our forbearers erected megalithic monuments, constructed elaborate temple complexes, and dedicated shrines so sacred that only those who had been ritually prepared could set foot within their boundaries. As before, these places of veneration were built at sites deemed somehow sacred or set apart from the mundane world. Something about them was connected to the realms of the spirit, making it easier for our ancestors to communicate with the Otherworld, both to send their requests and supplications, as well as to receive the will and guidance of the Divine. In many societies, the rites of worship and the need for Divine intervention were so central that nothing could be done without first consulting the oracle of the gods or making a sacrificial offering in hopes that they could win the gods’ favor.
These same beliefs and practices played out on a smaller scale as well, where individual households and groups of homesteads dedicated their own sacred spaces, whether at central clan places where seasonal gatherings and regional celebrations could be held, or at an individual’s hearthside where tribal and personal ancestors could be supplicated and local gods honored. Over space and time, the divinities and spirits being honored at these large communal centers or personal household shrines have changed name and form, often birthing multi-layered traditions whose ancient roots have become completely absorbed into new belief systems. What remains the same, however, is the continued human need to set aside a special place for prayer, contemplation, and worship.
While the grand cathedrals, temples, and mosques of the world speak volumes about the devotion and collective histories of millions of people across the planet, it is the elegant simplicity of the garden temple and the fireside shrine that is the powerful practice
