1. Introduction1

I visit the lhakhang [temple] and pay my respect to the gyap at least once a month. Six years ago, when I was working as a driver in one of the tourism companies, I [...] had to travel around Bhutan. […] When I returned to Paro, I had an accident. [...] Immediately my wife consulted a tsip [astrologer], who said that the accident might have happened because of the gyap, who might not be happy. I realized that I missed visiting the lhakhang, because I was engaged with the tourists. The next day, I went to the lhakhang with my family and offered tsok [food offerings]. Since then, I have never failed to visit the lhakhang. Now, I bring my children too, to make sure that they do not forget their culture when I am gone (Fieldnotes 16/05/2024).

3This example illustrates how the connection with a kyelha can guide people’s thinking about causation regarding their health and misfortunes. As we shall see, this shifted during COVID-19.

4Bhutan’s protective deities have been studied from various perspectives: their classification and names (Pommaret 1994; Ura 2001); Bonpo-shamanic-animist origins (Tashi 2023); rituals for restoring vitality (Dorji 2004; Huber 2020); ritual relationships with communities (Choden 2008; Pommaret 1994, 2004; Kuyakanon, Gyelthsen 2017); environmental connections (Pommaret 2007; Ura 2001) and their significance in conservation (Allison 2019). Village rituals and their deities received renewed interest when the government highlighted their importance for environmental preservation (Pommaret 2009: 112). More recently, scholars have explored the role of deities in climate disaster management among high-altitude herders (Dorji 2025; Yangzom, Wouters 2025). While deities’ involvement in disease is often mentioned, we are not aware of studies specializing on deities’ disease causation, likely because their invocations aim “at a totality of well-being and health of human beings” (Ura 2001: 9). Health is deeply tied to harvests, water-cycles and prevention of famine, draughts and epidemics, which feature prominently in rituals (Pommaret 2009: 136). Some of these age-old rituals, such as carrying sacred texts around villages (e.g., Choekor), were adapted for pandemic protection, uniting people on a national level (Kuyakanon, Gyelthsen 2022: 218). While village rituals are spiritually and economically tied to the deity’s territory (Pommaret 2009: 8), people draw on a hierarchy of ritual protection, from village deities to powerful enlightened protectors of Buddhism (e.g., Palden Lhamo), especially during national disasters.

6Bhutanese respect sadak as spiritual landowners. Lopen Pema Tshering, a senior lecturer at Norbuling Rigter College (NRC) trained in Buddhist Philosophy, explained that Buddhist texts emphasize seeking the sadak’s permission before cutting trees or building houses through Salang rituals (“begging for the land for human use”). Excessive construction without appeasing the sadak can disrupt a place’s spiritual balance, manifesting as illness or misfortune (Interview 15/04/2024). Anthropological studies have shown that people link overharvesting of the highly priced caterpillar fungus to angered sadak, which some locals believed caused the Nepal earthquake of 2015 (Childs et al. 2021: 41). Some Bhutan highlanders similarly blame the fungus economy for displeasing deities, resulting in erratic weather, poor health, declining pasture quality and increased natural disasters (Yangzom, Wouters 2025: 183). Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medicine/Bhutanese traditional medicine) sources also note that felling trees can provoke spirits, leading to illness as revenge. During the pandemic, this view surfaced among Sowa Rigpa practitioners in anglophone online forums, connecting deforestation which destroys the Earth’s “lungs” to “the respiratory symptoms of COVID-19” (van der Valk 2024: 812-813). Such discussions framed the pandemic “through the lens of more-than-human ecological relationality” and global environmental concerns (ibidem).

7In the spring of 2024, we conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the Phushar area, visiting five of its nine surrounding temples and interviewed their owners, caretakers, and resident Buddhist practitioners. We also spoke with Tshogpa Tshering, one of the five village heads (tshogpa) in Doteng Gewog, who managed Phushar during the pandemic, collaborating with the local government and enforcing public health measures. Interviews were conducted in Dzongkha (translated by Samdrup), the local dialect (translated by Tenzin Edon) and English. Using open-ended, semi-structured interview methods with in-depth follow-ups, we also involved students from Gerke’s fieldwork methods course at NRC. Students observed interviews and assisted with transcribing and translating one recorded interview as part of their training.

8We first explore some of the more-than-human ecologies in Bhutan, followed by perspectives of pandemic disease causation and protection in monastic and local village contexts and a case study of one family-owned temple.

2. More-than-human Ecologies

9Over the past two decades, the “more-than-human” approach has become central to fields like multispecies ethnography and the ontological turn in anthropology, prompting researchers to reconsider traditional boundaries between humans and other entities. This paradigm shift has led to a more inclusive understanding of the interdependencies shaping our worlds. Across the Himalayas, collective experiences of environmental calamities have pushed the social sciences to look more closely at multispecies and more-than-human relationships. Recent works (e.g., Wouters, Dema 2025; Wouters, Yü 2025) emphasize this new gaze on “ecologies of relations,” “more-than-human becomings” and “pluriversal worlding,” challenging human dominance and contextualizing climate precarity within larger species networks and elements of nature. Major disasters (e.g., the 2015 Nepal earthquake) have accentuated research on sacred geography ontologies tied to environmental misuse, effects of which (epidemics, earthquakes, drought, etc.) have long been prophesied in Buddhist texts (Childs et al. 2021).

11Bhutan offers a compelling case study for pandemic narratives of “blame”, highlighting more-than-human perspectives, as is evident in the case of the goddess Palden Lhamo. She is a principal protector deity of the kingdom and played a central role in the country’s ritual protection. Palden Lhamo’s iconography depicts her riding a mule and carrying a bag of diseases, symbolizing her dual role as both a spreader and protector from disease. This duality is common among Bhutan’s territorial deities: their influence — whether beneficial or harmful — depends on the nature of their relationship with the people committed to them.

12In August 2020, the Central Monastic Body (CMB) performed state-sponsored rituals across Bhutan’s twenty districts to appease Palden Lhamo (Gerke 2024; Kuyakanon, Gyeltshen 2022). Lam Neten, head of Paro Dzongkhag’s monastic administration, led these rituals in Paro. He explained that he attributed COVID-19 to human behavior — particularly excessive meat consumption and animal cruelty — emphasizing karmic causation and its moral implications:

So, my big doubt is that the pandemic was created by consuming high amounts of meat. People are enjoying meat. People are enjoying themselves, and animals are suffering. So, this is the consequence of that. My request is that people should cut down on consuming meat, torturing an animal and enjoying themselves. This is the opposite. If you don’t stop and if you don’t refrain from that manner, I don’t know what kind of difficulties will come in the future, again. It’s like cause and effect (Interview 29/04/2024).

13Lam Neten rejected the idea that Buddhist end-time prophecies predicted COVID-19. Instead, he attributed the pandemic to what in Bhutan is called lenchak (karmic vengeance), merging individual karmic actions involving animals with divine retribution from an angered Palden Lhamo, who spreads the virus to teach a lesson. Je Khenpo, chief abbot of the CMB, described COVID-19 as a global manifestation of lenchak, interpreting it as humanity collectively facing the karmic consequences of its negative actions (Pelayo et al. 2022: 212). We note here an intricate entanglement of individual and collective karma with more-than-humans — animals, viruses, and deities — in explanations of pandemic disease causation and ritual responses.

14Lam Neten explained that at Paro Dzong, the Lhamo Bachok protection ritual involved “feeding” the virus to Palden Lhamo using virus-shaped torma (offering cakes) because her enlightened nature allows her to absorb and neutralize “poisons”. The ritual included appeasing her with special foods, precious offerings and promises of better conduct, such as eating less or no meat. Its effects were also embedded in viral and weather ecologies; after the seven-day ritual it rained heavily and COVID-19 infections in Shaba, which had faced an outbreak, declined. After the lockdown, Shaba residents visited Paro Dzong to thank the monks and make offerings to Palden Lhamo.

15Our analysis now shifts from central monastic responses to local, village-level narratives around Phushar, situated ten kilometers north of Paro, near NRC where both authors worked in 2024.

3. Commitments, Temples and Deities in Phushar

16The valley between Paro town and NRC is home to farming villages dominated by river irrigated paddy cultivation. Part of Doteng Gewog, Phushar lies at the end of the valley (Fig. 1), where the roads give way to footpaths leading to high mountains bordering China. Phushar is surrounded by nine temples, some dating back to the fifteenth century. They are owned by private families, the CMB, or lamas (spiritual teachers), who guide Buddhist retreats at these sites. Their deities represent the wide range of mountain, pre-Buddhist and Buddhist divinities found throughout Bhutan. Some are considered enlightened, while others are bound to samsara like humans. Most are male and belong to the class of tsen or gyap/gyalpo. Among the temples, Ragoe Nye is attributed to Padmasambhava, while Chumphu Nye is the only shrine dedicated to a female deity, the enlightened protectress Dorji Pakmo. The privately-owned temple Shala Drangu houses a male gyap deity, referred to by the family as gyalpo (king), and his female consort, the gyalmo (queen).

17In Phushar, villagers like Tenzin make regular offerings to their deities, to which they are bound either by birth or through oaths taken in later life. Commitment is key to these relationships; villagers explained that seeking a deity’s help — through divinations (by throwing dice) or requests — creates an obligation to provide ongoing offerings in return. Aum Tashi Choezom, the 72-year-old owner of Shala Drangu said:

My family is always blessed by the gyap. I am old now. I will die anytime. I do not throw dice to get blessing from the gyap or to fulfill my wishes. He always guides my family. [...] In 2011, my daughter sought blessing by throwing the dice. [...] I knew her wish would be granted by the gyap. So, in a week’s time her wish was fulfilled (Interview 21/05/2024).

18Tshogpa Tshering, Phushar’s village head, also spoke about commitments towards the deities:

The gyap will protect us even if we do not belong to this community. But if you offer him nyendhar [monetary offering] and tsok, requesting something, he will grant the wish, but the interesting thing is, you should visit once a year whether you are here in Paro or in Australia. I know a family who came to the temple for blessings, but later they didn’t turn up. The wife was really sick. Even big hospitals couldn’t treat her. I heard they were in Canada. A mo [divination] indicated that it [the illness] was related to the yul lha [territorial deity]. The family came here in 2022 to the lhakhang [temple]. Now the wife is fine. I guess this might not happen with everyone, because some tsen are not like the gyap of Shala Drangu (Phone conversation 9/01/2025).

19Recognizing the importance of commitment to powerful deities, during fieldwork we always asked the temple caretakers whether our research questions were outside such bonds of commitment, which they confirmed. Next, we focus on the relationship between villagers and their deities, exploring how these more-than-human encounters played out during the pandemic.

4. Pandemic Responses in Phushar

20Village head Tshogpa Tshering noted that Phushar was spared from any major COVID-19 outbreak, which he attributed to the protection of the deities and the efforts of the King of Bhutan. Villagers had access to the Ministry of Health advice via social media and television. Public health measures affected communal farming practices, which had to be completed individually with physical distancing. Tshogpa Tshering also took responsibility to appease local deities. He offered rice, butter and cheese at seven of the nine temples under his jurisdiction (Fig. 2 depicts five of them) three times to request their pandemic protection (Interview 02/04/2024).

22We later discussed the hierarchies of deities with Kinlay, a senior lecturer at NRC with a monastic background. Representing Buddhist monastic perspectives, Kinlay suggested that tsen have a hierarchy based on whether they are enlightened. Khenpo Ngawang Gyamtsho at the monastic college Sang Chokhor confirmed that and explained that enlightened deities are preferred for achieving higher soteriological goals while non-enlightened deities address mundane wishes (Interview 20/04/2024). This contrasts with the egalitarian approach of Tshogpa Tshering who treated all deities equally to accommodate the needs of the entire community. This difference also seems to reflect a broader historical dynamic, where deity hierarchies echo the process of taming local spirits during the establishment of Buddhism in Bhutan.

4.1 A Temple Visit

23We started early on a warm spring day in May, 2024, with Yeshi Samdrup and driver Tenzin in his Bolero Jeep. With two students, Zhenphen and Lethro we headed to Tandrin Lhakhang, locally called Lhakhang Sarp (New Temple). It was rebuilt after a fire destroyed the original structure uphill. Known as a harvest-offering and name-giving temple, locals bring their first rice or vegetable harvest and newborns for blessings and names from the lama, Tsheten Gyeltshen. Thus, for many villagers, Lhakhang Sarp is their kyelha (birth deity) temple. Pekar, a male tsen protector resides in the shrine room, hidden behind colorful ribbon curtains as tsen are not to be seen. The caretaker, Chencho, explained that tsen can change form and move freely through small openings (Fig. 3). Pekar can leave the temple grounds whenever he wishes. His territory is undefined, and devotees feel his presence in various forms and locations.

24We interviewed Nawang Phuntsok, a retired English teacher, who had been in retreat at the temple for four months. During the pandemic, he spent three years in retreat, seeing no one except his lama. When asked about tsen, he mentioned their territorial flexibility, invisibility and spiritual guidance:

They [tsen] are also in samsara like us. But even then, we cannot see them, but they will see us. […] They are more powerful than us. So, when we make offerings to them, they give their blessing, their power to us, which we cannot see with our naked eye, but we receive that. So, because of that power, wherever you go, whatever you do, whenever your wish is fulfilled, means they are giving a blessing which we cannot see (Interview 16/05/2024).

25Nawang explained that his tsen’s blessings often manifest in his ability to do things he has no prior knowledge of; it happens naturally, usually a few days after a ritual. Since a tsen may take the form of an animal, an unusual encounter with a wild animal may signal the tsen’s presence and deliver messages or warnings. They may appear as birds, squirrels, or snakes, potentially causing accidents or offering blessings. Tsen travel and may transform into water, rocks or “terrifying ghosts.” For Nawang, the animistic, elemental world is infused with his tsen’s magical power. The stronger his faith and consistent offerings and prayers, the deeper the protection he perceives in his daily encounters with nature and animals.

26Talking about the pandemic, we learn about animated deity statues. He describes a Padmasambhava statue at the nearby Chumphu Nye temple that turned black during a past epidemic in Bhutan that caused people’s skin to blister and many to die. The statue “absorbed” the disease. As already mentioned, the statue of Dorje Pakmo at Chumphu Nye developed scars on her face during another epidemic. Lam Neten also recounted a Padmasambhava statue in Dodeydra, Thimphu valley, that turned black while “absorbing” a smallpox outbreak.

27Nawang explained that statues can change their faces, but only individuals with sonam (merit) can perceive it and receive blessings or messages. A deity’s emotions, such as anger, may reflect in a statue’s changing face, and can be perceived by those with sonam and a strong personal connection with that deity. We note that statues as more-than-human embodiments are seen as transmutable in many ways, absorbing disease and expressing emotions interpreted as warnings or blessings.

28We ascended twenty minutes through dense forest to reach Damtheykha Lhakhang, an isolated retreat center. This privately owned temple and its retreatants are supported by Laytshog Lopen Sangay Dorji and a network of sponsors who cover basic necessities. The long-term retreatants live in simple huts with small kitchens. We were told to be silent while walking through their vicinity.

29The caretakers, Chador and Tshewang, retired civil servants who vowed to spend their remaining years at Damtheykha, showed us how the landscape represents “the lap of Tandrin,” the horse-headed Buddhist tutelary deity (yidam). They pointed out how the hills and meadows around the retreat center resemble Tandrin, sitting cross-legged, with the hilltop representing his upper body and head. We climbed the steep stairs to the shrine room, where we made offerings to Pygo Tsen and a genyen (guardian deity), of which there are several in Bhutan (Pommaret 1994: 7). Hidden behind curtains, these deities were not represented by statues, but Pygo Tsen appears in a wall painting as a warrior in armor riding a horse, a common depiction of tsen and genyen in Bhutan (ibidem: 4; Fig. 4). We visited three more temples, each having deity imprints in the landscapes, such as a hundred thousand footprints of dakinis at Chenduen Goenpa. This spiritual topography is common in Bhutan, and “allows for multispecies reading of the geomorphological texture of the Bhutanese landscape” (Dorji 2025: 75). Chador and Tshewang told us that, during the pandemic, they performed the Sekha propitiation ritual and Lhabsang, a cleansing ritual to ward off defilements. Their isolation proved an asset. Physicians administered vaccines during visits. The caretakers remarked that while some retreatants experienced mild vaccine side-effects, the community remained healthy and resilient throughout the lockdowns. They continue to receive free healthcare with a physician visiting when needed. Their health practices are largely embedded in Buddhist rituals and biomedicine.

4.2 Prophecy and Protection at Shala Drangu Temple

30In the afternoon, we drove up the opposite mountain to Shala Drangu temple (Fig. 5), named after the crystal-like rock it was built on, overlooking the entire valley. According to oral history, in the late fifteenth century, Tibetan lama Trapa Jamsu, guided by his deity through dreams, came from Pelling in Tibet and settled on this hill (Interview 21/06/2024). He initially built one temple, later expanding to five, of which Shala Drangu remains family-owned. The deity who prophesied Trapa Jamsu’s mission to spread Buddhism in this valley, is now known as the gyap, though the family also refers to him as gyal, their personal protector. Since the gyap is deemed powerful, protecting the entire valley, locals understand that he could potentially harm those who bring harm to the family.

31The gyap’s statue, built after Trapa Jamsu arrived in the valley, depicts a warrior deity with a shield, a helmet, sturdy boots and a red face. His consort, the gyalmo, wears a brass mirror, or melong, a divinatory tool that reflects a person’s deeds or potential harm to the community. According to 72-year-old temple matron Tashi Choezom (Fig. 6), the gyap and the gyalmo need to know what is happening to protect the people. “Sometimes the gyap does not know, then his queen knows,” she said, referring to the gyalmo’s ability of prophetic vision through her melong (Interview 21/05/2024). We found that during the pandemic, the relationship between the temple owners and the gyap had protective, wish-fulfilling and divinatory elements. It is deeply sacred, and we were told not to write about it, nor publish the statue’s photos.

32Tashi Choezom married into this family of temple owners, where lineage is passed exclusively through male heirs. Her only son, Gawa Drukdra (33 years old in 2024, Fig. 7), is the current lineage holder in the twentieth generation, studying at Tango Buddhist University in Thimphu Dzongkhag. His father passed away when he was a teenager. Once educated, he is responsible for maintaining the temple, supporting its meditators, overseeing four annual rituals, and continuing the male lineage through marriage (Interview 21/06/2024). Since her husband’s passing and while Gawa Drukdra continues his studies, Tashi has been managing the temple and training her elder daughter, Norbu Zangmo. She also cares for two granddaughters from her younger daughter, Ninda, who will receive some training in temple practices but will not be official lineage holders. When we interviewed Tashi in her living room in Phushar, a framed photo of Bhutan’s King, his wife and first son prominently adorned the shelf. Tashi explained that some divinatory temple practices are related to the King’s wellbeing, the kingdom’s prosperity, harvests and the local communities. One of the temple’s prophetic practices is the alcohol divination.

33Alcohol offerings (serkem) to local deities reflect their human-like traits. Some Bhutanese deities are said to enjoy alcohol, get drunk and joke (Pommaret 1994: 10). During the pandemic, serkem were carried out at many sites to appease angered deities and seek their protection, akin to the offerings made to Palden Lhamo described above, but more simplified and tailored to village economics. At Shala Drangu, alcohol divination is a secret practice involving a female deity. Gawa Drukdra explained the process:

During the annual Tendri ritual in the eighth month of the Buddhist calendar [usually September], we perform an alcohol divination. Three glass bottles are filled with ara [clear liquor], sealed with butter, and kept under lock in a cool temple room that houses a secret female deity, and which only an ordained monk can enter. During the seventh month [August] of the following year, a monk will read the level of the alcohol in each bottle. Lower levels indicate a decline in harvest, health and village prosperity. One bottle refers to the wellbeing of our King. Since the reading happens in summer when the harvest is already under way, the prediction is for the following year (Interview 21/06/2024).

34In September 2019, the alcohol level of all the three bottles was lower, and this was interpreted as a warning of difficulties in 2020 for the country and the valley, though the exact nature was unclear at the time. The divination results were shared publicly. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, the temple owners retrospectively understood the signs as predicting the pandemic. Gawa Drukdra himself was surprised that the alcohol divination, which typically indicates harvest issues, pointed instead to a crisis of much larger scale. Due to the 2020 lockdowns, the family was unable to conduct their four annual rituals, which are large social events. Usually, people believe that if these rituals are not conducted, the community will be affected. The pandemic was seen as an exception to this commitment since major community gatherings were not allowed. Luckily, the family had provided provisions for the fifteen meditators living near the temple beforehand, who took turns in performing serkem and daily offerings to appease the deities.

35When asked about the role of the gyap during the pandemic, the family expressed strong confidence in his protection, both for their family and the entire valley. They believed that since COVID-19 came from outside, their deity protected them. This sentiment was also shared by the village head, Tshogpa Tsering, who told us that no one in Phushar got seriously ill or died.

36We also asked questions about climate change, wondering if with increased climate calamities the protection of the deities would still hold, and whether rituals would still be effective. Tashi Choezom thought their gyap would keep protecting them. Her elder daughter Norbu Zangmo told us that during a dry spell in spring 2024, villagers requested rain-making rituals from higher monastic authorities. Kanjur Chokor, traditionally a harvest, health and Dharma flourishing ritual, but nowadays often a rain-making ritual (Kinley 2025), which was also adapted for pandemic protection, performed to bless and protect the community by carrying the Kanjur (Buddha’s texts) through villages (Kuyakanon, Gyeltshen 2022: 214). Norbu Zangmo described a similar ritual involving relics and a statue of Bhutan’s founder Zhabdrung carried through the village:

Recently in Doteng Gewog the paddy fields were dry […]. Farmers were worried about their fields. We had a meeting in our community and reported to the tshogpa [village head] and then to Lam Neten [Paro Dzongkhag Administration]. Lam Neten and some people came to our village, carrying relics and a statue of Zhabdrung. […] they came here to pray for the rain (Interview 21/05/2024).

37It rained the next day.

5. Conclusion

38This paper explored pandemic entanglements with more-than-humans—animals, viruses, deities and their statues, divinatory tools—in rural Paro, Bhutan, focusing on disease causation and protection. Research participants expressed strong faith in their deities’ protective powers. In Phushar, no one directly blamed local deities for causing COVID-19, though some perceived them as upset, and temple predictions in 2019 foresaw difficulties for 2020. The virus was seen as an external threat entering Bhutan mainly from China and India. However, deity-human relationships of responsibility and blame merged individual and collective levels. We conclude that, unlike everyday illnesses attributed to neglecting kyelha (birth deities) or temple commitments, the pandemic shifted causation to more globalized karmic retributions (lenchak), linked to humanity’s cruelty towards animals. Buddhist teachers attributed COVID-19 to mass meat consumption, contrasting the framing of animals in modern epidemiology as “epidemic villains” of zoonotic or vector-borne diseases, typically leading to mass-killings during outbreaks (Lynteris 2019: 2). Our interviews with monastics portrayed animals as moral victims, whose killing unbalanced nature, angered deities and escalated the pandemic. COVID-19 did not involve mass animal culling. Nevertheless, our findings offer culture-specific and moral perspectives of the role of animals in pandemic disease causation.

39In Bhutan, collective karma called for collective responses, merging deity offerings with public health measures. Responses in Phushar were also embedded in oral histories of past epidemics, leaving memories of quarantine and loss that reinforced appreciation for the synergy of religious and public health responses in 2020/21 that Bhutan became famous for. We have shown that the spiritual relationships between humans and their various deities play out in interconnected fields of sonam (merit), lenchak (karmic retribution), and individual karma, which intersect every-day experiences of health and harvests and have taken on wider dimensions during the “Covidian age” observed across many Asian religions (Hertzmann et al. 2023). Our findings also parallel recent anthropological insights on perceptions of disasters among many indigenous groups around the world (Riboli et al. 2021), in which “chaos and disorder originated from human harmful and/or inconsiderate acts [that] hurt and offend the Earth a powerful deity in many cultures, or other spirits connected with atmospheric phenomena and the sacred landscape” (Riboli, Torri 2021: 5).

40Phushar’s deities fulfilled their protective roles during COVID-19, but intensifying climate calamities raise questions: will villagers increase ritual practice or will they doubt the efficacy of rituals? Who will be blamed? Pandemics are short-term when compared to long-term climate crises, which villagers notice as altered weather patterns, requesting rain rituals during dry spells. Currently, in the absence of drastic climate disasters, deities are still trusted protectors. However, future water shortages may change this, as seen in higher altitudes, where deities have migrated from dried lakes (Wouters, Dema 2025) and where extreme disasters, beyond ritual resolution, are seen as signs of unprecedented levels of the deities’ displeasure (Yangzom, Wouters 2025: 182). Elderly highlanders blame themselves for these disasters, not their deities or global drivers of climate crises (ibidem). Will Phushar reach a tipping point of ritual efficacy?

41By situating our pandemic narratives within broader moral and ecological frameworks, our findings show that disaster health management can meaningfully draw on more-than-human relations, offering synergetic responses to crises.