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.
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 |
