I have been writing and celebrating ritual for half of my life. The equinoxes and solstices and the cross quarter days (May 1, August 1, All Hallows, and February 2) comprise the eight spokes of the year. What I have… Read More ›
Earth-based spirituality
The Mountain and the Goddess by Judith Shaw
Mother Earth does not discriminate. She cares for all her children in all their varied forms. Our ancient ancestors considered Earth and its many geological elements to be feminine and/or associated with goddesses – from caves, to rivers, lakes and… Read More ›
A Lovely Self-Imposed Isolation by Deanne Quarrie
With everyone talking about it – I won’t. Let’s just say that I am in the “at risk” population and have decided that staying home is my best protection against “it.” Staying home is what I do most of the… Read More ›
Trees Sleep? by Sara Wright
This post follows last week’s post: The Forest Has a Heart? In 2016, Zlinszky (Zlinszky/Molnar/Barfod) and his team released another study demonstrating that birch trees go to sleep at night (now we know that all trees – at least all… Read More ›
The Forest has a Heart?** by Sara Wright
Scientist Diana Beresford Kroeger proved that the biochemistry of humans and that of plants and trees are the same – i.e. the hormones (including serotonin) that regulate human and plant life are identical. What this means practically is that trees… Read More ›
Frozen 2: Can the Christian Church Hear its Gospel Song? by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir
The first time I saw Frozen 2, I was impressed by the ecofeminism and the efforts to respect the Sami culture. The second time, I thoroughly enjoyed the superb music and the character development. The third time… was a religious… Read More ›
The Portal: How Do We Know What We Know? by Sara Wright
Every morning I walk to the river in the velveteen hour between the vanishing blue night and the coming of the first scarlet, pink, lavender, purple or golden ribbons that stretch across the horizon. Sometimes clouds with heavy gray eyelids… Read More ›
The Serpent and the Goddess by Judith Shaw
The otherworldly energy of Snake – it’s vitality, its uncanny ability to sense danger, and its ability to shed its skin and reappear as if reborn must have invoked feelings of awe in our ancestors. All across the pre-historic world… Read More ›
Matriarchies Are Not Just a Reversal of Patriarchies: A Structural Analysis by Heide Goettner-Abendroth
Matriarchies are not just a reversal of patriarchies, with women ruling over men – as the usual misinterpretation would have it. Matriarchies are mother-centered societies. They are based on maternal values: care-taking, nurturing, mothering. This holds for everybody: for mothers… Read More ›
The Ability to Feel and to Feel the Feelings of Others by Carol P. Christ
The term “panpsychism” is made up of two Greek words: pan, meaning all, and psyche, often translated mind or soul. Panpsychism is the view that (forms of) soul or mind or consciousness are found throughout the web of life. This… Read More ›
Tree Talk: Dr. Susan Simard by Sara Wright
Scientist Susan Simard is a professor of forest ecology at the University in Vancouver, British Columbia, who has been studying the below-ground fungal networks that connect trees and facilitate underground inter-tree communication and interaction. Over a period of more than… Read More ›
Wolf – The Call of the Wild by Judith Shaw
Howling wolves on a winter’s night sets the human heart aflame with fear – their legends are terrifying. Yet there is another side to Wolf. Deeply relational by nature, wolves are highly intelligent animals, excellent hunters and devoted to family…. Read More ›
Who Owns the Sacred? A Personal Search beyond (European) Indigenous Knowledge by Eline Kieft
For almost 35 years nature has been my sacred place. As an 8-year old, I started to pray to Mother Earth even though the protestant tradition in which I grew up only recognised ‘God the Father’. I went outside in… Read More ›
The Storyteller by Sara Wright
When I walked into the space a bolt of light shot across the room and struck me so forcibly that it felt like it shattered the cells beneath my skin. Did this occur before I glimpsed her bronzed moon shaped… Read More ›
Winter Solstice Drama by Sara Wright
Last year I attended a bonfire on the night of the winter solstice at a friend’s house. As my companion and I walked towards the ledge where the fire had been the year before we were both astonished. Where was… Read More ›
Liminal Space by Carol P. Christ
From the Latin word limen meaning threshold. When I returned to Lesbos in mid-October, I imagined I would be living in my new apartment in Crete for the holidays. In fact, my lawyer and my realtor insisted that I arrange… Read More ›
Becoming Scrub by Sara Wright
In the precious hour before dawn I walk down to a river that no longer empties into the sea – the circle of life has been broken – the earth’s veins and arteries are hopelessly clogged by human interference (stupidity)… Read More ›
Embracing the Darkness by Judith Shaw
For most of my life I dreaded both the approach of winter and winter itself. Having grown up in the semi-tropics of New Orleans I had little tolerance for the cold. Living further north as an adult, the shortening days… Read More ›
Navajo Night Chant and the Sacred Dark by Sara Wright
With Winter Moon’s passage and the approach of the winter solstice just a little less than a week away I am much aware of the (potential healing) dwelling place that I inhabit that also characterizes these dark months of the… Read More ›
The Circle of Life and Death by Sara Wright
This morning the sky was on fire before dawn even as I approached the river whose ripples reflected a purple so deep it was almost inked in charcoal – In the Bosque I noticed that one mule deer had used… Read More ›
Mess and Magic, by Molly Remer
Maybe beautiful things don’t only grow from peace, maybe they grow from the soil of living, which holds both blood and tears muck and magic. Last week I tried to work on my book while the household debris whirled around… Read More ›
Can We Celebrate the Dark? Can We Sleep? by Carol P. Christ
According to Marija Gimbutas, the religion of Old Europe celebrated the Goddess as the power of birth, death, and regeneration in all of life. Agricultural peoples understand that seeds must be kept in a cold dark place during the winter… Read More ›
Firebird’s Song by Sara Wright
In response to Carol Christ’s latest post… She came on the wings of the Owl flew out of the crack of our imagining, swooped low over the underground forest hooing, hooing, hooing screeching and clacking – Haunting the night with… Read More ›
Endings, Beginnings, and Dreamings by Carol P. Christ
Fifteen years ago, I bought my dream home in Molivos, Lesbos, one of the most stunning villages in the world. Over the next two years I renovated a listed Neoclassical house that had been neglected for over thirty years, restoring… Read More ›
This is for colored girls who are movin to the ends of their own rainbows: Ntozake Shange’s Choreopoem of Spiritual Healing by Carol P. Christ
Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf has reopened at the Public Theater in New York City to rave reviews. I first saw for colored girls in 1976 after my friend Carolyn Broadaway, who… Read More ›
“Para limpiar el corazon”: To Cleanse the Heart by Joyce Zonana
It should have been a wonderful journey, organized by three dear friends who run a yoga center in Costa Rica. I would be traveling with my husband, these friends, and thirteen other like-minded folk to the Sacred Valley of the Incas in the Andes highlands of southern Peru. We’d be staying at a lovely retreat center just outside Pisac, an ancient market town encircled by imposing mountains. And our itinerary would take us to some of the most important Inca sites, including the iconic, hauntingly beautiful and remote Machu Picchu.
Turtle – Slow and Steady Wins the Race by Judith Shaw
Turtle moves slowly through the world carrying its home on its back and has done so for over 200 million years, offering us its special wisdom – all you are and all you need is inside of you.
Wealth In Imagination by Laurie Goodhart
Artwork and sustainable agriculture are the two threads of my professional life. They mingle fruitfully beneath the surface as I sift through remaining evidence of ancient worlds, trying to sense how people of lost cultures met basic survival needs and… Read More ›
To Light a Flaming Pumpkin: The Inexact Art of Family Ritual, by Molly Remer
Our bounty is in creativity friendship community the myriad small adventures of everyday. We tell of magic and moonrise and listening to the pulse of the earth beneath our feet. Ah, October. Fall has settled into the trees and air…. Read More ›
Autumn Equinox with the Ancestors, or after ecstasy indeed the laundry*) Eline Kieft
As I hang the laundry back home, I remember how just 24 hours earlier I arrived back on the beach after an incredible time at the ancestral burial mound where I spend the night in ceremony at the Autumn Equinox…. Read More ›
