Reflections from a Dying Garden: Hieronymus Bosch and the Death of the Sacred Earth

As Divine Law across sacred traditions reveals, humanity has been entrusted with the care and guardianship of the Earth. Though not always framed as formal environmental philosophy, these laws carry within them clear, sacred imperatives: to preserve cleanliness, to treat animals and plants with dignity, and to resist waste, excess, and blind material pursuit. The Qur’an proclaims, “Indeed, He encompasses all things.” The word muḥīṭ—to encompass—also means “environment,” suggesting that God’s Presence is the very field in which all life unfolds. To desecrate the natural world—whose harmony is an echo of divine order—is to veil that Presence, to sever the thread between the sacred and the seen, and to unweave the delicate balance between nature, humanity, and the Creator. 

Yet we are witnessing that destruction—unfolding not only in physical terms, but in the collapse of conscience, psyche, and soul.

Surrounding the heinous reality we live in, I truly believe what encompassed humanity’s truth and fate has already been depicted in one of the most profound metaphors ever painted—Hieronymus Bosch’s enigmatic triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Its abundance of strange indiscretions and its infusion of the metaphysical and mystical world with the mortal realm provides an allegory of the interception of cause and effect. It narrates that we live in a compatibilist world—our actions are by choice, and the outcomes are not predetermined.

The blame is on us – not the universe, and not any metaphysical reality one might attain to. The images of souls suffering due to anxiety and fear are caused by the deceptions, lies, and atrocities society has committed. Whether one deems these actions to be sinful or not, it is by universal truth that the effects are multiplied. The barbaric actions committed by man onto man illustrate the hostilities and evil mankind implores on its own—and if we can be so inhumane to the one whom we recognize as ourselves, is it then truly a surprise that we have engaged in barbarism towards our planet? Are humans truly this vile?

The bestiality that occurs in some aspects of the painting could be interpreted as human actions towards society and the planet,  symbolizing that our actions are of those with no rationality, much like beasts—or that our morality has degraded far beyond persons, and we are now equal to, if not less than, animals.

The painting is a summary of the chaos and atrocities of our world towards the environment and its people—all caused by none other than the great human race. The fatalities portrayed are the reality of today’s physical, social, and spiritual state: complete turmoil. We are our own enemies.

To ignore this is to ignore our own reflection. The environmental crisis is no longer abstract—it is visible, measurable, and deeply spiritual. And yet many look only to technological solutions to fix what is, at its root, a moral and metaphysical failure. But those technologies emerge from the very paradigms that created the problem: consumption without consequence, progress without restraint, and advancement divorced from reverence. Bosch did not need to name climate change—he painted its psychological, ethical, and spiritual origins centuries ago.

We are not the victims of divine punishment or cosmic accident. We are the architects of collapse. The Earth is not failing us, we have failed it.

Hieronymus Bosch, displayed the deadly sins we have committed are not merely harming our souls and physical minds, but our people, and our planet. The spiritual, is the physical. 

And if there is one lasting truth embedded in both divine law and artistic prophecy, it is this: we were warned.

x Ariana Kamin