Spiritual practice as environmental activism in an Australian ashram

Om Shree Dham is a farm and also an ashram at Cedar Creek in the Hunter Valley, NSW, where ancient Vedic fire practices for purifying and healing the atmosphere are performed regularly by a group of white Australians. The main fire practice is known as Agnihotra and as well as removing the toxic conditions of the atmosphere through the agency of fire, the practice is understood to heal the practitioner. Agnihotra practitioners believe that these practices are our last chance to right the balance on earth before some final ecological cataclysm takes place. At least one member of this group joined because he felt that he was doing more thereby in the cause of environmental activism than he had been doing previously as the Newcastle organizer for Greenpeace. Viswan feels that homa therapy is also pro-active direct action like Greenpeace but of another kind. This is now his preferred form of direction action. This paper, which is based on one of the case studies for my doctorate, looks at Viswan’s explanation of these practices and at his reasoning about their efficacy and briefly looks at some implications of his thinking.