Wildness Sings in Us
For over 200,000 years our species (anatomically the same as we are today) lived by hunting and gathering.
We were so intimately entwined with the land.
Only in the past 10,000 years, and less than that for many cultures, did agriculture start to become the new way of doing things. And this happened slowly - over millennia.
Physiologically, psychologically, and soulfully, we are still adapting to this monumental shift in our way of relating to the earth and sustaining our communities and cultures. Make no mistake that this had one of the most seismic impacts on our species that has ever been seen in our history.
Because millennia are vast spans of time, it seems like our way of relating to the earth is an ancient system - but in the greater perspective of the history of our species, we are very new to it.
Our hands, bones, brains, blood, and entire energetic-embodied beings are still designed as those who move with the seasons, who hunt and gather, who live wild and undomesticated - and most importantly, who know that we belong to the earth instead of seeing the earth as belonging to us.
When we started domesticating crops and animals, we actually domesticated ourselves.
The entire ecosystem of myself feels resistance to domesticated life.
When I tune into the core of who I am, it is wildness who claims me.
Our wild selves are still there under the toxic industrial systems that currently prevail.
This is actually why my upcoming program focuses a lot of pre-agricultural animism of the British Isles, rather than solely on the Iron Age Celtic societies of the Isles. The most compelling animist epochs for me are before farming, before distinct territories and borders were violently defended and enforced to protect land. The mesolithic, hunter-gathering, herding societies hold the most power for me. They teach me to relate to the earth as an equal rather than subordinate. This is something we desperately need to remember. Learn more here: www.sacredearthgrove.com/otherworld
Relationships rooted in wildness are out there waiting for us. They’ve never left us.