#Spiritual Ecology

[wyrdwitchingways]

Random Thoughts on Gods

The universe is numinous! As a kid, I just knew the spirit world was bustling with activity, and as I grew up, I realized that I wanted to see and understand the beings around me. I started with the gods because that felt closer to the spirituality I was raised in. I mean. I grew up watching my grandma pray to one god in the early morning light while standing on our front porch. So when I realized that "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy," it felt natural to start with the gods.

Since then, I've encountered and worked with more than just gods. There are many different types of spirits and, of course, the dead too. I still find myself coming back to the gods a lot in my practice. I don't ignore spirits and dead folks obviously. They're there and active so I do make connections with them too. But I gravitate to the gods pretty strongly in my Work.

I view the gods as energies/powers/forces. But still as real beings with their own personalities, (primary) jurisdictions to a point, agendas, and modes of operating across the worlds. Some gods are singular and unique "persons" while others are maybe more like "hives" wearing one face but still "people". Either way, they exist and I acknowledge their "personhood" even if I don't have a personal relationship with a particular deity. I know a lot of folks don't really think the gods are real or that they are separate entities that exist outside of the human mind. Some folks prefer to view the gods as complex human concepts, constructs embedded in the collective unconscious exclusively present for human support, enlightenment, and elevation. If that's you, then do you. However, I have *concerns* when someone asserts that their mental representation of something is the actual thing itself and vice versa.

I mean yeah. Because the gods are not typically physically present in the same way that humans physically take up space, I can see how a person might think the gods are *all* in our heads. That is definitely one stage that they play on, no doubt. But asserting that their existence is confined to that space and that space alone is strange to me.

While they may use the contents of our brains to craft garments for themselves and shape how they manifest, our brains aren't their only space to exist. From my perspective, they act on the worlds, whether we "see" them or not. They have agency and autonomy, independent of our conceptions of them. Just like some random person living on the other side of the world shaping their own life and the lives of those around them, or - if they have power and authority - shaping the rise and fall of a nation.

As a side note, I actually don't think the gods (any of god) are any of "The Omnis": omnipotent, omniscient, or (in many cases) even omnipresent. Being a god and having power, authority, and/or influence as a god don't require any of those three things. It's not all or nothing. The gods are a part of a spiritual ecology. They are one potent force in the universe among many, including animals, humans, random spirits, dead folks, etc!

This post is a little rambly but like I said, I enjoy conversation. What do you think about all this?

[bodyalive]

* * * *

A Shamanic View:

Medicine for the Earth by Sandra Ingerman

In all spiritual traditions it is taught that everything that manifests in the physical world starts in the invisible realms of spirit.

We must remember that a baby grows in the womb. Trees and plants start with a seed that is nurtured in the earth and then expands into roots, branches, leaves, buds, fruits, and flowers.

Creation comes through us.

We often expect change just to happen magically without the inner work that is needed to create outer change. We want science to magically create "a cure" for all the ills of our times. But the true changes we are looking for must come from within. We need to incorporate spiritual practices into our daily lives and live the practices.

We need to be able to work through the dark states of consciousness and transform them into golden light. This is the true meaning of alchemy. And then our outer world will reflect our state of light back to us.

We must remember that we are not just form and matter. We are luminous beings. And our destiny is to radiate light.

Right now many of us walk around with unexamined thoughts, attitudes, and emotions. We live a life filled with fear and this generates states of hate and war. We believe that there is scarcity of resources and that we are limited in what we can create. This is a reflection of how we live from a place of separation.

The ultimate teaching is, "It is who we become that changes the world and not what we do." The part of us that is "becoming" involves remembering that we are spiritual beings whose destiny is to radiate light and channel unconditional love. We came here to learn about the power of love and to create from love. The part that we are "doing" involves how we walk on this earth as conscious beings. We must be conscious of every action, thought, and word. For once again, our outer world is a reflection of our inner state.

Excerpted from 'Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth', chapter 'Medicine for the Earth' by Sandra Ingerman.

Albarran Cabrera   —–   Instagram

The Mouth of Krishna

2022, #60907. Pigments, gampi paper and gold leaf

[nuanimistdatabase]

Why the World Needs Spiritual Ecology - Atmos

[starseedpsychics]

Embracing Spirituality: Welcoming the First Day of Spring

As winter’s icy grip loosens and nature begins to stir from its slumber, there’s a palpable sense of renewal in the air. The first day of spring, also known as the vernal equinox, marks a significant moment in the celestial calendar and carries profound symbolism across cultures worldwide. It’s a time of transition, of balance, and of awakening—a perfect opportunity to reflect on spirituality and…

[sspacegodd]

(A Rwandan talking about his experience with Western mental health and depression):

“We had a lot of trouble with Western mental health workers who came here immediately after the genocide."

They came and their practice did not involve being outside in the sun where you begin to feel better.

There was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again. There was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy. There was no acknowledgment of the depression as something invasive and external that could actually be cast out again.

"Instead, they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them.

We had to ask them to leave.”

--from Spiritual Ecology

[animystsoul]

MATRIX

The layers of the body

Like roots of forest trees

Are interwoven into one

The matrix, the deep underworld

Speaks as images, vision & dream—

As our feelings & thoughts

There is a forest under the skin—

— with interconnected root systems,

— the cellular matrix,

— the deep underworld,

— in which information flows,

— as electromagnetic & molecular currents

The underworld currents,

Are felt-sensations of aliveness,

Presenting to Consciousness,

As dreams & thoughts

There is two-way transduction

Between mind & matrix—

DNA reveals itself to mind—

And mind feeds back onto DNA

Layers are woven

Into one whole

In which sacred balance

Is delicately kept

#ecm #extracelularmatrix #ecosystem #spiritualecology #ecospirituality #roots #forest #animism #witch #wholeness

[itzayahuatlmermaid]

I just woke up at 7 am exactly w a weird feeling, then a few minutes later my whole room is rumbling and I can hear the glass in my window rattling. It lasted about a minute or two. I actually thought there was an earthquake for a few minutes there. But no, just Space-X launching their "Super Heavy" rocket, the "most powerful launch vehicle ever built', about 25 minutes away from my home. I cannot even describe how much I hate Space-X for all that they've done to my community and the environment in which we live. Musk has inflicted SEVERE and unforgivable harm upon land extremely diverse in plant and animal species (we have the 2nd highest concentration of wildlife next to Everglades!!), has made sea turtle nesting sites unsafe and unusable for the turtles, and is encouraging the gentrification of our culturally unique border community. Not to mention, the land which he disrespects so blatantly is occupied by the Carrizo Comecrudo tribe and is extremely significant to the indigenous peoples of this region. My own ancestors relied on this coastal environment for nourishment and safety, and it has always been a source of peace and love for my family and myself.

[wishicouldcrossthesea]

esoteric girl winter

[dailyanarchistposts]

“For me, wherever I go, I know my natural and eternal environment, and I know it as part of me and me of it. Beyond whatever we think, there is a darkly glimmering mystery far beyond reason and sanity, but full of the wholeness of beauty. It perpetually sustains and bestows all things with their own nature and being- perfectly, fully and without need for further elaboration or rectification. This is the sorcerous conception of deity.”— Robin Artisson, The Toadbone Treatise

It’s December and the air is warm here.

I peer out my window with drink in hand, watching the blood-splashed sun collapse beyond the horizon and into the highway. For a moment I relish being in a State where drinking a lime-juice cocktail isn’t a desperate plea for warmer days. Here winter never comes, and as such, we never need to change our tastes to heartier or heavier food and drink.

The Southeast is the only home I’ve known: a land of sweltering heat, mosquitoes the size of your arm, and uninterrupted madness via Florida Man. Where I dwell is nothing special: an average middle class town, the wonder and mystery of the city far away and only faintly sensed. The hustle and bustle of modern living remains only a faint rumor on the wind. Life moves along uninterrupted, save for twinges of change here and there. I can imagine such a life would not be enough for some, and truthfully it’s not enough for me. But in the meantime, there’s no rush; I drink deeply from the land and Spirits around me.

I think about Gordon’s piece on Natural Magic, the equation of Self+Spirit World+Place. It rings true to me. I think about the natural world around me, my own slice of it. Underneath the regular suburban dregs still beats the heart of that wild Florida, in every thicket and every wood. In them I’ve rattled open doorways between realms in areas smaller than some public parks, I’ve spoken with Swamp Spirits and learned the unspoken keys to plant identification, and I’ve traded payment and favors with the local Dead and seen them manifest right before my eyes. All these things happened in my hometown not in spite of it, but through it.

The great lesson of Folk Magick has always been that magick was right at hand, that you didn’t need a library of books or special clothes and wands to do it. In Hoodoo a quick trip to the grocery store and some significant places around town will allow you to hurl just about anything at people. When I’m particularly stuck for an ingredient I always go Journeying into the Spirit World and ask my friends there what might do the trick. And often the most powerful gifts are the simplest.

I came to read playing cards, to cast my eyes into the twisting nether realm of probability and possibility not through some online course nor through paid lessons from a teacher. I went down to the crossroads for nine nights around 11:45pm and called out to the One Who Dwells There to teach me, the only sacrifice being the time I spent there. And teach me He did. I found whole new ways of looking at the cards, as books and ideas seemed to drop into my view from all over; I read what I could, but the biggest advances seemed to come from just being out there, alone and in the dark, hearing whispers in my head and seeing symbols dance before my eyes. I read the cards now with great accuracy, with my window into the shifting seas of potentiality amounting to an admission fee of one dollar.

Often in life our own worlds can seem disenchanted, our existences too far away from any of “the action” to feel meaningful. As in spirituality so too in politics: the same way my heart longs to stir up the dead in St. Augustine it flutters at thoughts of joining in armed resistance somewhere in the streets of Rojava; as I ponder the possibilities of protective mojos made and blessed with the dirt from Castillo de San Marcos, I wonder what revolutionary potential I could add to the people’s struggles in Baltimore, Oakland, Chiapas, and Greece. Economics and familial ties, at least for the moment, always get the upper hand.

But I do not rest on my laurels. I read, I study, I speak with those around me. I consider myself the advance guard, the agent behind enemy lines. I gather folks of like mind around me and we plan, we plot, we create pockets of resistance and freedom. We are the first cells of the revolution you see, mitochondria that will one day evolve into a greater being. We put pamphlets, we put up posters, we engage in Direct Action. Rather then wait for ‘THE Revolution” I’ll do what I can here and now, building “the new world in the shell of the old.”

Those that simply wait for monumental change, or worse vote in the hopes it will come, display a distinctly unmagical air about them: they don’t believe anything can change unless everything does, they can’t imagine that their actions could move even the tiniest mole hill, they huff that the time is never quite ripe, that until some Unknown Messiah arrives we’d best simply hope for change.

Surely we, through direct experience, know better then this?

Can’t a hidden gesture or half-mumbled phrase move someone’s mind? Won’t a fervent prayer, a simple oil, and an intensity of Will attract unseen hands to guide you? Doesn’t the simplest mix of red pepper, black pepper, and sulpher cause the flames of hell to leap up at our command? You can’t have it both ways: either you and your allies can literally shift the movin’ and shakin’s of the luck plane as well as this artifice we call physical reality, or it’s all a sham.

I don’t know about you but I’ve got notebooks filled with proof that what we deem “inevitable” or “unmalleable” is plainly not so.

Magic presupposes we can change the foundations of the world around us. Why do our political beliefs so often not follow this maxim? Why are we waiting for some Vanguard, some Party, some Candidate, to rip up the noxious weeds of Capitalism and The State? Did we come by any of our magical knowledge by waiting or did we simply go out and start doing what we could? Wasn’t every bump in the road a lesson, every victory a confirmation that even against the odds we can win?

My tradition courses through the land and was born in struggle: against the State, against the Boss, against the Police. Under candle light and shroud of burning herbs I can feel the air thick with those that whispered or sang prayers in other times; they know, they understand: the battles may be different, the symbols may have changed, but the struggle has not. Candle flames burst with the same heat and energy raging away in my heart, teeth gritting in Nietzschean Will to change the world and break anything that stands in my way. Road Opener work or Revolution, what’s the difference?

My tradition is not alone: anyone laying hands on the practical magic of the past is touching a People’s History. You did what you could with what you had on hand, including whatever ghosts and goblins happened to be around. These people were in the same boat we are: under the heel of an oppressive state apparatus, one that could kill them at any time, all for the service of an economic elite. They too watched an increasing portion of all the value they created get siphoned away, hunger pangs and anxiety the mother of many a prosperity spell. Any good witchcraft carries with it the sublime scent of necessity; by the time you’re in the woods at midnight making pacts with unseen things it’s safe to say the usual channels of change have been blocked.

What else is magic but the metaphysical embodiment of Anarchism, of politics on a spiritual plane? That YOU could defy the laws of the “Lord” and make new arrangements for yourself, that YOU could gain insights and knowledge beyond your “station” in life, that YOU needn’t wait for someone to save you because you were going to save YOURSELF? Isn’t that what Sorcery is all about? Wasn’t it a battle against the dragon Zarathustra spoke about, the one that must be defeated, that must be slain?

“Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and god? ‘Thou shalt’ is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, ‘I will.’ ‘Thou shalt’ lies in his way…”

The day is dead now, street lights and shabby store signs acting as artificial suns. The lights manage to keep the hum-drum thoughts of day still near, a collective religious belief in the firm and unvarying nature of reality, that nothing has nor will it ever change. The lights bring stability and safety. In this warm paradise where winter never comes it’s easy to believe the lie that most things are unwavering, that some things just stay the same.

For instance, global capitalism or a client’s bad luck?

But I have neither the time nor the inclination for such adult bed-time stories. I close the blinds and set about the work of changing the world around me. To succumb to the thoughts of static existence, of even settled accounts is preposterous. I call out to the Unseen with techniques and tricks propelled into the future by the most disadvantaged in this region while the plantations of the past have gone from places of frightening power to mere relics. While others buy and sell my soul flies right down to the primal, throbbing tap-root of the land around me; what was once an altar in any other townhouse becomes the Crossroads of All Existence; my voice no longer my own, my body wracked with spasms, I become a conduit for things that others claim can’t or shouldn’t exist.

Impossible? Can’t? Won’t? Shouldn’t? All these words are nothing to me! There is only The Will. And if you Will it, it is no dream.

[tengerist]

Just like many birds, many indigenous people of Siberia and Mongolia are nomads. They go to different places during different seasons. This they did this to not exhaust the pastures and benefit from the local resources best. In other words they travel to the place they best fit into the ecosystem. Many governments forcibly settled the indigenous people and stropped their nomadic lifestyle. This not only lead to destruction of culture but also destruction of ecosystems. Overgrazing causes desertification. people are must all their resources from a habitat single habitat, rather than taking only that what a habitat can spare before moving along. Instead of settling nomadic people the world should learn for the traditional lifestyle. To not exhaust local habitats. The bird in the picture is a Grus grus, Common Crane

[venus-in-pearls]

~ Coastal Moodboard #2 ~

Yesterday I met a good friend of mine on the beach 💙 She had to leave after a little more than hour, and I spent the rest of the day there. I visited 3 beach accesses in total, from South to North. I saw and enjoyed some beautiful birds and water, but not as many seashells as I was hoping. I collected a few lovely common Ark shells, but nothing that really stood out. Because it was a Saturday and there were more people than usual, and because the waves and riptides were particularly strong

1) Mexican Olive tree trimmings from the tree in my garden

2) one of my favorite thrift finds ever!!! I found this absolutely beautiful scallop on a cheaply made necklace for a very low price! I removed it from the necklace and the scallop is on my altar now 🩷 I plan to reuse the wooden beads that were on the necklace for future jewelry pieces

3) Black Skimmer. I haven't seen this species in a long time! But she was so fascinating to watch! You can see in the photo that this bird glides along the water's edge with their mouth open, collecting small fish, crustaceans, and mollusks! She did this back and forth a few times, then went Northward, away from me

4) A pelican in flight! I saw several groups and pairs looking for and hunting fish. Last week at the beach when I did some spiritual work, I saw a group of 10 pelicans!!

5) Sanderling. A species of sandpiper! They're so cute!! 🩷

6) my favorite photo I've taken of pelicans so far!

[samissomar]

Wake up now Humans to your Divine inner Truth !...You're Eternal Spiritual Beings of Love's Consciousness !...You're all Light of the Infinite Universe !...You've a Sacred Mission which is not to destroy,but to Co-create Heaven on Earth !..

© Samissomar © Samissomar

http://samissomarspace.wordpress.com

[starmothpress]

[yourmamaganoush]

Rewilding 🍃🌱🍄🌼

[brendanelliswilliams]

Some Thoughts on Ancestral Inheritance

I have long felt that one of the many signs of our collective cultural illness (and cultural orphanhood) in the contemporary West—particularly in North America—is that most of us have no sense of where we really come from. I don’t mean where we were born, of course, but what specific people-groups and landscapes we’re descended from. Generally speaking, Americans invest little to no interest in this sort of inquiry, and, in my view, are greatly diminished thereby.

I once heard the half-Scottish, half-Cherokee author and psychiatrist, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, refer to a way of introducing oneself to others that incorporates some detail about where one actually comes from as an ‘indigenous introduction’: a way that folks from most indigenous cultures around the world might be likely to introduce themselves, especially in a formal context—that is, by naming the people and communities they are descended from, and, with equal weight of importance, the Land(s) that their people hail from, where the bones of their ancient ancestors are buried and have merged with the soil for countless generations. This kind of ancestral memory was so important to my own Gaelic ancestors that in ancient times folks would frequently recite entire lineages of ancestry at public feasts and other important gatherings, often connecting individuals with certain divinized ancestors—sometimes human, sometimes not. This was seen as a way to express a healthful pride in one’s ancestry, and also in some cases to make a claim for why one should be listened to or accorded a place of trust, honor, or authority in the assembly.

In many indigenous cultures, the question of ‘authority’ is a crucial one. What, for instance, gives one authority to claim a certain title, or to pursue a vocational role that would significantly affect the lives of other people in the tribe, or of the communitas at large (i.e., of the human and other-than-human communities in a specific place)? Naturally, each culture answers this question differently, but as one example of how this kind of thing might be approached: in Diné culture, possessing some soil or stones (and/or other natural objects) from a certain sacred place in the landscape grants one the authority to speak with the spirits and ancestors in prayer: a crucial thing for all, without which life cannot proceed harmoniously. Likewise, in Diné, Hopi, and other Southwestern indigenous cultures it is considered a duty to be able to introduce oneself by naming the four clans one is most directly descended from (traced from the grandparents on both the maternal and paternal sides). Traditionally, whenever one introduces oneself to a new person or group of people, one offers the names of these four clans from which one has descended, so that the person or group right away knows something deeper about the one they’re relating with.

In any animistic worldview, knowing where on the Land one’s people are from is crucial, too, because it says something meaningful about the inheritance that person is carrying—not just from genetic and epigenetic memory, via the human (and possibly non-human) ancestors, but also from the living Land herself.

All this relates to the indispensable practice in more or less all animistic cultures of honoring the ancestors. In some cultures, ‘ancestors’ is a fairly broad category, but at very least it includes the human beings in our direct lineages of descent, all those because of whom we are who we are, here and now, in the present form in which we find ourselves.

It goes without saying that almost no one in our contemporary North American social environment asks about these kinds of things, and no one speaks this way when meeting others (in fact, to many people it would probably seem rude or outlandish to do so). In part this no doubt relates to the fact that very few of us are indigenous to this Land, and indigenous American cultures are tragically now a minority within the greater population. Most of us, in other words, are not descended from this Land, and nor were our ancestors—human or otherwise. Whether European, African, Asian, or anything else, our origins lie in another landscape, and many of us are unfortunately not in touch with that fact at all, or with the Land(s) we are actually descended from. (This certainly doesn’t mean that we can’t also feel profoundly connected to the American landscape; I certainly do—at least to certain parts of it. And it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t also honor the Land we’re actually standing on, and engage with her and all her inhabitants relationally, wherever we happen to be. We should absolutely and unequivocally do so!)

I have sometimes introduced myself in a (broadly) indigenous way to students, for example at the beginning of a workshop or class that I’m teaching, but I almost never have the occasion to do so in general life when meeting new folks (unless those folks happen to be indigenous Americans), simply because it would seem bizarre and totally out of place in the minds of most Westerners for me to introduce myself in that manner. This is unfortunate, but it’s the plain reality. Notwithstanding, I’ve been thinking recently that perhaps I should attempt to do this kind of introduction a bit more frequently, and encourage others to do the necessary research and reflection that would allow them to do likewise, should they wish to.

In this spirit, I have decided to begin using the traditional spelling of my name more often, i.e., as it is rendered in my ancestral language of Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic). I will not do this everywhere (for instance in my published writing, only because at this point it would likely be unnecessarily confusing to people in that context), but I am beginning to do it in a host of other places where it seems to make sense, including here on the ‘inter-webs’.

So, this is how I would formally introduce myself in Gàidhlig—anns an Ghàidhlig (agus A’Chuimris):

An t-Athair Urramach Brèanainn Èilis Mac Uilleim, à Naomh Anna

Oighreachd shinnsireil: Mac Greumach à Lothian, Alba; Mac Glasain à Inbhir Nis, Alba; Ò Beòllàin à Slideach agus an Clàir, Connacht, Èirinn; Mac Uilleim à Monmouth, A’ Chuimrigh

Agus anns an t-A’Chuimris (and in Welsh): Y Parchedig Tad Brenhin Elisedd Ap Gwilym

This honors the clannan (‘clans’) from which I am directly descended, both matrilineally and patrilineally, in their original spellings in Gàidhlig, and names the ancestral Lands of each clann. It also gives my full name and religious title in Gàidhlig, and states where I was born (Naomh Anna: St. Anne). Oighreachd shinnsireil means literally, ‘ancestral inheritance’, or, ‘what is received from the ancestors’, and can refer to material inheritance, but also to lineages of descent. I like this double-valence of meaning because what we principally receive or ‘inherit’ from our ancestors is our particular shape of life in a given incarnation, derived to a meaningful degree from their epigenetic memories, their genetic tendencies, and a spiritual connection to the sacred Lands from which they hail. We also, of course, receive their names and stories. All this, it seems to me, is our true inheritance.

I can’t help but think that a completely different mindset and culture than what is normative today throughout the West would result from being taught (or learning) to think of oneself firstly in relation to who and where one comes from, rather than first and foremost imagining oneself as an isolated agent somehow moving through the world apart from all those threads of what I sometimes call the breacan a bhith (‘tartan/weaving of life/being’), which actually constitute a large portion of who we are in this lifetime.

I would say that to understand and honor this reality of interbeing reflects a broadly indigenous (and certainly an animistic) worldview: an interpretive lens of relationality, interdependence, and holism, rather than isolationism and consumption. And we could reasonably say that this relational way of thinking and being reflects an inherently anti-colonial worldview, because by its very nature it resists the reductionism, materialism, selfishness and egoic isolationism that modern Western thought and social practice have enforced on so many cultures the world over, not only to the destruction of the latter, but to the everlasting shame and interior erosion of the former.

If one wished to take this worldview a step further, one could begin to incorporate the notion that plants and animals and all living beings on this Earth are also in some meaningful sense our ancestors and our spiritual siblings. It is possible to engage deeply with these concepts and begin to integrate them, both ideationally and practically. (This is something I have explored at some length elsewhere, e.g., in my book, Seeds from the Wild Verge.)

A deeper and more life-giving way of seeing can indeed be learned, even if we were never taught to think in such a way when we were children. It is never too late to revisit the underlying, foundational assumptions in our minds and redress them in a way that might yield a more fruitful mode of thinking and moving in the world. Perhaps a mode in which our starting point for conceptualizing our lives and the world around us begins not with us as individuals, but with a collective, a commonage, a family of being from which our own lives have arisen and to which, by duty of honor, we owe an immense debt of gratitude.

It takes time and effort to do this work, but one can absolutely transmute their way of thinking about self and other, relationship to the Land and the ancestors and all other living things, into a vision that is holistic, realistic, and generative. It is my feeling and experience that, if one is truly open and desirous of this transmutation, no amount of corrosive, capitalistic, dominator ideology and past conditioning can prevent its unfoldment. That much, at least, I feel confident in definitively stating. And I think this is so because it is actually natural for us to relate to the world in a holistic and relational way; what is unnatural is the corrosive conditioning placed around our necks by the materialistic, self-focused, reductionistic, alienating dominator ideologies that have so thoroughly shaped our thoughts and actions for so long in the Western world.

And the process of liberating ourselves from all this can begin with some very simple things like learning to make an ‘indigenous introduction’, as described above, or going out into the natural world around where one lives—preferably alone and undistracted—to spend some time really getting to know the plant and animal species one shares that part of the world with, experiencing and reflecting on their different qualities and gifts of beauty, and on the ways in which they contribute to one’s own life and well-being, even though one ordinarily wouldn’t be aware of it.

These kinds of simple practices, if done with sincerity and intentionality, can be the beginning steps on a journey toward greater wholeness and the reclamation of our own ancestral inheritance—and, at some level, as Irish poet Seán Ó Ríordáin once put it, of ‘[our] own mind and [our] own true shape.’

Mòran beannachdan air an t-slighe (‘Many blessings on the way’),

An t-Athair Brèanainn

[itzayahuatlmermaid]

My second post about spending some time with the bayside wetlands 💙

1 ~ A little channel of water lined with Black Mangroves. I've been learning more about them lately. These trees are extremely important for the ecosystem, as they provide shelter and hunting grounds for many wildlife species. Black Mangroves also trap carbon dioxide in their roots, and stabilize the shoreline by preventing erosion, protecting the state of the ecosystem

2 ~ wild Goldenrod! Goldenrod is a medicinal plant with many properties. Though so far I've only used it in teas intended for respiratory health and allergy relief

3 ~ a section of some smaller and more shrub-like Black. Mangroves

4 ~ storm clouds rolling in as I rested on the beach. I left as soon as it began to drizzle. I found a good few beautiful and fully intact giant Atlantic cockle shells. I find these by walking about knee deep in the water, and looking next to crab and sand flea holes in the sand for the shells discarded after they've eaten their mollusk meal

5 ~ some species of lichen that I saw all over sections of the bayside boardwalk. If anyone could identify it, I'd appreciate it!

6 ~ A colorful bird (I don't know this species' name yet : ( using the shelter that Black Mangroves provide fish as his hunting ground

7 ~ The tallest I've seen Black Mangroves grow! These were easily 15+ feet tall!

8 ~ gator tracks? I'm not sure as I'm unfamiliar with identifying tracks, but I'd love to learn! There were also flattened beds of grass nearby, which also made me think these may be gator tracks

9~ a wide area of Black Mangroves! These beautiful trees can go on for miles when given the opportunity ✨️