"In 2016, I accidentally read the book »From the Invisible Side of the Sky « by Pavel Medvešček Klančar, which reveals natural religious counterculture in the remote hilly areas of Primorska. After a few pages, the book revealed other things in heaven and earth. My delving into this ethnographic material led to a meeting with the author and an intensive research collaboration with him."

The insightful discussion was focused on the analysis and interpretation of critical elements of naturalism related to nature as a subject of belief: naturalistic space-time, naturalistic cosmogony, Nikrmana, the Great Mother, trinity, animism, totemism, and biocentrism.

Even in the second half of the 20th century, a pre-Christian natural religious community poses several conceptual challenges to the social sciences. Among other things, Western Slovenian natural religion justifies not only an entirely opposed attitude towards nature from the extractivist attitude of modern society but also redefines religion as a way of life.

"Natural believers were also a political community. They politicized their place and the landscape they lived in, leaving such an indelible mark on it that even today when they are gone, it is still a land of naturalism," pointed out Dr. Toplak.

An Alma Mater Europaea – ISH doctoral student, Ignac Navernik, moderated the conversation with the author.

The event was created in cooperation between Alma Mater Europaea - ISH and the Maribor Library.

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Dr. Cirila Toplak is an expert on Slovenia's political and ethnological history and a former adviser on European issues in the Office of the President of the Republic of Slovenia. After a master's degree in humanities from Buffalo State University, she received a doctorate in history and international relations from the Sorbonne University in Paris. She works as a full-time university professor and scientific advisor. She teaches political history courses at the Department of Theoretical and Analytical Political Science of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana. She is the head of the Research Center for Political Theories of the Faculty of Social Sciences. As a Cultural Formation Research program member, she conducts research at the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis AMEU. Dr. Toplak is the president of the Balkan Political Science Association and a member of the Ethics Commission for Animal Experiments.