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Nature Magic for Everyone

March 22, 2023 by Fowler

That’s the name of the book I’ve been writing since last summer!

Here’s the subtitle: Ways to Become Wiser, Happier and More Useful to the Sacred Land.

In these times when it’s hard to know how to even face what’s happening on our planet—much less have any faith that we can really help—this book offers a unique and optimistic perspective.

It’s partly a compendium of the basics of Earth-Centered Spirituality, based on my decades of study of both Native American and Celtic/Western practices; partly a primer on Deep Ecology, the contemporary discipline that challenges us humans to change ourselves rather than “fix” outer things, by, first, recognizing the inherent value of all living beings and ecosystems; partly a Memoir of my profound, illuminating, sometimes delightfully shocking encounters with the more-than-human world and its inhabitants; and partly a no-punches-pulled Critique of the modern world’s catastrophically destructive, human-centered, patriarchal beliefs, values and actions. [Read more…] about Nature Magic for Everyone

Filed Under: Deep Ecology and Earth-Centered Philosophy, Home Featured Left

Magic Beckoning

August 2, 2022 by Fowler

Hello, friends of Gaia! Climate scientist James Lovelock, the central developer of the Gaia hypothesis back in the 1970s, died last week at 103 years old. An obituary in The Guardian states: “He warned, in clearer terms than any of his peers, of the dangers humanity posed to the extraordinary web of relations that make Earth uniquely alive in our universe.” I recently returned from a 2-½ month pilgrimage to Scotland and Ireland, where my appreciation of this magnificent, mysterious “web of relations” deepened considerably.

Now, back at home, I’m beginning to write a book! It will incorporate earlier writings in this blog, along with revelations and instructions I received on my recent journey. The book will recount my own ideas and experiences with what I call Nature Magic.

Here is a draft of the Preface:

In April 2018 I took part in a powerful 5-day retreat in which we explored the deepest parts of ourselves and worked to reclaim our most profound greatness and uniqueness. During our time together, I contacted and released an enormous amount of energy and power that had been suppressed inside me all my life. I returned home with this personal mantra: “I can have whatever I want.” I had never completely believed that before, and, with awe, I felt my deep Self empowered and enlarged. Here is what happened a few days later:

I drive to a place outside Santa Fe to go birdwatching. It’s along the Santa Fe River, downstream from the sewage treatment plant. The river—emblematic of many rivers in the drought-plagued American Southwest—flows for maybe half a mile through the town’s tourist areas, and then, except temporarily during thunderstorms, becomes a dry, sandy ditch for most of its length. Southwest of town, it is temporarily rejuvenated for a few miles by the treated sewage effluent released from the plant, before it again goes dry, all the way down to its junction with the Rio Grande.

As I’m greeting the arriving spring warblers and tanagers, I feel again my love for the birds, and my commitment to these winged ones who have enchanted me all my life. I affirm once more that I don’t work for myself—I work for the birds. I want what they want. And, I ask myself, what do they want? It’s very simple. They want water, trees, cover, food, nesting sites. They want their patch of ground where they can keep living and prospering as they have for millions of years. The birds, like other wild creatures, don’t have it in their nature to “want” anything beyond the necessary conditions for life and its continuance.

And, I suddenly see, that’s exactly what I can’t give them, and neither can anyone else!

Here they are, my precious bird friends, living along a couple of miles of treated sewage water, with the river dry and lifeless above and below this small, faintly reeking green place. While the birds steadily decrease in number, the county still grants building permits for 20 new homes here and 100 new apartments there, when everyone knows that there’s not even enough water for the present population. And there’s seemingly no end to this destructive short-sightedness, here, or anywhere else in the Southwest, or, really, anywhere else in the world.

So—no! I can’t have what I want! None of us who love green Nature can ever have what we want: a fertile, diverse world whose robust living web generously supports all life, human and non-human, where all beings are respected and live freely in their home place, and know that their descendants can too.

I’m stunned. I feel like I’ve run full tilt into a stone wall. I cry and cry. And, finally, a calm inner voice says, “Now it’s clear. The only thing I can do is learn to work the strongest Nature-based magic I possibly can until the end of my days. Magic that can plant good seeds for a beneficent, rooted, green future that I’ll never see. That is how I can truly help.”

This book is one of those seeds.

Filed Under: Ancestral Spirituality, Home Featured Left

Acting Like We Have Relatives

December 16, 2021 by Fowler

I’ve been told that the Dineh people of the desert southwest describe someone who has gotten grievously off-track in his life and behavior by saying: “He’s acting like he doesn’t have any relatives.”

Among ancestral peoples, someone who acts like he or she doesn’t have relatives—someone who behaves as if they are not linked to their life-honoring ancestral ways, and who disrespects and rejects the human and non-human members of their community—is in major trouble. Those who rudely fail to acknowledge their connections or carry out their obligations to Gaia’s web of life, of which they are inevitably a part, are considered seriously ill, both mentally and spiritually. [Read more…] about Acting Like We Have Relatives

Filed Under: Ancestral Spirituality, Home Featured Left

Becoming “Woke” on Behalf of Gaia

November 11, 2021 by Fowler

These days we’re being confronted on all sides with a wide variety of human grievances. We’re even being urged to re-examine the very words we use, to become more “woke” to systemic discrimination and oppression.

As a relatively privileged white woman, I can’t imagine the trauma of centuries of oppression and mistreatment of Native and Black people, and their justified outrage about that. But one way I can get close to understanding it is when I contemplate the violence and aggression long perpetrated by men on women and girls. I can certainly resonate at times with the temptation to dismiss all men as arrogant, destructive, and hopelessly ignorant, if not downright complacent, about the vast male-supremacist ocean in which we all swim. (This despite the fact that in my own life, I enjoy close and respectful friendships with men who honor the Feminine in the world and themselves.) [Read more…] about Becoming “Woke” on Behalf of Gaia

Filed Under: Deep Ecology and Earth-Centered Philosophy, Home Featured Left

The Flowing Green Love of Autumn

September 27, 2021 by Fowler

One day last year, walking along a nearby mountain stream, I entered a place that felt sacred and mysterious. Shaded by a grove of willows, the creek’s waters gently flowed and purled around some stepping stones, evoking a sense of quiet, of waiting. I felt the presence of a water spirit and started singing to her. Very soon she began to sing back. She ended up giving me a beautiful song, which I was fortunately able to echo and record, line by line, as she sang it. When it was over, with great gratitude I inquired, “is this a song from the Mother of the Waters?” And I heard very clearly: “No, it is a song from a Mother of the Waters.” [Read more…] about The Flowing Green Love of Autumn

Filed Under: Ancestral Spirituality, Home Featured Left

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Mary Janet Fowler
Mary Janet Fowler

I am a sacramental ceremonialist on behalf of Gaia

I grew up roaming the mountains and mesas of northern New Mexico. Out there I came to know that the earth and its creatures and places are not only alive, intelligent and beautiful, but are an essential part of who I am. I also learned firsthand about the spiritual beings of the Sacred Land, and felt their promptings and protective presence for years before I even knew a language to describe it.

I was intrigued and excited by the Gaia Hypothesis—which proposes that the entire planet is a dynamic, self-regulating being—when it was first explicated 50 years ago. I found this idea both radical and obvious. I’ve always known that there is a living, interconnected presence in Nature, a vibrant physical and spiritual wholeness, grounded in both change and continuity, ever seeking harmony and balance.

After a lifetime of earth-centered explorations, I’ve come to focus my entire spiritual life around Gaia Herself—the vast, vital, planetary being who generated me and the lands, plants and creatures I love. My calling is to do whatever I can to strengthen Gaia’s regenerative, transformative powers, on behalf of all future generations of human and non-human beings.

Blog Topics

  • Ancestral Spirituality
  • Deep Ecology and Earth-Centered Philosophy
  • Earth-Centered Practices and Ceremonies
  • Gaia and the Divine Feminine
  • The Sacred Land’s Wisdom

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