Elements and Spirit

 

And Starhawk published more information regarding Spirit which I shared again this week on FaceBook.

You likely know about the four elements: earth, air, fire, & water—but have you explored the fifth—spirit? It lives in the center point, where the elements connect and transform, where that ethereal fifth sacred thing arises from.

To understand how the elements of life interact, we need to look not at the isolated elements, but at the patterns around us. Magical consciousness is pattern-thinking, thinking that can comprehend not just separate parts, but wholes in relation to other wholes.

Much science and academic thinking is like a focused laser, beaming intensely at one aspect of a subject. Such vision might focus in detail on a needle of a redwood tree, but it could never show us the whole tree itself, let alone the forest... To see the tree we need to step back, broaden our view, and look in a different way. The most brilliant and creative scientists do just that.

A pattern is a form or a set of actions, a way of organizing energies, that repeats. Nature is full of patterns—indeed, she seems to enjoy certain patterns and uses them over and over again. Understanding those patterns will help us to cultivate a deeper appreciation of how things work in the natural world, and how these patterns impact human culture.

We can use our understanding of patterns in our work as earth healers, in designing our lives and our gardens and in our energetic and ritual work as well. Take some time today to observe nature's patterns- perhaps draw them, paint them, bring in objects that embody them to add to your altars. When we can observe and truly understand some of the basic patterns in nature, we can learn not just to speak back to her, but to sing with the music of the spheres.

-Excerpted from my book, "The Earth Path, Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature"

[NOTE: posted first in 2022] If you're interested in learning more about how to observe and harness the patterns in nature to design human systems that heal the earth, I invite you to come take a permaculture course with me and Earth Activist Training! We employ these kinds of exercises to help you shift your awareness and develop holistic systems thinking skills. We have a 14 week online PDC starting on Tuesday. All the info and registration is here: https://earthactivisttraining.org/permaculture-design.../