Our tenets are these:
- There should be a sensitivity, a belief in the Spiritual Reality behind what we refer to as Nature.
- There should be a sincere love of Earth herself, and a desire to communicate with Her other children.
- There should be a belief in the individual life of this planet and a certainty that it permeates the whole world.
So, what do these mean to me?
Let me pause a second and define Nature.
We have the macrocosm, the great uncharted unknown of space –
star systems. Planets, galaxies, and all sorts of things out there in the
greater universe. (I also see us having many universes existing simultaneously
with this one we are focused on, truly making the world we live in a
Multi-verse. But, I digress.) This is all part of Nature – this is all part of
the Goddess – the great one we, as human beings cannot hope to understand.
We also have the microcosm. We have subatomic particles,
waves, and wave-icles. We have string theory, and Higgs-Boson. We see so much
happening down at these levels that touch on the profoundly spiritual. Things
like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle – the idea that the observer impacts
the results of the observation; and the idea of Quantum Entanglement where
things that act on one object, affect an associated object. (And if these
things are not the beginning of science seeing Magic, I don’t know what is.) But
these are also all part of Nature.
And then we have the great visible universe. We have Nature
as we interact with it every day. The trees, and the forest, the ocean and the
mountains. The air, and water, fire and earth. All of these are also nature.
And within Nature, is the Goddess, the Great Lady. You can
feel her touch when walking in the woods. You can see her act in the movement
of a tree branch. You can feel her move with the waves of the ocean or the
gusts of the wind. She is in all things and touches on all of us.
But, let me move on to the second tenet.
A sincere Love of Earth Herself. We see her in Nature, and
we should love her, as a mother, and as the Goddess that she is.
I remember reading long ago an interesting idea. If we look
at the history of man on this planet, for thousands of years we have been at
the mercy of Nature. We have depended on her for livelihood, and we have been
in fear of death at her hands, all at the same time. We have lived in this
manner for thousands of years. Evolutionary Psychologists would say this is the
state of Savannah Man. (Our last great evolutionary advancement.) But, we’ve
won. In the past hundred years, Man has won the battle with nature. It’s over,
we won. Now, we have to understand this, and we have to see the earth and we
have to stop fighting her. We have to take our role as steward and consort and
we have to nurture and protect nature. This is what I see as being a sincere
love of the Earth, Herself.
And a desire to communicate with her other kindred…
Well, what other kindred are we referring to? On the one
hand this is the plant and animal kingdoms. We have much to learn from our Tree
mysteries, and from the great animal totems. This also touches on the work with
the over-souls and the Nature spirits. We can see this also as the Faerie
Kingdoms. We must work with these, her other kindred, and not against them.
Finally, the Tenets wrap up with a re-iteration, a grounding
of our belief in the Gestalt. The individual life of Mother Earth, Gaia, Danu.
This great mother that we all depend on.
But more than a belief, it is certainty that she is in all things, and
thru all the world. From the most distant star to the smallest particle, from
the ninth wave to the pinnacle of the Mount, she is there. And she is here, in
our hearts.
