Engaging with PAMLA’s 2026 theme, “Our Ruling Classes: Culture, Power, Conflict,” this panel asks: How do esoteric ecological imaginaries reinforce, negotiate, or resist ruling ideologies? How have spiritualized visions of nature shaped elite cultural production, countercultural movements, or alternative political communities? What conflicts emerge when esoteric environmental ethics confront institutional religion, scientific rationalism, or capitalist extraction?

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, literary representations of enchanted ecologies, spiritual ecologies in travel writing or poetic form, occult environmental metaphysics, and the role of esoteric belief in shaping ecological imaginaries. We welcome historically grounded and theoretically informed approaches to literature, art, travel writing, popular culture, and critical theory. Topics may include ecospirituality, occult environmentalism, esoteric dimensions of deep ecology, and aesthetic practices that envision enchanted or spiritually animated landscapes as sites of cultural struggle and renewal.

To submit a paper and present, you must become a PAMLA member by paying the member fee and the conference fee. For graduate students, there are scholarships available to help with the conference fee in exchange for some volunteer hours.