The Golden Bough was written by Sir James Frazer. Some of it is useful, much of it was never accepted by specialists in the relevant fields and has since been superseded. Frazer is thought by some commentators to have had an anti-Christian ax to grind, and it might be helpful to keep this point in mind when using his work.

Bartholomew wrote: "those Pagan faiths the nuns warned me about were mostly rooted in a love for the earth". If the pagan religion of the ancient Greeks can be said to have a single organizing principle, it was "the city", not "the earth." If the pagan Greeks loved the earth so much, why did they wear out the land with inept farming in some places ? (One can probably multiply examples of this kind. If the pagan inhabitants of Easter Island loved the earth so much, why did they cut down every tree on the island ?)

If the religion of ancient Egypt had a single organizing principle, it was probably the continuity of the ruling dynasty and the preservation of social and political order in the Two Lands, not "the earth."

If you think that love for the Earth is a sentiment that incorporates an important truth, and you seek a religous tradition that incorporates the same truth, you might consider the Christianity of your childhood, which implicitly in its rituals (at least as some interpret them) teaches that the Creator created the "the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that is in them" as a means of loving communion between himself and mankind.

T.