The majority of my work occurs in Pagan spaces whether online or at festivals, conferences, and other events. I’m really grateful that I get to work in a field I love, and that my career brings me into contact with so many other fascinating people doing the work of rebuilding or flat-out building vibrant Pagan religions. One thing that happens when you spend a lot of time in specific cultural spaces is that you bump up against larger currents of thinking within the culture. Ideas that repeat across presenters and groups.
One concept I’ve repeatedly encountered is the idea that we need to re-enchant the world. This takes different forms depending upon the person speaking or the group in question, but the overall theme is that we need to make more places magical. We need to make more places spiritually special in some way.
I think I understand the core of what’s motivating this idea of re-enchantment. The Christian conversion shifted sacrality – the inherent holiness of something – from the landscape and other-than-human persons around us into specific buildings and contexts. A force that our human ancestors once encountered regularly as part of simply living in a given region became restricted. Transcendental spiritual experiences began to only be recognized and tolerated or “allowed” when they occurred within fairly narrow confines. Revelations were only acceptable if they occurred during a church service or specific feast day, or to someone who was considering taking the vows of a novitiate in a Christian religious order. The idea that sacrality was not in the landscape but contained within human-made structures and systems became pervasive.
It is no longer possible to fully disentangle the influence of Christianity on the wider culture of the United States and on the smaller and more specific culture of contemporary Paganism. This push for re-enchantment is an example of that influence and the way it leaves its mark on everything it touches.
What makes something holy or magical isn’t the category the location or item falls into, or what it’s physically made out of. What makes something holy is our relationship with it. The trees have as much sacrality as they ever did. Sacred groves were traded for cathedrals, sometimes literally when the invading religion built its temple on top of an already-sacred site. What changed was us, how we thought of those previously sacred places, and the actions we performed when near them.
The drive toward re-enchantment can swing too far as well. The other extreme of the pendulum’s arc is a form of pantheism where all places and objects are equally holy. This is not quite what people are reaching for either, of course. If everything is special, then nothing is. We do know on an instinctual level that certain places can be more sacral than others. I think the drive toward re-enchantment is a piece of deep cellular memory reaching toward the surface and struggling against a system that does not support it. Most people do desire contact with the numinous – we seek transcendental connection with that which is greater than ourselves. We know that the sort of spiritual experience we crave is less common in one’s living room, but for Pagans and many others, the standard options of churches, temples, and mosques don’t work.
I have a lifelong love of ancient history and often look to early civilizations for answers and ideas. Holy places ran the gamut in the ancient world. In pre-Christian Scandinavia, sacred groves of trees appear to have been one form of holy place. Cenotes are deep natural sinkholes and caves full of water that were and are sacred to the Maya people of Latin America. Here in the United States, certain mountains were and are sacred to some of our First Nations tribes. Caves appear to have often been sacred places, up to and including for our neanderthal ancestors. Human-created structures are also part of that ancient landscape – locations like Stonehenge and Gobekli Tepe come to mind.
With all of these locations, whether naturally formed or human-created, a big part of how we know they were religious centers is through the archeological remains. All of them hold the residues and traces of offerings: unusual or valuable items that were left by the people who interacted with these locations. Jewelry and other human-made objects, food, plant residue from species that do not occur locally, and more. What made these places sacred was not their specific form in nature, or the form they were given by human hands. What made these places sacred was the relationship between place and people. And it was the series of actions, repeated many times over many years, that formed the basis of the relationship. A single precious stone in an archeological site could simply be something that was dropped. A religious center is denoted by the layers upon layers of offerings present. The relationship between place and people unfolded over time and was regularly reinforced.
This is the other thread of Christian influence that is difficult to untangle. When people are attempting to deconstruct internalized Christian norms and ideas, they sometimes throw out more than is helpful. The mechanism of going to a specific location more than once and performing actions that increase closeness with the other-than-human persons that are present in that space is consistent across religions. Christianity doesn’t have a monopoly on this mechanism. We go to the mountain and lay flowers upon the stones. We go to the cenote and offer valuable objects to the spirits deep in the waters. We go to the caves and tuck sacrifices into the sacred darkness of the stone. And in contemporary times, we go to church and offer prayers and donations to that conception of the sacred.
Sacrality is determined by relationship. Relationship is determined by actions. The world does not need to be re-enchanted. But we do.
So, how do we re-enchant ourselves? How do we find the holy in the landscape more readily?
We must consciously choose repeated actions that foster connection with places that we feel are special. We need to expand that idea of special-ness to larger scale sacrality as well as smaller. And, we need to change the actions that support our relationship with special places.
Many people already engage with a pattern that is similar to our shared species history of visiting holy sites. I have friends who go to the ocean once a year, and for whom this is a vital part of their lives that must not be neglected. I know many people who walk specific paths in the woods, visit particular boulders and trees, sit beside certain parts of flowing streams or waterfalls again and again and again. I think we have the presence part down. Most of us already have a handle on what this kind of special place can mean. A place we go to every year without fail. A place we go to when we are struggling, or trying to make a decision. A place we go to out of remembrance for others.
Entering into relationship with a place isn’t simply a matter of showing up, though. This is where some familiarity with pantheism and animism can be helpful. Whether we’ve done it consciously or not, most of us already have places that feel special. The next step is allowing our understanding of those places to become more open. If a place we love is also holy, is also enspirited, then the relationship shifts from simply showing up and witnessing to engaging with the enspirited presence there.
We have examples from all over the world to inform how this could work. A relationship with a holy place usually begins with a gift. Something we bring with us specifically for the spirits of a certain place. The days of carrying pouches of frankincense and myrrh may be far behind us, but establishing a relationship through kindness and generosity remains. An offering can take many forms. Perhaps it’s reading a poem you love, or one that you wrote, aloud to the spirits there. Perhaps it’s an offering of clear water from a dedicated water bottle. Even better if you speak a blessing as that water flows onto the earth. Perhaps the offering is labor – picking up trash or pulling invasive species. Perhaps the offering is ecologically appropriate food for some of the species there. There are many possibilities. What’s most important is the idea of gifting or offering. Of providing something to a holy place that represents how you feel about it.
The next part is something we generally already do – witnessing or listening. Spending time in contemplation or prayer. What changes when we shift perspective and open to the sacrality of a place is how we listen. Similarly to the openness that allows a place to be spiritually special, we open to the possibility of messages, information, and ideas that fall into nonlogical, nonlinear, or nonrational ways of knowing. We consciously disarm the part of the mind that likes logic, rules, and absolutes and allow a more imaginative, intuitive, and empathetic part of the mind to take over.
As a practicing mystic who also operates within the practical daytime world, holding the messages we receive in mystical moments gently is a good approach. An insight can be nonlogical and also powerful. A message can be important for us individually but not necessarily something we should interrogate and share. Mysticism and connection with that which is greater than ourselves becomes more comfortable as we practice. If you decide to experiment with opening to the sacrality of a place, go gently and slowly. Allow yourself time to feel into this new way of being in relationship.
Good friendships are a balance of speaking and listening, and then reflecting on what we’ve heard in order to continue the conversation. This is true for building a relationship with the spirits of a place as well. We allow revelations, transcendental moments, insights and ideas to settle in our minds. We contemplate them gently, allowing for new and different questions or avenues of thought when we return to a sacred site.
The last step, of course, is repetition. That which is fed increases. Our sense of connection and closeness to a special place deepens every time we visit. The potential for transcendental experiences expands with every offering, every moment of contemplation, every minute spent with a place we experience as special.
Another aspect of finding holiness within the landscape that was more common in the pre-Christian world was the idea of large holy sites and smaller ones. For the ancient Germanic people, the sacred grove at the temple in Uppsala, Sweden, was an incredibly important site that was visited as part of the religious cycle of life. However, the landscape surrounding people in that culture also contained smaller sacred sites. Trees where all members of the family buried the placentas of newborn children, connecting the tree to the line of the family and protection of the farmstead. Boulders and small hills or mounds where offerings were placed regularly to support a good relationship with the local spirits. Waterfalls, springs, and streams that were likewise honored with offerings and sought out for guidance or help on a more casual basis.
This is probably the hardest thread to detangle. Deconstruction is challenging – it requires a shift in mindset. If even the Pagans are trying to enchant something that is already fully enchanted, then you know the programming runs very deep indeed. Concentrating sacrality into cathedrals resulted in a mindset that can’t even fathom or allow for the idea that something under our noses, something we interact with or are physically near pretty much every day, might be holy.
If we’re going to save this beautiful, broken world for our grandchildren and their grandchildren, one of the most useful things we can do is shift our perspective. One of the most useful things we can do is rebuild the relationship between humans and other-than-human persons. One of the most useful things we can do is begin to see the real, enspirited, sacred places that surround us. Once we shift our perspective, the actions follow. Sacrality is determined by relationship. Relationship is determined by actions. This is how re-enchantment actually works.
So, where does holiness live in the landscape for you? And how do you want to build a relationship that nourishes that connection?
This sermon was offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Hagerstown on October 26th, 2025.
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