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The Sanctuary: Essays on Eco-Mythology

10/6/2024

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REVIEW BY PEGI EYERS


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Recovering our eco-self is the most important work of our time, and freeing ourselves from the disassociated modern psyche is essential. With her brilliant prose, scholarship and mythopoetics, Sofia Batalha has been one of our foremost guides to this process, and the long-awaited English translation of The Sanctuary: Essays on Eco-Mythology far exceeds all expectations.  This volume is a superlative weaving of mythology, psychology and ecology – a set of portals, principles, metaphors, dreams, symbols and ancient tales - within a beautifully designed and articulated “Amulet Book.”  Sofia outlines the amnesia and dysfunction of coloniality in great detail, and by foregrounding the sacred stories and landscapes of Portugal, uncovers the “frail remaining fragments of a responsible and reciprocal European psyche.” The earth is alive, the elementals and spirits are speaking, the land is teeming with stories, mythical modes remain our primary form of understanding, and somatic dialogue with the other-than-human world is possible.   
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In synthesis with ancient ways of knowing and Indigenous methodologies worldwide, Sofia introduces new/old modalities to live by, such as the “crack of the mythical psykhē,” the “emergence of the present body,” the “portal of the sacred earth” and “research – prayer.”  Sofia asks if we dare to imagine ourselves as interdependent once again, and alternative narratives mean remembering and reclaiming the animist parts of ourselves, cultivating a deep belonging to place, answering our soul’s yearning, and co-creating with living myths to keep the mystery alive. “Research – Prayer” evokes the non-linear imagination, is both subjective and multi-directional, and is open to encounters with living forces and beings in the interconnected web with worship, reverence, ecstasy, ceremony, and communion.  Within the sacred space created by The Sanctuary: Essays on Eco-Mythology, Sofia’s wisdom allows us to make the pilgrimage to the “wrong side of the crossroads,” embrace an ancestral cosmology, embody the seasonal cycles of time, find our own local spirits and mythologies, leave offerings, and share the ancient tales. This is the work of reviving the wild ecological soul, and also our original instructions. As we reclaim the sacred connection denied so long by coloniality, in Sofia’s own words, “may the primal soul, archaic cosmic elixir and procreative flow, liquid and meandering, claim us back.”  

Order "The Sanctuary" by Sofia Batalha >here< or >here< 

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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. 

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    Book Reviews
    by Pegi Eyers




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