Collin Gow, C.N.C.

The Religion Part 2

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"The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Naturotheology is a type of earth and nature-based spirituality or nature-based religion that I, Collin Gow, C.N.C. came up with. Spirituality, to me, is a way of feeling a connection, meaning, and purpose to the earth/world/universe/nature around you and feeling that you have an affect on it and that you are an important being with a meaningful purpose in it. Spirituality is being informed, being aware, feeling alive, feeling inspired, feeling natural, feeling happy. Religion should endow one with these feelings. For others, religion might provide morals, rules, and values to live by - the 10 commandments give Christians the moral rules to live by, for instance, (though we know the 10 commandments are a plagiarization of spell 125 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead) and the Golden Rule tells Christians to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". These ideas are important and can help really messed up people take more positive and righteous actions and get on the straight and narrow. If you're not really messed up though, if you are already a positive and good person, and if you have a hard time believing in the literality of religious texts, as some Christian denominations do for instance, and if you're a down to earth person, then there's not much left for you in some of these modern religions. To me, spirituality is not some high falutin, airy thing, that whisks you away from reality and into believing and having faith in some dead guy who probably never lived, who was likely a personification of the sun, and whose story must be an astrological allegory and allegory for the evolution and expansion of the soul/consciousness/psyche on its journey through life in a physical body. Educating oneself is spiritual, to me. It liberates the spirit/mind from too base an existence in too base a body and gives it power to improve itself and the body. Education allows one to grow - physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally. Educating oneself liberates the spirit from the shackles that the grotesque, wrong, erroneous, and inaccurate culture which we were born into in America put on us from birth and helps the spirit to reclaim it's true identity. Knowledge is power. Power over oneself. Power to affect change. Naturotheologists seek truth, wisdom, and knowledge.

 

One area we like to study is astrology. We seek to learn the ways in which the natural clockworkers - the planets, stars, and surrounding environment, influence our biophysiology, biorhythms, and behavior on earth through forces known and unknown. If you're weirded out by astrology, don't be. It's the most down to earth ancient science you can imagine, after all, planetology is an Earth Science. The stars and planets are real natural objects that exist in nature. They are part of nature. We should be aware of their influences. Too far away from earth to affect us you say? In the quantum world, distance doesn't matter, plus there may be an electrical and plasma related explanation for their effects as well. The moon affects the tides, women's menstrual cycles, and the rate of hospital admissions. Sun spot activity affects blood clotting and the percentage of lymphocytes in the blood. Just because we don't know how it all works doesn't mean it doesn't work. And if you research astrology in depth, it's truth becomes undeniable. If you're not convinced by it yet, then you haven't educated yourself enough about it, plain and simple. See my astrology videos here to learn more. 

 

We like astrotheology too (religion based on the stars and planets). Astrotheology studies astronomy, astrology, ancient cultures, mythology, and cosmology and often re-interprets modern Abrahamic religious texts from these perspectives. It recognizes the nature-based, sky-based, pagan roots of modern religions.

 

Not just stars and planets, but everything in nature affects everything else. We are not separate from nature, we are nature. We are intelligent, unique primates; intelligent, unique animals, not born into this world but born out of it and maybe also into it. We are not above other animals. We are animals. All animals are "gods" in the sense that they should all be respected and seen as powerful and all are the manifestations of spirit/consciousness/psyche/soul/light in matter. Everything is a god in that sense. Everything is divine. Everything is conscious. Everything is meaningful. Plato said that man in body is an animal, in intellect, a god. To be a Naturotheologist is to live life passionately and enchanted; in tune with, fascinated by, and captivated by nature, the seasons, the birds, the animals, the flowers, the mountains, the rivers, the springs, the oceans, the deserts, the forests, the landscape, and the rest of the world around you and see that everything is alive and imbued with consciousness. The world you live in comes to life when you study it deeply, observe it regularly, and play in it consciously. It comes to life and becomes meaningful and amazing when you know how it affects you and how you affect it and when you see how everything is connected. People who litter show that they have no connection to the earth they live on. They are literally littering on their home, Earth. But they don't realize it's their home because they're so disconnected and detached from reality. Naturotheologists are born conservationists, gardeners, ecologists, and environmentalists.

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We like gardening and foraging for wild edibles. These practices engage the caretaker side of ourselves as we care for our plants and water them each day. They also help us learn about where our food comes from and how it's grown and they connect us to the land. Gardening and foraging saves money and makes us more self-reliant and self-sufficient/self-sustainable, yet at the same time, the abundance we grow and gather makes us want to share it with others and be more giving. Caring for plants, caring for others, and giving gifts from the earth to others is spiritual. Plus, the healthiest food you can eat is the food you grow and gather yourself because it is fresher, you know exactly how it was cared for and/or where it came from, plus you can more easily get good nature microorganisms that haven't been washed 100 times before it reaches you at the grocery store. If we eat nature, we become nature. If we eat manufactured, processed, packaged, delivered food, we become manufactured, processed, packaged, boxed in, delivered people, not delivered from evil, delivered as in given into another's posession, as in, we are no longer ourselves. We are what we eat.

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Our spirituality puts emphasis on, not just the nature around us, but our own nature too. Self-analysis, self-knowledge, and self and nature awareness, or what we call Natwareness, and self-actualization, or rather self-naturalization, are all of critical import to expanding our consciousness and reaching our full natural potential. To self-actualize is to reach your full potential. To self-naturalize, then, is to reach your full natural potential and realize your identity as a natural being, not as a machine or robot. We share similarities with botanists, permaculturalists, biodynamic farmers, healers, medicine men, naturopaths, herbalists, shamans, native Americans, hunter-foragers, tribal people, primitive people, the ancients, our ancestors, and rustic folk. 

 

We like to study many subjects, including, the electric universe theory, the Gaia hypothesis, pyramid technology, primary perception, water memory, sacred geometry, ethnology, crop circles, quantum physics, recapitulation theory, cymatics, mythology, the doctrine of signatures, evolutionary psychology, natural philosophy, tai chi, biomimicry, biophilia, chaos theory, complexity theory, philosophy of science, Egyptology, UFO technology, paleoanthropology, astrology, syncretism, kabbalah, paganism, animism, pantheism, deism, shintoism, totemism, Mother Earth spirituality, Holism, panpsychism, Goethean Science, and other earth and nature-based ideas, practices, sciences, and forms of spirituality.

 

Numerology is also important to us. Numerology enriches astrology and life. It allows one to see a secret code in everything and see the synchronicities in events. It makes life magical, engaging, inspiring, entrancing, charming, fascinating, and full of wonder. It, along with astrology and other forms of divination/typology/self-knowledge/self-study, gives one the assurance and the confidence that one is going in the right direction and that all is happening as it should.

 

Naturotheology may share some elements with Natural Theology, but my discovery of Natural Theology came long after I came up with the term and concept of Naturotheology. According to Wikipedia: "Natural theology, once also termed physico-theology, is a type of theology that provides arguments for the existence of God based on reason and ordinary experience of nature. This distinguishes it from revealed theology, which is based on scripture and/or religious experiences, and from transcendental theology, which is based on a priori reasoning."Naturotheology is distinct from Natural Theology in that we are not linked to modern Christianity in any way as Natural Theology was by Thomas Aquinas. 

 

In abiding in, obeying, stewarding, and being nature, as well as being into the natural, the earthy, and the real, we like to eat healthy, natural, whole, organic, non-gmo foods also, to keep our bodies healthy and natural. We like naturopathic medicine, complementary and alternative medicine, herbalism, Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, evolutionary nutrition, philosophy of nutrition, comparative nutrition, homeopathy, medical astrology, ethnomedicine, food science, epigenetics, microbiology, zoopharmacognosy, One Health Initiative, and more. We also believe in studying and surveying as much of nature as possible, before choosing a diet. We think it is important and valuable to observe and study what other animals eat, among other things, and apply those lessons to our diets. We ourselves are animals, so other animals have things they can teach us. Wild animals, other countries, traditional cultures, and hunter-gatherers, are all relevant and often neglected sources of information we can use to improve our diets. It is our argument that they should not be neglected since health is nature and nature is health and these beings all live closer to nature than modern, western, civilized man. Click here to learn more about our dietary views.

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Here are some other types of earth and nature-based spirituality (some of which I've already mentioned) that may share similarities with Naturotheology (I've made up some of the words below - the best religion is the one you make up yourself, just like the best diet is the one you make up yourself):

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Animism

Pantheism

Paganism

Nature worship

Naturotheosophy

Naturosophy

Astrotheology

Numerology

Natural philosophy

Science

Indigenous religion

Druidry

Philosophes

Learning

Shinto

Hinduism

Sacred geometry

Mother Earth spirituality

Wicca

Kaballah

Primitive religion

Ancient religions

Native American religion

Ancient Celtic religion

Shamanism

Syncretism

Esotericism

Hunter-gatherer religion

Hunter-forager religion

Sun worship

Moon worship

Gnosticism

Buddhism

Taoism

Deism

Prehistoric religion

Folk religion

Mysticism

Zoomorphism

Pragmatism

Magic

Quakerism

Old African religion

Self religion

Transcendentalism

Ascendentalism

Researcherism

Healthism

Quantum Mechanicism

Pyrrhonism

Pythagoreanism

Spirit-science

Theosophy

Cosmic religion

New age (old age)

Intellectualism

Scholasticism

Academicism

Self-awareness

Nature-awareness

History-awareness

Educationism

Creativism

Neotheologism

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Naturotheology is not for everyone. I would imagine that Earth signs or Earth element dominant people would probably be the most likely candidates who would appreciate and agree with the concept. I could see Virgos, Capricorns, and Taurus' liking it. Scorpios, Sagittarius', Pisces', and maybe Aries' and Libras might also enjoy it. But the sun sign is not everything either, so if you enjoy it, and are a different sun sign, that's great too.

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The bottom line of Naturotheology is to live naturally, eat naturally, think naturally, and worship naturally (venerate, commemorate, and hallow naturally). It's goals are self and nature-awareness (natwareness), self-naturalization, freedom, health, and happiness. 

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