When a natural disaster such as a hurricane or earthquake or even a disease such as AIDs occurs, one perspective that sometimes is adopted is that we are being divinely punished by a deity for some sin or behavior, and that we may even be hated by these divine forces or by nature itself. In this article, I'm going to argue that there is no divine anger in any natural disaster and that nature does not hate us at all.

Although in Paganism it is common to associate deities and other types of entities with different forces of nature and can be useful to do as a way of connecting with nature, it's also important to consider carefully the idea of a deity causing a natural disaster. For example, if a tsunami rolls in, is Poseidon to blame for it? Although Poseidon or other deities can provide a face for nature and its realities, this doesn't necessarily mean that they have decided to conjure a hurricane. While it would be convenient and easy to blame a natural disaster on a deity, it's important to consider that a storm, tsunami, or other natural force is simply part of the ecosystem we live in, and as such is part of the risk involved in living on this planet. This perspective does ask humans to be responsible for adapting to said natural force, and while one method of adapting can involve making a plea to a deity of your choice, it may also be helpful to invest in the appropriate safeguards one can take for handling nature.

Even without the personification of a God, some might argue that a hurricane is nature's way of expressing hatred toward us for defiling it. Given that global warming seems increasingly real and may be helped along by human activities, nature might hate us for all the disruptions that we cause to the ecosystems we inhabit.

However, even this tendency to attribute an emotion to a natural disaster is one that represents one of humanity's least admirable traits: namely self-absorption, the belief that everything revolves around us. Hatred is a human concept and trying to apply hatred as a sentiment felt by nature is an attempt to impose our own sense of what consciousness is on how the world interacts with us. The real issue here isn’t if nature is hates us. Rather, it is how we humans (pagan or not) often read much more into the actions of the universe than may be there, and how we read those actions is indicative of how we really feel about ourselves. This is important in considering the question of whether nature hates us, because what it really suggests is that any anger or hatred we attribute to nature is based on a self-absorption that continues to damage the relationships we create with each other and with nature. It is much easier to project our own issues onto what is happening around us and thus conveniently avoid taking responsibility for our problems.

I am not suggesting that nature, the universe, or deities in general are merely subjective projections of our psyche. I think they have independent existence of us, though I would also suggest there is a symbiotic connection between humans, deities, the world, and the universe. Certainly we humans cannot live without the Earth or a planet that provides similar conditions for life. I suspect the Earth could easily live without us.

A pathological approach to the concept of hate as it applies to nature examines it solely in terms of the destruction, death, and inconveniences caused by natural events. This approach emphasizes an unhealthy perspective of nature, namely that it’s a force acting against us as a way of punishing us. A pathological approach emphasizes a dysfunctional adolescent perspective about nature and even the associated deities, where nature punishes us for being bad children. It does not even begin to address how to develop a healthier relationship with this planet or the entities we associate as representatives of this planet.

A holistic approach to the problem of hate focuses on recognizing that projecting human emotions onto an act of nature conveniently polarizes and dichotomizes relationships with the planet and nature that should ideally NOT be polarized or dichotomized. By projecting emotional responses onto nature, we end up humanizing nature, without necessarily attempting to understand or approach it on its own terms. In fact, when we perceive an emotion such as hate in the cycle of nature, what we are really doing is obfuscating the relationship that we need to develop with it.

Any perceived hatred is a misunderstanding applied to the cycle of nature. A hurricane or tornado or earthquake doesn't need to be an act of hate. They are natural occurrences that happen to have an effect on the way we live our lives. The hurricane, tornado, or earthquake is essential to the cycle of nature, but attempting to place a human motivation or feeling for it ultimately displays a self-absorbed ignorance on the part of the people who do so. This ignorance can only be undone when those people attempt to understand nature from a different perspective than the human experience of attributing meaning and emotion to an occurrence.

A holistic relationship recognizes that we are part of nature as opposed to being separate from it. It recognizes that to really understand the human experience, a person needs to situate him/herself in nature, both externally and internally. When the person recognizes his/her role within nature, s/he no longer feels a need to attribute a human perspective to why a storm is occurring. S/he accepts that the storm is a natural part of the cycle with potential consequences that are positive for some parts of the cycle, while negative for other parts, with no malice intended.

To situate ourselves in nature involves recognizing two very important perspectives about contemporary culture, pagan, or otherwise. The first perspective is that the majority of us doesn’t have healthy relationships with our bodies and usually have not cultivated an awareness of body consciousness. The second perspective is that the majority of us do not have a conscious awareness of our relationship to this planet or the role we need to take, if we are to truly become its stewards. The two perspectives are intricately linked; the human body is a microcosm of the planet. It has its own complex ecology, and if it isn’t taken care of, that ecology can ultimately turn against the person. The Earth is also a macrocosm of the human body. The animals (including us) and plants are cells within the body of the planet. If we take good care of it, it provides us an environment to live in. If we don’t, we can become the cancer that destroys the Earth.

By changing our perspective of nature to a holistic perspective where we treat the human body as its own planet, we can begin to change how we relate to nature and to the natural disasters that occur. We recognize that the body is an eco-system (or systems) and that we can affect the life that resides in us in a variety of ways without any emotion informing how the life in the body is treated. Likewise, the planet has its own ecosystems, which also have natural occurrences that affect us because we live on this planet. An emotion such as hate doesn't need to be a part of those natural occurrences and when we remove it from the equation, we also start to change our pathological relationship with nature and the Earth into a conscious, holistic relationship.

A person choosing to enter into a conscious relationship with nature also enters into a conscious relationship with the body, which is part of nature. That person can’t ignore how his/her actions affect both the health of the body and the health of the planet. S/he realizes that s/he is a cell in the body of the planet and that his or her choices definitely affect its health. At that point, re-entering and becoming part of the cycle of the Earth becomes very important. The person begins to compost the leftovers, to mindfully consider what s/he is buying and who s/he is supporting with his/her money. At the same time, the person mindfully contemplates the state of his/her body and how s/he can take better care of it and all the life within it that supports him/her. S/he recognizes that truly accepting the natural rhythm of life involves letting go of preconceptions about forces of nature hating that person for existing.

The ultimate result of this is the realization that to be a true steward of the Earth, to be a healthy cell of the Earth’s body, we need to be healthy stewards of ourselves. By embracing a holistic perspective that accepts and recognizes the cycle of nature as it occurs within us and external to us, we no longer fear the storms or think that nature hates us. Instead the storms and nature itself are simply playing a part in the larger cycle of life, just as we need to. We can’t control nature, but we can be part of it.

We are given no promises of safety from nature or this planet when we live here. Like any other animal, we must make our way and take our risks. Unlike any other animal, we can consciously and knowingly take a role in the cycle of nature and do our best to take care of this planet we live on.

Taylor Ellwood is the author of Pop Culture Magick, Space/Time Magic, Inner Alchemy, Multi-Media Magic, and co-author of Kink Magic. He is currently working on a book about identity and magic. For more information about him, visit http://www.thegreenwolf or http://magicalexperiments.wordpress.com

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