In popular pre-Christinan Greek religion, divinity was inherent in all natural phenomena including those that man [sic] had tamed and domesticated. Divinity was present in springs, and rivers, and the sea; in trees, both the wild oak and the cultivated olive-tree; in corn and vines; in mountains; in earthquakes and lightening and thunder. The godhead was diffused throughout the phenomena. It was plural, not singular; a pantheon, not a unique almighty super-human person. When the Graeco-Roman World was converted to Christianity, the divinity was drained out of nature and was concentrated in one unique transcendent [god. "Pan is dead." "The oracles are dumb." "Bronsgrove is no longer a wood that is sacrosanct because it is animated by the god Bron . . . ."
~Toynbee, quoted in Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler
Christianity in absolute contrast to ancient paganism . . . not only established a dualism [heh] of man [sic] and nature but also insisted that it is [g]od's will that man [sic] exploit nature for his [sic] proper ends . . . . In antiquity every tree, every spring, stream, every hill had its own genius loci, its guardian spirit . . . . By destroying pagan animism, [c]hristianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feeling of natural objects.
~Lynn White The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis quoted in Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler.
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