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Oceans Divide Us

7/18/2022

PEGI EYERS

painting by Ian David Soar

ANCESTRAL LANDS

With blessings and benediction

Ancestral lands of my spirit -
the passage of time and oceans divide us
yet my heart-home yearns for you still

Your feminine forms rest deep in the earth
sacred earth goddesses that live on
in DNA memory - of kin, of connection

The eternal cycles, the great stone circles
nourish my thoughts and prayers

Your spirits of place that speak
to all those with open hearts

Touching the loam, immersed in sounds & scents
the coastlines, moors, your meadow-grasses

May my sisters give voice to my name
palms down, ancient spirit rising

May the Great Heart in the land
send blessings to her daughter across the sea

Send messages of belonging
beloved motherline that fills my soul

Mythopoetics by Pegi Eyers May, 2022. I don't usually use the term "benediction" (religiosity?) but sometimes I just enjoy the sound of it. It works.

Pegi Eyers is the author of Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for social justice, uncolonization, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon.

Ancestral Motherline ~ Guided Meditation

5/14/2022

Pegi Eyers

Let us move back in time, through the recent years of your beautiful unfolding, to your childhood, when you were learning the ways of the world. Go back, past the moment of your birth to your earthly origins, and think of your mother and her mother, going back in a long motherline through time and space. Continuing back in time, feel the security and love of the village that surrounds you, and how the care that you offer to the community, is the same care that is offered to you.

Spend time feeling yourself in the wild, at one with the natural world, on pilgrimage to sacred sites like great stone circles, gathering wild food and tending the gardens, raising your family, healing your kindred spirits, making tools and all the beautiful objects for daily living. Knowing yourself to be in reciprocity with the land, remember when you sowed the seeds from your plant helpers into the rich soil, and harvested your food and medicine.

And then, knowing yourself as an animist being living in a spiritual universe once again, you cross the green meadow and approach a beautiful round dwelling made out of earthen materials. You enter the shadowy space and notice a small fire burning, a beacon in the darkness. There is a figure hunched beside the fire, shaking a rattle in soft spirals, and you let the melodic tones wash over you. You notice a glowing light, and green tendrils around the face of the figure as she rises. Now, before you stands the Ancient Wild Woman of hearth and home, the Ancestor of all the women in your family line. She is cloaked in green, and is the very personification of Natura the Green Goddess.

"Ancestor, at last I see your face! I greet you from a time much different from yours, when humanity has lost its ability to honor the natural world. As I gather around your sacred fire, speak to me across the time and space of centuries. Speak to me that I may learn. Speak to me of your role in the tribe as wildcrafter, as dancer, as storyteller, as weaver, as healer, as shapeshifter, as ritual-maker and Crone. Speak to me of our beloved creatures that walk the earth beside us, and speak to me of a time when our souls were in the earth and the earth was in our souls."

Suddenly you are no longer alone. You are standing in a circle of ancient trees with the star-lit sky above, moving side-by-side with a multitude of tribal members and your kindred spirits the animals and birds, each one a spark of gratitude, radiance and joy. Holding all of us gently in her hearts, the world falls silent as the Ancient Wild Woman’s arms are raised in a gesture of blessing. At long last, and like your Clan Mothers before you, you know that you too are a daughter of Earth Community. With laughter and pure joy, you complete the circle, and take your transformative expressions of Unity back to the beloved landscapes of home. Returning slowly through the long centuries that rise and fall, you awaken from your journey, into the time and place from where you began.

Writer and visual artist Pegi Eyers is the author of Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community. She lives in the countryside on the outskirts of Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg territory (Peterborough, Canada) on a hilltop with views reaching for miles in all directions. ASR is available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon

The Life Force: Restoring Sacred Myth

3/20/2022

PEGI EYERS

The Great Cycles ~ Everlasting & Antediluvian

Painting © Friedrich Hechelmann, Used With Permission

What is the essence of life? What causes the seed to sprout, new growth to unfurl and babies to be born? To our primordial ancestors, they honored the life spark as sacred, and embraced the cycles of life with reverence and awe. Knowing themselves as equal members in Earth Community, they acknowledged the miracle and mystery of life, and surrendered to the forces that provided the sustenance they needed to survive and thrive. In contrast to the western worldview that seeks to analyze and dissect, our ancestors were comfortable with boundaries and limitations, and with knowing how impossible it is, to articulate The Sacred. The western mind loves to understand concepts and define terms, but these efforts weigh down the celestial, and concretize what is in the end, unsayable.

According to Sean Kane, author of Wisdom of the Mythtellers, the most generous focus for myth involves a sense of mystery. He tells us that myths are about “something mysterious, intelligent, invisible and whole.” And what is more mysterious than the essence of life itself? Showing up in ethnocultures and mystery traditions worldwide, perennial myths and origin stories draw close to the inexplicable, and pay tribute to the life spark in story-cycles redolent with beauty and renewal. Here in Anishnaabe territory, “something mysterious” is the best translation for the Ojibway term “Manitou.” It can mean a Spirit Being whose presence is felt, or it can mean a feeling of “something mysterious” as connected to landscape or place.

Painting © Friedrich Hechelmann, Used With Permission

But before we look at origin stories that illuminate the essence of life, let’s go back to the very beginning.

Before the earliest myths of a “golden age” or an “earthly paradise” that are found all over the world, there existed an original perfect world of nature, long before the gods, or humans arrived on the scene. Let’s call this primordial place the Green World - a place we can scarcely imagine - a version of Earth where the mountains, forests, oceans and sky were pristine, and the elements of earth, water, fire and air were interpenetrated with each other. Our planet was new, but sentience was there at the beginning. Arising from a mixture of water, saline and minerals - the building blocks of life on Earth - primal forms were beginning to emerge from the lowest levels of the ocean.

Painting © Friedrich Hechelmann, Used With Permission

Many ancient legends reaffirm the presence of the Green World, and that life originated from the water, in combination with oxygen, protozoa and other organic molocules. By a lucky coincidence that is still beyond the ability of science, or the Gaia Hypothesis, to fully articulate, the temperature of the oceans allowed the Earth to have a rich atmosphere, and to be self-regulating. The Earth supports a magnificent biodiversity of life, and in fact, countless species have already come and gone, from our beautiful green world.

Painting © Friedrich Hechelmann, Used With Permission

In mythologies that speak of the “life spark” in terms of fertility, new scholarship in Matriarchal Studies by Maria Gimbutas and others chart a direct path from our ancient communal past, to a living symbiosis that is being evoked and remembered today. In terms of procreation, it was the Primordial Mothers who were birthing primal life forms from the elements and waters. Holders of the oldest consciousness on the planet, these Creatrixes moved in fluid streams of energy through the primal “muck,” that evolved into earthy and material bodies.

The lifegiving properties of their transmissions were held within the collective “prima materia” of the Divine Feminine, an eternal voice in the wisdom body that still reverberates today. Women continue to hold a deep connection to the sacred essence our biological bodies arose from, so many eons ago, and by embodying this truth in our lives, are returning to a interdependent relationship with Gaia. This form of ancestral wisdom can guide our choices and actions from an energetic place / deep cellular level, in our current era of collapse and environmental destruction.

Painting © Friedrich Hechelmann, Used With Permission

To our Paleolithic Ancestors, it was obvious that women, with their mysterious cycles, performed the same functions as Gaia, who was the source of all nourishment, protection and procreative power. Mythologies from ancient matrifocal societies such as Minoan Crete and Catalhöyük in Turkey, or today in Nubia in Sudan, Khasi in India, Mosuo in China, the Island of Women in Mexico, or the Haudenosaunee Clan Mothers in the Americas, Indigenous societies honor the life-creating power of the Sacred Feminine, and revere women as an extension of the miraculous divinity of creation. Women are held sacred, and our fertility and nurturing abilities are known to be the same as the Primordial Mothers who created all life.

It’s fascinating to see how origin stories from diverse cultures point to the essence of life arising from the elements of earth, fire and air – in addition to water – and important aspects of the life force such as seeds and eggs. In the Hopi origin story the collective lived beneath the surface of the earth, and when it was time to emerge into the world they met up with Maasaw, the Caretaker and Creator of the Earth. A promise was made during that emergence, that the Hopi would be stewards of the Earth for all time, and they have held that sacred covenant to the present day.

Painting © Friedrich Hechelmann, Used With Permission

A bond to the perennialism of Earth’s forests and plant life also appear in hundreds of mythologies worldwide, most importantly within the Tree of Life narratives, as a symbolic axis mundi connecting the planes of the Underworld and the sky with that of the terrestrial world. In Bantu mythology the universe and the animals are eternal, so there are no creation myths about their origin, but the first human was born from a bamboo stem, and in Herero mythology (also in Africa) the first human was born from the roots of the "Omumborombonga" Leadwood tree.

The element of fire also plays an important role in creation stories, such as the ancient myth of the Maya, that describes the emergence of human beings when the Maize Mountain was opened by the lightning deities. In the Anishnaabe and Haudenosaunee creation story, air is the force that creates life. Kitchi-Manitou, or The Great Mystery, has flooded the earth, and a Giant Turtle offers Sky Woman a place to land. Riding on the turtle’s back, She asks for a small amount of soil, but a tiny muskrat is the only creature capable of bringing a handful of earth up from the deep waters. Sky Women then blows the breath of life, growth, fertility and abundance into the soil, and infuses it with the eternal lifegiving attributes of the nurturing Mother. Only then, do the continents rise and human beings flourish.

Painting © Friedrich Hechelmann, Used With Permission

Another powerful motif for fertility are seeds that contain the force of life, and the overwhelming drive to flourish. The magic of all four conditions being present for germination to occur - water, light, oxygen and temperature – is a miracle that should never be taken for granted. Without the correct timing, seeds can lie dormant for thousands of years. A supreme consciousness must certainly be at play, when all the elements come into balance for a seed to sprout at the optimal moment.

Of course we all know about the abduction of Persephone by Hades in classic Greek mythology, and how in her grief Demeter withholds the “green fuse” that germinates the land. Demeter represents the primordial mother power, the ancient archetype of feminine regeneration, and with the eating of the pomegranate seed that allows her to co-exist in both life and death, Persephone affirms the importance of fertility and the cycles of the seasons.

Painting © Friedrich Hechelmann, Used With Permission

Eggs as symbols of fertility also appear in creation myths and Indigenous Knowledge worldwide. In the ancestral wisdom of the Vietnamese people a story details how two progenitors, a man known as the "Dragon Lord of Lạc" and a woman known as the "Lady of Âu" give birth to a hundred eggs, fifty of which hatch, settle on the land and eventually become the Vietnamese people. In pre-colonial African traditions, the two great sources of life are the Earth and Her waters, which originally emanated from the universe during creation. The Earth occupies the original space before time, and is part of the “egg” of the world – a giant sphere or oval that encapsulates us and our universe. The earth and the universe are inextricably linked, bound together to the past, in both physical and spiritual union. The Earth is sacred, divine, and alive with immense power, and the purpose of human life is to accept the sentience of the Earth, and give Her the proper respect through ceremony and care.

Painting © Friedrich Hechelmann, Used With Permission

My own Celtic heritage is drawn from the beauty of the pre-colonial traditions of England and Scotland, and with all the resources at our fingertips today, it is possible to access the primordial memories of our kinship with the cosmos, and to re-mount the worlds of animism and inter-existence that our tribal ancestors knew. The history, poetry and myth cycles that survive, tell us that for the Celts, our beloved Earth and Her abundant diversity gave rise to an entire spiritual continuum, and we regard the Earth and our embeddedness in the natural world as Sacred, both in our everyday deeds and elaborate rituals. Mother Earth is the source of all, and her Cycle Of Life encompasses the birth, growth, decay and fallowness common to all beings. Dwelling in an interconnected appreciation for the land and grounded in the everyday sacred, the ancient Celts did not value an ascensionist spirituality, but found the extraordinary in their ordinary lives. If the gods or elementals were seeking to visit across the Sidhe, they could reach us in the “here and now” of everyday life, the earth-bound time and space, that is at the same time luminous and holy.

Painting © Friedrich Hechelmann, Used With Permission

Thanks to the Cartesian rupture, the industrial revolution, the rise of science and modernity in general, ancestral traditions worldwide have been denied, penetrated, dissected, analyzed, disembodied and turned into quaint reminders of long ago. Since the time of the Greek philosophers, an emphasis on the “mind” and all that is linear, left brain and cerebral has been reflected in the macrocosm of our civilization, with its unsustainable disregard for natural law. The top-down authority of "analytical over embodied," and "intellect over instinct" is at the root of our humancentric society, and has led to the cascading economic and environmental crises we face today. Western ideology has tried to separate us from using our own senses, intuition and wild nature to locate our own intrinsic knowledge of the sacred mysteries, and the complexity of the Cosmos.

Painting © Friedrich Hechelmann, Used With Permission

As Dylan Thomas reminded us in 1934, “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower, drives my green age.” Human beings are just one strand woven into the complex systems of Earth Community - a perspective fundamental to the recovery of ancestral wisdom today, and the paradigm shift to ecological civilization. The term “Animism” is a good way to describe how humanity has been connected to the land and its seasonal cycles for millennia, in deep rapport with the animals, plants, elements, earth spirits and Ancestors with whom we share our lives.

Still, in today’s world, at any given moment, when we are inspired by the cycles of nature and embrace a cyclical view of time, we immediately return to our primeval origins, to the Gods and the Cosmos. According to the ancient Egyptians, the present is a series of recurring cycles, based on previous epochs of linear time, when the myths set the pattern. Current events repeat the mythic episodes, and in doing so renew Maat, the fundamental order of the universe established at creation (also personified as the Goddess of truth and justice). Said another way by Ramon Elani, the author of Wyrd Against the Modern World, “Through myth and ritual, we are constantly in a state of repeating and reenacting cosmogony.”

Painting © Friedrich Hechelmann, Used With Permission

Many of the magnificent achievements of our civilization pale in comparison to the magic in nature, the green mysteries that empower seeds to germinate and grow, babies to be born and new life to manifest season after season. In reality, the essence of life and the originator force is so mysterious our only proper response can be a mythic one. It is infinitely better to acknowledge the inexplicable with a mytho-spiritual conscious-ness, than to approach the Earth as “lifeless resources” at our disposal. Coming to know the processes of nature through an everyday intimacy, and the Gods, entities, and deities as connected to place, is to re-sacralize our awe and wonder at the powers of regeneration. This worldview, or ancient spirit rising, may be the only belief system that stands between us and climate disaster or massive change, caused by our own techno-industrial society.

Throughout history and across cultures, humans have relied on myth to make sense of the world. As we revive the oldest myth of all - the perennialism of the Green World - and make new meaning, we align with our own resilience and creativity. Against all odds, the driver for the life spark continues to rise in Earth Community - including human fertility - even as the actions and attitudes of western society continue to attack and decimate the natural world. Will the trajectories of unlimited capitalism, artificial intelligence, or DNA tampering put the “green fuse” at risk? Through millennia, rising and fading away, the foundation of our unique planet has always been fecundity. Let us work to stop the assaults on our Mother, remediate the Earth, and be inspired by the wisdom of the Hopi People, that informs us “Everything will come to good again.”

The Life Force: Restoring Sacred Myth ~ Pegi Eyers
RESOURCES

Paintings © Friedrich Hechelmann, Used With Permission

ASWM - The Association for Women and Mythology,
Wisdom Across the Ages: Celebrating the Centennial of
Archaeomythologist Marija Gimbutas, Symposium 2021
Owen Burnham, African Wisdom, Piatkus Publishers, 2000
Chalquist, Craig Ph.D. “Practical Uses of Mythology.” Pacifica Post,
Pacifica Graduate Institute, Aug 21, 2017
Ramon Elani, Wyrd Against the Modern World, Night Forest Press, 2021
Pegi Eyers, Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring
Earth Community, Stone Circle Press. 2016
Pegi Eyers, “The Primordial Mothers,” She Summons: Why Goddess Feminism, Activism and Spirituality? Mago Books, 2021
Heide Goettner-Abendroth, Societies of Peace: Matriarchies Past,
Present and Future, Inanna Publications, 2009
Richard Heinberg, Memories and Visions of Paradise,
Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1989
Basil Johnston, The Manitous: The Supernatural World of the Ojibway,
Key Porter Books, 1995
Sean Kane, Wisdom of the Mythtellers, Broadview Press, 1998
“The Tree of Life,” Parabola the Magazine of Myth and Tradition,
Vol XIV, No 3, 1989

"The Life Force: Restoring Sacred Myth" by Pegi Eyers is a transcript of my presentation at the 2021 Fates and Graces Mythologium >website<

Pegi Eyers is the author of Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for social justice, uncolonization, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon.

Eco-Soul

1/11/2022

PEGI EYERS

"Spirits of good children lived in that tree waiting to be born. On ordinary days, young women who desired children came to sit under its shade." Chinua Achebe

How deeply are human beings entwined with the natural world? Bespoke wisdom, a vision from the wild, or an offering from my ancestral Clan Mothers, an epiphany came to me in the trance state between sleeping and waking. This fantastical manifesto, an ontology inspired by our most ancient beginnings, extends past the far reaches of modern environmental theory and gives us much to contemplate, as we continue to be humbled by the Great Mystery.

OUR SOULS LIVE IN THE EARTH
AND THE EARTH LIVES IN OUR SOULS

WHAT IF it was proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that your soul is eternal? That your soul is a unique and sacred spark, a blessed part of the Divine Mystery that animates your inner life from birth to death, and beyond? AND WHAT IF it was proven that your soul is on a continuous forward journey? AND WHAT IF PROOF EXISTS that between lifetimes your soul resides IN the landscape and IN the various features, elements and creatures in the natural world? THAT IN FACT, the natural environment serves as a vessel, or holding place for your spirit?

The trees, plants, wetlands, grasslands, wildflower meadows, sand dunes, mounds, rocky escarpments, underground tunnels, caverns, ponds, lakes, rivers – any of these numinous and holy landscapes could serve as dwelling places for your soul.

AND KNOWING THIS TO BE TRUE, believing beyond a doubt that the continuum of your soul depends on this eco-resting place, how can we allow the destruction of the natural world to continue? The contamination created by conveniences and technologies, the pollution dumped into the water systems, earth and air, the forests logged, the animals harvested, the earth’s body stripped by mining, the replacement of wild nature with highways, fences, factories and cities all pose a real and terrible danger to our personal destiny. After our physical death, where the Great Mystery will place our spirit cannot be predicted. (Unless we have exceptional training and have willed it so. Making personal decisions affecting the process of being born into death used to be a given in Indigenous societies.)

Therefore the reckless and thoughtless damage to the environment on every level MUST BE STOPPED! It goes far beyond the adage of "We are All Related." We now know that without access to the undisturbed natural places on this beautiful planet that have been provided for our soul's rest and return, our spirits will surely and completely disappear. Contrary to the modern worldview, humans are not meant to exist in close proximity to technology, concrete cities and the built environment, but thrive in the truest sense ONLY in the embrace of the green and natural world.

The further away we push nature the smaller our souls become – this is not a metaphor but a fact, as experienced by the millions today who feel a void, something missing in their lives. Endless distractions and therapies exist to address this emptiness, but most of the theories bypass the simple truth that addresses the foundational requirements of the eco-soul. The contemporary endemic shrinking of the spirit is a reality, and healing is possible when we return to our ancestral and earth-connected roots, reclaim our enchantment with the world, embrace the wild for our ensouling, and re-establish the connection to Mother Earth that is so vital to our well-being.

As we co-existed peacefully with the Earth for millennia, we must expand once again into our true nature and potential as fully-realized human beings. To survive in both body and soul, we must acknowledge our vital reciprocal relationship with nature, and embrace our true human role as keepers and protectors of Earth Community.

Examples of the Eco-Soul dynamic are found in earth-connected and Indigenous societies worldwide, in oral tradition, myth, and even contemporary film-making. Based on Yolngu Matha Indigenous Knowledge and filmed in the Ganalbingu language, the Australian award-winning movie Ten Canoes is a dazzling and accurate portrayal of a pre-contact hunter-gatherer society deeply bonded to the natural world in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. During the course of the movie, the storytelling in their oral tradition reveals that the souls of their people continue to live in a particular wetland - or billabong - between lives, and that the pregnant women of the tribe go there to coax a soul into their belly.

Sourced from the ancient folklore of Europe and elsewhere, James Frazer stated in The Golden Bough that the spirits of the dead reside in the trees, awaiting rebirth. The Indigenous peoples of Lithuania, Greece, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Britain, Africa, Indonesia, and the Americas worshipped the trees as sacred beings with in-dwelling souls, and protected them from harm. Depending on the culture, trees can be the abode of spirits, gods, ancestors, or souls waiting to be born.

The Dryad by Evelyn De Morgan

Ten Canoes Film Poster

Hypogeum in Ħal-Saflieni

One of the ancient megalithic structures found in Malta, the Hypogeum in Ħal-Saflieni is the oldest intact underground temple in the world, and is thought to have been sacred space for rituals of birth, death and regeneration. Both above and below ground, the temple complex of this ancient matriarchal society (3800 to 3600 BCE) reveals construction and symbols that celebrate fertility and the female form. Having amazing acoustic properties, the subterranean chambers and structures enabled powerful communication with the spirit realm, and were places for worship, divination and healing. From tomb to womb, the Hypogeum in Ħal-Saflieni was also the burial place for thousands of community members, and the Chamber of All Souls held the spirits of the collective between lives - as crucible, vessel and cauldron. The highly-evolved wisdom held by this society allowed for the successful migration between disembodied and incarnate spirits, in a dance of Sacred Mystery that embraced the perennial cycles of all life.

Pegi Eyers is the author of Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores social justice, nature spirituality, the ancestral arts, and resilience in times of massive change.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon.

Shifting Borderlands of Tame and Wild

9/17/2021

PEGI EYERS

For millennia the false narratives of western civilization have placed humans as superior to all other life, and our era of late-stage capitalism has intensified our callous exploitation of “resources,” and our disconnect from the natural world. And yet we still carry the wisdom of our Ancestors deep within, the “Indigenous lore and undomesticated knowledge that portrays the world, and everything in it, as existing for its own sake, not to be defined, confined, known or possessed.”[1] At the other extreme, we have been cushioned from encounters with “the feral” and have been influenced by the lies in books and films that demonize wild animals, and present them as monsters to be eradicated and feared. We rarely experience truthful encounters with animals, or intentionally seek them out, and yet I have discovered that the boundary between “wild” and “tame” is a permeable state, and surprisingly, subject to what is most expansive, and positive, in the human heart and soul.

One beautiful summer day not too long ago, I was shocked by a horrifying sight – my beloved cat Fettie rolling around in a Wild Turkey nest, full body stretched out in ecstasy, with the chipped remains of 13 very large eggs all around him. I had been well aware of the nest for weeks, and with a protective gaze had been nervously watching the cows in the pasture browsing closer and closer to where Mama Turkey had chosen to build, right on the border of fenced pasture and wildflower meadow, leading up to the house on the hill.

And yet it wasn’t the thousand-pound cows crushing the delicate eggs that were a danger to the heart-melting prospect of motherhood and new babies, it was a member of my own family. So impossible did it seem that my lap-cat Fettie, so well-fed and spoiled, would end those precious wild lives, I actually spent two days thinking that he had come upon the nest already plundered, and was claiming some sort of ownership after-the-fact. And yet, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that body language does not lie. By rolling around in the remains of bone, feather and shell, the cozy nest of baby birds now gone from this world, he was showing me how pleased he was with himself – with his skill at killing, and his ability to survive, and thrive.

How must Mama Turkey be feeling, I wondered? Her heart broken, her purpose in life destroyed, her deep sorrow at the tiny sweet babies all gone, her beautiful family that never materialized a deep dark scar on her soul. And yet I was anthropomorphizing, projecting my human sensibilities on the non-human – we do it all time – but in my heart I knew that Mama Turkey did know and feel many of those things. Wild Turkeys are smart community-oriented birds with long memories, and since that terrible violation the flocks in the far-off fields have kept a safe distance, and no other nest has ever appeared.

Something in the human heart – mine in particular – will always mourn the departure of any infant taken from Earth Community, but I also know that the predator and prey relationship is integral to this world. As a semi-carnivore living a privileged life far from the killing and butchery process, evidence of the hunt - or demise by natural means - has been a familiar sight during my sojourns in the wild. Today, I define my deep bonds to the land as Animism, based on a life-altering ecomystic experience at age eight when I was immersed in the transcendent glow of nature for an entire afternoon, to decades of ambling in the woods, or dashing there for sanctuary and healing. Interactive communion with the other-than-human has been part of my life for a very long time, and the reciprocity emanating back to me from the wild beings, elements and creatures never ceases to amaze. And never more so, then when taking on the uncomfortable, tiring, frustrating, and ultimately rewarding role, of "Tamer of Feral Cats."

Living in rolling countryside on the outskirts of a medium-sized Canadian city affords the best of both worlds – proximity to necessities and amenities, plus the “far removed” stance of being surrounded by nature, the deep quiet punctuated by birdsong, turbulent winds or coyote’s howl, and at the end of the day, a clear view of starlit skies reaching to the cosmos. Sighting wild species such as deer, fox, hare or hawk is a blessing, and a reminder of my own wildness, or “deep feral” within, and my own potential to thrive in the wild.

A few years ago three small raccoons ambled up the hill directly toward me, making eye contact and chirping a kind of welcome that was more like a plea for help. Much to my surprise, I got directly to work picking the many burrs and sticky seed pods out of their fur. They spent the summer in proximity to the farm, being fed cat kibble, letting me gingerly pet them (to a degree), jumping on me as I was reading on the porch, occasionally coming though the door, or communicating in that frolicking charming way of raccoons all over Turtle Island. But to tame them as pets? That was never an option.

And yet, what happens at the intersection of wild/domestic when there does appear a species, like a cat, that one can tame? A free-roaming and unowned cat is as feral as any other creature, spending most of the time stalking and hunting over wide distances, marking territory, and depending on the cat, hiding out during the vulnerable daylight hours. For me, the boundary between “wild” and “tame” is fascinating to the point of obsession, as I’ve spent literally weeks interacting, observing, and questioning these kinds of relations.

For one thing, how do domesticated felines end up in the wild? Born into the wild or abandoned, a cat who lives as a wild animal is at risk of death from predators such as coyotes, and diseases such as rabies, feline leukemia and parasites. Cursing as I do “all those who discard cats,” unfortunately our unpaved country road is a good location for city dwellers burdened with pet responsibilities – a “dumping ground” as it were for cats of all stripes, ages, and various states of well-being. Our farming neighbours are not especially welcoming to cats, except for occasional hand-outs to the ones residing in drafty barns, left to survive (or not) on their own. One warm summer’s eve, I spotted a cat with grey fur wandering erratically back and forth across the road, oblivious to danger. Instantly I knew this was a newly-abandoned cat, and stopped my car to help. He or she seemed delirious, wounded, suffering from the effects of a head injury perhaps, and the closer I got the further they ran away. “Definitely not about to trust a human, not now” was the clear message I received. By the time I went home for trapping equipment and returned, the cat was already dead at the side of the road, hit by some oblivious driver.

Even more upsetting were the bags of feline remains, and the skeletons under the trees, I found one day hiking in the woods near the road past the farm. These kinds of events are hardly significant to the farmers and hunters of my region, but devastating to cat lovers. And yet, in contrast to the heartbreak are the “love stories” of four feral cats, who successfully made their way to the farm on the hill - now safely ensconced on their mats, with names, personalities, love, family, care, full bellies and medical histories.

Speaking from experience, the taming of a feral cat can be a long and tedious process, taking up to two years from first introduction to full status as a “family member.” Even with monumental patience and constant urging, the feral is not entirely motivated until the food, warmth and shelter outweigh the doubts and fears. First the cat appears, perhaps sighted hanging around the barn, under the storage shed, or in Bin Bin’s case, roaming up and down the front lane to burrow under the leafy border of Maple Trees. Next - the calling and coaxing, the rattle of kibble in the dish, or food left out for their wanderings. Ferals are usually ravenous, and if food is available along with a friendly human presence, they are willing to take the risk. Even after many weeks (or months) of this sporadic feeding, there is still no eye contact, and they continue to run and hide.

Then, as the deep freeze of a Canadian winter sets in and the wind blows hard, the feral will finally cross an inconceivable boundary and enter the house, sometimes hiding in the basement for many weeks (or even months!) as they become accustomed to the smells and sounds of mechanical things like heaters, and human activity. Finally, after many hours of venturing into the lair with food and hesitant touch, trust is established and eye contact is made. Slowly the unremitting praise and petting has an impact, and after a few inevitable scratches and band-aids, the cat is tumbled into the carrier, taken to the veterinarian, and with the finality of surgery (spay or neuter) domestication is achieved.

Warmth, light, a steady food supply, and love are what domestication brings, and seemingly what the wild animal needs. But how can you “need” things that have been a complete unknown? Some mysterious reciprocity begins with the domestication process, changing the boundaries of what is wild and what is not. Animals have love, care and loyalty to each other it’s true, expressed in their own unique way, and yet what can human love mean to an animal? Probably nothing at first, but over time a strange and miraculous intersection occurs, that something of that love is now being expressed by the animal. Are they mirroring it back to us, or do they actually carry the seeds for deep love between species? Can this be some kind of miracle that confirms our value as a human, to awaken a rare and transformative interspecies affection? If so, and if we can extend that same love to all of Earth Community, at the very least can we take our place in the Sacred Circle, with the intent to heal and care for all beings?

There certainly is no discounting that the cats in my life, best friends who share movies and rides in the car, will continue to bring out my best qualities of love and care, and to teach me how to be true to myself, be patient, stick to a routine, spend lots of time meditating and looking at trees and clouds, and to pounce on something immediately if it appears delicious to eat. Most assuredly, cats have personality traits similar to human qualities – loyalty, respect, gratitude and altruism, such as the day when Buster guided another feral cat to the house, with behavior that can only be described as gallant. And the gift of purring to heal the human psyche cannot be understated-!

What is it in the animal that allows for domestication, to be content around humans, but maybe just as content in the natural world? The urge to hunt never leaves, as with his exceptional strength, speed, sharp claws and deep bite my boy Fettie will always be a highly-skilled predator. One autumn afternoon he bolted into the field of golden corn, and by the time he arrived at the road 300 feet away, had killed a hare exactly the same size as himself. Watching him drag the poor creature home in triumph was a tragedy for me, the over-domesticated human. My compulsion to painstakingly record the kills in photographs – the turkey eggs, the hare, the hawk, the voles, the mice, the baby rabbits, the various songbirds and woodpeckers – is to perhaps make sense of a process that few have the opportunity to witness, in our modern world.

For millennia humans were not domesticated, and our hunter-gatherer societies were highly successful. Civilization and our removal from the wild may offer certain advantages, but based on massive change and climate disaster today, has become lethal to Earth Community. Looking into the eyes of another species and sharing our lives means being connected, empathic, grounded, embodied, vibrant, present, spiraling in time, sensing the mystery, and feeling wonder or awe – all aspects of a much-needed return to Ancestral Wisdom. Without a doubt, we are companions on the journey. And with our ongoing sorrows and sacrifices, perhaps all beings – animal, human, plant, element or other – can share the deeply felt dynamic of both predator and prey, taking turns over and over in the great Dance of Life.

photograph by Pegi Eyers

NOTES
[1] Layla Abdelrahim, Children’s Literature, Domestication, and Social Foundation: Narratives of Civilization and Wilderness, Routledge, 2015

"Shifting Borderlands of Tame and Wild" was originally published in Unpsychology Magazine, Issue #6, "The Other-than-Human Anthology," May 2020. free download www.unpsychology.org/latest-issue/4585970771

Pegi Eyers is the author of "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community," an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon.

ASR ~ Recommended Reading

9/17/2021

I am thrilled, and so grateful to see Barjon's Books in Billings, Montana featuring Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community as recommended reading ~!

by Pegi Eyers

Come back to your roots! Drawing on cultural studies and contemporary social justice, Ancient Spirit Rising examines the loss of our vital ethnocultural connection to tribe and place, and why there is a trend to borrow identities from other cultures.

From the wealth of resources available today, an authentic self-identity can be reconstructed from old/new earth-centered societies, using the timeless values of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) as our model. A weaving of analysis, evocation and promptings of the heart, Ancient Spirit Rising offers strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, rewilding, restoring an ecocentric worldview, returning to the Old Ways, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.

With extensive notes and exhaustive references, Ancient Spirit Rising is an essential compendium for change!

Barjon's Books is more than your average bookstore......

"We are proud to offer the largest selection of alternative spiritual resources in Montana. You will find a huge selection of books for personal development, inner exploration and healing, as well as many resources on various religious ideas from around the world, both ancient and modern."

Pegi Eyers is the author of Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for social justice, uncolonization, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon.

Earth First

8/23/2021

PEGI EYERS ~ Ancient Spirit Rising

"The First Ones" © Milka Lolo

The majority of the world does not find its roots in western culture or tradition. The majority of the world finds its roots in the natural world, and it is the natural world, and the traditions of the natural world which must prevail. [1]
(Haudenosaunee Address)

The land is our greatest strength – if we look to Her we will survive. [2]
(Wisakedjak)

In the magnificent journey to reclaim our own Ancestral Knowledge, our essential bond to the land and our own form of ecocultural identity on Turtle Island, there are diverse paths and modalities that can lead our hearts and minds back to the natural world. From the minute they rolled out the pavement, my sense is that the western world has been devolving (!), and that every technological advance and infrastructure development is another act of self-destruction, when compared to the infinity of sacred treasures found in Indigenous life.

Situated at the core of western civilization is the master narrative of Christianity encoded in our expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and this scenario has been reenacted over and over for millennia. Reinforced by the isolationist perception that nature is a hostile force, cultural groups worldwide have hidden themselves away from the dangers of wild animals “red in tooth and claw” and the vagaries of weather, and better to make your stronghold fast.

Over time, the culmination of this vast separation from the natural world has become a huge embarrassment to the artists, mystics, visionaries, and practitioners of our European-based Old Ways, who have tried to amalgamate elements of nature worship and earth connection into the public sphere, keeping indigeneity alive in a covert way, and adding a much-needed eco-awareness to the western canon. For centuries religion, philosophy and science developed elaborate theories to justify and cloak our separation from the natural world, inevitably coming full circle in contemporary times to spiritual ecology, the “greening of religion,” and a scientific backtrack to the original cosmology of Indigenous Science (found all along in living Indigenous Knowledge [IK] systems).

The Seven Grandfather Teachings ~ foundational to Anishnaabe IK

Already in place as they have for millennia, it is the IK/EIK (European Indigenous Knowledge) in every domain of human activity that hold the key to our mutual uncolonization process and survival into post-industrial society. The popular praxis that a “new view of reality is emerging in which spiritual insight and scientific discovery both contribute to an understanding of ourselves as intimately interwoven with our world”[3] (Macy and Johnstone) implies that we need to conjure up a brand new paradigm, a cutting-edge convergence of modern technology with spiritual enlightenment. The truth is, everything we could possibly need is already waiting to be found in earth-connected IK/EIK systems, and this actuality is expressed by renowned Mexican scholar Gustavo Esteva.

“The system is not working, and everyone is realizing it. People are looking everywhere, imagining and theorizing the possibilities, grasping at more creations of their own making in the built infrastructure, seeking the paradigm shift in science, technology, medicine, the Occupy movement and so on that needs to happen, whereas it is already in place as it has been for millennia, being lived by Indigenous Knowledge and Indigenous people. Any course-correction discipline to decolonize ourselves is already in practice by Indigenous peoples, from astronomy to ethnobotany to medicine to food sources to community living, to intimate knowledge of the land base. You name it, it is already being lived and practiced. The only thing that the dominant society needs to access this storehouse, held by the people for the people, is humility. The paradigm shift is already being lived by millions of earth-connected cultures and Indigenous people worldwide, and the time has come to let the slowest set the pace.”[4]

In the throes of Euro-civilization building in the Americas, vital aspects of sustaining our eco-identity while existing under the blanket of colonialism seems to have fallen to the green thinkers, the herbalists, the naturalists, the wilderness guides, the artists (yet again!), the outcasts, the discontents, the malcontents, the cultural creatives and the introverts. An interesting contemporary phenomena is the anomie of certain people visiting the cities who experience great discomfort, sensitive souls who cannot abide the noise, pollution, and grey-on-grey tangle of the urban jungle. This almost begs the question that there must be two distinct types of humans, those that have evolved in the artificiality of cities - the thriving urban dwellers who love their metropolises - and those to whom concrete urban spaces are anathema. These "pastoral" folk are out-of-step with the values of Empire, and need to maintain their kinship to the natural world at all costs. Some have even gone so far as to say that “souls who are more comfortable in the cities are no longer comfortable on this planet, and should travel to another planet!” [5] (Krow Fischer) Then there are the folks who exist in a kind of liminal space or twilight zone, somewhat urban while their hearts continue to resonate with the natural world, forced to live in small cities yet not fully embracing the rural life or countryside either.

Wherever one is situated, to heal our rift from nature and reclaim our ecological self, we need to put the highest value on loving and experiencing the land, for this is how our IK/EIK will emerge. To this end, my book Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community offers a collection of diverse paths, both ancient in origin and modern in voice, that place the Earth First. These chapters Include:

Go Outside

Earthing

Animism

Ecomysticism & Nature Spirituality

Ecopsychology

Earth Story

Sacred Sites

Earth Love

Rewilding

Earth Rights

"Border Crossing" © Lisa Ericson

“Nature gives birth to your soul – and that of all other animals and plants on the planet. You can count on wild nature to reflect your soul, because soul is your most wild and natural dimension.”[6] (Bill Plotkin)

NOTES
[1] Jerry Mander, “A Basic Call to Consciousness, the Haudenosaunee Address to the Western World,” In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations. Sierra Club Books, 1992.
[2] Public Energy, Wisakedjak/Mazinaw Rocks, dance theatre performance, Market Hall, Peterborough, ON, 10/31/2013.
[3] Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re In Without Going Crazy, New World Library, 2012.
[4] Mexican activist, “deprofessionalized intellectual” and nomadic storyteller Gustavo Esteva, Traditional Elders Conference 2013, Lecture, Indigenous Studies Department, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, January 28, 2013.
[5] Krow Fischer, Weavers of Light: A Channelled Book of Knowledge for Our Changing Times, Here On Earth, 2008.
[6] Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche, New World Library, 2010.

Pegi Eyers is the author of "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community," an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon.

The World of Small

5/23/2021

PEGI EYERS

"Moth Wing Woman" © Dorrie Joy

Pandemic restrictions aside, I have grown weary of late with "wilderness adventure" and "nature experience" narratives that involve counting the miles, scaling the heights, penetrating the off-limits, traversing the most rugged terrain, finding rare species after a day-long search, or paddling like mad to reach that overnight camping destination. Nature excursions have been commodified for decades now - a mega-industry tiered to income - and today privileged folks spend lavish amounts of money to go "rock climbing," "mountaineering," "canyoneering," "whitewater rafting," "fly-fishing" or "wildlife viewing." And for any "helicopter expedition, personalized tour, whale-watch or safari" there is always a luxury lodge waiting at the end of the day.

And yet nature is not a "challenge," a set of hurdles to overcome, a place to "survive" or improve your personal score. These are all outdated concepts held over from the Euro-Colonial era, that pit "man against nature" through high-powered conquest. Based on fear and loathing, there is no genuine respect or love for nature, in the worldview that western men carry in their colonial souls.

"How far and how fast can my ATV go? How can my pickup truck compete with this run-off, this muddy backroad? Where is the most spectacular scenery for my rappelling, surfing, zipline, hang-gliding, bungee-jumping or sea-kayaking? How deep in the forest can I go, to reach that palatial, fully-stocked hunting camp?" Modernity has produced people so callous, and so focused on centering themselves in every location, that they have lost the actual ability to see, or feel that nature is alive and sacred.

These "extreme" activities are also deeply racist, classist, ableist and misogynist, by leaving out the wishes and desires of BIPOC, low income, disabled folks, or women. Not everyone is physically, mentally or financially equipped, or even interested in, superficial encounters with the wild!

In counterpoint to the über-man who takes up space with his "power over nature," I'm seeking narratives of nature connection that are scaled to the human body, to our wonder at the "small" and our most intimate expressions, and to seeing the tiniest organism with a soft touch and a gentle heart. This is the worldview of simplicity and immediacy, that favors the delights in our own orbit to the lofty heights of "eco-adventure." Even in a few feet of water, sunshine, or soil there is so much going on! I have a friend who takes the most astonishing pleasure in her tiny backyard garden. In my own case, the story of my Cabbage Butterfly Friend is a great illustration of "embracing the small."

Cabbage Butterfly (Pieris Rapae)

One afternoon in early March 2021, I noticed a Cabbage Butterfly with beautiful markings, lying sideways on the dining room floor. This was not surprising, as a cadre of eight had already emerged in January from the potted kale moved indoors last autumn. Being hatched in the warmth of the house out-of-season, there was nothing in the immediate environment to sustain this wee being, and her chances of living past "day one" were slim. Nevertheless I lifted her frail body up with my “insect catcher” (small plastic sheet and glass lid). Placing her upright on the counter, I watched her struggle to regain her footing, and quickly set up a “feeding station” with the felt stamens, punctured container and sugar-water on hand from the last off-season emergence. She seemed content to stay on the stamens, so I left her without a cover or netting.

So many “lucky incidents” followed to extend the life of this tiny being, that I feel compelled to bear witness and tell her story. The first challenge (aside from being prone on the floor) was that when I set up her sugar-water station, the stamens overflowed the saucer area. I checked on her 30 minutes later, and was dismayed to see that she had landed in a pool of nectar, and was immersed on her side struggling for life. With a small wooden skewer under her footies, I lifted her up and placed her on a dry layer of paper towels. Hoping the sticky nectar wouldn’t permanently damage her wings, I spritzed her with water, and much to my relief she dried off and revived over the next couple of hours.

Then it was on to some serious feeding. What a delight to watch her delicate proboscis twirling in a spiral, finding a juicy patch and settling in. She soon became my special friend, who I nurtured and cared for, like any beloved pet. When the sugar-water got low or the stamens began to dry, I changed the feeding station, and redirected her to it if she flew off-course. After hours of feeding I would find her perched on other objects in the kitchen – plastic cat food containers, a glass bottle, or other items. But she never flew too far – until I began to find her perched upright on the kitchen floor.

There were exactly five incidents when I arrived home and clumped into the kitchen, only to miss stepping on her in my “assumption of human space.” Each time I lifted her with the flat plastic and returned her to her place on the saucer or the stamens, and each time she was safe. The next dangerous incident occurred one day when I lifted the cat food tupperware in a rush, filled the kitty bowls and clicked it back on the counter, only then looking for my little butterfly friend. I immediately realized I had seen her perched on that exact container only an hour before, but I had forgotten all about it. In a state of upset and fear I began to search the kitchen and dining area, thinking she was smashed to bits, crushed under my own foot, or thrust into some crevice, never to return.

Imagine my relief and surprise when I saw her perched upright, hidden by leaves under the plant stand on the kitchen island. I gently lifted her up again with the plastic sheet, and she seemed to be in fine shape. What a resilient little being! So the days passed, far beyond the 3-week life cycle of a Cabbage Butterfly. She was in a warm, sunlit space, next to the conversation and commotion in the kitchen, and didn’t seem to mind one bit. In the evening I turned on a small tube light to give her a few hours of extra light, and then she settled into the darkness like the rest of the household, to be greeted in the morning with activity and a warm breeze. In the middle of the day, or at other times, I would gently spray the top of the feeding station and the stamens with a mist of water, to keep her environment from drying out.

On my birthday in March I returned home from a lovely celebration lunch, and a few hours later dipped into the take-out cake (of course), accidentally knocking the top of the container onto the feeding station. Oh my god! I looked for my butterfly friend, and there she was, fastened to the styrofoam lid, none the worse for wear. I’m not sure how she jumped so nimbly onto the lid without getting hurt, but I was so glad and relieved.

As the days passed, I checked on her often, blowing on her wings to create a warm breeze and imitate the elements she might have encountered in the wild. I talked to her, put her back on the stamens if she wandered too far, and just generally studied this delicate and wondrous being. She started to turn her wee body to face me, with her little eyes looking up into my own. I felt in my bones a connection between us, and that she was telling me she was unhappy but grateful for this small chance at life, that she trusted me implicitly, and that she was fulfilling her own destiny as a member of Earth Community.

I also communed with the Cabbage Butterfly Deva, or archetypal spirit, and with metapoetics and prayer, interacted with the sacred network and important niche of this species. I wondered about my butterfly friend’s impression of this strange environment, for like any other being, she held epigenetic memories of her normal passage through life. It also crossed my mind that some aspect of the Cabbage Butterfly psyche may now hold a new adaptation in their memory from care in captivity, and how would that affect them? Such things remain a mystery.

At one point I thought my friend was ailing as she sat still for so long, so I gently separated out her wings with the point of my wooden skewer as she let me caress her. Her wings were so much more sturdy than they appeared!. As her wings separated they began to dry, and over the next couple of days she was energized and fluttering around the kitchen, again with my help returning to her station. A few times I touched her wee antenna and she stepped up onto my finger, sitting there with an expression of contentment, basking in my admiration and love. She never seemed to lag, and at the end of the 4th week I began to call her my “Miracle Butterfly” after all the NDE's she had survived.

Toward the end of the 5th week I came home one day, and my Butterfly Friend was nowhere to be found. I searched the kitchen counter, front and back, the entire area and the dining room for 30 minutes. It finally occurred to me to look under the layers of paper towel holding the sugar-water, and at that moment a giant Wolf Spider zipped out, and ran away. As I lifted the paper towel higher, there she was, right where the spider had been sitting. She was dead, killed by a mortal blow, captive to the Wolf Spider. In that moment of shock and sorrow, I continued to speak to her and honor her spirit, and was sadly reminded of the predator-prey dynamic that rules our planet. I placed her wee body in a sweet nest of cotton with her other kindred, and noticed that in death the Cabbage Butterfly loses absolutely none of its beauty, poise or vital earth essence. In the kitchen I went to where her feeding station used to be, felt her presence still, and thanked her for being my companion on the journey.

A few weeks later on a cool spring day, a beautiful white Cabbage Butterfly flew toward me in a friendly manner - right at my front door - and continued to soar around the yard in circles and swirls. I responded with the joy of connectivity, and with pure delight, to see a member of this species outdoors where they belonged!

Encounters with minute elements or beings in Earth Community - The World of Small - can open our hearts, bring gratitude and care, and create powerful bonds to place. These are the missing elements in our lives, since techno-capitalism has taught us we never have enough, we have to "keep moving," or what we really need, is always "over there." We do carry enormous hungers, and yet meaningful soul contracts can be found right next to us or underfoot, in loving relationship with the other-than-human world, in our indoor or outdoor gardens, and in our local green spaces.

RESOURCES

Investigating Life with the Cabbage White Butterfly and Brassicas >PDF<

Tiny Hummingbird Stops Construction on the Trans-Mountain Pipeline for 4 Months

Is it Time to Stop Climbing Mountains? Obsession with Reaching Summits is a Modern Invention

Pegi Eyers is the author of "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community," an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon

Resilience, Renewal and Love

4/27/2021

PEGI EYERS

The Legacy of the Ancestors

"Ancestor" mixed-media © Pegi Eyers

“Are you, like me, feeling that the mythology of your life is now divided between the eras of pre-COVID-19 and post-COVID-19?” When I wrote those words at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, I was experiencing confusion and unease, in what felt like a menacing new reality. Being part of a “lockdown” was totally surreal. Was this really happening? Did our public health authorities actually have the power to shut down our civic spaces and amenities, and restrict our movements? Apparently they did. For most of us, this was a totally new phenomena. And to top it off, how could a “state of emergency” be declared on my own birthday, and what was I doing enjoying a celebration in a restaurant that should have closed their doors?

It’s now a full year later, my solar return has come and gone, and the entire world has been forced to reconcile with great disruptions, tragedies and impossible events. Like everyone else, I’ve been stripped down to the essentials of refuge, food, medicine and other basic needs, with the comfort of social life relegated to the sidelines. Even going for a walk is daunting, with the potential of a deadly virus waiting around the corner to contaminate our lives. And how dis-empowering, to think of the people, places, and objects of our desire as a hidden source of danger!

New words are part of our vocabulary too – terms like “self-isolation,” “shelter in place,” “quarantine,” “essential workers,” “community spread,” “flatten the curve,” “online reality,” or “covidiot” (covid denier). Instead of café culture, bookstore browsing, visiting art galleries and going to spiritual gatherings and conferences, we now spend our days in our homes - humble or palatial as they may be. Except for the super-rich, everyone is suffering an economic hit, and the ability to keep a roof over our heads is in jeopardy. Knowing how capitalism is structured, without the daily intake of profits our beloved community restaurants and shops will never rise from the ashes. And right now, it’s hard to imagine what the world will look like, in a post-COVID era.

Intellectually I understand that the virus will run its course – some will catch it, others never will; some will die and others recover. These are plain truths I can deal with, with a grudging acceptance and communal grieving. But still, there is stress in the disruption of my routine, plus the ongoing worry of falling ill. COVID-19 has changed our world on a scale never seen before, and yet we had so much to begin with! Until 2020 I was feeling the irony of living in an era of hope and cultural renaissance, at the same time that western civilization seemed to be collapsing under its own weight. For many years I watched for omens of the apocalypse, and as a society, we’ve been comfortable with “the sky falling” for decades now. Warnings of monumental change and the breakdown of ecosystems have been part of the public discourse for my entire adult life. A civilization that destroys the natural world to live, will destroy itself. It’s a given. And altering the balance of nature by massive deforestation and the annihilation of natural habitat, can unleash viruses like COVID-19 on the world.

During the summer of 2020 as the pandemic set in, and after a proper time of adjustment and bemoaning, I finally went, “wait a minute!” As a Celtic Animist with a focus on Matriarchal Studies, I had an epiphany that the clanswomen in my motherline would also have endured times of dire deprivation, as no era is exempt from the cyclical forces of birth, life, death and rebirth. They would have found their ingenuity and strength when the rains did not come, when the ground was barren, when the forest was on fire, when the storm lashed the valley, when the river flooded the land in the middle of the night, when disease gripped the babies and the Elders, when a horde of marauding horsemen threatened their borders, and when the cold and ice was so unrelenting they thought it would never end. And to withstand all this, and more, without electricity, hot baths, craft rooms, Netflix or gourmet food delivery!

Our Ancient Mothers love us so much, they are always there to support us, and patiently guide us. Working from an eternal place of continuity and care, our motherlines have prepared us for a “time of awakening,” when the power of the Eternal Feminine is rising once again. The gifts of the Ancestral Mothers are manifesting in every sphere – in the urgency of women’s leadership, the revival of the gift economy and egalitarian social organizations, the emphasis on the “we” instead of the “me,” the double roles of the birth and death doula, the need for wise elders, the supremacy of unconditional love, and the passion for venerating our Beloved Ancestors in the here and now. As in ancient times, on the rise today are the green seers, mystics and spirit-walkers, those skilled with oracles, dream and vision interpretation, storytellers, gardeners, artisans, warriors and guardians. We have re-discovered our skill with animist lifeways, interspecies communication, plant-spirit medicine, important rites of passage, magical intuitive “knowing,” honoring the sacred, reciprocity with Earth Community – and finally, making decisions that honor the Seven Generations yet to come.

Drought, fire, flood, hurricane, war, famine, disease – all these and more we have endured and will endure again. Keeping the era in perspective, there is also a “destroyer” aspect to feminine deity, and goddesses like Kali and Coatlique bequeath the land and all beings with cataclysmic events in the “great re-balancing” – cycle upon cycle through the great wheel of time.

Fortified with a new-found faith in the resilience of my ancient Clanmothers, I was able to cope, unlock my capacity for grief and compassion, find patience and perseverance, and understand that all things have a beginning, a middle and an end. To embrace the “silver lining” of pandemic times means reconnecting with what is most important, and to adapt and thrive. Isolation offers us the gift of time, and the space to retreat from the world. We can make the most of the opportunity by reviving our ancestral wisdom, honing our craft, singing, dancing, laughing, crying and telling the stories of our lives. The darkness in hard times can also feed us, nourish us, wake us, and ground us.

So what is the best way forward? The stress and grief we are facing is real. And yet, we need to keep our spirits up and stay positive! To trust that the Primordial Mothers - the weavers embedded in the land - are summoning us back to our most ancient selves, to the Ancestors and wild nature. For the first time in many years, Mother Earth is flourishing from reduced pollution, and the portal is open wide to animist connections and nature bonding. The natural world remains the foundation of all life, and the sacred wisdom of re-connection has not wavered. Even in the modern era we are still “People of the Earth” and our true power is found in our ancient communal past, when we remember the sacred essence our bodies evolved from, so many aeons ago.

As we connect to the land, the Ancestral Mothers witness us from the thin place between the worlds, know our hearts and souls, and help us to heal from trauma. They send us the message that we will recover from the COVID-19 pandemic stronger, smarter and more compassionate, and new initiatives will manifest as we rise to the challenge. And at some point in the not-too-distant future, the impulse to find our kindred spirits will bring us back to each other again. As we gradually emerge from this traumatic time over the summer of 2021, I intend to find a Grandmother Tree, curl up in her roots and pray - pray for the revival of our beloved Earth Community.

Read more on social justice, ethnocultural recovery, re-landing, rewilding, ancestral connection, sacred land and animism in "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community" by Pegi Eyers.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon

European Roots ~ A Call for Leadership

4/17/2021

PEGI EYERS

Celebrating the European Old Ways and building a movement to reconnect with earth-emergent wisdom means reaching out to other spiritually-bereft diasporans, who are also seeking alternatives to Empire. Brilliant leaders, authors, ceremonialists and seers in Celtic Reconstruction, Ásatrú, Norse Heathenry, Sinnsreachd, Faery Faith, Druidry, and others who have been on the path for decades, are perfectly positioned to mentor and promote European Ancestral Knowledge to the culturally-deprived, as we participate in our collective journey to authenticity.

With the beautiful renaissance of ancestral connection happening today, we need to “go wide” with our learning and sharing, and reach out in our community-building. There is a model from ancient times to follow, whereby religious and community leaders would offer up their powerful talents, knowledge, guidance and mysticism for the greater good, and this dynamic needs to be stepped-up in today’s world.

Going beyond the Christian notion of proselytizing, becoming proactive in informing those with shared heritage that a thriving movement of cultural reclamation is possible, is exciting and fulfilling work. Paradoxically, it is our privileges that have given us the leisure to recover our European Ancestral Wisdom in the first place, and these same entitlements may induce us to cling to the knowledge we have so painstakingly collected. Yet if we can bypass our internalized conditioning in regard to cultural insularism, intellectual detachment or spiritual materialism, we can naturally and organically help to build, and restore, ancestral-sourced community.

People are starved for European Indigenous Knowledge (EIK), and letting go of the tendency to over-protect means learning from one another, sharing our gifts, and connecting with kindred spirits as we return to our Sacred Ways. Reconstructionists and Traditionalists who are adept with EIK after years of immersion have the unique opportunity right now to assume major leadership roles, and by declaring themselves fully representative of their pre-colonial ancestral culture, speak for those of European identity at conferences, symposia, and even gatherings of Indigenous peoples.

As those of European descent become more adept at declaring ourselves to be part of the worldwide circle of diversity, our appearance at tribal gatherings will not be as host, or financier, or apologizer, or journalist, or scholar, or anthropologist, or collaborator, or spectator, or as a wannabee aligned with the lifeways of a tradition not our own, but as an equal and full participant, secure in our own ancestral knowledge.

If those of European heritage have also done their uncolonizing work by rejecting the memes of Euro-domination, and are clear about holding a position in solidarity with all those decimated and oppressed by Empire, this will naturally form the circle Mother Earth in Her infinite wisdom has been waiting for, as we express our mutual love in Earth Community.

“Attuning ourselves to the long-forgotten tides of moon and season, sun and sea, of land and circling stars - our connections with the cog wheels of
creation have deep roots in antiquity and are our oldest inheritance.”
Marian Green, The Elements of Natural Magic

Read more on social justice, ethnocultural recovery, re-landing, rewilding, ancestral connection, sacred land and animism in "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community" by Pegi Eyers. Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon