New Worlds of Body, Mind & Spirit Since 1901
Even as an infant, I loved dirt. Plopped in a patch of soil, dressed only in a cloth diaper and a sunhat, I would clench this best of toys in my fat little fist, shake it up and down, and grin. My parents dreamed of homesteading, so there was plenty of dirt to be had. Our bit of heaven, a tiny cabin on a little island, came with a goat and a pair of peacocks and acres of fields to cultivate. I grew up with a garden—bugs and soil and seedlings—as a central part of my life. Now I see gardens as the key to a healthy future for our species and the earth. Big business is taking over our food stream. Food production and transport depend on petroleum. For these reasons alone we all ...
Yes, listen. Observe yourself and observe others around you. Do you ever really listen? Close your eyes right now, and listen. Ignore any outside background noises. Listen, and what you will mostly hear is your own internal prattle. It is constant. You talk to yourself constantly and that prevents any other voices from reaching you. Now, observe yourself in conversation. If you are honest, it is mostly the same thing: perhaps you listen to the other person twenty percent of the time and the remaining eighty percent is filled with your internal dialogue and commentary. Can you still that internal noise and listen to the silence? When you can do that, you can listen for the voices that ...
If you've read some of my past columns, you'll already know that I'm a huge tree hugger—and also that I believe all witches must be, almost by definition. We must be environmentalists and defenders of the earth and pioneers of sustainability. But don't take it from me. In Wiccan Beliefs and Practices, Gary Cantrell writes: Wicca is a religion based on harmony with nature and all aspects of the God and Goddess divinity. It is a veneration of our Earth. We understand that our world is in the midst of an ecological disaster in the making and that our atmosphere and our water have been polluted to the extent that major expenditures of effort and money are now required to even begin to ...
April Fools Day, a light-hearted day filled with pranks and jokes, heralds the beginning, for me, of Spring Fever—that feeling of wanting to ditch work and mundane obligation in favor of adventure, preferably outdoors. After hunkering down during a long, dark, cold winter, I am ready, even if there is still a chill in the air, to wander. And this, naturally, makes me think of The Fool card. The Fool card is complex, and made no less so by the evolution of its imagery and meanings over the centuries. What began as a comical figure, base fool, often with his pants down (see the Universal Wirth Fool) has changed into something more admirable. Indeed, early meanings (in the 18th century) ...
