A Five-Fold Path of (Re)turning

Weaving the Collective Towards a (Re)turn to Wholeness

Catherine A. Reynolds

This paper was not written solely by me. It was written, in part, by the wind playing through the pile of yellowing maple leaves collecting in the corner of the yard, the fallen apples slowly decaying beneath their tree, the ladybug navigating the edge of my tea bowl, the pearlescent spider web being cast between two branches in the corner of my vision, and the pair of yearling magpies perched on the fence watching my fingers type these words.

With the intention to inspire connection to each of these additional authors, I would like to suggest that the following pages be printed out (double sided, black, and white, and then recycled) and read aloud from the page, outdoors if the weather allows. At the very least, please read one of the stories shared in Appendix A out loud to the land. I see this as a way to honour the aliveness of these words, written not just by me, in a way that reading silently from a screen cannot achieve.

I would also like to suggest the following playlist be played quietly in the background during reading. I believe this will help create a resonance that, when paired with the spoken words (which, in and of themselves, only tell part of the story), will hopefully spotlight a deeper, somatic meaning for the living being doing the reading. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0lYliZ3XgBU8MYDEI4nPT2?si=7f2e21c2c1a448e7

The Weaving at the Heart of the World

Myths remind us of the importance of knowing where we came from. Sometimes they stand alone, unique to the land from which they sprung. Often though, their elements, storylines, and characters are reflected in one another. These stories belong to all of creation and speak to the universal truths of life. Several, from distinct cultures around the globe, tell of an Old Woman and an animal companion, living in a cave at the edge of the world.

Unaffected by the cycles of time or the seasons, the Old Woman is said to be working on a beautiful weaving. Her tapestry, or blanket, or cloak (this varies from story to story) is in a constant state of being beautifully and intricately made, almost finished, and then dramatically unmade by her companion (who is either a black dog, a raven, or a crow, depending on the culture telling the story). They reside in a hidden cave, along with a giant cauldron filled to the brim with a bubbling soup and the ancient fire over which it sits. Most of the time, the Old Woman is engrossed in her weaving. Every so often though, the soup will utter a splutter and up the old woman gets, moving slowly towards the back of the cave to stir the cauldron. As the Old Woman attends to the soup (which is said to contain all the seeds of all of creation), her animal companion (whose name is Trickster) comes forward. Trickster understands that if the Old Woman’s weaving were ever to be completed, the world would come to an end. So, to prevent this, whenever the Old Woman turns her back to stir the cauldron, Trickster takes up a trailing thread from the edge of the loom and tugs. They tug and tug and tug until eventually, the entire weaving comes undone. When the Old Woman returns from the fire, all that remains is a tangled pile of threads beneath her loom. She stands and considers the chaos before her. Some stories say she has a tear in her eye here, lamenting her lost work, but they notably never mention her lashing out at her companion, or acting in anger of any kind. Slowly, with great care, she reaches down and takes up one of the threads from the tangled pile – maybe that bright green one there – and, with thread in hand, smiling to herself, she begins again.

When Words Were Alive

Language is a living thing, and the meaning of a given word can change over time. For instance, myth, which in contemporary usage tends to mean something that is false or untrue, originally meant something that was deeply true, something that carried universal truth, and could be as if a living source of emergent truth. (Meade, 2024)

This dance of uncertainty happening between the Old Woman and Trickster creates the opportunity for new patterns and truths to emerge, and for life to continue. The weaving itself (representative of the state of the world, of humanity, and the collective consciousness) in its constant state of being made, unmade, and made new again, reflects a universal truth of its own. Uncertainty is an inevitable part of life, but like the Old Woman, we get to choose how we face it.

Stories like this¹ along with an infinite number of others, were once known to be alive with truth and wisdom. They were the guiding threads through the labyrinth of life, the pathways on which humanity was able to locate itself within the greater tapestry of the world, not above but right alongside every other being we share this planet with. These stories would be spoken (or often sung) aloud to remind humanity where we Earth, and to point out the dangers of forgetting this connection. Storytellers would cast the words as spells, taking listeners on a journey, allowing for them to encapsulate themselves into the spirit of the story and the land. The words themselves would change and shift with every telling, as the weaving does with every re-making, bringing forth the truth and wisdom of the specific moment in which they were being shared. So much was held in the old languages. Through the resonance of a human voice, in an exchange with both other humans and the natural world, a certain alchemy of integration and relationship with the animate Earth would occur. We (humans) would become entangled with and enchanted by the places in which we were living, breathing and telling the stories.

Dropped Threads: Humanity’s Forgetting

Stories like these are no longer shared around campfires, at hearths, or along the road with fellow travelers. Humanity no longer sees itself as part of nature, no longer remembers what it was to be of the land and not simply on it. Collectively, we have forgotten the old stories and the power that comes from sharing them aloud on the land from which they grew. We have forgotten what it means to be enchanted by and entangled with the world in which we live.

In his book The Ever-present Origin, Jean Gebser (1985/1949) highlights how “the mental structure [of our current society now] emphasizes only the one bright, right, conscious, masculine, active side just as it accentuates one god, one soul, and the individual human being…”(p. 198) just as it de-emphasizes the dark, shadowy, unconscious, feminine. The Feminine, represented here in the Old Woman responsible for weaving the consciousness of the world into constant, shifting existence, has been nearly completely forgotten. It is not inconsequential that these structures have enabled humanity to spend the last several centuries devastating our living Earth. As a result, we now find ourselves in a time of deepest discontent, disease, and disconnection.

David Abram (1996) speaks to the origins of the root of this disconnection in The Spell of the Sensuous. “All of the early writing systems of our species remain tied to the mysteries of a more-than-human world” (p.96) They were place-specific; consider the differences between the petroglyphs of pre-Columbian Turtle Island and a pictographic system like Egyptian hieroglyphics. However, as language and writing evolved, the way in which we communicated with one another requisitely became more and more generalized. While this generalization and standardization of certain languages and written letterforms doubtlessly made it more convenient to communicate with one another, it inherently cut out communication with Nature, the Earth and the Other. Once humanity began to “noun” those more-than-human Others, every being that would once have been commonly recognized as alive – possessing spirit and having consciousness – was seen dumb, deaf, and mute. The living world around us was no longer full of wonder and magic, it existed solely for the benefit of humankind – ourselves now distinctly separated from and not a part of nature – to use as we wished, without apparent consequence or guilt. For centuries, as the briefest of glances at any current new reels will show, we have done just that.

Humanity as a whole is now standing before the chaos of that tangled pile of threads. We must choose wisely where to begin, understanding that every choice will entail learning some of the steps to the dance of uncertainty. I believe we are being collectively called to remember the languages our tongues and bodies and hearts once knew, begin asked to speak and sing and share them aloud with the Earth once more. To overcome these mental structures that surround and beguile us, we must (re)member and (re)turn² to where our bodies came from. Turning and re-turning along the spiraling paths of the labyrinth of life, we must find and take up a new thread and weave a new path, in doing so, becoming active members of this animate Earth once again.

The Five Spheres of Consciousness

An Initiation of (Re)membering

Linda Hogan, (1995) asks “how do we learn to trust ourselves enough to hear the chanting of the Earth? To know what’s alive or absent around us…the old, slow pulse of things…” (p 28). We must become, as Gebser (1985/1949) described, initiated into the lucidity of Origin. Here, Origin serves as another word for Source, Spirit, God or The Mystery. To Gebser, Origin was the essential thread running through each structure (or layer) of consciousness, the thread that tied All together as One. I believe following this thread requires a certain level of trust, and an honest desire to for us to truly feel “the old, slow pulse of things,” once more. We must want to return once again to a place where humans and Origin, humans and Earth, are entangled as a whole. Integration of each of the previous structures of consciousness is required for this kind of (re)turning. To Gebser, integration of this kind would bring humanity, once again, to a place where our relationship with Origin (Earth, Source, Mystery) was one of numinous enchantment.

To attempt this kind of integration, we first need to reach back along the thread humanity has been following for so long, to understand the structures of consciousness that the collective has experienced thus far. My primary aim with this paper is to lay out a path of (re)turning, (re)membering and (re)enchantment. I will therefore cover only the basic characteristics of each of Gebser’s structures, as a foundation for understanding the proposed path. As the Integral is represented best by a sphere, I will refer to each structure of consciousness as a sphere moving forward, to honour our aiming for that ultimate wholeness.

The First Sphere: The Archaic

Gebser (1985/1949), defines the Archaic as being essentially identical to Origin; “it is a ‘first’ structure emanating from that perfect identity existing ‘before’ (or behind) all oneness or unity which it initially might have represented.” During this time in our history, the human soul is seen as being dormant or asleep, and no differentiation exists between people and nature (p. 43).

Not much is known about this ancient time, since language and writing did not yet exist, at least not as we know them today. As such, any written accounts of the human experience during that time would be pale reflections, cast out from a mirror aimed at the past, held from a place within one of the subsequent spheres. Indeed, Gebser himself found only two sources he considered to be acceptable reflections of the Archaic sphere, themselves both written during the Mythic sphere. Zhuangzi’s (2009) statement that “the Genuine Human Beings of old slept without dreaming and woke without worries” (Ch. 6 line 6:6) was one of them. In particular, the expression of sleeping without dreaming suggested to Gebser (1985/1949), that consciousness had not yet awoken in or been attained by these early humans, who were still “unquestionably part of the whole” (pp. 44-45).

The Second Sphere: The Magic

The [humans] of the magic structure [had] been released from [their] harmony or iden-tity with the whole. With that a first process of consciousness began…” (Gebser, 1985/1949, p. 46)

With the beginning of the arising of consciousness, human beings started to see themselves not solely as the world, but as part of the world. While a single part (a single human, for example) could still represent the entire whole, we were not completely separate from the world, but existed as distinct individuals within it. Gebser (1985/1949) suggests that, during this Magic structure, consciousness was not quite residing within humans yet but resting, or sleeping, within the Earth herself. Gradually this earthly consciousness would begin to stream towards and into humankind, leading to an emergent awareness of nature as the “recognized” world, while humanity remained egoless. There was an attitude of vital agency, driven by instinct and emotion, alongside a non-directional interweaving and acceptance of the unity of all things. Liner time, as we know it today, was non-existent. Nature was humanity’s objective external focus, and emotion was our subjective internal focus. (pp. 617 – 621)

The Third Sphere: The Mythical

Where in the Magical sphere, humankind’s awareness of self was mainly one-dimensional, in the Mythical sphere, we moved into two-dimensionality and polarity. To Gebser (1985/1949), this suggested an emergent awareness of Soul or Psyche as the objective aspect of the external world, and imagination as the subjective aspect of the internal world. Humanity began to internally reflect and contemplate both ourselves and the world around us and then externally represented these processes through utterance, expression, and the creation and sharing of myth. Imagination arose during this sphere as well, as we expressed our experiences in new ways. Nature still equated to relation, although the focus was more on ancestors (past-focused) than kith and kin (present-focused), as it had been in the Magic sphere. Relationships were generally still egoless., and Soul was still seen as interchangeable with Life and Death, (pp. 617 – 621)

The Fourth (and Present) Sphere: The Mental / Rational

“We can no longer hear the voice of the rivers, the mountains, or the sea. The trees and meadows are no longer intimate modes of spirit presence. The world about us has become an ‘it’ rather than a ‘thou’” (Berry, 1999, p. 17).

This is the sphere of consciousness in which we currently reside. And, as Thomas Berry points out, people are no longer able to hear the voices of Nature, which therefore no longer holds spirit, meaning or importance to our disconnected, rational minds. “The word ‘rational’ originally comes from ‘ratio,’ referring to harmony and proportion between things” (Bohm, 1980, p.26). This original meaning is the one to which we must return. The current Western paradigm of rationality generally excludes any experience that cannot be satisfactorily explained by the high and holy trinity of the scientific method, modern academia and the thinking mind.

According to Gebser (1985/1949), the essence of this sphere is duality. Society is externally objectively focused on the concept of space, and internally subjectively focused on abstraction. We relate to the outer world as an entity wholly separate and apart from ourselves. The collective attitude is highly cerebral, focused on conceptualizing, projecting, seeing, measuring, and believing. Relationships are future-oriented and often goal or purpose driven. Where, in previous spheres, relationships were in part tied to our more-than-human kin and the natural world, they are now almost entirely egocentric and materialistic (pp. 617 – 621). By considering each of the spheres that existed “before” now, (another defining characteristic of the Mental sphere is linear time) we can understand where and how humanity dropped the throughline, or thread of Origin. The question then becomes; how do we pick it up and begin anew?

A Merging of the Spheres: The Integral

Gebser (1985/1949), believed that the Integral sphere enveloped and included each and every sphere occurring before it. As the spheres mutated and changed, they did not negate any aspects of their previous iterations, but instead integrated them, merging All together as One. This Integral sphere is the ultimate merging, where the consciousness (of all beings) would be collectively recognized, open and free flowing without divisions or limitations. Humans would be free of the constraints of ego, existing instead in an amaterial, enchanted entanglement with Origin, Soul, and Source. We would step out of the bounding boxes of “time” and “space” and reside instead in an aperspectival, four-dimensional cosmic relationship with the numinous. In merging the spheres and moving into the Integral, humankind would at last be returned to Origin (pp. 617 – 621).

A Pathway of Return

“The pathway of Return begins when the masculine journey away from origin has run its course… The Return leads back to Oneness, wholeness, and healing” (Parry, 2015, p. 160).

Glenn Parry (2015) writes in Original Thinking, that humanity needs to deeply examine and question our conditioning, in order to have any hope of escaping our current path of shortsightedness. The path we have been walking centers around seeking short-term benefits only for ourselves, while endangering the entire community of the Earth in the long run (p. 161).

We seem to have forgotten that community includes humanity as well. To scaffold the collective into the Integral, we need pathways that are as multifaceted as nature is. These paths must be integral, accessible, and based on principles of oneness, wholeness, healing and connection. This means they will also naturally include elements (threads) from each of the previous spheres of consciousness, along with the additional thread of Origin that was ever-present (whether pervasive or hidden) within each of them.

A Five-Fold Path

Only by walking and working in the liminal space between the spheres (not residing in one alone) will we be able to untangle the tangled, draw up original threads from each sphere that link All together as One and begin weaving once more. The five-fold path laid out below could serve as the warp and weft of humanity’s new weaving. It consists of Practices, Partners, Plants, Place, and Pith.

There are three primary strands to this woven path – Partners, Plants and Place. As with all weavings, these primary threads are woven onto two foundational threads, called the warp and the weft. These foundational threads are Practice and Pith. I will describe Practice fist, as one half of the foundation. I will then bring in each of the three primary strands, offering practices and ideas on how to foster a return to right-relationship with Partners, Plants and Place. I will close with an exploration of Pith, the other half of the foundation, diving into the language of Spirit and the expression of Soul. The following practices are only suggestions of accessible starting points; many more exist beyond what I have space to share here. They are opportunities for re-enchantment and re-entanglement; choices of threads with which humanity could begin to re-weave our collective future.

Practices: A Foundation

Practice is the foundation for all other foundations, the warp thread, the base of the weaving. It lays down the bones, the structure for each of the other threads to be built up on. I chose to use the word practice for its neutrality and accessibility, but this thread could just as easily be called Ritual. Each of the practices proposed herin will be more potent, more profound, when pursued with the deep devotion and intention often found in ritual spaces and rites. Any practice, approached with attention and intention, can become a ritual. In our current sphere of mental-centric-consciousness, the cultivation of attention and ritual have been set aside, since they generally require an awareness of and attunement to our own animal bodies. The word Ritual itself holds a fair amount of religious and spiritual connotation as well, which could be both positive or negative depending on a persons’ context. Understanding that such perceived connotations and levels of awareness might prevent people from engaging at all, in the spirit of Trickster, we will call this thread Practice instead.

One practice I have returned to repeatedly while walking this five-fold path myself, one that I can say from experience will strengthen and compliment all others, is an apprenticeship to silence.

You must learn one thing. / The world was made to be free in. / Give up all the other / worlds / except the one to which you belong. / Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet / confinement of your aloneness / to learn / anything or anyone / that does not bring you / alive / is too small for you. (Whyte, 1997)

In today’s world we are more often surrounded by noise than by silence. That sweet confinement of aloneness that Whyte speaks of is a rare jewel, buried under layers of flashing lights, over-saturated colours, blaring sound and rapid movements constantly streaming at, around and through us. Finding time for true silence is almost impossible. So, we must make space for it, both in smaller doses as a daily practice and in longer stretches, as a deeper form of Medicine.

For those daily, smaller doses, five minutes of intentional silence before the day starts (with a focus on doing nothing but being present to the silence), can create powerful shifts in how we interact with the world. Putting down our screens, turning off our phones, and giving our brains space away from the cacophony that technology emits, is also excellent, especially if done for longer periods of time. Acknowledging that unplugging is sometimes easier said than done, this is where longer stretches of more consciously held space can be helpful in solidifying silence as a practice.

Silence is essential… it transports our awareness beyond thought into a state of what Joseph Campbell, borrowing an idea from James Joyce, called aesthetic arrest. In aesthetic arrest the racing of the mind and heart are stilled, such that we are enabled to feel a sense of our kinship with Being itself, beyond words or concepts or thought. But we need silence in order to hear that greater Silence. (Smith, 2020)

Silent retreats allow for our focus to be held internally, fostering a renewed sense of kinship with Being. While there is, of course, immense value in community and connection, longer periods of silence offer us a rare opportunity to give those areas of our brain that handle speech time to rest. This allows us to then use that energy for genuine self-reflection, and to remember and return to that kinship. It is important to note that for most people, this is not easy, or comfortable. I recommend first stepping into that sweet aloneness in a safely held container with practitioners who have experience guiding people through whatever will inevitably arise.

“The adventure of the universe depends upon our capacity to listen.” (Berry, Swimme, 1992, p. 44). In many different traditions, retreat was a time to work on the primary relationship we have with Self, Soul, and the Land, and to deeply listen to the messages from each. Deep listening sprouts forth from Silence and will enhance our capacity to engage with each of the other practices on the three primary strands of this path.

Partners: Human and the More-Than-Human Beings

If my consciousness has a body, why should other bodies not ‘have’ consciousnesses? (Merleau-Ponty 2013/1945, p. 408-409)

Partners, the first primary strand of this five-fold path, encompasses relationships and practices revolving around all those ‘other bodies that have consciousness,’ as Merleau-Ponty expressed (save Plants, which hold a strand of their own that we will come to next.) Partners then, in this context, include both our human and our more-than-human kin here on Earth. I define our more-than-human-kin as encompassing animals, spirits, energies, those who have moved on and any other beings present on the land – seen and unseen. There is deep wisdom and knowledge of the Earth to be gained from observing and working with our more-than-human kin, as all Indigenous communities will attest to. Knowledge that deepens even further with patience and commitment to the work of (re)membering human consciousness into the animate world.

I have included a simple practice below as a starting point to this (re)membering ourselves back into right relationship with that of all those “other bodies.”

An Expressive Art Practice to Engage with Partners

Inner forms of communication are perhaps the strongest core of ourselves. We have feelings that can’t be spoken. That very speechlessness results in poems that try to articulate what can’t be said directly, in paintings that bypass the intellectual boundaries of our daily vision, and in music that goes straight to the body. And there is even more a deep moving underground language in us. Its currents pass between us and the rest of nature. (Hogan, 1995, p. 57)

Go to a place in Nature, ideally where it is possible to observe the local flora and fauna. Remember that squirrels, birds, trees and insects have a consciousness that is different from your own, so be open and get curious. Bring a journal and a pen and immerse yourself in this place. Try to set aside your thinking mind and open all of your bodily senses to the experience. Become silent and focused but also allow whatever might be present around you to unfold – sit for at least 15 minutes. Your only task is to witness the Partners that are moving about around you. Introduce yourself to whichever Partners draw your attention; ask (out loud or silently) if any one of them would be willing to sit with you and share in an experience.

Accept a Partner to focus your open attention on. It might be a bird or a body of water, or the wind rustling in the leaves or perhaps an unseen guide that presents themselves upon your arrival and introduction. Whoever you choose to focus your attention on, let them come fully to life in your awareness. Engage all of your senses. Then, slowly and gently, let their energy and their consciousness come into your human body. Become this being as fully as you can, through your body’s movements, feelings or voice; feel what it might be like to soar or ripple or gust or pass through time as another. Let this experience be exactly as it is – try not to let your thinking mind take over and categorize, define or ridicule any part of it. If you find your mind creeping in, ask it politely but firmly to sit to the side while you have this experience together.

When the experience feels complete, turn to your journal and write a poem or a few sentences born from this experience, again without thinking too much about it, just let the words flow. Then, as an act of gratitude, speak your written piece aloud with the Partner you just engaged with, offering thanks for the opportunity to re-entangle your consciousness with theirs. Do not forget to let yourself be enchanted by this experience.

Plants: Medicine for Enhancing Perception

The second primary stand of this five-fold path is Plants. For millennia, traditional Indigenous peoples around the world have looked to the plant kingdom, not solely for food and shelter, but also for wisdom, guidance, and Medicine. Entheogenic plants used in religious, spiritual, or ceremonial contexts, often produce a psychoactive or hallucinogenic response in participants. There are a number of sacred medicinal plants used in ceremonies around the world with which one could form a relationship. Any quick web search will elicit multiple opportunities to “experience the sacred” or “learn the secret of life,” often in just one short weekend and for several thousand dollars. These are not the relationships I am speaking about; we could argue that experiences like these aren’t founded on relationships at all, except perhaps with money. That people are monetizing plant medicine though, that the collective is searching for them more and more does speak to their potency and power though. There is no doubt that Plants, when used in ceremony and within a deep relationship, can help enhance our perception of our human place in the world. As I have my own meaningful relationship with one of these plants – Tea – she is the Plant I will focus on here.

Linda Hogan’s (1995) perspective on Ceremony is reflective of my own approach to working with Tea;

The intention of a ceremony is to put a person back together by restructuring the human mind. This reorganization is accomplished by a kind of inner map, a geography of the human spirit and the rest of the world… Within ourselves, we bring together the fragments of our lives in a sacred act of renewal, and we reestablish our connections with others. The ceremony is a point of return…. But it is not a finished thing. The real ceremony begins where the formal one ends, when we take up a new way, our minds and hearts filled with the vision of earth that holds us within it in compassionate relationship to and with our world. (pp. 40-41).

While not traditionally considered an entheogen, Tea offers a deeply sacred, deeply feminine Medicine. The experience of Tea Ceremony often leaves participants with an expanded perception of their own consciousness as it relates to the consciousness of all beings. Tea provides a map for the ultimate return, as Hogan shares. To illustrate Tea’s capacity for this, I will share the legend of Shennong, a mythological emperor in Chinese folk religion, and his fabled first interaction with Tea. With the intention of honouring that old stories are living things themselves, I have chosen to paraphrase this legend in the way I personally share it after serving Tea. One of the many different recorded versions of this story can be found in Appendix B.

Meditating on a mountain one evening, Shennong, the Divine Farmer found that a leaf from the tree under which he sat had landed in his cauldron of boiling water. Never one to question the wisdom of Nature, the Sage (who is still honoured today for his tasting and describing the medicinal uses of thousands of plants) bowed to the tree and poured himself a bowl. As he sat drinking bowl after bowl of the amber liquor that steeped out of the leaf, he found the spirit of the tree began to present herself to him. She spoke, in the way that trees do, and told him that she too had been meditating on this mountain, but for millennia. She asked him to tell her stories of the current world, and upon hearing that people now lived in villages and towns below the mountain, requested she be brought to them. She wanted to know what it meant to be a part of human life, to become entangled with it. His spirit uplifted and his eyes brightened by her medicine, he agreed, proclaiming the legendary words that are carved in the rock and brushed to paper, even today. “This is the empress of all medicinal herbs.”

In her asking to be entangled with the human world, Tea was offering herself as a connecting thread between humans and Nature. Tea provides a pathway to remembering our inborn relationship with the natural world, offering a gentle way to begin to restructure our human minds and help us remember that we are all part of one great and mysterious Whole. Through Tea our hearts are opened, our eyes become brighter, and we are returned, bowl after bowl, to our Origin within the Integral. Tea reminds us that the seemingly individual threads of the human, the animal, the natural, and the celestial are one; each thing intertwines and is interchangeable. In other words, we can experience the entire universe in every single bowl of Tea. Through my almost nine years of experience sitting with and serving Tea, I can confidently say that She is, in fact, an entheogen.

Tea speaks to us, not in the language of the mind, or ego, but in the language of Nature. Following a Ceremony, there are often no words to describe the experience. What pours forth is nothing short of the utterances of the leaf, the Mystery of the life in which we are all entangled. It is not something I can write about; it must be experienced.

Place: Entanglement with the Animate Earth

The breathing, sensing body draws its sustenance and its very substance from the soils, plants, and elements that sur round it; it continually contributes itself, in turn, to the air, to the composting earth, to the nourishment of insects and oak trees and squirrels, ceaselessly spreading out of itself as well as breathing the world into itself, so that it is very difficult to discern, at any moment, precisely where this living body begins and where it ends. (Abram, 1996, pp. 46-47)

Place, the final primary strand on this five-fold path, is the one that determines which Partners and Plants will naturally be present and those that will not. Place also defines which Practices will be the most meaningful, and those that might fall flat. Integral to fully engaging each of the threads on the path is forming a deep relationship with Place, as it is through this relationship that all others will root, rise and grow. Any Plant, Partner or Practice can be a doorway through which to access Place, but the most direct is simply to sit.

The Sit Spot

A sit spot is the fastest and most direct way to engage with Place, no matter where you find yourself. The procedure is this: like the artistic expression practice shared above, spend some time, each day, sitting in a spot out in nature, with the sole intention of being present to is. Ideally this would happen out on the land and away from the distractions of home, work and life, but even a backyard sit spot can offer the opportunity for connection when approached with intention. Place underlies houses and roads just as much as it does forests and meadows, although it might be harder to feel. The ultimate location is not as important as the consistency with which you seek to build the relationship.

Once there, the task is to allow your awareness to ebb and flow into the energy of the Place itself. Allow your focus and attention to drift between and around other beings, plants, animals, elements, and weather. Notice what comes up. Cultivate your awareness: notice if any messages, sensations, feelings, or thoughts arrive. Cultivate discernment; where or who are these messages coming from? Bring a journal and keep track of each experience. Go as often as you can, to the same spot, for as long as you can, and notice how the Place changes through different seasons, weather, and times of day.

We must renew our acquaintance with the sensuous world… Without the oxygenating breath of the forests, without the clutch of gravity and the tumbled magic of river rapids, we have no distance from our technologies, no way of assessing their limitations, no way to keep ourselves from turning into them. We need to know the textures, the rhythms, and tastes of the bodily world… Direct sensuous reality, in all its more than-human mystery, remains the sole solid touchstone for an experimental world… only in regular contact with the tangible ground and sky can we learn how to orient and to navigate in the multiple dimensions that now claim us. (Abram, 1996, p. ix-x)

Regular contact, over time, with patience and mindful attention, creates a relationship that, as Abram describes, teaches us how to orient and navigate the multitude of dimensions scrambling and screaming for our attention. Returning to the animate Earth, returning home to that “direct, sensuous reality” is what the final strand of this five-fold path is all about.

Pith: The Animating Inner

Most traditional cultures imagine some sort of soulful presence that accompanies a person throughout the course of their life. But as the narrow sense of rationality and logic has come to dominate modern life, most modern people doubt there is any such thing as a self-defining human soul. And yet, one of the few things that can stand against the onslaught of radical change and great uncertainty in the world is the sense of an animating inner soul… (Meade, 2024)

Michael Meade’s (2024) reference to Soul as “an animating inner” essences within each person, is the way I look at Pith. It is the weft thread. Together with the warp thread of Practices, Pith holds the pattern of the weaving, animating and enlivening all that is woven onto it. Pith is ever present; accessible from any place, at any time, by any being. I believe it can be tapped into through each of the practices outlined above and can be interacted with deeply by attuning to its native language, Intuition.

When asked about how the expansion of rationality is different from the expansion of intuition Thomas Berry replied:

With rationality we are never completely satisfied. Expansion of rationality is different from the expansion of intuition, which can bring a depth of understanding and a sense of the sacred… Intuition is the unique quality of the human that is also the consciousness of the earth and the eventuality of the universe because it can reflect on the reality of the universe, its origin and its history. You might say that intuition is the foundation of reason that is laid down first in a child before the rational faculties are added on like grace notes. (Toben, 2023)

Recognizing that the expansion of intuition often brings a depth of understanding, a sense of Soul and the Sacred, it follows that fostering that expansion could then lead to more meaningful connections being formed. These connections, in turn, would encourage people to perceive and experience the sacred in the everyday, ultimately returning to Origin through those same acts. This is Radical Immanence, this is Pith – where the Divine, the Sacred, the Mystery is not elsewhere, but right here, right now, and available to all of us in every and any moment.

The animating language of intuition, alongside the somatically felt senses that relay intuitive knowing to our brains, only exists beyond rationality. We can’t simply know or believe the Sacred to be everywhere, we have to feel it in our bones. When a person engages in re-enchanting and re-entangling themselves with the natural world, there will inherently be experiences within those engagements that cannot be organized or specified but that will simply (and deeply) be felt. This is Pith – the heartwood of our experience as humans – or, as Berry says, “the consciousness of the earth and the eventuality of the universe.” It is the connecting thread that binds together every moment and every being. It is naturally inherent in every one of us, which makes this five-fold path ever-present and wholly accessible. The only practice we need to access is it is to be human.

Returning to the Cave

In the myth of the weaving at the heart of the world, the tapestry of existence is constantly being made, unmade, and then made again. Every thread that has ever been used is available to us here and now, and every thread that has ever been imagined or dreamed of is also present, waiting to be plucked forward. We must draw up those that will grant us the greatest chance of success, dancing with the uncertainty that we cannot and do not have sole control over the outcomes of our choices. I propose the threads of this five-fold path – Practices, Partners, Plants, Place and Pith – are a solid place from which to begin weaving a collective consciousness that is both entangled with and enchanted by the world in which it evolved.

We need to remember and begin to tell again the old stories of magic and myth and listen to the stories and voices of those we once called and knew as kin. We need stories of forgiveness and deep recollection, ones in which humans and the more-than-human world each hold one key to a door with two locks. “Only stories will help us rejoin human to humility to humus, through their shared root. (The root that we’re looking for here is dhghem: Earth)” (Powers, 2021, p.76). We need these stories to help us remember where we’ve come from, to see the pathway laid out, in the liminal space between the spheres, and to start to walk it in earnest. Only through sharing these stories, and walking this path, can we truly (Re)member and (Re)turn.

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Endnotes

¹ Two of the many different sources of this story can be found in Appendix A.

² I write “remembering” as “(re)membering” and “returning” as “(re)turning” here and throughout as a reminder that humanity has previously been in the place I am referencing. Separating the word into its constituent parts encourages a reframing of its understanding in this context. What I am suggesting is that we need to re-member ourselves into the animate world and to re-turn into it just as much as we need to remember and return.

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References

Abram, D. (2010). Becoming Animal. An Earthly Cosmology (1st ed.). Vintage Books.

Abram, D. (1996). The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. Vintage Books.

Berry, T. (1999). The Great Work: Our Way into the Future. Harmony/Bell Tower.

Berry, T., & Swimme, B. (1992). The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era—A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos. Harper San Francisco.

Blackie, S. (2018). The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday. House of Anansi Press.

Bohm, D. (1980). Wholeness and the Implicate Order. Routledge. p. 26

Fisher, A. (2014). Tea Medicine. Globalteahut.org. pp. 22-23

Hogan, L. (1995). Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World. WW Norton.

Gebser, J. (1985). The Ever-Present Origin. (N. Barstad & A. Mickunas, Trans.). Ohio University Press. (Original work published 1949)

Meade, M. (Host). (2024, December 11). From Polarization to Re-Creation (No. 413) [Audio podcast episode]. In Living Myth. https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/living-myth/id1192810215?i=1000680056603

Meade, M. (Host). (2024, November 20). On Hope and Despair (No. 410) [Audio podcast episode]. In Living Myth. https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/living-myth/id1192810215?i=1000677669778

Meade, M. (2012). Why the World Doesn’t End: Tales of Renewal in Times of Loss (1st ed.). GreenFire Press.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2013). Phenomenology of Perception (D. Landes, Trans.). Routledge. Original work published 1945)

Parry, G. A. (2015). Original Thinking: A Radical Revisioning of Time, Humanity, and Nature. North Atlantic Books.

Powers, R. (2021). A Little More Than Kin. In Van Horn, G., Wall Kimmerer, R., & Hausdoerffer, J. (Eds.). (2021). Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations. Center for Humans and Nature. (pp. 72-79).

Smith, J. E. (Host). (2020, October 20). Noise and the Inner Life [Audio podcast episode]. In Digital Jung.

Toben, C. (2023). Thomas Berry on Intuition. Kosmos: Journal for Global Transformation, 2023(3). https://www.kosmosjournal.org/kj_article/thomas-berry-on-intuition/

Whyte, D. (1997). The House of Belonging. Many Rivers Press.

Zhuangzi. (2009). The Essential Writing: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries
(B. Ziporyn, Trans.). Hackett Publishing Company Inc.

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Appendix A

Two Versions of The Old Woman in the Cave

This first version of The Old Woman in the Cave is from the White Mountain Apache, as shared in Why the World Doesn’t End, by Michael Meade (2012).

The old people of the tribes would tell of a special cave where knowledge of the wonders and workings of the world could be found. Even now, some of the native people say that the cave of knowledge exists and might be discovered again. They say it is tucked away on the side of a mountain. “Not too far to go,” they say, yet no one seems to find it anymore. Despite all t=he highways and byways, all the thoroughfares and back roads that crosscut the face of the earth, despite all the maps that detail and try to define each area, no one seems to find that old cave. That’s too bad, they say, because inside the cave can be found genuine knowledge about how to act when the dark times come around again and the balance of the world tips away from order and slips towards chaos.

Inside the cave, there lives an old woman who remains unaffected by the rush of time and the confusion and strife of daily life. She attends to other things; she has a longer sense of time and a deep capacity for vision. She spends most of her time weaving in the cave where light and shadows play. She wants to fashion the most beautiful garment in the whole world. She has been at this weaving project for a long time and has reached the point of making a fringe for the edge of her exquisitely designed cloak. She wants that fringe to be special; wants it to be meaningful as well as elegant, so she weaves it with porcupine quills. She likes the idea of using something that could poke you as an element of beauty; she likes turning things around and seeing life from odd angles. In order to use the porcupine quills, she must flatten each one with her teeth. After years of biting hard on the quills, her teeth have become worn down to nubs that barely rise above her gums. Still, the old woman keeps biting down and she keeps weaving on.

The only time she interrupts her weaving work is when she goes to stir the soup that simmers in a great cauldron at the back of the cave. The old cauldron hangs over a fire that began a long time ago. The old woman cannot recall anything older than that fire; it just might be the oldest thing there is in this world. Occasionally, she does recall that she must stir the soup that simmers over those flames. For that simmering stew contains all the seeds and roots that become the grains and plants and herbs that sprout up all over the surface of the earth. If the old woman fails to stir the ancient stew once in a while, the fire will scorch the ingredients and there is no telling what troubles might result from that.

So, the old woman divides her efforts between weaving the exquisite cloak and stirring the elemental soup. In a sense, she is responsible for weaving things together as well as for stirring everything up. She senses when the time has come to let the weaving go and stir things up again. Then, she leaves the weaving on the floor of the cave and turns to the task of stirring the soup. Because she is old and tired from her labors and because of the relentless passage of time, she moves slowly, and it takes a while for her to amble over to the cauldron.

As the old woman shuffles across the floor and makes her way to the back of the ancient cave, a black dog watches her every move. The dog was there all along. Seemingly asleep, it awakens as soon as the old weaver turns her attention from one task to the other. As she begins stirring the soup in order to sustain the seeds, the black dog moves to where the weaving lies on the floor of the cave. The dog picks up a loose thread with its teeth and begins pulling on it. As the black dog pulls on the loose thread, the beautiful garment begins to unravel. Since each thread has been woven to another, pulling upon one begins to undo them all. As the great stew is being stirred up, the elegant garment comes apart and becomes a chaotic mess on the floor.

When the old woman returns to take up her handiwork again, she finds nothing but chaos where there had been a garment of great elegance and beauty. The cloak she has woven with great care has been pulled apart, the fringe all undone; the effort of creation has been turned to naught. The old woman sits and looks silently upon the remnants of her once-beautiful design. She ignores the presence of the black dog as she stares intently at the tangle of undone threads and distorted patterns.

After a while, she bends down, picks up a loose thread, and begins to weave the whole thing again. As she pulls thread after thread from the chaotic mess, she begins again to imagine the most beautiful garment in the whole world. As she weaves, new visions and elegant designs appear before her and her old hands begin to knowingly give them vibrant shape. Soon she has forgotten the cloak she was weaving before as she concentrates on capturing the new design and weaving it into the most beautiful garment ever seen in the world.

This second version of The Old Woman in the Cave was shared by Sharon Blackie (2018) in her book The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday.

There is an island to the far north-west of these lands, close to the end of the world; you’ll maybe have seen it in your dreams. Long white beaches, rocky coves, stormy seas. If you stand on the cliff-tops on its westernmost shores, they say you might sometimes catch a glimpse of Tír na mBan, the Isle of Women, way out on the horizon. When the sky is blue, and the air is still – which happens rarely enough in those parts. Here, the wind blows hard and long through the dark days of winter, and summer is precious and fleeting. Somewhere along the stormiest section of the westernmost coast is a high, inaccessible cave where they say the Old Woman of the World lives still – but no one I’ve met has ever found that cave, though many have searched, and many have drowned in the process.

No one knows how long she’s been in that cave, the Old Woman of the World; she’s not even sure herself. She only knows that she doesn’t remember having been anywhere else. Are you wondering what she does there? She weaves. You might catch her at it, if you should be lucky enough to happen across that cave – right at the back there, creating an enormous tapestry which she plans will be the most beautiful weaving in the world. Oh, the complexity of it! – and the rainbow colours of the threads, some thick and some thin, some soft, and some shiny. Right now, she’s getting ready to make a fringe for the weaving, and she wants the fringe to be as intricate and unique as the body of the tapestry. So, she’s making the fringe from sea urchin spines. Because it seems right somehow to the Old Woman of the World that such a beautiful piece of craftsmanship should be finished off by sharp and thorny spines which can sting you if you don’t take care. After all – she’s weaving the world, and this is the way the world is. She has to flatten the spines to work with them, and so she bites them; and because she has flattened so many of them during the long history of the world, her teeth are little more than stubs.

Over on the other side of the cave is a big fire. They say that the fire has been burning in the cave forever; certainly, the Old Woman can’t remember a time when she hasn’t tended it. Over that fire hangs an enormous black cauldron, and in that cauldron is a soup which contains all of the seeds and all of the herbs and all of the essence of all of the growing and living things in the world. As well as weaving, it is the Old Woman’s job to tend to that soup. But sometimes she gets so caught up in her weaving that she forgets about the soup, and it splutters and splashes – and then she jumps up and crosses to the other side of the cave to stir the pot.

But there’s another inhabitant of that cave, and he is biding his time, waiting for the Old Woman to leave her weaving for a moment. He’s been watching her, you see – watching all the beautiful shiny threads going back and forth – watching and waiting. He’s a big black crow, and his name is Trickster. I wouldn’t say that he was a companion to the Old Woman, but wherever she goes he seems to be there too, as if they’re bound together somehow, like the weaving and the soup. So, when the Old Woman leaves her loom to tend to the soup, Trickster Crow flies down from his rocky perch at the back of the cave and stands in front of the tapestry.

And then he begins to peck at it. Thread by thread, he begins to unravel it. Faster and faster, picking and pecking, until by the time the Old Woman turns away from the soup and makes her way back to the loom, all that is left is a tangled mess of threads on the floor.

What does the Old Woman do now? Does she weep and wail, sit down by the tangled chaos of her work and grieve because she will never create anything so beautiful again?

She doesn’t. Because as she stands there, eyes moist, staring at the mess in front of her, a beautiful rich green thread catches her eye. Who knows why it’s that particular thread? But she happens to glance at it, and before she can even begin to think about it, her hands are reaching out and she’s picking up that thread and she’s weaving it back into the fragments of the warp which remain on her loom – and before she really understands what’s happening, a new pattern is already beginning to emerge, and a new tapestry is taking form. And Trickster Crow cackles and caws and flies back to his perch.

The Old Woman isn’t thinking about the beautiful work that was lost, or wasting her time getting angry at Trickster Crow, because the Old Woman is a weaver, and weaving is what she does. Weaving is what she is for. So, on she goes, warp and weft, thread after beautiful thread, weaving a new pattern until the next time that the soup needs stirring and Trickster Crow flies down again from his perch. Because Trickster Crow understands this: that if the weaving is ever finished in all its beautiful perfection, the world will come to an end. And so, Trickster keeps on disrupting, and the Old Woman keeps on weaving through all the ages of the world, so that new patterns are always in the process of becoming, and the end of the world is held at bay for a few ages more.

Appendix B

The Legend of Shennong

They say that long, long ago there lived a great scholar, wiser and older than the cragged mountains he dwelled upon. Many feared him and stayed away…some went to him for advice… and when the people needed advice, they would elect a group of representatives to make the journey up into the mountain and seek out his advice, for whatever else he was, he was their emperor, Shen Nong… One young monk was said to have spent an entire season with Shen Nong on his mountain…. During the colder months [they] would boil herbal drinks.

It was maybe during one such night, possibly when the moon was full and the sky clear, that they sat in the forest listening to the mountain and the sound of the water boiling on a nearby fire. A breeze stirred…Was it chance? Did destiny reach out and pluck the leaf from the tree and, in the form of wind, let it fall into the boiling water below? Who can say? But Shen Nong was never one to question the gifts of nature… and after a few bowls, the Sage exclaimed the legendary words that are carved in the rock and brushed to paper, inspiring us even today. “This is the emperor of all medicinal herbs.” (Fisher, 2014, pp. 22-23).