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Post by Admin on Dec 8, 2020 13:07:54 GMT
Four Lessons from the GardenReflections on the work of Narendra 'It's not where you come from that matters, but how you live in a place'. Our new series, Of Earth and Empire, looks at what it takes for modern deracinated peoples to 'return' home to the Earth, and how writing can be a bridge to remembering our primary relationship with the wild world, even as civilisation falls apart. In today's post, Paul Kingsnorth, celebrates the work of Indian writer, Narendra, whose dispatches about the Adivasi communities of Abujhmad in Bastar Dark Mountain has been publishing over several years. dark-mountain.net/four-lessons-from-the-garden/Is it possible to be at home in this world? The foundation stories of very different cultures, from very different times and places, seem to tell us that it was once, but that things are different now. In India, the Mahabharata tells a story of cyclical time, moving from a primal unity towards dissolution and collapse, after which the cycle begins again. The final era of the cycle, the Kali Yuga, is overseen by the dark goddess of disintegration, war, strife: humans move further and further away from the sacred centre where truth is to be found, deeper into their own small selves. The Kali Yuga, needless to say, is our time. Here in the West, the same tale is told as the story of four ages. The primal unity, in this case, is represented by the Golden Age, long in the past, in which humans lived in balance with the world. The subsequent degradation moves downward through Silver and Bronze ages to our own Iron Age, a time again of egoism and strife. This in turn is mirrored by the fulcrum-story of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the myth of the Fall. Again, we hear of a time in which humans lived in deep communion with God and with Earth, in a garden no less. We could have stayed there for eternity, but there is something in us, some thorn, that will not grow that way. We wanted more, we wanted knowledge and power, we wanted to beat God at His own game. We were banished from the garden, and now we wander as exiles, torn between pleading to be let back in and defiantly building our own, better home here on Earth: a genetically-modified smart garden, arranged entirely around our own self-love. Eden is fascinating to me. I think that this four-thousand-year-old Biblical myth tells us more about ourselves than we would like to admit. In his novel Ishmael, Daniel Quinn frames the story of the Fall as a narrative of the human shift from hunting-gathering to agriculture. The primal garden, claims the narrator, is a fragmentary, mythologised version of the world before farming. The Middle East – the ‘fertile crescent’ in which the Biblical peoples lived – was one of the first centres of agriculture on Earth, but agriculture can only flourish when roaming cultures are replaced by sedentary ones. This replacement usually happens by force, as tribal cultures are displaced, their lands seized and turned over to fields and livestock. Eden, in this telling, is not myth but prehistory: a dim memory of a time when humans really did live in some form of communion with the rest of nature, before farming transformed the non-human world into a product line, and we were exiled forever by our decision to choose control over acceptance.
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Post by Admin on Dec 17, 2020 23:46:54 GMT
The organization Deep Green Resistance has existed for nearly a decade, since the book was released in 2011. For this piece, we look at four different answers to the question: “What is Deep Green Resistance?”#DeepGreenResistance dgrnewsservice.org/resistance-culture/what-is-deep-green-resistance/Ben Warner: What is Deep Green Resistance? DGR is survival. We want to survive and we want the rest of the living work to survive too. You wanna live right? Right now life is barely surviving. Right now the living world is being exterminated. What’s exterminating it? A group of people who live in densely populated, ever-expanding colonies. They get their food and other resources, most of which they don’t actually need, from far away places. Do you think they care about the other living beings in these places? Do you think they consider the damage their resource extraction does? Many of them don’t know about it because they can’t see it, some of them are too busy living to even think about it and the rest are too busy making money to stop it. So agriculture, mining and other forms of resource extraction continue destroying habitat, poisoning land and killing our kin. And what about their poisonous toxic waste? Where do they dispose of it? Not where they live of course. They pile it up in far away places or bury it or drop it in the sea or sell it to the poor. Do you think they consider the harm this does? Their shit is piling up all over the world and they don’t care enough to stop. This is what happens when you live in one place, get your sustenance in another, and dispose of your waste elsewhere. This is our culture. You can call it civilisation, or a city based way of living, or a culture of empire. Whatever you call it, we don’t think it’s a good idea. Life cannot survive this for much longer and neither can we because cities are still expanding, resource extraction is still increasing and our poisonous waste is piling up in the sea, on the land and in the very air that we breathe. You want your children to live and grow in a world that is flourishing and full of life? That’s what we want too. We want to live and we want the other communities of life that allow us to live to survive too. So we are building a culture of resistance because time is running out for life and we are still alive. We are an above ground movement that is willing to defend the relentless attacks on life. We are also willing to admit that defense is not enough. We need other brave, moral, and strategically aware people to form underground groups and fight this culture before it wipes out life. If we don’t we will die and so will nearly everything else from bacteria to blue whales. If you want to live with others you need to enter into a relationship with them. You need to love them. Control is not love. Abuse is not love. Domination is not love. This culture does not live with, or even on, land it occupies. Like any invading force it is sucking its host dry. Both the parasite and the host are doomed in this type of interaction. We want to end this culture of death and destruction, so we are no longer ashamed or embarrassed to be human. We want to live with land, rivers, trees, forests, mountains and all living communities that are both a requirement for and a functioning part of our own lives and happiness. We want to swim in and drink clean water. We want to sing and breathe in fresh air. We want to live and love on flourishing land. We want our children and your children and all children to do it too. What are you prepared to do to help us build this future?
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Post by Admin on Dec 20, 2020 22:48:30 GMT
PAGANISM WITHIN THE PROJECT OF EQUITYabeautifulresistance.org/site/2020/11/5/caz2bcam82y8tgo37yrgpkr9ebvarg“Intimacy is a critical feature of this coerced labor and of care. Black intimacy has been shaped by the anomalous social formation produced by slavery, by involuntary servitude, by capitalist extraction, and by antiblackness and yet exceeds these conditions. The intimate realm is an extension of the social world—it is inseparable from the social world—so to create other networks of love and affiliation, to nurture a promiscuous sociality vast enough to embrace strangers, is to be involved in the work of challenging and remaking the terms of sociality.” (Saidiya Hartman) Elections have the habit of making even the most radical among us elevate the project of democracy. If the United States were a true democracy, that would be a vast improvement over the present condition. But what this line of thinking fundamentally does is provide a simulacrum of arguments for equity. In this way, equity shifts gently away from what it would be in earnest, and all arguments about equity become about democracy. Questions around an equitable democracy inevitably revolve around pluralism. Let’s remind ourselves that plurality has two meanings which are slightly different. One is a voice for everyone included. That’s a nice ideal, and one that is perhaps better than what is reflected in our present condition. The second, somewhat derived from the first, is the largest group. One suggested fix for certain elements of democracy in the United States would be to shift away from a mere plurality of votes to requiring a majority win; or shifting away from a representative democracy to a total democracy — embracing a more pluralist project. These are good first steps. In paganism, people like to suggest that polytheism is itself an embracing of pluralism, and that this makes it closer to the project of equity. It inverts Hegel’s claim that only monotheistic people can imagine freedom, and so slavery is not wrong, since polytheistic people are incapable of true freedom. I would argue that both are mistaken as to what the project of equity is. No point of view is automatically equitable, equity is something that requires constant reinvention. From my former post as print designer at Gods and Radicals, I’ve grown persistently wary of how racial equity is characterized within the press. Saidiya Hartman, Safiya Umoja Nobel, and Zakiyyah Iman Jackson are three of the biggest names in Black leftist writing right now. Along with Denise Ferreira da Silva, Ruha Benjamin, Barbara Smith, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, or even Aimé Césaire; these names are woefully absent. At the Gods and Radicals website, Mirna Wabi-Sabi and Angie Speaks contribute poignant criticism and are wonderful additions to the G&R cannon, but pointing to them while excusing the rest isn't progress — it's tokenism. Deepening a bench of citations to include names like these would mean embracing a more pluralistic approach. To do so, we have to become a lot more comfortable discussing identity — not less. As the United States has met one of the largest reckonings with its own racist history and its people increasingly aware of contemporary Black scholarship, what are the mechanisms preventing the inclusion of these names? What do these scholars have to share with us? In an essay within the anthology Racism Postrace, Safiya Umoja Nobel and Sarah Roberts define postracialism by quoting legal scholar Sumi Cho, saying it is an “ideology that reflects a belief that due to the significant racial progress that has been made, the state need not engage in race-based decision-making or adopt race-based remedies, and that civil society should eschew race as a central organizing principle of social action.” Cho adds, “post-racialism as an ideology serves to reinstate an unchallenged white normativity.” Saidiya Hartman writes about the abolition of whiteness in Art Forum — which is different from the previous understanding of postracialism, and so deserves clarification. In bold letters she says “it requires a radical divestment in the project of whiteness and a redistribution of wealth and resources. It requires abolition, the abolition of the carceral world, the abolition of capitalism.” She says, “There’s a great disparity between what’s being articulated by this radical feminist queer trans Black movement and the language of party politics,” and what she calls for is a movement steeped in liberation from the politics of vulnerability and violence — itself drawing from the work of the Combahee River Collective and the original intent of Identity Politics. She ends the piece by naming many of the scholars I’ve highlighted above.
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Post by Admin on Dec 23, 2020 18:37:35 GMT
"The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are bilabial kin, not resources; or if the planet is our Mother, not an opportunity ... then we will treat each other with greater respect. Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective."
~ David Suzuki
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Post by Admin on Dec 23, 2020 18:41:39 GMT
The Vital CompassA conversation with Vanessa Andreotti Continuing our new series Of Earth an Empire, an exploration of indigenous perception and the collapse of colonial thinking, we republish a pivotal dialogue between Dark Mountain co-founder, Dougald Hine and Brazilian academic, Vanessa Andreotti, from our anniversary issue, REFUGE. dark-mountain.net/the-vital-compass/The second time I meet Vanessa Andreotti, we’re in the lobby of a Paris hotel. There are signs warning guests against trying to get around by taxi. It’s Saturday, 1st December, 2018 – or Act III, according to the calendar of the gilets jaunes protesters who are converging on the capital for the third weekend in a row, bringing half the city to a halt. We’re here for the Plurality University, a gathering of designers and thinkers and sci-fi writers brought together ‘to broaden the scope of thinkable futures’. There are distant sirens and smoke rising from the city below, and it feels like the future already arrived while we were busy looking the other way. So Vanessa and I slip away through the back streets, talking about what happens when the future fails. She’s just been back to Brazil, her home country, and she traces the lines that run from an eruption of anger that spilled out onto the streets there five years earlier to the election of Jair Bolsonaro. How much of today’s politics, around the world, is shaped by the dawning recognition that the ship of modernity – sailing under the flags of development and progress – is going down? ‘A lot depends,’ she says, ‘on whether people feel that the promises were broken, or whether they see that these were false promises all along.’ The first step is an admission that something has gone badly wrong. This is the advantage that Trump had over Clinton, or the Brexiteers over the Remainers: whatever pile of lies they served it up with, they were able to admit that the ship is in trouble, while their opponents went on insisting that we were sailing towards the promised destination. In Brazil, the promise was that everyone could have the lifestyle of a new global middle class – and when this future failed to materialise, Bolsonaro was able to ride the anger of voters by claiming that it could have been theirs, if it hadn’t been for the corruption of his opponents. If the promises were broken, then we look for who to blame and how to take revenge. A lot depends, then, on the recognition that the promises could never have been kept; that they were not only unrealistic, but harmful. For only with this recognition is there a chance of working out what remains, what might be done, starting from the wreckage in which we find ourselves. For more than ten years, I have been seeking out conversations about what remains, looking for people with whom to think about the wrecked promises of modernity, ways of naming our situation and making it possible to talk together about it. The most illuminating of these encounters have been with people whose thinking was formed by finding themselves and their communities on the hard end of the processes of modernisation. As Gustavo Esteva and I discussed in Dark Mountain: Issue 4, there is a sense that the West is belatedly coming to know the shadows of development and progress, shadows all-too-familiar to those unto whom development was done. Vanessa Andreotti’s work deals with these shadows. Her institutional position at the University of British Columbia overlaps with her work as part of Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures, a collaboration between academics, artists and indigenous scholars and communities. Six months on from that day in Paris, we record a conversation, and as I listen back to the recording, I’m struck by the sense that she is always speaking out of a collective, collaborative, ongoing process of thinking together. Every time we talk, there are new versions of the ‘social cartographies’, poetic maps that make it possible to have difficult conversations. The maps that emerge from Vanessa’s collaborations are boundary objects, places where we meet, where there is a chance of sitting with our discomfort, with our limits, maybe beginning to find a place within a world that is larger and stranger than that allowed for in the ways of seeing that shaped the modern world.
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Post by Admin on Dec 27, 2020 20:37:20 GMT
ESSAY The Serviceberry An Economy of Abundanceemergencemagazine.org/story/the-serviceberry/by Robin Wall Kimmerer As Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and ecological systems to reimagine currencies of exchange? The cool breath of evening slips off the wooded hills, displacing the heat of the day, and with it come the birds, as eager for the cool as I am. They arrive in a flock of calls that sound like laughter, and I have to laugh back with the same delight. They are all around me, Cedar Waxwings and Catbirds and a flash of Bluebird iridescence. I have never felt such a kinship to my namesake, Robin, as in this moment when we are both stuffing our mouths with berries and chortling with happiness. The bushes are laden with fat clusters of red, blue, and wine purple, in every stage of ripeness, so many you can pick them by the handful. I’m glad I have a pail and wonder if the birds will be able to fly with their bellies as full as mine. This abundance of berries feels like a pure gift from the land. I have not earned, paid for, nor labored for them. There is no mathematics of worthiness that reckons I deserve them in any way. And yet here they are—along with the sun and the air and the birds and the rain, gathering in the towers of cumulonimbi. You could call them natural resources or ecosystem services, but the Robins and I know them as gifts. We both sing gratitude with our mouths full. Part of my delight comes from their unexpected presence. The local native Serviceberries, Amelanchier arborea, have small, hard fruits, which tend toward dryness, and only once in a while is there a tree with sweet offerings. The bounty in my bucket is a western species—A. alnifolium, known as Saskatoons—planted by my farmer neighbor, and this is their first bearing year, which they do with an enthusiasm that matches my own. Saskatoon, Juneberry, Shadbush, Shadblow, Sugarplum, Sarvis, Serviceberry—these are among the many names for Amelanchier. Ethnobotanists know that the more names a plant has, the greater its cultural importance. The tree is beloved for its fruits, for medicinal use, and for the early froth of flowers that whiten woodland edges at the first hint of spring. Serviceberry is known as a calendar plant, so faithful is it to seasonal weather patterns. Its bloom is a sign that the ground has thawed and that the shad are running upstream—or at least it was back in the day, when rivers were clear and free enough to support their spawning. The derivation of the name “Service” from its relative Sorbus (also in the Rose Family) notwithstanding, the plant does provide myriad goods and services. Not only to humans but to many other citizens. It is a preferred browse of Deer and Moose, a vital source of early pollen for newly emerging insects, and host to a suite of butterfly larvae—like Tiger Swallowtails, Viceroys, Admirals, and Hairstreaks—and berry-feasting birds who rely on those calories in breeding season. In Potawatomi, it is called Bozakmin, which is a superlative: the best of the berries. I agree with my ancestors on the rightness of that name. Imagine a fruit that tastes like a Blueberry crossed with the satisfying heft of an Apple, a touch of rosewater and a miniscule crunch of almond-flavored seeds. They taste like nothing a grocery store has to offer: wild, complex with a chemistry that your body recognizes as the real food it’s been waiting for. For me, the most important part of the word Bozakmin is “min,” the root for “berry.” It appears in our Potawatomi words for Blueberry, Strawberry, Raspberry, even Apple, Maize, and Wild Rice. The revelation in that word is a treasure for me, because it is also the root word for “gift.” In naming the plants who shower us with goodness, we recognize that these are gifts from our plant relatives, manifestations of their generosity, care, and creativity. When we speak of these not as things or products or commodities, but as gifts, the whole relationship changes. I can’t help but gaze at them, cupped like jewels in my hand, and breathe out my gratitude. In the presence of such gifts, gratitude is the intuitive first response. The gratitude flows toward our plant elders and radiates to the rain, to the sunshine, to the improbability of bushes spangled with morsels of sweetness in a world that can be bitter. Gratitude is so much more than a polite thank you. It is the thread that connects us in a deep relationship, simultaneously physical and spiritual, as our bodies are fed and spirits nourished by the sense of belonging, which is the most vital of foods. Gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver. If our first response is gratitude, then our second is reciprocity: to give a gift in return. What could I give these plants in return for their generosity? It could be a direct response, like weeding or water or a song of thanks that sends appreciation out on the wind. Or indirect, like donating to my local land trust so that more habitat for the gift givers will be saved, or making art that invites others into the web of reciprocity. Gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy, and they have the remarkable property of multiplying with every exchange, their energy concentrating as they pass from hand to hand, a truly renewable resource. I accept the gift from the bush and then spread that gift with a dish of berries to my neighbor, who makes a pie to share with his friend, who feels so wealthy in food and friendship that he volunteers at the food pantry. You know how it goes. To name the world as gift is to feel one’s membership in the web of reciprocity. It makes you happy—and it makes you accountable. Conceiving of something as a gift changes your relationship to it in a profound way, even though the physical makeup of the “thing” has not changed. A wooly knit hat that you purchase at the store will keep you warm regardless of its origin, but if it was hand knit by your favorite auntie, then you are in relationship to that “thing” in a very different way: you are responsible for it, and your gratitude has motive force in the world. You’re likely to take much better care of the gift hat than the commodity hat, because it is knit of relationships. This is the power of gift thinking. I imagine if we acknowledged that everything we consume is the gift of Mother Earth, we would take better care of what we are given. Mistreating a gift has emotional and ethical gravity as well as ecological resonance. How we think ripples out to how we behave. If we view these berries, or that coal or forest, as an object, as property, it can be exploited as a commodity in a market economy. We know the consequences of that. Why then have we permitted the dominance of economic systems that commoditize everything? That create scarcity instead of abundance, that promote accumulation rather than sharing? We’ve surrendered our values to an economic system that actively harms what we love. I’m wondering how we fix that. And I’m not alone. Because I’m a botanist, my fluency in the lexicon of berries may not easily extend to economics, so I wanted to revisit the conventional meaning of economics to compare it to my understanding of the gift economy of nature. What is economics for anyway? It turns out that answer depends a lot on who you ask. On their website, the American Economic Association says, “It’s the study of scarcity, the study of how people use resources and respond to incentives.” My son-in-law teaches high school economics, and the first principle his students learn is that economics is about decision-making in the face of scarcity. Anything and everything in a market is implicitly defined as scarce. With scarcity as the main principle, the mindset that follows is based on commodification of goods and services. I’m way past high school, but I’m not sure I grasp that thinking, so I fill a bowl with fresh Serviceberries for my friend and colleague, Dr. Valerie Luzadis. She is an appreciator of earthly gifts and a professor and past president of the US Society for Ecological Economics. Ecological economics is a growing economic theory that expands the conventional definition by working to integrate Earth’s natural systems and human values. But it has not been standard practice to include these foundational elements—they are usually left out of the equation. Valerie prefers the definition that “economics is how we organize ourselves to sustain life and enhance its quality. It’s a way of considering how we provide for ourselves.” The words ecology and economy come from the same root, the Greek oikos, meaning “home” or “household”: i.e., the systems of relationship, the goods and services that keep us alive. The system of market economies that we’re given as a default is hardly the only model out there. Anthropologists have observed and shared multiple cultural frameworks, colored by very different worldviews on “how we provide for ourselves,” including gift economies. As the berries plunk into my bucket, I’m thinking about what I’ll do with them all. I’ll drop some off for friends and neighbors, and I’ll certainly fill the freezer for Juneberry muffins in February. This “problem” of managing decisions about abundance reminds me of a report that linguist Daniel Everett wrote as he was learning from a hunter-gatherer community in the Brazilian rainforest. A hunter had brought home a sizable kill, far too much to be eaten by his family. The researcher asked how he would store the excess. Smoking and drying technologies were well known; storing was possible. The hunter was puzzled by the question—store the meat? Why would he do that? Instead, he sent out an invitation to a feast, and soon the neighboring families were gathered around his fire, until every last morsel was consumed. This seemed like maladaptive behavior to the anthropologist, who asked again: given the uncertainty of meat in the forest, why didn’t he store the meat for himself, which is what the economic system of his home culture would predict. “Store my meat? I store my meat in the belly of my brother,” replied the hunter. I feel a great debt to this unnamed teacher for these words. There beats the heart of gift economies, an antecedent alternative to market economies, another way of “organizing ourselves to sustain life.” In a gift economy, wealth is understood as having enough to share, and the practice for dealing with abundance is to give it away. In fact, status is determined not by how much one accumulates, but by how much one gives away. The currency in a gift economy is relationship, which is expressed as gratitude, as interdependence and the ongoing cycles of reciprocity. A gift economy nurtures the community bonds which enhance mutual well-being; the economic unit is “we” rather than “I,” as all flourishing is mutual. Anthropologists characterize gift economies as systems of exchange in which goods and services circulate without explicit expectations of direct compensation. Those who have give to those who don’t, so that everyone in the system has what they need. It is not regulated from above, but derives from a collective sense of equity and accountability in response to the gifts of the Earth. In his book Sacred Economics, Charles Eisenstein states: “Gifts cement the mystical realization of participation in something greater than oneself which, yet, is not separate from oneself. The axioms of rational self-interest change because the self has expanded to include something of the other.” If the community is flourishing, then all within it will partake of the same abundance—or shortage—that nature provides. The currency of exchange is gratitude and relationship rather than money. It includes a system of social and moral agreements for indirect reciprocity. So, the hunter who shared the feast with you could well anticipate that you would share from a full fishnet or offer your labor in repairing a boat. The natural world itself is understood as a gift and not as private property, as such there are ethical constraints on the accumulation of abundance that is not yours. Well known examples of gift economies include potlatches or the Kula ring cycle, in which gifts circulate in the group, solidifying bonds of relationship and redistributing wealth. The question of abundance highlights the striking difference between the market economies which have come to dominate the globe and the ancient gift economies which preceded them. There are many examples of functioning gift economies—most in small societies of close relations, where community well-being is recognized as the “unit” of success—where the interest of “we” exceeds that of “I.” In this time when the economies have grown so large and impersonal that they extinguish rather than nurture community well-being, perhaps we should consider other ways to organize the exchange of goods and services which constitute an economy. In a market economy, where the underlying principles are scarcity and maximizing return on investment, the meat is private property, accumulated for the well-being of the hunter or exchanged for currency. The greatest status and success comes from possession. Food security is assured by private accumulation. In contrast, gift economies arise from the abundance of gifts from the Earth, which are owned by no one and therefore shared. Sharing engenders relationships of good will and bonds that ensure you will be invited to the feast when your neighbor is fortunate. Security is ensured by the nurturing of bonds of reciprocity. You can store meat in your own pantry or in the belly of your brother. Both have the result of keeping hunger at bay but with very different consequences for the people and for the land which provided that sustenance. I haven’t studied economics in decades, but as a plant ecologist, I’ve spent a lifetime asking the plants for their guidance on any number of issues; so I wondered what the Serviceberries had to say about the systems which create and distribute goods and services. What is their economic system? How do they respond to the issues of abundance and scarcity? Has their evolutionary process shaped them to be hoarders or sharers? Let’s ask the Saskatoons. These ten-foot-tall trees are the producers in this economy. Using the free raw materials of light, water, and air, they transmute these gifts into leaves and flowers and fruits. They store some energy as sugars in the making of their own bodies, but much of it is shared. Some of the abundance of spring rain and sun manifests in the form of flowers, which offer a feast for insects when it’s cold and rainy. The insects return the favor by carrying pollen. Food is rarely in short supply for Saskatoons, but mobility is rare. Movement is a gift of the pollinators, but the energy needed to support buzzing around is scarce. So they create a relationship of exchange that benefits both. Rest in Link.
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Post by Admin on Jan 1, 2021 18:05:59 GMT
"There will be no simple answer to the coming years, except the love and prayer that we hold in our hearts, and the companionship we live with each other and the Earth. We are the inhabitants of a civilization that has lost its way, that has forgotten that the Earth is a living sacred being. And so we stand at a door never before opened, at a crossroads never before reached, when the fate of humanity and the whole web of life hang in the balance. What does it mean to be present at this time of a great dying when the wells run dry and the rivers are toxic? And where are those who hold the balance of the worlds—the rainmaker sitting in his hut holding an inner equilibrium, the monk whose prayer beads and mantras keep the worlds in tune? Yes, a few essential things remain, like joy and love and the beauty of spring blossoms, the stars or a sunset. And in our hearts there is a seed of a future that returns to the beginning, to when the Source ran free and the names of creation sang in the wind." The Labyrinth and the Black Madonnawww.kosmosjournal.org/kj_article/love-and-earth-magic-the-labyrinth-and-the-black-madonna/When I was a nineteen-year-old architecture student I spent two weeks in Chartres Cathedral, studying the labyrinth. Most visiting Chartres are there only for a few hours—they are struck by its beauty, its perfect stained-glass windows, its sculptures which are some of the finest medieval art. They sense the holiness of this ancient pre-Christian site, which belonged to the Earth Mother, the Black Virgin, before it was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. But to spend two weeks inside this building is a very different experience, and I found myself completely immersed in sacred space. Chartres was the “blue-print cathedral” for the Gothic movement, and is an almost perfect geometric and harmonic creation. (One of the spiritual centers of medieval Europe, Chartres had an esoteric mystery school that taught sacred geometry as well as sacred music.) There is even a tradition that the stained-glass was made by alchemists, transmuting the light. Chartres Cathedral is an instrument designed to attune the soul of the worshiper, harmonizing the energies of heaven and earth. We stayed in the nunnery next door, and, together with a friend, I worked to accurately measure the labyrinth—a circular mandala-pattern, forty feet in diameter, depicted in blue and white stones near the west door. We moved away the chairs and spent hours following this ancient circuitous pattern that images the journey of the soul, the path to the center of the psyche.[1] Medieval pilgrims would kneel their way round the labyrinth’s maze until they reached the center, where they would find an image of the Minotaur (removed at the time of Napoleon), and then turn and look up at the magnificent west rose window, whose twelve-fold mandala images the heart center with luminous beauty. While there, one evening we witnessed the arrival of hundreds of students who had walked down from Paris. They surrounded the cathedral, joining hands, and then entering the nave, each person holding a candle—an individual and collective prayer. This simple and powerful image reaches me now half a century later, as a pandemic and ongoing social injustices call out for prayer, for our shared humanity. And this image of the labyrinth also speaks to the journey we are on—individually and together—a journey that takes us step by step back to the center, where we confront the beast of the Minotaur and then turn to the beauty of the heart. The coronavirus has faced us with our darkest fears, sickness and death, and also shown us our shared humanity that has come together in this crisis—the single lights of care and compassion, that link together to form a community of love and support. And we have also had to face the breakdown of our economic system, so fragile it seems to be blown over by the breath of a virus, leaving millions unemployed, day-laborers destitute and hungry, food lines growing. Despite all the warning of a possible pandemic, there was no “plan B,” just the defenses of denial by authoritarian leaders, more concerned about politics and power than people. And now as we begin to emerge from lockdown, from forced isolation, into what world are we returning? Our leaders, our corporations, custodians of consumerism, would like us to “return to normal” as quickly as possible. But what of our shared journey, our fears, our suffering and love? As a piece of graffiti in Hong Kong written early in the pandemic stated, “We can’t return to normal, because the normal that we had was precisely the problem.” Should we go back to cheap flights and disposable goods? Should we continue with our exploitation of nature, the imbalance that caused this crisis—the loss of habitat and biodiversity directly causing animal viruses to spread to humans—and the racial injustice and the economic structures that ensure the poor and destitute suffer most? Racial injustice has also meant that in the United States many people of color, particularly African Americans, and also Native Americans, are experiencing more serious illness and deaths due to Covid-19 compared to white people.[2] And the continuing divisiveness of racial injustice, combined with the ongoing acts of police brutality, have brought protests to the streets of many American cities. The killing of George Floyd and so many others has struck at a deep wound in the American psyche, and we are witnessing both heartfelt solidarity, as well as agony and rage across the country. Once again there is a linking of hands in peaceful protest, but also a country trembling on the edge of violence. On our shared journey we need to embrace this collective pain with its roots in inequality. In a country already battered by the pandemic, do we have the strength to hold true to our deepest human values—equality, unity in diversity, justice?
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Post by Admin on Jan 3, 2021 16:00:25 GMT
FOR THE MOTHER...
“...Mother Earth and all her kin share vibrations. Isn't it natural that the Planet is also conscious as all matter regardless of its latency? According to some studies, the magnetic field of the planet emits vibrations of the same frequency as those of a human heart.
The relationship between human consciousness and that of the atmosphere of the planet is an important subject. The atmospheric layers around the earth are being highly polluted. The pollution isn't just biological, chemical or radioactive in nature. The atmosphere of the earth is an astral layer of the planet and it's thinning out. The mental sphere around the globe is also densely polluted with negative thought vibrations.
The Earth and Her creatures are currently vibrating in disharmony. The harmful action is indistinguishable from the supporting one, because the field of action itself is being polluted. The field of action—the very definition of Dharma—is an underlying principle that upholds Natural Law at its very basis.
That basis is human level of consciousness, whence it is an indicator of our collective awareness in relation to all actions. Actions simply spring from that field, and no amount of 'good will' is enough to arbitrate the appropriateness of action at any given moment.
As the population grows towards an unprecedented demographic proportion the question is not only how fast we can implement the newly found energies to supply our insatiable desires and drives for instant self-gratification. But above all else how much we can accommodate the newly awakening consciousness before its power of renewal breaks down the boundaries of our resistance by sheer force. In other words, how much are we prepared to change within? How fast can we adapt to the next evolutionary leap...”
– Igor Kufayev
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Post by Admin on Jan 3, 2021 17:11:57 GMT
WITCHES IN A CRUMBLING EMPIREabeautifulresistance.org/witches-in-a-crumbling-empireWITCHES IN A CRUMBLING EMPIRE, BY RHYD WILDERMUTH “The Empire under which we all suffer, under which we are all ruled, was born upon the factory floor and upon the witch’s stake. But in the char of those burnings and the soot from those smokestacks we can see its impending death…” Beauty stolen in a tavern of a Scottish port. A dead Cathar’s caress as a man waits for bootsteps that will drag him away. Rain-drenched grief over iron bridges. Plastic fairies littering an ancient stone circle. Sex amongst bones and the howls of the Hunter. A new collection of essays, mystic prose, and poems from Gods&Radicals co-founder Rhyd Wildermuth, including the expanded and previously un-released text of his speech, “Witches In a Crumbling Empire.” Witches In A Crumbling Empire weaves together love, resistance, and magic into a ritual not to hold up the pillars of Empire as they fall, but to dance as they collapse.
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Post by Admin on Jan 6, 2021 20:07:58 GMT
MAGIC AND ECOLOGY is a series of online and in-person events that brings together scholars, artists and writers from a range of disciplines and across the globe in order to foster new and original thinking on urgent cultural and environmental concerns. MAGIC AND ECOLOGY aims to think the uncertainty of a future through the possibilities thrown up by the concept of magic or possibility itself. The events invite researchers thinking about magic in relation to ecology, and practitioners working with magic to transform modes of earth-living. The purpose is to provide a unique opportunity for enabling collaborative thinking across disciplines and practices. MAGIC AND ECOLOGY is funded by CRASSH and the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge. For more information and details of how to sign up for live online events, please visit the CRASSH website. WHY MAGIC? In recent decades ecological thinkers and cultural theorists Isabelle Stengers, Jane Bennett, and Timothy Morton have given critical attention to magic and to the way in which it operates as a technique for paying attention to things and to clarifying, rather than confusing, human dependence on the other-than-human that is also more-than-us. Such magic is seen as a counter-force to the powers of capitalist “sorcery” and an alternative to the mindless enchantments of modernity; it is interested in the practical (ethical, political) consequences of not only “including” the nonhuman in one’s circle but working with them, “invoking” and recognizing dependence on them. An entirely new politics of the nonhuman opens up at this point, one that is distinctly non-secular even as it persists on the fringes of “theological” respectability. It is a question of approaching nonhumans as formidable agents and figuring out, from there, how best to make oneself attractive as potential working-partner in their eyes. What changes – modifications to human lifestyles, habits of consumption – must be attended to first before setting up the working space and invoking the other? magicecology.crassh.cam.ac.uk/programme/
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Post by Admin on Jan 7, 2021 21:20:35 GMT
Life Among the BranchesLatest for our Under the Canopy section about the entwining destinies of trees and human beings, writer and activist Warren Draper reports on (and photographs) the vital role of tree protectors, as thousands of mature trees in Britain come under the axe to make way for a high speed rail link. dark-mountain.net/life-among-the-branches/The old adage about not seeing the wood for the trees is undoubtedly a truism, but sometimes we can also find it hard to see the tree for the forest. When I first became ecologically aware, I joined the environmental choir as they sang the importance of rainforests. I joyfully echoed the chorus of the Amazon being the ‘lungs of the planet’, even though that particular accolade should probably go to the ocean’s phytoplankton. I reeled off all of the other benefits that forests provide humanity as a treasury of materials, medicines, minerals, food, energy and culture. The forest has always been a key provider, something recognised in the Charter of the Forest of 1217, the lesser known companion document to Magna Carta, which guaranteed the peasantry food, shelter and energy from the land. Small wonder that Carta Foresta is less well known than the much celebrated Magna Carta, the guarantee of autonomous subsistence from the land is an anathema to capitalism. Small wonder too that the UK government quietly repealed these millennia-held rights during the birth of neoliberalism back in the 1970s. Forests are important, magical and vital. But they are vital in their own right, not just for what they can do for humanity. The exploitation of resources from forests, no matter how valuable they might be to our own species, is a key driver of the Anthropocene extinction event. Reforestation will also be essential if we are serious about combating the climate crisis. Unfortunately, the climate crisis as it is currently framed also places the future of humanity first and foremost in its list of priorities and asks us to save the forest in order to save ourselves. But putting ourselves first is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place. There are huge physical and mental health benefits to be gained if the so-called developed world were to undergo a programme of de-growth and de-consumerism. Don’t get me wrong, I love humans. They are like family to me. But it is our addiction to global, constant-growth economics, rather than growth of the population of the global South, which is driving collapse and requiring us to radically rehaul our relationship with the living world. My work at Bentley Urban Farm, an upcycled market garden which encourages people to become more ecologically aware and helps them become more resilient, proves to me on a daily basis that there are huge physical and mental health benefits to be gained if the so-called developed world were to undergo a programme of de-growth and de-consumerism. Most importantly, especially with regard to our mental wellbeing, there are immense benefits to be found in decentralising the importance of humanity in our relationships with the living world.
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Post by Admin on Jan 19, 2021 17:32:21 GMT
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Post by Admin on Feb 12, 2021 20:08:43 GMT
AN ANIMISTIC REVOLUTIONabeautifulresistance.org/site/2021/2/12/an-animistic-revolution‘This is an infusion of energy and movement. It is a witchcraft for those who know that the wheel of the year has broken from the spokes of the season.’ ~ Peter Grey, Apocalyptic Witchcraft ‘But finally, after much discourse, I understood what the trees were telling me: being an individual doesn’t matter...all human beings to the trees are one. We are judged by our worst collective behaviour, since it is so vast; not by our singular best. The Earth holds us responsible for our crimes against it, not as individuals but as a species.’ ~ Alice Walker, Living By The Word Imbolc has passed. Despite the snow that lies on the ground outside my door, light here even for the UK for my town is nestled in a valley, the days grow longer, surely a sign that despite the freezing temperatures and icy air that numbs the forehead and pinches the nose and ears, the darkness of winter is passing. It is light when I leave for work in the mornings and still so when I return some eight hours later. Not for long mind, but still light. I often think the lengthening and shortening of days is perhaps the most obvious sign of the cycles of nature. People notice it all of a sudden, even folks who ordinarily have no interest in the passing of the seasons except for the prospect of cheap package holidays and the consumerist holidays of the seasons. They exclaim all of a sudden at how light the morning or evening is, or how dark, depending on time of year. When after winter, such comments seem to brim with hope, a hope that cannot be so rationally explained but sure enough, the knowledge of the lengthening days seems to lift the spirits and hearts if only for a short time. To me, this hope seems to spring forth from some hidden reservoir deep inside each one of us, perhaps a link that none can deny, a link to nature, to the source of existence for all things, ourselves included. A connection that we might not understand, might not even be aware of but remains there anyway, hidden within ourselves to bubble to the surface, taking us by surprise at the depth of feeling, even if that feeling is fleeting and soon lost in the humdrum of our workaday lives. In many of my writings, the courses I teach and general interactions with like-minded people, I often talk of connecting to the land where we live. We seem to be caught up in the thought that the romantic image of the wild woods, some deep and ancient forest, is the be-all and end-all of nature, and in my own humble opinion paganism has a lot to answer for. But it would be unfair to blame paganism solely, for we see the every day with old eyes and in doing so we cannot recognise the beauty and the nature that resides there. Those who live in cities and large towns may feel the lack of open spaces even more keenly, but that doesn’t diminish that which resides where they do. And it starts small, in the noticing of the lengthening days perhaps. But not some absentminded awareness, but an obvious effort to be still in that glorious moment of understanding. Of stopping, if just for a moment, with face turned skywards and lungs full of air to appreciate the beauty of the moment, the inherent richness of that one particular instant, the essence of reality and all that is. Sometimes it is the beauty of a tree, it’s branches bare with the sky as a backdrop that catches me unaware. Familiar as these trees might be on my journey from work, still their beauty enchants me. The sky might be the pale blue of early evening, or grey and low, pregnant with the prospect of snow, sometimes a dazzling golden pink with clouds that would put any Michelangelo to shame. Each sky beautiful in its uniqueness. Each tree magnificent. I saw a quote somewhere once about seeing the beauty in every tree no matter how the conditions of which it has grown has shaped it, stunted and twisted or tall and majestic. Other times it’s the simple contrast of colours. Yellow crocuses poking out of the snow or the dark green of yew needles when everything else seems muted and pale. It is in these things, so small and perhaps you may think pointless, that I feel the spirit, the life of those beings. It is in these small moments that I sometimes ponder the wonder of the natural world. The black nightshade that pokes up through the concrete, the moss that makes the ground spongy soft underfoot, the sight of fungi growing up a tree trunk. The growing dawn chorus or the single call of the blackbird. The caw of a crow. All is filled with spirit. All worthy of love and respect, just as much as any ancient woodland, perhaps more so seeing as these are the things accessible to you, so common as to be overlooked and ignored but still so beautifully alive, humming with the song of soul, of spirit. In these small trifles I urge you to go out and see your local landscape with new eyes. Allow yourself to feel the spirits of the wild things, for they can be found, no matter the concrete that tries to smother all. Pay homage to the dandelion that breaks through that concrete, the weeds that grow unwanted all around. The most common of birds, the sparrow, not particularly beautiful but with a charm that exceeds mere beauty. Let this be a manifesto of sorts. I offer no doctrine nor rules, no boundaries or theology. Instead, go out and be wild, embrace our true natures, revel in the beauty of nature that is found everywhere and anywhere, for nature and indeed spirit recognise not the political borders and factions that seem to drive all aspects of our lives. Let this be the beginning of our animistic revolution. Small acts, individual acts, that may in time merge together and grow forth, as strong as the spirits that may guide us. We are not judged by individual or singular bests but instead by the collective efforts and yet, we must start with ourselves. Go outside, if only for a moment and let your own spirit soar and mingle with those that imbue this natural world, for spirit recognises spirit and the world is full of it. ‘...All things are alive, perhaps not in the same way we are alive, but each in its own way, as should be, for we are not all the same. And though different from us in shape and life span, different in Time and Knowing, and yet are trees alive. And rocks. And water. And all know emotion.’ ~ Anne Cameron, Daughters of Copper Woman
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Post by Admin on Feb 17, 2021 20:52:44 GMT
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Post by Admin on Feb 18, 2021 19:43:18 GMT
Scottish 'warrior poet' pays tribute to thousands of women persecuted for witchcraft as campaign steps up A young "warrior poet" whose videos have gone viral on social media has created a powerful new piece honouring the thousands of Scots women who were persecuted for witchcraft. By Brian Ferguson www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/watch-scottish-warrior-poet-pays-tribute-thousands-women-persecuted-witchcraft-campaign-steps-3127001Fife student Len Pennie, one of the rising stars of Scotland’s poetry scene thanks to her daily posts on Twitter, has described their treatment as “state-sanctioned murder of innocent folks” in a powerful new video. It includes a pledge to “demand justice” for all those who were tortured and tried when the Witchcraft Act was law in Scotland between the 16th and 18th centuries, branding it “a punishment lacking a crime.”
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