Sealing future geographies: religious prophecy and the case of Joanna Southcott

Abstract

This paper seeks to contribute to an emerging debate in human geography concerning the spatialities of the future, and aims to address a gap in work on the geography of religion regarding the temporalities of faith. Through a focus on religious prophecy, the paper seeks to examine how different spaces, temporalities, identities, practices and dispositions (both religious and secular‐scientific) are generated through and generate this religious future. The paper argues that prophecy is a particular form of making the future, and advances the dual notions cosmic‐divine time and preparatory assured readiness in order to understand and underline this specificity. Through the example of the prophetess Joanna Southcott (1750–1814) and an event involving a box of her prophecies publically opened in 1927, it argues that prophetic space‐times presence the future through multiple and intersecting ‘not‐yets’, hesitancies and assurances.