Animate Earth Collective

Last call to join our upcoming Cultivating The Diviner apprenticeship with Colin Campbell starting tomorrow.

This is a apprenticeship for those who are called to work closely with the ‘primary text’ of the natural world in the role of seer or diviner.

Bookings via https://animate-earth.org/cultivating-the-diviner/

"I am sitting in a circle, holding space for Colin Campbell, a Sangoma ‘medicine man’ from Botswana. He has asked everyone to turn over a card, an animal card, from a range of exotic animals found in his country of birth, the pangolin, the lion, the vulture. These are divination cards and form part of a tradition for which he is an elder and lineage holder. Many of these animals can also be found in the jennet-skin bag he carries with him, which contains the hard-won bones of his trade. These are ‘ditaola’, and he is what we might here in western slang call a ‘bone reader’ or diviner. He uses a method of speaking with the ancestors, by throwing animal bones onto a mat and then translating their messages through one of hundreds of poems that these configurations invoke."

Read more on our substack The Common Wild Tongue

https://thecommonwildtongue.substack.com/p/cultivating-the-diviner?r=5de06f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

🙌Win for UK nature🙌

The beloved River Wye has now formally been granted its own rights, in a UK first.

This applies to the entire catchment of the river, formally recognising it as a living ecosystem with intrinsic rights in a charter. The rights include:

💚The right to flow
💚The right to biodiversity
💚The right to be free from pollution
💚The right to regenerate
💚The right to be represented

It's a meaningful step towards protecting one of the UK's most well-known rivers, which has been suffering from pollution due to industrial farming run-off and sewage spills.

More here: https://brnw.ch/21x2VFj

THE WAYFARER

The spirits said to me, “Wayfarer what keeps your heart beating?”
I walked the way and said,
“I’m turning the earth with my footsteps
I’m turning the earth with my beat
For without a beat there’s no turning
No primal rhythm to meet.
No clock.
No wayfaring
through the tide of green each spring.
No spindle to carry threads.
No snake or snail.
No screaming to the bone
in a beautiful patch of countryside.”
I walked the way and said,
“No heartbeat can exist alone,
It needs that full cheeked, delicious mouthful of
hostile conditions with spirit -
It needs the wayfaring water bear,
who between each beat’s
suspended animation
knows there’s magic
in voluntarily dying -
when the whole world ends
like a red, silk curtain
rolling softly
through
a little
gate.”
The spirits said to me, “Wayfarer what keeps your heart beating?”
I walked the way and said,
“Without a beat there’s no stream.
No dream.
No longing to be loved.
No yellow rattle.
No sorcerer delicately stretching
hell.
It’s the daisy that keeps my heart beating.
The day’s eye.
Eye, Eye, I
It is I who wants the key dug up,
the gate unlocked
and the whole world appearing
again.
I am the wayfaring water bear,
Who turns the earth with each footstep
Who turns the earth with each beat
For without a beat there’s no turning
No primal rhythm to meet.”

~ Mia, Cultivating The Diviner participant

Final applications for our next Cultivating The Diviner apprenticeship are open, starting on 2 June. This is a apprenticeship for those who are called to work closely with the ‘primary text’ of the natural world in the role of seer or diviner.

https://animate-earth.org/cultivating-the-diviner/

Divination begins with attention. This is a apprenticeship for those who are called to work closely with the ‘primary text’ of the natural world in the role of seer or diviner. Last call to join us from 2 June - 15 December in Cultivating The Diviner: An Apprenticeship

https://animate-earth.org/cultivating-the-diviner/

Cultivating the Diviner within. Colin works with the wisdom traditions of South Africa, specifically those that are based on our relationships with the ancestors and spirits of nature. He looks at where these ancient indigenous practices collide and coalesce with the knowledge and belief systems of the west.

Cultivating the Diviner is an apprenticeship for those who are called to work closely with the ‘primary text’ of the natural world in the role of seer or diviner.

Who Is the Diviner - with Colin Campbell Who is the Diviner - This introductory talk with Colin Campbell exp...

Patterning I-We

I go for a wander, and wade in your fen,
Smell: rich, reek time.
Who are I-we now? Who were I-we then?
I siT aTop a ciTy’s seaT and waTch.
Westerlies move with deep time grace over land marked by our hand and changing at pace.
I love this place and hold it dear,
But I struggle when asking, ‘Who is I-We here?’
In Sandwood Bay a ray’S bone StickS out from the Sand,
And rays of light hold clouds above the land;
And the sea and river enacts a pattern of relationality that leaves me awe-struck.
I sit aTop a TenemenT, hewn from sand. And listen.
To young Gulls-Mew and Swifts-Screech
And reach anew, as hands clasp and wet eyes glisten.
A memory that moves me.
…
I-We fall as rain, and move down the river;
‘Familial ties flowing to the sea’.
And as Some rivers do, ourS braidS, and we settle in the mud,
And a question then settles in me.
…
How would it Feel, iF, I were to change?
Change as the Westerlies and fen fields do.
Embrace the patterning I-We that moves through time,
And step-in to rejoicing anew?

~ Niall Dolan, Cultivating The Diviner participant

Final applications for the start of our next Cultivating The Diviner apprenticeship are open. This is a apprenticeship for those who are called to work closely with the ‘primary text’ of the natural world in the role of seer or diviner.

https://animate-earth.org/cultivating-the-diviner/