Les milieux naturels et le sacré. Esquisse d’une biogéographie spirituelle de la nature

By combining individual or collective sacred experiences with the natural objects that create them, the aim was to draw up a phenomenological classification in which environmental forms are not only perceived as objective realities, but also as symbolic constructs. Likewise, more than the opposition between subjective and objective, the constant movements from subjective to objective are interpreted as revealing sacred ways of inhabiting the world. Our demonstration has three sections. Firstly, we summarise the small number of theoretical works that deal with the spatial mediation of the sacred, in order to define the epistemological contours of the sacred in a geohistorical perspective. Secondly, we endeavour to understand how environmental forms and natural landscapes define and participate in the sacralisation of the world. Then, we sketch the feelings of those who live a sacred experience when contemplating a landscape form. In conclusion, we compare the landscape sources of the sacred to spiritual experiences in order to build the phenomenological classification that is the ultimate aim of this paper.