Our beloved Earth is Mother to us all. She is a sentient being, an ancient soul in the process of completing her own life’s journey. She is the embodiment of the deepest and most ancient mysteries of our universe. She is the keeper of the secret of secrets.
Our beloved Earth is not some geographical object that we make her out to be. She is a goddess, a deep and mysterious being who deserves our utmost respect. Her role is to be both the body of creation and mother to all of creation. This is a paradox. The gods don’t abide by our mortal rules. She is both the embodiment of creation and the mother to all living things within creation. She is the created world and the creator of life.
Her blood is made up of the waters of the planet which move in an endless flow from cloud to rain to river and ocean, filling every pore of the earth, bringing the kiss of life to matter. Her breath is the air and the wind, carrying pure particles of light which are woven into the very fabric of physical creation. Her bones are the rocks and her flesh is the soft green blanket of flora covering the land. Our beloved Earth exists in multiple dimensions, from dense matter to the subtle spirit realms. Her body is the meeting place of these worlds. She is a divine confluence of worlds within worlds, bound together in a magical spell of love and she is utterly beautiful, beyond the words of the greatest of love poets. Her heart spins on an axis love at the center of creation. This love is the alchemical substance that gives birth to life in an endless cycle of death and renewal, the unfurling tapestry of creation
Love manifests as divine light at the center of creation and bursts forth from the seams of everything in existence. This light is love, they are one, and they are woven in a web of wholeness from the subtle world of the beyond into the dense forms of matter. This Earth that we stand on is utterly sacred and holy, but humanity has forgotten this sacred lore. She is an exquisitely woven body of light, a delicate and perfect fabric of creation, woven by the hands of the greatest intelligence with golden threads of love. This light body unfurls like a blossoming meadow of flowers throughout all aspects of creation, from the smallest microcosm to the cosmos itself. Always something new being born. Always utterly sacred and holy.
Our beloved Earth is only partially recognizable by the five human senses. It requires the sense born from love in our hearts, with eyes made tear-soft, to know the totality of her being.
With subtle sight we are given access to the non-physical worlds, dimensions of light and darkness, form and emptiness within the Earth’s body. These are the birthplaces of the ancient mythical creatures of fairy tales, the archetypal dimensions of our psyche and Hers. With soft eyes we know the truth of this spirit world, we see how there are beings within beings in an endless unfolding of light upon light, a seemingly infinite unfolding of the many faces of God.
From the depths of the fertile darkness to the brilliant dimensions of light, Her inner world is a universe of these endless manifestations of life. Angels, devas, nature spirits and beings beyond words who, like us, are living a specific note of God. In nature we can feel the presence of these devas, these aspects of Her that have accumulated great knowledge and power and made immense spiritual progress in their karmic journeys. Many of these beings have attained enlightenment or perfection in the strain of life which they represent. These are the great spirits of trees, animals and mountains, which still live in this world, applying their consciousness to the work of Mother Earth’s evolutionary journey.
These words are but the smallest taste of the Truth that underlie this most beautiful fragment of creation. Nobody can really see the true face of our Mother and survive. We see the smallest fragments and can only imagine what utter magnificence lies beyond these realms. We are blinded by the smallest glimpse of the true beauty of our Earth, so we rely on second-hand accounts of those that have seen fragments and survived. Yet truly, the depth of beauty of our Mother Earth is beyond words. Her name is etched inside the innermost chambers of our hearts where we dare not look for too long or face the devastation of experiencing a love that is beyond this world.
But once we have tasted even the smallest glimpse of Her vast beauty there is nothing left in this world that can satisfy us any more. We are devastated and entranced by her beauty and are left with a deep longing that brings us to our knees, begging for one more glimpse, one more glance from her loving eyes. Her beauty is That which can only bring us to our knees in prayer and surrender to Love.
And then there is the fall. Once we have seen Her face there is the inevitability of having to face a very different picture in the world that comes to greet us every day. There is the utter devastation as one recognizes where she stands today. Our Mother has been desecrated.
There is no pain greater than the acknowledgement of this. Our role on earth is to be Her guardians, Her lovers, to give of our light to Her light, to nurture the ongoing dance of light within Her. How is it possible that we have turned so absolutely callous and desecrated the body and soul of our beloved Mother Earth?
There is no answer for this question.
Human beings. We too are the Goddess, imbued with the same sacred powers of creation. We too are the continual unfolding of mystery and magic that is at the center of all life. We are a microcosm within the body of Gaia, we are born from her flesh and are her offspring.
If our Mother is an ancient goddess, then what does it mean to be an earthling? This is the secret miracle and mystery of what it means to be human.
In this time of great desecration of the planet it has become utterly important that those who can see with spiritual clarity, those whose hearts are awakened in conscious love, and those who simply love the earth, consciously choose to recognize and relate to the Earth as a sacred being and as our beloved Mother. Without this vital remembrance we will reach an evolutionary dead-end and unconsciously allow a great moment of spiritual evolution to be lost. Our love for the earth is the single simple key to allow a new era of the rebirth of humanity to unfold.
Spring is a time of renewal and rebirth. The darkest days of winter are past and the light grows stronger every day. All the forces of nature move from dormancy to growth in the cycle of outward expansion and renewal. There is a freshness in the air, an aliveness in the light, a sense of optimism and abundance.
But in the outer world, on a global scale, we appear to be moving into a collective winter. The world is getting darker as global ecological collapse continues unabated and our socio-political systems contract into less evolved forms of their true potential. Sages and prophets have referred to this period by many names and recently I heard the term ‘The Great Reset’ which rang true. Collectively we know that this is a time when the cycle of consciousness reaches a tipping point and either progresses into a new and more evolved form of itself or collapses and retracts into patterns of constriction. There is overwhelming evidence in our world that we have chosen the latter path.
There was a period at the turn of the millennium when humanity had the choice to step into the light and take responsibility for the new spiritual potential of oneness that was being born in the heart of the world, but this moment has sadly passed. Humanity has chosen the allure and addiction of material things over spiritual progress and now we are bearing witness to a time on earth where we collectively regress into a lower form of our divine potential.
Fundamentally, things have changed In this time of great turbulence in the world, we are all bearing witness to fundamental changes in global ecology and in our culture. We are moving into a new era where the primary fabric of life, the global ecosystem, is collapsing. As this collapse continues to unfold in cycles of catastrophic climate change there will be vast changes in the way that we live and in the environment around us. None of us will be untouched by these changes. Rich, poor, old, young, we will all be affected profoundly.
On a deeper level this is something that we all sensed was coming. We felt the anxiety and fear of a collective angst growing day by day and we witnessed as humanity buried this fear by choosing to become consumers of a materialistic dream. Our community of spiritually conscious people has lived in hope of seeing the birth of a new era in which we could integrate the principles of oneness into global culture. We prayed for and worked towards the birth of a new consciousness where an understanding of the interconnectedness of all the living systems would become central to our culture. We saw the potential of a new era where the threads of love that are woven between the living earth and human culture would be remembered again, that we would learn from our mistakes caused by an addiction to material things and begin to build new ways of life that would be in tune with our earth and each other. But this has not happened. The opportunity has now passed us by. I wish it weren’t so.
It is now a period of transition on earth where the light that is at the centre of creation is dimming. In the choice that humanity has made collectively to refuse the potential of living in an era of oneness, we have set course for a very different shore. The gift of oneness showed us a potential future for humanity where we could collectively co-operate with the living wholeness that is sacred and essential nature of the earth. Oneness offered us true magic, inspired sacred principles for living a new story of collective cooperation and it contained the gifts of an entirely new culture that would be more harmoniously aligned with the soul of the world. But we chose to refuse the gift of oneness and we have now steered toward the opposite potential of oneness which will be greater divisiveness, perfectly played out in the dramas of a global pandemic. Lockdown, social isolation, forced infringements upon the sacred space of our God-given bodies, restricted movement and heightened control from a centralised power which is monitored by systems of artificial intelligence. Our new world is now the antithesis of the gift of oneness. The new world is like a dark spell, infused with the same patterns of a psychologically dysfunctional dynamic, where the potential to live a certain note of truth has been permanently damaged by our repeated patterns of denial, addiction and abuse.
The words being used to describe the radical shift in our climate are ‘irreversible’ and ‘unprecedented ecological collapse’.
The earth weeps The impact of this decision to live a materialistic life that denies the sacred has had a catastrophic effect on the body of the earth. We have given ourselves permission to treat the earth as a soulless material object and this has enabled our global culture to utterly desecrate her body. When the earth is not respected as a living being, when the light in creation is not seen and respected, when the spirit realms are disrespected and sacred groves are torn down, then we cease to live, see and speak in a way that is sacred.
When nature is not sacred then our collective attitude is to see her as a resource to be consumed. We see this being played out in the world over and over again. The most recent story that illustrates this turn toward hyper-materialism is in China, where there is a planned relocation of more than 200-million rural people over the next decade into the 600 new Chinese cities that have been built since 1949. The removal of the farmers from the land will allow radical industrialised agriculture to flourish and ensure a mass culture of more and more city-based materialism as the rural people who are the caretakers of the earth are forced to become urbanised consumers. With the relocation of the people from the land there will be nobody left to sing the songs of love to the earth, nobody to protect the sacred rivers, no systems of traditional knowledge remaining to be guardians of the earth. This is what humanity has collectively chosen, being played out in the new Chinese vision. Of course, it is not only China, but everywhere.
The global result of this shift from sacred ways of knowing and living is now so perfectly captured in the narratives around climate change. Scientists who were issuing us with warnings about future environmental disasters are now mostly resigned to accept that we will live in a world where ecological collapse on a vast scale is guaranteed. The words being used to describe the radical shift in our climate are ‘irreversible’ and ‘unprecedented ecological collapse’. There is a raging fire of materialism that is burning our earth and yet humanity wants to continue to build cities and follow the materialistic dream.
Remembering the nature soul In the face of such extreme materialism we have to dig deeper than ever before to hold onto our indigenous ways of knowing. In all of us there is this ‘nature soul’, that aspect of us that is connected to the living soul of the earth. It is now more important than ever to return to the innate awareness that we humans are not separate from our beloved earth. It is utterly critical that we remember that humanity is an intricate part of the very fabric of creation. We are the living, breathing, pulsating essence of life that flows between all living systems of the earth. We are closer to the earth than our own jugular vein.
It is so easy to be drawn into helplessness when the tide of human affairs is rushing in like a dark tsunami that one can see will spell death to the natural world and to the principles of sustainability and oneness with the spirit of the earth. It is difficult to endure the witnessing of the loss of our wild habitats, the loss of traditional ways of living that are our models of sustainability and to see how we are stepping away, further than ever before, from the possibility of living in balance with the spirit of the earth. It is now more important than ever for us to dig even deeper and maintain our sacred ways of life.
The devic realm There is something important that is not being spoken about in many spiritual circles and I would like to bring it into this conversation because I believe that it needs to be a part of our storytelling. We speak about the collapse of the earth’s ecosystem and the tearing down of sacred places, but nobody remembers the beings of the subtle realms that inhabit the sacred inner spaces of the earth’s subtle body.
We witness the desecration of the physical world but there is very little being said about the subtle worlds and the desecration that has taken place in this realm. As the body of the earth has been desecrated, so too have the sacred places in the subtle realms been destroyed.
The subtle worlds too will become filled with refugees who are confused and bewildered. The great spirits of mountains, forests, rivers, the infinitesimally small devic beings of flowers, fields and homes, these beings all will endure the same collapse of their habitat. They are invisible to the eye but their suffering will be palpable and they too will need places where they can be nourished, nurtured and loved. They too will need counselling and comfort from their loss of life as humanity destroys the sacred places.
When the sacred groves are being cut down, the ancient rivers being polluted, the migratory pathways blocked, where will these creatures and their spirits go? They are all a part of the body of light of the earth and they will need our hearts as a safe place to find refuge. There is radical simplicity in loving the earth and taking extra care to hold the light of the world soul in our hearts whilst we witness the desecration of her body. Those that can remember must hold the light, must bear witness to what is transpiring so that there are still some in humanity who see them, acknowledge them and who remain respectful to the ancient sacred ways.
Holdingthe earth in our hearts It is vital to remember that, in our very own hearts, there is a place where the soul of the world finds refuge. We can hold the earth in our prayers and make our hearts a place of remembrance for our beloved Mother as she endures this suffering. Our hearts are connected by a golden thread in a web of light that is made strong by our remembrance of oneness. I believe that it is a radically powerful act in this time to collectively remember the earth in our prayers and hold her in this web of hearts connected by love. In holding her in our individual and collective spiritual heart we will also avail ourselves to bear witness to her suffering and pain. In holding this pain in our hearts we can share in her suffering, help her transition through this difficult time and soften her pain. We can remember her in our prayers, offer her gifts of incense and flowers on our altars, walk with deep respect and appreciation and simply remember our beloved Mother and acknowledge her suffering.
So let us remember to bring the Earth into our meditation and prayers and hold her in our hearts. Let us ensure that we are living with gentleness on the earth. The light of the earth can then rest in our hearts and receive the love that is so desperately needed to help her to transition through this time of darkness.
The original article was written for Odyssey Magazine, Winter 2021 edition.
Herbalism is a gift from the Great Mother. It is her promise to provide us with a medicine for every ailment. The Great Mother, our beloved earth, is filled with an abundance of gifts given freely to humanity for us to survive and thrive. Our very existence is dependent on the sustenance that the earth’s natural abundance gives to us and yet today we live in a world that is increasingly disconnected from this reality. As humanity grows more and more removed from natural ways of living it seems as though our feet float above the earth, ungrounded, lacking roots, disembodied. We live lives where our attention is scattered, our energy pulled outwardly into the world of endless distractions, forgetting to return to the source of our being, the source of our sustenance, our Mother Earth.
We have forgotten that we are intimately connected to the earth and that this is the natural birthright of each human being. Every breath of air, every meal, every drink of water is a miracle of creation which is a seamless wholeness that embraces humanity.
Having been a herbalist now for more than half of my life I have come to recognize the gift of my connection to the natural world, the great peace that it brings to be content with sitting in nature and watching the leaves of a tree dance in the breeze. It is a simple gift but one that is greatly contrasted with the reality of the world that so many of us face in this post-virus world of conspiracy and misinformation, hyper-materialism and a deeply ominous sense of pending ecocide. This for me is a daily reminder of the open embrace of our beloved mother who gives and gives without any need for anything in return.
In talking about herbalism I think it is important to begin with the simple remembrance that the earth is really our mother and that we are earthlings, living in the abundance of her endless generosity. Mother Earth, Gaia, Pachamama, these are some of the sacred names for this Great Mother who has given us everything we need to survive and thrive, including an entire apothecary of medicines for the body, mind and spirit. As a herbalist I have come to understand that in her generosity she has given us a medicine for every ailment and this is a privilege which we need to honor.
A Lost Language of the Wilderness
Part of the mystery of being a herbalist is observing how one’s consciousness becomes woven into the living earth and that in this weaving there is an intimate embrace in which we learn to speak an ancient language of the earth: the language of wild medicine.
To understand the origins and essence of herbalism, one needs to move out of the head and into the heart. There is no place for scientific reductionism in herbalism. This can only take you down a path where the mind gets its grip on things and then there is no chance of hearing the soft-spoken language of a plant. Being a herbalist means learning the ancient language of plants and to do this one needs to disengage the mind and enter through the heart. In learning herbalism there must be a softening inside, a space for feeling, an empty space for interspecies transmission of wisdom. Only the senses and intelligence beyond the mind can really fathom and integrate this communication. Herbalists are people who live in this awareness and who have a living, feeling, intuitive relationship to the plant kingdom and the spirit of the earth. Herbalists speak a secret language to plants and we love them as friends and teachers, learning from them and the Great Mother in a way that a devotee might learn from their teacher. Plants impart great wisdom to us when we are working with them, show us things that are beyond the reaches of the mind. Some of these things are mysteries that we cannot fathom but can only accept as deeply mysterious. They speak in a language that is complex, an ancient intelligence that humans have long understood, that has been passed from one herbalist to another since humanity began. They ask us to reach deeper, to feel more, to step outside of our comfortable zones of thinking and into the abyss of mystery and awe. In some ways I see herbalists as irrational because we are seeking a way to live an ancient relationship with the earth during an age of ecological devastation and scientific rationalism. But the heart knows only love and we are lovers who don’t see anything but our beloved plants. That is how herbalists come to know plants, through a language of love.
Herbalism is an impulse, an uncontrollable passion, a need, a deep desire that stems from an inner longing. It is not the dry intellectual decision to study at university and accumulate knowledge from the great pharmacopeias. Herbalism comes from a deep inner longing that only a living relationship with plants can meet. Quite often it is through the process of becoming ill that people discover herbalism and learn the secrets of this ancient art. The fear of death, disease and the the stresses of daily life lead us to cry out for help, sometimes in complete desperation and only then do we discover that the plants are responding to our call. Our call to them in our time of need is also their call to us. When they hear us asking for help they respond, because in doing so they get to live their purpose which is to help humanity.
Herbalism is also a living lineage of traditions and teachings handed down from one generation to another, one teacher to another. There is a golden thread that connects herbalists across time and space in a very mysterious way and we somehow recognize each other by some familiarity that is beyond reason. Quite often a person will come to embrace herbalism through meeting a herbalist and realizing that a certain inner longing, a certain hunger for wisdom is fulfilled by the art of herbalism. The tradition is taught from one person to another, a transmission of the healing spirit, form heart to heart.
Herbalism is at first a hunger that only plants can feed, an empty fertile space within the gut that needs to be touched by the deep greenery of medicinal plant wisdom. Herbalism comes to you in a communication with the plant world, it reaches inside you with tendrils and speaks to you in your dreams until you learn to respond. As long as humans have walked this earth there have been herbalists who have communed with the greenery of the earth, spoken to the plants, attuned to the wisdom of nature, bowed down in deep respect to the plant kingdom.
Only recently has herbalism become a commercial endeavor. It was once a way of life and now it has become a fertile place to prospect for natural compounds to make commercial medicines. It once was the domain of grandmothers in a kitchen, and now it is a brightly labelled and carefully packed product on a shelf.
Before there was innate knowledge of plants and their healing abilities. They came to us in dreams and visions, spoke to us about their properties and showed us where to find them. We prayed before we collected the plants and we gave thanks when we picked them. The practice of making a medicine was a prayer weaving the fertile depths of our Mother Earth with the Great Spirit. We used to leave our bodies and journey with the plants and the patient, go find help and advice in other dimensions with great teachers of the world beyond this one. There we would fetch remedies and be given insights that healed and restored balance to the spirit.
Only later did we find out about such things as secondary metabolites and measurable medical compounds. It was only when the plants entered universities that we were told that they had discovered great phyto-medicinal properties and used words such as antibiotic, anti-viral or anti-coagulant to describe these things. Words that sounded more like warfare, a battleground where wild microbes waged war against the human body. It was only when science needed to classify, name and own what we have always known that they created words such as phenolics, alkaloids, saponins, terpenes and lipids in order to describe the medicinal properties of plants. Herbalism was never about this naming and classifying, categorization and hierarchical reductionist relationships. This was a mechanistic approach that did not see any of the deep and mysterious world of plant language that herbalists carried. The science of herbalism that we see today is a one dimensional description of a living art, a way of life, an endlessly complex and continually changing landscape of the inner worlds. The herbalism you will find in a book is not the herbalism that I know. I would be dishonest if I tried to convince you that it could be learned in books.
Herbalism shakes you to the core and forces you to look deeper than you are comfortable looking. It drags your awareness into the bowels of life where there is no place for the mind to make sense of things and then it speaks with you and shows you things. Science and the intelligent minds that are drawn to it try so desperately to classify herbalism, but how can you analyze a dead bird and know what it means to hear the birdsong at sunrise? Herbalism is a living art that takes you into some deeper place of fertile wisdom where the birdsong is alive within. This is where real herbalism offers its magic, when you surrender your human mind in order to hear the soft spoken words of the plant world. This is where the gifts of healing are given, a place of miracles and transmutation. Herbalism is not what you will find in the pharmacopoeia; it is in the dirt, deep in the roots of the fertile earth where your hands sink slowly, softly, to pull the roots of the wild pumpkin out of the mud. It is the conversation you have with the sun, the wind, the spirit of the mountain. It is the process of stepping outside of this world and into another space where magic is alive and speaking to the plant world, the spirits of the land. And when you are in that place, where words and descriptions no longer make sense to your rational mind, then you are being taught the art of herbalism, the ancient language of plants.
But this tradition is now at great risk of being lost, along with traditional wisdom and wild places in this world.
The Uncertain Future
We have reached an era of mass ecological devastation. With the decimation of ecosystems comes the loss of vast treasure troves of medicine and the living communities of people who hold the knowledge of how to use these medicines.
There are two things threatening the herbal tradition: the loss of wild places and the loss of indigenous knowledge systems.
On the Importance of Wild Places
For herbalism to continue as a tradition we need to retain our wild habitats. Undisturbed thicket, wild forest, desert scrub, these are the temples of a herbalist. This is where we meet our plant teachers and where the connection between the earth and humans is a vital part of a living tradition. Busy, built-up places where no wilderness survives carry a discordant energy that removes a herbalist from the ongoing conversation with nature. The teachings and practices remain but the spirit longs to touch the earth and to melt into the fabric of the wild. Wild places are habitats for an abundance of medicinal plants and they are also the homes of great spirits of the plant world, the non-physical beings of creation. The rivers, mountains, forests and caves are all home to the great nature spirits or devas who are living teachers in the subtle worlds. These devas have a living presence and they are an intrinsic connection that a herbalist must make before learning the secrets of the plant world.
I remember the first time I felt a living presence in nature that spoke to me: I was a young boy and we lived next to a coastal wetland surrounded by bush. A wild place. In the afternoons when I finished school I would make my way into the bush with our family dogs and I’d disappear until it started getting dark. One evening I was watching the sunset at the edge of the wetland and the fish were kissing the surface of the water as the setting sun glistened across the surface and the birds sang their evening prayers. I was in deep conversation with the fabric of this place and a light was present that one could only describe as sacred, ethereal and holy. This was a natural experience for the mind of a child, a part of being human. The experience of connecting to this living presence is utterly simple. It is a transmission, a fertilization, it plants a seed that grows into something inside us, offers us a living relationship with the earth.
The vast wilderness is the face of this presence. Each plant, each tree, each nook and cranny is a part of the great body of the wilderness, of our Great Mother. What is present in the wilderness is not just an extraordinary amount of biodiversity, medicines for every ailment and undiscovered cures for future diseases, but a treasure trove of wisdom that is embodied in the natural world. Here we can learn to connect and speak to the wilderness, learn to listen to its magical language and enter into a fertile relationship that grows the unloved seeds of potential inside of us. But if these spaces are no longer present in the world then we will lose the opportunities for ourselves and our future generations to have these important conversations with our Mother Earth. With the loss of wilderness there is the loss of an opportunity to converse with a deep collective wisdom that is present in nature. This intelligence in the wilderness also wants our co-operation, longs to converse with humanity and to share a closer relationship. The medicines in the wild are Her gifts to us to endure the hardships of disease and to experience the possibility of living in harmony with ourselves, our bodies, our communities and our relationship to the land. The wilderness deserves our protection. It gives so freely to us and asks so little in return.
On the Importance of Indigenous Knowledge Systems
The wilderness is also the last crucible of traditional knowledge systems. In the same way that a herbalist needs the wild open spaces to connect to the earth, so too do our indigenous knowledge systems need to live in the wild places and take care of them. Humanity has co-evolved with the natural world and survived impeccably. Indigenous knowledge systems have been created by a relationship to plants and ecosystems that is interwoven in their entire way of being. These ways of knowing have been a cornerstone of building deep treasure troves of wisdom for survival and thriving as a species. Indigenous communities have been taking care of wild landscapes for thousands of years, deriving food, medicine and shelter in an endlessly renewable lifestyle that has kept the world in balance. These communities still exist in isolation, but for how long we do not know. Like the wilderness, these communities deserve our protection.
The herbalists that are in these places of indigenous community hold and protect an athenaeum of wisdom from the plant world. They protect the very source of our deep inner wisdom of plant medicine, nurture the relationship with the plant kingdom whilst the rest of the world seems to have forgotten. These places and their people are important ambassadors between humanity and the natural world, they speak for nature, they are some of the few that still understand the language of nature and who can continue to give the gift of plant communication to the future generations.
Seeds for the Future
When the ecological devastation of our planet reaches a tipping point in the near future, it will be a time for all of humanity to pool our knowledge and wisdom in order to survive. This will be a time when our indigenous ways of knowing and living will be of paramount importance. The medicinal knowledge that is held in these communities is not only for human benefit but for entire ecosystems too. Those that speak to the plants not only receive wisdom about medicine but also are shown how to sustain and nourish life on earth in ways that science cannot understand.
The signs of imminent collapse are everywhere. When the herbalists and indigenous knowledge systems are eliminated, it paves a way for the world to be treated as a material object without feeling or sentience. Who will be left to remember the Great Mother and who will tend to the sacred groves?
The disconnection with the sacred will lead to more ecologically catastrophic decisions made in the name of progress and growth. More dams will be built without consideration of the living spirit of a river, forests will be cut down and entire species eliminated which contain valuable new medicines, the estuaries will be drained and the rivers will continue to be polluted, the floodplains poisoned until life can no longer sustain itself.
Who will protect the earth is there is nobody left to listen to what she has to say?
Indigenous knowledge systems, much like wild ecosystems, are deep treasure troves of wisdom, connection, medicine and sustenance. The art of herbalism is intrinsically connected to indigenous knowledge and the wilderness. It is a tradition which offers a direct relationship to the spirit of the earth, the Great Mother who is also our mother. So for those that are conscious, who are spiritually minded, who believe that this is the time to hold the light of the heart of the world, I ask that you will embrace and defend our ancient art and protect the wild ecosystems that nurture and sustain it.
“The heart is turned to God by longing, and longing is the hearts remembrance of God, and as we live this longing, so we remember our beloved. Longing turns us back towards God and our tears wash away the veils of forgetfulness.” LVL
Oneness
There are these subtle moments that come to us in nature. Moments of primordial oneness where life is revealed in a living fractal of absolute oneness. These moments are blessings that are not to be missed. These are moments of sacred opportunity where the head is free from the tyranny of cascading thoughts and there is an emptiness on the screens of our mind that allows a glimpse of the world as it really is. This transcendent state reveals a oneness that pervades everything and it is good and true and beautiful.
It is in these glimpses of eternity that I have seen nature’s unveiled form and known firsthand that She is intrinsically mystical. Looking upon Her face reveals a secret weaving of the holy alliance between matter and spirit. She is an awe inspiring reflection of the beauty and mystery that reveals how matter is the veiled face of God.
We live in this mystery, inside this sacred and magical revelation of God. The folds of Her skin are where we live our lives, unaware that we are so intimate and close, unconscious of the holiness of our habitat, but we have forgotten this spiritual secret. We are travelers who have fallen asleep in the caravanserai of her body, believing falsely that we are separated from our beloved Earth Mother. We have forgotten a deep spiritual truth that all the universe, the Earth and humanity, are one living being. We have neglected to nurture the intrinsic knowledge that we are the living pulse of the universe and a fragment of God’s seamless wholeness. We are a microcosm of the Earth and She is a microcosm of a greater form of worlds within worlds, layers of consciousness embedded within deeper and wider webs of life.
The living heartbeat
Every thing we can feel, see, hear and touch is alive and it resonates with a song that is the music of the universe. This mystical music is heard by our inner ears. It is a sacred symphony that measures the dance of life unfolding in space and time. This is the deep rhythmic pulse of all life. All life exists by virtue of this fundamental rhythm which is the heartbeat of life, of the Earth, of ourselves.
The Earth is an infinitely small part of an infinitely large unfolding universe. Her heart beats in unison with the heartbeat of the universe in an utterly ancient rhythm that weaves and dances with light throughout all of creation, from the nothingness before time to the present moment.
We see and feel this pulse of the Earth in our daily lives, it is all pervasive. It is evident in the simplest things: the ebb and flow of the tides, the mysterious cycles of falling rain, the reliable cycle of the sun heating and cooling the ground, complex ecosystems of plants in states of growth and decay and in our own cycles of life and rebirth. In our own bodies, in our cycles of life and death, we mimic this heartbeat that measures the passing of time in a universe where time is simultaneously nonexistent. These cycles cannot be comprehended by our rational measuring of life in pinpoints and way-stations. They are a rhythm, a beat, a song and a dance that is forever changing and fluid. This is the fundamental heartbeat of all life.
Fertile emptiness
Within the rhythmic heartbeat there is a natural pause between beats. The pause in this heartbeat is an unknown, unseen and un-manifest substance that is the living substrate of the beat. The pause exists in the empty spaces of this heartbeat and it includes the heartbeat too. This pause between beats is not really a pause at all but an aspect of the wholeness of the breath that is moving between two poles in creation. It is the strange nothingness, the fertile darkness upon which the relationship between opposites manifests.
Our hearts, entrained to her heartbeat, also contain this emptiness of creation and so we too are this fertile darkness upon which the songs of life are orchestrated. This means that our hearts contain the same formless fertile emptiness that is present throughout creation. Our hearts are assembled from this same deep mystery of all life. There is no separation, only a magnitude of infinite diversity which is part of one seamless whole.
Being attentive in nature, in meditation, we hear our hearts singing this song that is sacred and holy. We hear music emanating from the unbound totality, a universal symphony resounding throughout the created world. This is the strange silent symphony that emanates from the emptiness of a seashell, the silent whistling of a desert, the inner flowing stillness of a meditation.
This heartbeat is also our breath as it is drawn and exhaled, drawing our souls into and out of the created world. This dance of opposites upon fertile spaces of nothingness is the very essence of all life.
An Axis of Love
There is an ancient wisdom which says that the heart of the Earth, like ours, is held between the fingers of God and gently turned by His will. God’s will is the axis of love and all life oscillates around this axis. God is also this strange nothingness that is the pause between the poles of creation. God is both the pause and the poles, both the being and the non-beingness of the heartbeat of life.
In vision I see that as the heart is turned in the fingers of God, so it dances this partnering of opposites in long sweeping rhythmic cycles of life unfolding unto itself. This dynamic flow brings to mind a beautiful image of Earth, alive and deeply conscious, Her heart turned in the fingers of God, ever present in the eternal moment, dutifully unfolding life unto itself.
Miraculous humanity
We (humanity) are the miracles that live by virtue of this universal heartbeat. We are a mystery of self-consciousness and free will, able to look back upon creation and reflect upon our very presence within it. We are Adam and Eve, the archetypal humans who were born into creation and live in the primordial oneness of the Earth imbued with the gift of self-reflection, but in truth we are Her mind reflecting upon creation.
The Goddess Earth gave birth to self-consciousness in the form of humanity so that she may come to know the dynamics of her own duality. Through this process of consciousness she is witnessing the aspects of herself that appear to be separated from Her beloved creator. And in witnessing this separation she comes to know the emptiness that is the primal substrate of all creation.
It is through this act of witnessing the emptiness of the void that her heart cries in pain and so calls the light of her beloved to fill the emptiness with His love. Through her emptiness she may receive more of the pure light of the creator and reflect it back to her beloved. The purpose of humanity is to be the vehicle of Her knowing.
All the world is a play of light. From light it comes and to light it returns. It is light upon light.
This beautiful earthly existence is so captivating but it is only one aspect of the primordial light of creation. It takes soft eyes and an open heart to see the world as it really is, to recognize the light that is at the center of everything, the light that is the living substance of creation.
A Vision of Light I have had a vision of how the earth is born from light. It was a potent vision that seemed to reflect an ancient understanding of the earth, a way of seeing the earth that we have collectively forgotten. It felt like a mystical vision merged with a shamanic trance. In this vision I saw that God is a seamless wholeness without beginning or end. God was imaged as light that is at the center of creation, a living, flowing light that is permeating everything. In this center of creation there is only a fertile nothingness and the light of creation flows from it. There is a sense that this image of creation is simultaneously both form and formless.
Creation is a deeply mysterious act that is constantly in process of becoming. It is an act of subtle magic, something we cannot measure and weigh or even give a name to. Yet it has been so heavily laden with our imaginings and projections.
We think that creation is this planet, this material realm, but on the inner planes it is far more mysterious than that. Creation is like a continual process of God manifesting in this world and then simultaneously vanishing from it. Creation is at its essence something that has no form, it is a void of potential that is covered in veil upon veil, light upon light.
Creation emerges into existence from this void and manifests in successive layers of subtle form. Our very consciousness of creation, our need to understand it and engage with it in our minds and hearts, changes it.
With intuitive sight one can see how creation is woven together into a web of silk-like threads made of light. As this light is woven into this web, it is like a Mandelbrot fractal which contains every single possibility of this dimension that we call the universe. But even this living fractal, pulsating with infinite spirals of life unfolding unto itself, is just an aspect of the oneness of God.
When peering behind these veils into the realms of light we see things as they truly are. The veils of the material world become thin and the immutable laws of matter themselves become soft and permeable. Matter reveals its fractal nature, it becomes a living being and shows us the presence of the light within it, interacts with us as though a god in its own right, revealing its multiple forms. This web becomes the primary screen upon which all creation manifests through a projection of the light. This web is the fertile substrate in which form appears, and it operates by different laws and principles to the material world we are so entranced with. Every single atom of creation is a particle of light, and in each particle of light there exists a reflection of the entire universe.
Time and Space In the realms of light, everything takes on an archetypal meaning. Time and space are not immutable laws but rather living archetypes, or living gods. Like all archetypes they carry the power of the gods, they are imbued with a consciousness and exist within their own right, make their own choices, fulfill their own destinies. The constructs that we have made them into are dissolved in the realms of light. Time and space show us the deeper dimensions of their being, their true archetypal faces which are so much more mysterious than we care to see in this world. In these realms it is made obvious that our human conditioning about the permanence of time and space is a construct that is self-limiting. Here the world shows us that it does not have a beginning or end, cannot be weighed or measured, cannot be understood with the rational mind, because its real nature is this light that is pregnant with infinite possibilities.
Seamless Wholeness When seeing this realm of light we are reminded that life truly is a mystery that we do not and cannot ever understand within our human condition because life is a dynamic and ever-changing pattern of light merging with light. In these planes of light there is no separation between us and God, only a spectacular unfolding of life from the planes of non-manifestation to the planes of creation, in a continual pattern of emergence. In the planes of light everything reveals itself as a seamless wholeness. Everything is a unified wholeness, everything is one.
Hidden Treasure It is said in that God created the world in order to know himself:
“I was a hidden treasure, and I wished to be known, so I created mankind.” (Hadith Qudsi)
In this hadith there is secret wisdom, hidden treasure, that points to a profound truth. But like most good treasures, it is hidden and the path to discover the treasure is disguised in a riddle that needs solving. The riddle has the power to awaken in us the realization of something that is good and true and beautiful.
I have pondered this saying, written about it, meditated upon it, gazed into the clouds and drifted into daydreaming with it. I have brought it into my art, coaxed it out of a good few sunrises and wrestled with it. I have come to think of it as meaning that the divine light of God is present in every atom of creation and that through the eyes of humanity God looks back upon Himself.
The light in creation, the light in a flower or a tree, a mountain range or a stream, these are all places where the mystery of this Hadith is revealed. There is a substance to this light that we can dance with in nature. This light seduces our senses, like a bee is seduced by the patterns of light emanating from a flower. All of nature seems to witness this light in creation where it is present in every single thing. Even the rock is a living being that is made of this light. It is simply a seamless wholeness of light upon light.
In the inner worlds of oneness and on the planes of mystical light there is only oneness and love, a seamless wholeness that pervades all the created worlds. When looking at the world and seeing a seamless wholeness throughout the fabric of creation which is saturated with the presence of God, one cannot see anything other than something truly holy and deeply sacred, something profoundly connected and seamless. With the eyes of a mystic, through the lens of oneness, one cannot see God as something separate from creation because there is no place where God is not present. When we see the world through our hearts, when we engage with the world in love, then the mysteries are revealed.
The important thing for me in this deeply complex subject of the origin of life is that it makes us wonder. It is through wondering that we open the portals to mystery and through our passion and longing for truth that we are softened enough to receive this wisdom.
Shamanism knows and breathes nature in Her entirety. Shamanism is fed by the spirit of nature and in return it feeds nature’s spirit. The shaman and nature are like one breath, they inhale and exhale one another throughout time. This breath is a bond of love. Life breathes through the shaman in order to live life more fully so that it may come alive and the shaman cannot live unless it is through the breath of nature.
Journey inwards The shamanic way is a path. It’s not written in any books and taught at a school. It’s an inner journey that one must be initiated into, a journey where one is helped by a teacher to retrieve an ancient relationship between humanity and the soul of nature.
The path exists already inside the heart and when we start to walk this path it begins for many as a love affair with the living earth, the mother goddess, Gaia. For a person to become a shaman they must first lose themselves in their own hearts, because there they will discover is the heart of nature, the heart of the goddess, alive and inside us.
To walk this path of the shaman we must fall in love, become spellbound by the earths beauty, allow the heart to be seduced and led to a place where the feet no longer touch the ground. This journey of love brings a person inwards, into the softness of the heart, where there is a space of longing and wanting, a desire for connection, and it is this very place of longing that we must reach into and experience with our whole being.
Gaia asks first that we cast aside the small self that resides in the mind and enter into the sacred silence of the heart. When the mind is the servant of the heart, then we become free to walk in spirit alongside the spirit of nature. This journey is one that does not reach outwards and upwards to a sacredness that is beyond this world, but is rather a journey inside, into the depths of the fertile darkness within the self. It is a journey into the underworld where the inner emptiness, the void of darkness, takes the seeker deep within to a universe reflected inside our own selves.
In this fertile darkness is the nothingness from which all creation emerges. This is the void present inside each of us, a dynamic centre of emergence, where the earth mother, Gaia, is present. The shaman journeys inside, into the heart and is taken by longing and love to the goddess who resides in these depths. There she encounters the world of the dead, alongside the fountain of life that gives rise to all that is living.
This is the shamanic path in its essence. Through an attitude of longing, an open heart filled with deep love for the earth, the shaman is taken through the heart and into the depths where through her intuition and her attention she navigates the path home to the goddess within her own being.
We find the earth mother through this practice of travelling along this ancient trail, this path that one walks inwardly, spiralling into ones self, deeper and deeper into the fertile nothingness within. As we go deeper into this fertile darkness we discover that there is light in this darkness and that it is our own light within the earth that we are walking towards.
Finding the thread At the centre of creation the shaman sees the light inside the fertile nothingness. This light is of course the light of the self that is embedded within the material world, within the body of the earth. That light is like a thread that ties them to the source. They see the threads of connection to the earth mother that they followed down here into the depths and so they realise that there is a unity in all creation, the connectedness of all life forms, the primordial oneness of being. This is the umbilicus that gave rise to all living things and it is a living thread of connection to the web of all life.
The witnessing of the umbilicus, the remembrance of this connection, then frees the shaman to return to the world and to be this place of inner fertility in the outside world. She becomes a conduit for the emergence of the light that resides deep within the heart of the earth, the light of the self now consciously brought into the world. But now she is transformed, no longer human, conscious that she is a divine being in whom the goddess Gaia resides.
The shaman is one who has travelled to the depths and seen the source of life, then returned, back along this thread to the world of form. She brings with her stories from the other side, the inside, the realm of the dead who are so much more alive than the living, that carry the life force of this living connection, so that her words may bring the magic of creation into the world of form.
And so the shaman is a healer because they bring this thread alive in the world, deepen the connection, strengthen the flow of light between the deep inner worlds and the outer world of the tribe. She has lit the pathway between tribe and the soul of the earth. And as the path is once again walked by the shaman, whilst she sings the songs of creation, so the heart of the earth is nourished.
In its purest form the shaman who has returned from the depths comes back with lungs filled by the breath of nature. She breathes from within, not desperately sucking the prana from the air, but absorbing the living essence of creation in every breath from within, remembering the name of her beloved mother earth. And so it is that with her breath she becomes more alive and the soul of the earth becomes more alive too. Breathing with the spirit of the earth the two enliven each other. They are one breath and the shaman has become the axis of creation between the inner and the outer worlds.
The Axis of Creation A shaman embodies both the darkness of the deep earth and the surface of light that reflects the sun. The space that a shaman holds is a dynamic center that is able to embody both poles of the light and the fertile darkness. A shaman can’t be forced to live in the darkness or the light exclusively because a shaman is the pole between these two worlds, the axis of creation. Her role is to be a pivotal place of transmutation that can unify both worlds.
When there is no place on earth for the shaman then her alchemical powers of uniting heaven and earth have no place to be practiced. She is a tree without a trunk. She has roots to draw the darkness from the depths of her being and leaves to imbibe and transmute the light of the sun, but there is no form in-between that can marry the energies of life’s light and darkness.
A Medicine for the Earth The shaman’s heart is like a medicine for the earth, a medicine that aligns and restores energy that flows between the poles of creation. She is the place of fertilization between the pure light of spirit and the dark recesses of anti-matter.
In her body there is a special place that can hold these energies and fertilize life into new forms. Her womb is not just a place for the growth of a child, but it is the center of creation, a dynamic center that holds life and gives birth to what needs to come into this world. Our transcendent prayers have no place to be answered if we do not have the womb of the shaman to give birth to its outcome.
The transcendent spiritual traditions can’t achieve anything without the shamanic wisdom that knows how to weave together the sacred transcendent light with the fertile darkness of the earth mother. She is the body of life through which a certain type of grace can be born into the world. Certain things are born through the body of this woman alone and cannot be born into this world unless it has the sacred place of the shaman’s womb. Any transformation we are hoping for in life will not happen until we create the place for our shamans to take their position at the center of society, where their trusted role has been since time began.
With the memory of our shamans who were cast out in the previous era, let us all create a place in our hearts, in our groups for the re-emergence of the shamanic spirit so that the earth may blossom once more.
“I walk the earth with my feet deeply rooted in the soil. My heart beats in unison with the clouds, the thunder and the rain. As I give myself to the moment I become the tide that ebbs and flows. I am the sun that rises and the moon that dances with the stars in the night sky. I am the pain and suffering of our planet, choking on the poisons in the soil and sick from the polluted waters. I am the wind in the trees and yet my consciousness is also embedded in the eternal rocks. This morning whispered to me and my soul answered the calling by being present. When I am still and listen to the whispers of the inner worlds, the language can be heard, seen and tasted in every moment. An ancient language beyond this time and place. In this state, no separation exists. Everything is holy, everything is One.” – Journal excerpt.
Within each of us is the nature soul, an aspect of ourselves that is rooted within the fabric of the living earth. The nature soul is an embodiment of the continual remembrance of our earthly mother. It is the inner silent witness to the earth’s sacred nature. It is a part of us that is the living connection to the soul of the earth, the animamundi as Carl Jung called it. It is the remembrance that we are a spark within Her soul and an inseparable part of Her being. This nature soul remembers its own essential nature, the sacred oneness of earth, the sacred wholeness underlying all creation. It is a living connection to the universal presence in all things great and small.
The nature soul is present in each of us. The heart of nature is alive inside of us because we are nature. This is the umbilicus that makes us human. We commune with this nature soul when we connect to the presence of intelligence in nature, when we go to nature in a sacred way. Through deep longing we can find the thread that leads us back to the source, where the nature soul lies present inside of us. When we lower our heads in humility to this inner presence we can invoke the potency and power of this ancient archetype and invoke the ancient language of the nature soul again.
In these days where ecological destruction cascades into apocalyptic scenarios of the collapse of entire ecosystems it has become more important than ever for us to reconnect with our nature souls, to enter into conversation with the wilderness within, to trace that thread of our nature back to its source. The connection to this thread of the sacred in nature is something that our indigenous ancestors took for granted in their daily lives which were so intimately close to the earth, but in today’s world we have entire generations who are lacking a sacred connection to nature, who have not been able to experience a fundamental initiation into the ways of the wilderness.
The Green Man The nature soul is the archetype of the Green Man, that part of us who is wild, green, born from the earth. It is the wilderness within. This archetype stands at an ancient doorway of the inner worlds that leads us back to the sacred origin of creation. The archetype of the Green Man is our higher self reflected in nature, it is the part of us that is an earthling, a child of the earth, made from the very body of this green being that we live within.
Through love and attention we can grow this connection to our nature soul and invoke the reflection of the Green Man in this world. It happens when we are in the forest or on the mountain, but it can also happen by just simply sitting under a tree and being present. Establishing a connection with nature is an innate part of being human and She is present in every living thing, waiting to be seen, spoken to, listened to. And even in the complete absence of nature it can happen simply by facing the vast inner landscape of the wilderness inside ourselves. We need to fall in love with the earth again both inside ourselves and outside. We need to do this whilst at work, whilst in the midst of this civilisation and it’s madness, so that we can hold a certain note in the world. The nature soul needs to enter this world in the very places it has been most forgotten.
When we enter into a sacred relationship with nature, in a state of loving receptiveness, in a state of humility and respect, we create a living thread between our small self and the nature soul. This connection creates a certain quality of light inside us, it makes a place inside us where this light can be present. Just like in nature, this light touches seeds and awakens their potential to grow, so too does this soft light of nature touch something inside of us, nourish it and awaken its potential to grow. Nature wants to make this connection, it is the way that things are, the desire for growth, connection and unfolding of divine potential are Her ways. The tendrils of her longing to connect with us only need that fertile place in our hearts to take root and flourish.
When we make space for this light to be present inside of us then we become a place in this world where there can be an intercession of the divine, where the nature soul can be present in this world and can hold a certain note of the expression of divinity. The intercession of the divine needs conscious human beings to be the gateway through which the divine intercedes in this world of form. Said differently, the gods need our conscious participation in this world in order for them to be present within it. When we invoke the presence of the Green Man and create a connection to this ancient and primal aspect of our being we become a place where the gods, the divine intercession, can be in this world again.
It is especially vital that we remember the nature soul in these times of ecological devastation because it is only through remembrance of the nature soul that we will become conscious of the sacred possibilities for a future renewal of the earth. Only in this state of receptive consciousness will we be shown the seeds that are needed to rebirth this dying civilisation. It may be too late to stop the impending ecocide, but we can still nourish the seeds that will flourish in the future.
The remembrance of the nature soul gives us access to a living path which helps us find a way home again, back inside, back to the origins of life where we can begin again. The path is a spiralling perambulation in that it guides us towards our future spiritual practice, for a time that is yet to come when the earth will be renewed once again, but also it takes us back in time to the primordial moment of creation. By journeying inwards, into the depths of the earth whilst the outer world is in turmoil we return to the source of creation, to the nourishment of the fertile depths. We return to a place where stories of the future are being formed, stories that will show us how navigate these times. This is the circumambulation of the sacred and it leads us inwards again.
Dissolving the dark spell This act of remembering the nature soul also has an obvious gift for the present: it is the one thing that can help us disentangle ourselves from the dark spell of materialism.
Our global culture is in the throes of a deep mental illness imaged as a spell that has fundamentally altered our collective perception of the divinity of life. This spell is insidious and all-pervasive. It has infiltrated nearly all aspects of our life. There are few places in the world today that are not infiltrated by this dark magic and yet we seem blind to its presence in the world.
This spell is like an underlying fracture in our collective human perception. It has changed our ability to see the pure light that rests inside matter. With less light, with the fracturing of the light, we see less clearly and it becomes more difficult to witness the true nature of creation.
The true nature of creation is that it is a living being and an embodied face of God.
The spell has had a negative effect on the innate connection to our nature soul and in so doing it has caused us to forget how to see the presence of God in our beloved Mother Earth. This has allowed humanity to treat the earth as a material object which exists to fulfil our desires for material goods. This means we have related to the earth without respecting her sacred nature and therefore our actions have desecrated the earth.
This spell on our consciousness continues to grow stronger too. There was a time when it appeared that there may be an opportunity for a shift in consciousness towards a more balanced world, but instead things have become far worse. The spell of materialism appears to have become an autonomous entity that is thriving and growing. The signs that this magic is reaching its death grip are being witnessed in ecological devastation of a scale that we are now calling “irreversible”. Now we live in the time of the Anthropocene, where our very presence on this planet is leading to its destruction. We have become the antithesis of life itself.
As the spell continues to desecrate the bonds of love that are woven between humanity and Mother Earth it is as though it looks for a place in the subtle realms where it it can become a permanent veil that will shadow and further fracture the light that flows between God and humanity. In this fatal game of smoke and mirrors the dark magic seems to be finding its death grip. It has almost permanently stamped its power upon the psyche of humanity, capturing the light, fragmenting it, changing how we hear and relate to that primordial note of creation. But our connection to the nature soul can reverse this dark magic, unravel it, dissolve its grip on our lives. If not collectively, then at least within small circles of conscious caretakers who will hold the light of the earth in their hearts, sing the songs of creation.
There was a time when every human being was conscious of the oneness of the earth, when we related to the earth as a living goddess, a sacred being who was the face of God. But we no longer have the daily practice of connecting to the sacred nature of life, the practice of morning prayer, of listening to the voices of the birds at dawn, the giving thanks for a new day; these are all rituals that nourish the soul of the earth. Humanity no longer nourishes these threads of love which allowed the earth to give birth to new life, to new undulations of the unfolding pattern of consciousness. Each one of us that makes place for witnessing the sacred in daily life holds a vital connection that is needed in these times. It does not need to become a recruitment campaign, it does not need to become a proselytizing, we don’t need any more people attempting to convince others of the truth. That is a fundamentalism that is not needed. It simply needs to be an awareness held silently in the heart and maintained every day through prayers of love and connection to the earth. This simple act can hold so much light for the soul of the world in these trying times.
“The songs of creation weave the threads of the sacred into existence. These threads are nurtured by our remembrance of the sacred nature of life, the remembrance that we are on this planet to be guardians of the earth.”
The sacred songs Where once there were songs that brought the light in creation alive, the spell of materialism now drowns the song of the earth with its own dark lullaby. Our attention has been so utterly diverted from the sacred that we have forgotten the old instinctual song lines that brought life into existence.
The birds remember the songs and they greet the rising and setting sun with this remembrance every day. Their symphony of song, their prayer of remembrance at dawn, is their continual remembrance of the song that is at the heart of creation. But like the dissipating bird life, the songs of creation are receding into obscurity. Where there once was life, bright and abundant, now it feels like there is an absence of its presence. In nature where there once was a symphony of birdsong there is now a hollowness to their music that speaks of what has been lost.
The songlines of creation weave the threads of the sacred into existence. These threads are nurtured by our remembrance of the sacred nature of life, the remembrance that we are guardians of the earth. These are sacred threads of consciousness and wisdom that stretch far back into the original, primordial moment of creation. These are the golden threads of the unfolding of consciousness that have been nurtured by the mystics and shamans since the beginning of time. They know that these threads are the substance that holds the sacred balance of life intact. They understand that if these threads are not nurtured then the very fabric of creation is affected. This is because the life force that is continually being born into this world from the planes of light needs these threads to be present in order for it to root itself in this world. The sacred threads of creation are like an umbilicus that hold the light and bring it into this world of form, allow it to unfold in this world and nourish what is continually being born.
The songs are the prayers that incubate the transmission of the light in these golden threads and they nourish creation. Through these songs, the shamans and mystics know how to nurture these threads of light that emerge from the source of creation, they know how to build the light bodies in the subtle world that will allow the light to manifest in this world in a sacred manner, aligned with its true purpose. These subtle light bodies are woven from the threads that originate from the primal source of being stretching all the way back to the beginning of time. On a deep mystical level it is these threads, these songlines, nurtured and woven by the shaman and mystic, that hold all of life in balance.
There must always be a nurturing of the energies that emerge from the centre of creation. This is the primordial place where light enters this world of form and it is filled with divine potential, unaffected by the collective psyche of humanity. This is why it has always been such an important aspect of indigenous cultures that we are continually in conversation with the earth whose centre is the essence from which all life is born. The light that is born into creation is in need of nurturing, holding, allowing it to emerge into the world to its full potential. It must be allowed to stretch to the four corners of creation and be woven into all aspects of the world.
Apocalypse If humanity continues to forget that the earth is sacred, that we are guardians of nature, then our current civilisation will simply come to an end. When humanity forgets its primary role of custodianship over nature then our beloved Mother Earth will forget us too. She will mimic us, forgetting her role as nurturing mother and she will reflect our own forgetfulness. The Mother Earth will turn into the dark goddess, Kali, violently aborting us from her holarchy. This is simply the natural order of life. By all accounts this is where we are now, our time has passed and we will witness the darkness of the earths psyche. As this happens, as the darkening unfolds, the forgetfulness deepens, our current civilisation will end and a new one will be born. But during the death of this current civilisation we are being given the seeds for the rebirth of the future.
The true meaning of the word apocalypse stems from the greek word apokálupsis, which means disclosure or revelation, because when a civilisation dies the mystic and shaman are given the seeds for the rebirth of a new beginning. They alone hold the answers to helping humanity avoid a deeper catastrophe, but they are also given the seeds for the rebirth of what has come to an end.
These times remind me of a prophecy I heard when meeting with Credo Mutwa, the high Sanusi and spiritual leader of the indigenous Zulu tribe of Southern Africa. We were speaking about the world and it’s uncertain future and he told me that he saw the African tribes leaving this earth to continue their evolution on another planet. He went on to explain that this world had become too desecrated for the African tribes to complete their soul work here. Their way of life was not respected, the simple fact that everyone was being forced to become a tax-paying, possession-owning consumer tore apart the very threads of community life. In the late 1990’s this seemed difficult to comprehend, but in these days of global ecocide I wonder whether this was a prophetic metaphor of the future he saw unfolding. If there are no cultures left to nurture and sustain the threads of the earth lore intact, then what hope is there for a sleeping humanity to remain harmoniously present in the global ecosystem?
The Anthropocene is our current era and it signals the time of the apocalypse. This is the time of revelation, the time to pack up our things, forget this culture of materialism and move inwards. As we move inwardly, spiral into ourselves more deeply and forget this world, there we will find the silence that rests at the centre of creation, where it is being born anew.
It is time, As Credo said, to leave this world and start anew elsewhere. That ‘elsewhere’ is within.
The Gift of our Nature Soul Credo Mutwa was speaking about this other self that rests in the greenery of the forest, the gentle nature spirit inside of us that has not been given a place to be present in this world. It is our own indigenous way of knowing that looks into the eyes of the great Mother and feels the cry of deep pain in Her heart. As environmentalists we witness the outer destruction of ecosystems but as children of Mother Earth we can feel the inner desecration of Her being. It is a deep and terrible pain that has forced our nature soul deep into the recesses of our consciousness.
The nature soul needs to witness the desecration of the beloved earth, needs to be present and needs to feel the deep sense of loss at this time in human evolution. This is an act of witnessing, a vantage point from which we can be present with the beloved earth in her suffering. It is a compassionate act, an act of love, to be present and to witness whilst this civilisation comes to an end.
By invoking the presence of the nature soul to witness the end of an era, we are also pointing our inner compass back to where our soul originates, to the primordial garden where life is endlessly unfolding and renewing itself. We follow the longlines inward and we invoke the distant memory where the earth was a sacred goddess and humanity were devotees, implicitly conscious of our divine role.
Our ancestors knew. Their sacred ceremonies remembered. They taught each generation to relate to the earth in an act of love, head bowed in humility, honour and the deepest respect for that which is truly sacred. We all originate from this sacred tribe, we all know this nature soul in our hearts which recognises that life is a divine consciousness unfolding and reflecting upon itself, a consciousness that can only be called a supreme state of primordial love. Their wisdom taught us to act as children of the earth, caretakers of this Garden of Eden.
Only through this inner journey, the journey inside oneself where we return to our source, where we must confront the depth and extent of our complicity in the damage done to our beloved Mother Earth, only there do we find the light that is present inside us and return with it to offer it back to Mother Earth, for her sake.
I believe that when we remember the nature soul we are each given a gift that is a special secret held in Her heart. It is a memory that we are both mystic and shaman, both of this world and the transcendent spiritual realm. It is something with roots that grow back to the first moment of creation where our mother was a spark that emerged into the nothingness before time. In remembering there is awakening and in awakening there is a fertilization of the vision that was prophesied by ancient women, many moons ago, that a new “Unknown She” would rise up and return to walk and dance love back into the earth. It speaks to us as a motion in the fabric of the earth’s psyche, a murmuring that the shamans interpret in the winds and unravel in their songs, the dawn chorus of the birds that greet the sun with their prayers. It contains that same primordial spark of the first dance of existence. It is something so profoundly mysterious but utterly simple and unseen to those whose gaze is fixated on the material world.
And in this deeply significant time of transition, this time of immense ecological crisis, there is a brief moment of possibility for us to receive this gift, to learn to sing to our Mother Earth again. For to know this secret is to understand life’s potential for infinite renewal. It is the secret lore that our ancient ancestors held in their hearts. It reminds us that the present moment is a moment of potential, a small portal through which a new light can enter the world and illuminate the God-given possibilities of this time. This moment offers us a shamanic practice for bringing the light into the Earth. Our nature soul is this gift given back to us in this time of need.
