Pegi EYERS Ahmadreza Ghafari / Unsplash We are all part of the old stories. And whether we know the stories or not, the old stories know about us. [1] Leslie Marmon Silko I have always been attracted to the primordial building blocks of human existence, and my guiding light - or happy place - is my affinity for ancestral ways. The elements of earth, fire, water and air, stone, bone, shells, clay, carved branches, baskets, red ochre, the hand on the cave wall, feathers in my hair, and the land's dreaming, all continue to nourish my soul. Ignited by sojourns in nature and my deep time memories, I spontaneously seek to revive the primordial, and to express the wilds of my own imagination by weaving text, mixed media and storytelling - and even digital tools - into my writing, art, and craft. My resonance with the paleolithic and neolithic were unusual in my early years, but I grew up surrounded by lakes and rivers, luxuriant forests, the great stone outcroppings of the Canadian Shield, and other wild places. Over the decades, I began to find models in archaeology and mythology (of course), but also in the worlds of literature and fine art. With so many beautiful inspirations – each a joyful discovery - I found that I was not the only one occupied with the primal and the “time before time,” as the monolith of civilization kept advancing. Today, we find the symbols of our primordial past everywhere, as this iconography continues to flourish like a perennial garden. Forms, symbols and textures from pre-colonial cultures worldwide show up in our fashion, furniture, food, décor, art, music, games and tools. In many ways this re-emergence is a much-needed return to animism and nature spirituality. But the popularity of tribal content is not merely a reflection of our communal yearning for a simpler time. It is also an expression of our timeless heritage as people of the land, and the primordial legacy stored in our DNA. Over the ages, we have always been both human and animal, and have a well-defined place of belonging in Earth Community.
As an animist, I know that my Deep Time Ancestors embraced the wheel of the year, the phases of the moon, and the cyclical forces of birth, life, death, and rebirth. In terms of my own cultural and spiritual path, I make every effort to align with sustainable practices, and to reject the “status quo” of capitalism and consumerism. Living on a rural property surrounded by hedgerows and forests, I observe the activity in nature around me, celebrate the ever-changing phenomena of climate and the cosmos, and keep my love for the land front and center. Despite the demands and challenges of modern life, I applaud all those who are able to fully rewild themselves, and join ecovillages or intentional communities. Today, the rise of the ancestral arts frames the irony of a cultural renaissance based on hope, just when western civilization seems to be collapsing under its own weight. Apocalyptic omens are everywhere, and warnings of monumental change and the breakdown of ecosystems have been part of the public discourse for decades. A civilization that destroys the natural world to live, will destroy itself. The annihilation of wild places alters the balance, and chthonic powers are unleashed through climate disasters, pandemics and other forms of collapse. Our attraction to the primordial points to the timeless needs of human beings, but it could also be an unconscious pull toward the future, when our post-civilizational reality may include such things as bone hooks, stone blades, woven clothing, black earth pigments, face paint, feather altars, vine ties, carved paddles, copper elements, and animal clans.  Voices of Earth ~ Archaic Whispers hands in earth, green growing cavern sweet with flowers and leaves (diving deep) earth that is her body ten thousand things rise and fall Ancestors! Ancestors! the deepest sound is silence next to hard rock she can remember listening ~ not with the ear with the spirit Ancestors! Ancestors! the trail is cold cave walls echo ……….. summoning blissful hallowing voices of earth, archaic whispers guided, protected and inspired rhythmic drums and sacred songs homelands etched on the heart Ancestors! Ancestors! diving deep earth that is her body ] [ (wings to fly) rising up to meet the light  To be fully informed in the sphere of the ancestral arts, is to understand the controversies in the Americas (aka Turtle Island), that point to the original apocalypse First Nations endured, with the arrival of the European powers. The legacy of colonial violence is still being reckoned with today in cross-cultural dialogue, bridge-building, and discourse in social justice. Today’s “Settlers”[2], the descendants of Euro-emigration, immigration and diaspora, continue to cause harm with habitual patterns such as racism and oppression, but also with less obvious actions such as cultural appropriation. Untethered from one’s own heritage, and blessed with access and privilege, many folks have taken the spiritual and cultural property of living First Nations – such as the Lakota or Anishnaabe – to create their own faux identity. Such a shocking phenomena has led academics, activists and practitioners to teach and write about better choices, and more positive action toward reconciliation. My own book Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community arose from my fascination with colleagues who were pretending to be Cree and Haudenosaunee, when they were clearly of European descent! In terms of a silver lining, First Nations Elders, vision keepers and community leaders have been urging all peoples - from any ethnoculture - to recover, reclaim and revive their own Indigenous Knowledge.[3] We are being directed - like a mandate or manifesto - to discover our own roots, and to make that expression part of our contemporary lives. This of course, is the antidote to the harm caused by cultural appropriation. And yet, a serious scholar would have difficulty finding an ancestral European culture completely free of coloniality. Religious persecution, economic oppression and other brutalities have been happening for hundreds, if not thousands of years. We can clearly see that horrific events such as the witch burnings, Highland Clearances, Potato Famine and Magdalene Laundries resulted from a long history of oppression, and were also trial runs for what happened in the Americas. With centuries of interference, the pathways back to an authentic European indigeneity are hard to find, if not non-existent. So what would our primal return look like, for those of us who have been “civilized” for millennia? If First Nations - with worldviews immersed in nature and the sacred - are correct in their assessment, civilization is an aberration, and a wrong turn in our overall human journey. The First Nations position is clear, and yet why is this so difficult for the “civilized” to see? Detached from the natural world, modernists are firmly planted in a self-created reality of religion, culture, philosophy, science and Empire-building. Civilized life is now “the norm,” along with the techno-optimists and “humans by design” on the rise in our new era of the Anthropocene. And yet, if we can truly reach back to pre-colonial times, there is no question that indigeneity can be located, at some point in our ancestral line. In my own case, I had my mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), or motherline, traced through Oxford Ancestors[4] to a tribal group that existed 30,000 years ago in the Lascaux Valley of France. From generation to generation they thrived, chose the migration journey, and eventually crossed to what is now the Scottish Highlands. Through the mists of cyclic time and geography, I am the recipient of a wealth of blessings from my ancestors. Their resilience has empowered me to self-identify with my own haplogroup and claim my tribe. It may take much dedication and imagination, but at least there is no argument that I am not Indigenous to Old Europe! I am finally at home, with my primordial belonging, my clan mothers, and my kinship to Earth Community.
It is fascinating to think that we can reach back to the Upper Paleolithic to decolonize and re-indigenize ourselves, and what we can learn from that process going forward. Delving into deep time also leads us to the question – what is the nature of primordial mind? According to China Galland, “Our basic mind is like water, its nature remains clear and unpolluted, and that no matter what distressing emotions arise, our primordial nature – our ‘basic’ mind – remains unaffected, beginninglessly good. Goodness without beginning, goodness without end.”[5] Also, Haridas Chaudhuri writes, “When a person discovers his ultimate ground of existence, his authentic individuality emerges. He begins to feel a spiritual kinship with the entire universe. He experiences a sense of responsibility for the entire living creation. His heart beats in unison with the all of existence. His soul is aflame with the spirit of dedication to cosmic welfare, and he becomes cosmocentric.”[6] I find these assessments very reassuring, in the face of recent critiques that consider past-cultural revivals to be based on fantasy and cosplay.[7] Any rationalist can pull together a case study that discounts our deep time memory and place within the ecosystem. But there are clearly positive attributes of the human psyche that have kept us alive through the millennia. Basic human goodness - still visible everywhere today – has been a constant, especially in societies with a moral code that place kindness and hospitality first. These are the best qualities of “indigenous mind”[8] that we hold from ancient times, and that we can still uncover in ourselves and others today. The challenge of the polycrisis means reconnecting with what is most important, and reviving our ancestral wisdom to adapt and thrive. The power of Earth Community is rising once again. The gifts of the Ancestors are manifesting in every sphere – in the revival of the gift economy and egalitarian social organization, the emphasis on the “we” instead of the “me,” and the supremacy of unconditional love. We are re-discovering our skill with animist lifeways, interspecies communication, reciprocity with the more-than-human, plant-spirit medicine, important rites of passage, honoring the sacred in all life – and finally, making decisions that honor the generations yet to come. The Old Ones - the weavers embedded in the land - are summoning us back to our most ancient selves, to our Ancestors and wild nature. The natural world remains the foundation of all life, and the wisdom of our indigeneity has not wavered. Even in modern times our true power is found in our ancient communal past, when we remember the sacred essence we held, so long ago.  ENDNOTES [1] Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit, Simon & Schuster, 1997 [2] Referring to the various diasporans and descendants of the original colonizers as “Settler” has gained wide usage in the Americas, and is an appropriate reminder of our status as seen through the lens of Empire-building. “The term Settler is used to denaturalize our status on this land, to force colonialism into the forefront of our consciousness, to cause discomfort and force a reckoning with our inherited colonial status, to create the understanding and desire to embrace, demand and effect change.” Corey Snelgrove and Klara Woldenga, Why the Term ‘Settler’ Needs to Stick, The Martlet, University of Victoria, March 28, 2013. (www.martlet.ca) [3] Pegi Eyers, First Nations on Ancestral Connection, Stone Circle Press, 2025 (www.stonecirclepress.com/blog-9658-ancient-spirit-rising/first-nations-on-ancestral-connection) [4] There is nothing more thrilling than pinpointing your DNA signature and genetic homeland! Oxford Ancestors (now defunct) offered mitochondrial DNA testing (mtDNA) for personal research into ancient ancestry. Oxford Ancestors was founded by Bryan Sykes, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, and author of The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science that Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry, W. W. Norton & Company, 2010 [5] China Galland, The Bond Between Women, Riverhead Books, 1999 [6] Jürgen W. Kremer, The Primordial Mind: Outline of a Pedagogy for the Recovery of Indigenous Mind and the Facilitation of Integrated States of Consciousness, Founders Symposium, California Institute of Integral Studies, 2010 [7] Alan Jacobs, Fantasy and the Buffered Self, The New Atlantis, 2014 [8] Pegi Eyers, Entwining Heart & Mind, Stone Circle Press, 2025 (www.stonecirclepress.com/blog-9658-ancient-spirit-rising/entwining-heart-mind)  "Primordial Revival" originally appeared in Homecoming 5: Art, A Journal of New Animist Writing, Aurochs Underground Press, Summer Solstice 2025. The digital book/PDF is available. Aurochs is a small press set up in 2021 by the author Jack Wolf, based in Bath, UK. >Aurochs Press Store< 
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pegi eyers / deep times ~ A Journal of the Work That Reconnects Nature Art by Pegi Eyers The rise of the ecological self in recent years has been spectacular, and there is much to celebrate! Patriarchal Empire-building in the Americas has created a toxic system of ecocide and alienation, and yet ecofeminism, deep ecology, and nature-based movements continue to resist this hegemony in thought and action. The economic model of unlimited growth on a finite planet isn’t working, and in the face of potential climate disaster we have been busy creating resilient communities and finding our kindred spirits in the process. At this point with the stakes so high, we are fulfilling the directive to shift the paradigm, and replace it with more ethical and sustainable ways of being. Resistance to Empire has been a cumulative process over the centuries, and movements such as “abolitionism, pacifism, anarchism, anti-colonialism and environmentalism describe different manifestations of the same androcratic monster as the totality of the problem, yet they fail to address the fact that at its heart lies a dominator, female-dominated model of the human species”[1]. This is extremely important to recognize, as feminists and change agents everywhere confront and deconstruct the masculinist hegemony that is ingrained in our industrial growth society. The ruling elite that initiated Empire-building in the Americas were driven by patriarchal values such as manifest destiny, Christian conversion and capitalism. The antidote to monotheistic religions is animism – the worldview that permeates pre-colonial and contemporary matriarchal, matrifocal and Indigenous Clan Mother societies worldwide, including those in Old Europe. The work of Riane Eisler is key to deconstructing patriarchy, as her methodology compares the dominator model of patriarchy with the relationship model of matriarchy[2] – values observed by Eisler over a long timeline. To describe a “matriarchy” more precisely, it is not the simplistic reverse of a patriarchy, with women dominating or abusing men through some kind of “mother-rule”, nor is it the Jungian notion of an early and necessary “stage” in the evolutionary development toward a higher culture (i.e. patriarchy). A definitive text on the subject, Societies of Peace: Matriarchies Past, Present, and Future by Heide Goettner-Abendroth[3], is a collection of essays by feminists, scholars, activists and Indigenous women who identify the elements of historic and present-day matriarchies all over the world. Goettner-Abendroth argues that matriarchies are societies that place the highest value on the aspects of nurture, care and generosity usually associated with motherhood. It is hard to imagine, but in matriarchal societies men do hold power as brothers and uncles, yet in collaboration with mothers and grandmothers through an egalitarian process whereby all voices are heard, and there is no value placed on the ability to dominate. Based on matriarchal partnership models, creating an alternative, life-affirming society today is a logical response to the oppression we have endured from the military industrial complex, and the “civilizing force” revolving around the dominator “Big Man”. The contemporary explosion of women’s empowerment, advancements in women’s rights, and the rise of the Divine Feminine in our spiritual life are essential components of the Great Turning. However, feminism and the undoing of patriarch are not just “women’s issues”, and men such as activist Jackson Katz are taking up the fight by openly declaring that “one of the key characteristics of power and privilege is that dominant groups maintain and reproduce themselves, and are rarely challenged to think about their dominance. Men have the ability to lack introspection, to go unexamined, and to be rendered invisible in the discourse. In fact, men are largely erased in the conversation about a subject that is centrally about them”[4]. For both men and women, our imperative must be to challenge the centrality and “power over” of the patriarchal Empire, which has used reductionist science, race theory and other toxic ideologies to suppress egalitarian societies based on interconnectivity, such as women’s wisdom and Indigenous knowledge(s). The good news is that monumental cracks are appearing in the patriarchal façade, finally liberating the human spirit from the parochial tyrannies based on gender and racial divisions that have haunted us for centuries. Tolerance for diversity in peaceful co-existence is not a complicated approach, and is key to our mutual decolonization project. As we draw on ancient models of tribal and village life in our collective liberation, from eras that pre-date colonization both in Europe and here on Turtle Island, how much do we truly remember? Perhaps there is a hidden code that gets activated in a community, the further away from Empire that we stray, both metaphorically and in the immediacy of our lives. And this arc must surely change and grow as we cycle through our own passages and personal mythology. The revival of ancestral wisdom cannot be repressed (even in a world of “me-me-me” hyperindividualism) and, like the perennial green fuse, will continue to rise again. Finding guidelines for lasting change, or the “decolonization of our psyches”, can be a challenge. Still holding negative conditioning and dysfunctional behavior from a childhood in white cookie-cutter suburbia, being raised in the Americas presents us with a unique set of cultural habits that are hard to shake, even as we are “building the new” and embodying alternatives to the dominant society. Surrounded by narcissism and other forms of infantilization, and trained to embrace the “cult of the individual” over the needs of the collective, overcoming these patterns can be a life-long process. Relinquishing western thinking and learning to put the “we” ahead of “me” is at the heart of collaborative community, and wisdom from pre-colonial cultures worldwide – including those in Old Europe – hold elements of ancestral mind that may benefit us today. Copying these societies verbatim may fall under the rubric of cultural appropriation, yet being informed by the timeless values of earth-emergent knowledge is not. At one time we all lived in tribal groups that acknowledged the sacred in every activity, and emphasized the bonds of the community over the needs of the individual. As modernists, let’s not be too hard on ourselves (!) as we have been steeped in a brew of over-rational, over-analytical linear thinking; dualism and the mistaken belief that we are separate from nature; restlessness and a constant attraction to “the new”; an eagerness to dominate and control, and a bias toward “the other” as a result of the patriarchy that surrounds us. These may be the aspects of western mind that we want to revise or discard! And even though we have ancient models to follow, with the shift to future/primitive ways of thinking we are entering new ground, and it is simplistic to suggest that we can renounce ourselves completely as modern people. To reject the patriarchy, we are moving both forward and back, and when we consider the beauty and timelessness of pre-colonial worldviews, we may find new modalities to encourage or embrace. Let’s look at a brief compilation of matriarchal wisdom, and the overarching values that can be found in Indigenous philosophies and pre-colonial heritage(s) worldwide: The Earth Our Mother The world is a place of sacred mystery, and our relationship with the world is rooted in a profound respect for the land and all life. Humans are not above creation but part of it, and we flourish within the boundaries of the Sacred Circle. Our culture arises or is informed by the land and our bond to a particular landscape, and in this animist universe we are connected to the plants, creatures, elements and earth spirits that dwell there. The love of the land and our community is the only true wealth we have – we are part of the Earth and the Earth is part of us. The Natural World as Blessing, and Portal to the Sacred Circle Leaving the “buzz” of civilization behind and immersing ourselves in nature easily and effortlessly brings us into the intuitive knowing of Ancestral Mind. Opening to the natural world and stilling our inner dialogue enables the mysterious unfolding of our hearts. Simply from being in nature we see the world through the lens of love, and come to know that the Great Heart is the connective force in all creation. Filtered through this harmonious and beautiful space, our thoughts become allied with Earth Community. Clarity replaces confusion, and our thinking becomes a joyful series of inspirations in service to furthering the goals of Gaia, which are to flourish and thrive. Instead of identifying with the separatist and mechanistic worldview of industrial growth society, we find that we are at home again in the Sacred Circle of the heart. And in fact, we have never left. Patterns of Ancestral Mind By reclaiming our place within (not above) Earth Community we organically find ourselves practicing a cyclical thinking that is based on spirit connectivity, natural processes, creativity and peace, rather than singularity, ownership or dominance. When we are physically grounded and embodied our restless mind fades, and we find ourselves vibrant and present in a field of mindfulness and awareness. We begin to perceive time as a spiral, and are more connected and empathic with others. Our learning is purely experiential, as we are empowered to acquire knowledge at our own pace in our own way, and our overall self-identity is based on our own experience and self-reflection. Being a part of an earth-emergent community allows us to hold an “everyday” sense of mystery, wonder and awe, and all of our intelligences are combined to fulfill our holistic potential as a “true human being”. With an ecocentric mind as the foundation, the entire collective is able to integrate self-discovery, wisdom and responsibility. Reciprocity with the Land and Each Other Our existence is sustained by expressions of gratitude, as we unconditionally give thanks for all life and the elements that make life possible. We are in a symbiotic relationship with the Earth, as everything we need to live a Good Life comes from the land, and our activities are intertwined with the cycles of nature. When we embody these principles and have respect for all beings through ceremony and prayer, the cosmic balance is upheld and restored, and the survival of the community ongoing. The reciprocity of maintaining good relationships with each other and all beings is a shared collective value, and our mentors teach us and model to us the virtues of wisdom, bravery, generosity and selflessness that guide us in these interactions. It is our responsibility to hold the role of our teachers in the highest regard, and to ensure that the generations following also become Wise Elders, and continue to pass on our collective values, history and wisdom.  It may be hard work to remember and practice ancient ways of knowing, or to reclaim earth-rooted identity after being told that life in urban America is the only way to go, or that we cannot exist without the benefits and amenities of the dominant society. But we owe it to ourselves and our kinship group to join the worldwide circle of ecological community, and move through great change and turmoil to a time of “unity in diversity” as we align with a holistic paradigm once again. The love, respect and care we hold, means that we are incapable of using or abusing nature past the carrying capacity of the land, and in the end, these are the mindful qualities that will translate into sustainable societies and well-being for all. Regaining our humanity as whole human beings living in an animistic universe may be challenging, but the outcome is clear that by rejecting the patriarchy in principle, thought and deed, we can protect and sustain the sacred ground of Earth Community for the generations yet to come. The essay "Matriarchal Values: Our Pre-Colonial Heritage" by Pegi Eyers was published in the March 2022 issue of Deep Times Journal. This issue includes work from a wonderful cohort of cultural creatives, thinkers and ecological visionaries~! access online >here<  references[1] Eisler, Riane. (1988) The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, HarperCollins. [2] Ibid [3] Goettner-Abendroth, Heide, Ed.(2009). Societies of Peace: Matriarchies Past, Present, and Future, Inanna Publications. [4] Katz, Jackson. Violence Against Women – It’s A Men’s Issue. Violence & Silence: at TEDxFiDiWomen, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTvSfeCRxe8  PEGI EYERS The women’s movement has evolved because the crisis of the eternal world is calling for the return of the Goddess to restore the balance of nature. Old forms and traditions are falling away, and new ideas and ancient systems that were interrupted by Empire are rising. At a time when our collective Mother Earth is suffering from massive change and climate disaster, we are being summoned to rejuvenate the chthonic Old Ways that honor Earth Community. The feminine archetype is returning, as women everywhere continue to resist the patriarchy, fight for change, and reinstate the Goddess both within and without in acts of revolutionary love. In recent years, the Divine Feminine has evolved through a monumental array of modalities, practices and Goddess Studies. With a concise foundational myth, and core principles of equity, egalitarianism, ecological sustainability and nature reverence, Goddess Feminism challenges the intersectional oppressions that have harmed all beings – both human and other-than-human. New explorations in rituals, ceremony, storytelling and the arts, and new paths of liberation in social justice, anti-racism, environmental protection and earth remediation, are all empowering aspects of Ecofeminism and Goddess Spirituality. The principle of the Divine Feminine is both immanent and transcendent, and the many diverse Goddesses we are drawn to, or called by - all precious and beloved - evoke the same cosmic principles of universal love, creative fertility and natural abundance. The “Old Shes” have been there all along - waiting to hold us again, to welcome us home - and in return we are embracing them with our whole body, mind and soul! As I respond to the call of the Goddess in my own life, I have been compelled to seek a deeper level, to bypass the millennia of patriarchal occupation and go right to the source, to a time of our most ancient beginnings. As kindred spirits, many of us today are feeling the Great Mystery of our motherlines reverberating in our souls, and to trust that the Primordial Mothers - the weavers embedded in the land- are summoning us back to our most ancient selves, to our Ancestors and wild nature. Tied to the cycles of the land and the truth of our own bodies, the Primordial Mothers are the givers of birth and death, and our fundamental reality. Even in the modern era we are still “Women of the Earth” and our true power is found in our ancient communal past, when we remember, know and feel our symbiotic connection to the Primordial Mothers, and the sacred soil essence our biological bodies arose from, so many aeons ago. But who or what are the Primordial Mothers? In ancient times when the planet was new and life was just emerging from the sea, the Mothers were birthing primal life forms from the elements and waters. Holders of the oldest consciousness on the planet, these Creatrixes moved in fluid streams of energy and through the primal “muck” that evolved into earthy and material bodies. From the beginning, the lifegiving properties and fertility of their transmissions were held within the collective “prima materia” of the Divine Feminine, an eternal voice in the wisdom body that still reverberates today. Each one of us continues to hold this deep connection, and as we embody this truth in our lives, we return to a necessary symbiotic relationship with Gaia. This is the ancestral wisdom that can guide our choices and actions from a deep energetic and cellular level, in our current era of potential collapse and environmental destruction.  Knowing that the Primordial Mothers still surround us is comforting knowledge indeed! Forms found in nature are especially evocative of Goddess energy. Mountains, mounds or rocks shaped like a woman’s face, curves, or body, such as Silbury Hill in England, were further developed by Neolithic peoples into gigantic Goddess sculptures with temples and stone circles. Paintings deep in caverns such as Chauvet Caves at Vallon-Pont-d’Arc in France honored the sacred womb principle, and monumental earthworks in Crete and Malta were built into the landscape to evoke the sense of a female body. Even sacred sites in my own region such as Kinowagwapkong (The Teaching Rocks, or Peterborough Petroglyphs) were built or carved over underground streams, symbolizing the underworld womb and source of all life. Indigenous and earth-emergent societies everywhere honored the life-creating power of the Sacred Feminine, and revered women in their cultures as an extension of the miraculous divinity of creation. Women were held sacred, and their fertility and nurturing abilities were known to be exactly the same as the Primordial Mothers who created all life. To our Paleolithic Ancestors, it was obvious that women, with their mysterious cycles, performed the same functions as Gaia, who was the source of all nourishment, protection and procreative power. Contrary to the Abrahamic religions that dominated history (“Hisstory”) and subjugated women, when we look to nature it is self evident that the divine presence emanating from, and animating the natural world is feminine - abundant, fertile, yin, cyclic, ever renewing, forgiving, and above all, loving and nurturing (“Herstory”). All things are born and nurtured by a mother, and this love and nurture is the great cosmic principle of all life. It is so obvious, yet our civilization, based on 2000-plus years of patriarchal rule, has tried very hard to conceal this life-affirming and sacred truth. These efforts are now ringing hollow, and women everywhere are reasserting our primal creativity, and reshaping societies in the process. Just like childbirth and the other chthonic feminine powers, this undeniable process is both laborious and far-reaching! The tenets of Goddess Spirituality hold all life as sacred, bond us to the land, and give us a holistic view of Earth Community. We are connected with all life, from the surging rivers, to the smallest cells, to the plants, the animals, the birds, the reptiles, the insects, and to the great flowing atmospheres of infinite space. Seeking our timeless bonds to the Primordial Ones, we yearn for a way of life when we are immersed in natural processes every waking moment, and embedded in ancient knowing. That is why locating our mtDNA signature across time and space, and membership in one of the great Motherhood Clans is so incredibly empowering. With immense joy (and a mtDNA test) I found my belonging within the largest and most resilient Celtic group, the mtDNA-based Helena Clan, one of the world clans descended from “Mitochondrial Eve” as traced by Bryan Sykes in The Seven Daughters of Eve. My deep time ancestors originated in the Lascaux region of France 32,000 years ago, and even though I may never fully know the lifeways of my distant relatives, I can still resonate with their treasures, and the beauty of their legacy to the world. Being close to the textures of the earth, walking barefoot on the sand, feeling clay on my hands or body, viewing petroglyphs and working with red ochre or earth pigments, can instantly transport me back, to my foundational earth connection. Rooting ourselves deep in Earth of every texture and hue, we express Her Body as Our Body. Earth as foundation, Earth as matrix, Earth as crucible, Earth as lightning rod, Earth as watercourse, Earth as birthing platform, Earth as sacred adornment, Earth as sweet bed of fern and flower, Earth as woven bier, and Earth as joyful resting place - our bonds to the land will never fade. The centuries fall away when we come faceto- face with the “prima materica” that patiently waits all around us, in grotto, ocean-side cave and deep within the forest floor. What better way to shed the trappings of "modernity" for a time, and connect with what is primal and real, both in ourselves and the land?  It is time that we honor the Primordial Mothers, the clan leaders who founded the countless generations of humanity – the ones who possessed the skill, intelligence and resilience for our communities to survive and thrive. We are being summoned at this time to align with the components of ancestral knowledge systems, to reclaim our power and realize the sacredness of our bodies, minds, voices and spirits, and to recover the beliefs and practices our Ancestors were forced to give up long ago. At the foundation of our essential return, aspects of ancestral identity can be reclaimed from ancient matriarchies and Indigenous societies worldwide, traditions that were guarded through the ages, preserved and passed down through oral traditions, parables, poetic sagas, fairy tales, folklore and myth. Learning to put the “we” ahead of “me” is at the heart of the Divine Feminine, and the wisdom from primeval societies hold beliefs and values that can benefit us today, in our quest for (re)emergent Goddess myths and collaborative community. The resurgence of matriarchal ethics in our time gives us the courage, wisdom and joy that is needed to revitalize ourselves and the world, to recover what has been lost and grieve what cannot be recovered, and ultimately, to restore much-needed balance to the world.  RESOURCES Austin, Debra, Daughter of Kura: A Novel, A Touchstone Book, 2009 Daly, Mary, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation, Beacon Press, 1993 Dashu, Max, Women’s Power (DVD), Suppressed Histories Archives, 2008 Eisler, Riane, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, HarperCollins, 1988 Gimbutas, Marija, The Civilization of the Goddess, HarperCollins, 1991 Goettner-Abendroth, Heide, editor, Societies of Peace: Matriarchies Past Present and Future, Inanna Publications, 2009 Hillyer, Carolyn, Sacred House: Where Women Weave Words into the Earth, Seventh Wave Books, 2010 Pollack, Rachel, The Body of the Goddess: Sacred Wisdom in Myth, Landscape and Culture, Element Books/Vega, 2003 Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess: 20th Anniversary Edition, HarperOne, 2011 Stone, Merlin, When God Was a Woman, Mariner Books, 1976 Sykes, Bryan, The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science that Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry, W. W. Norton & Company, 2010 Wells, Spencer, Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project, National Geographic Society, 2006  "Primordial Revival" was originally published in She Summons: Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality? A Mago Books anthology, Edited by Kaalii Cargill and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, June Solstice, 2021. >Mago Books<  |
ESSAYS BY PEGI EYERSWe need to tell new stories about ourselves, new myths to guide us forward, and new manifestos that celebrate our integration with the natural world. our archaic spirit needs to rise again in a weaving of timeless myths and stories of growth, regeneration, rites of passage, motion, energy, illumination, magic, decay, and all the earth’s processes that dwell both in us and the more-than-human world.
Pegi Eyers Ancient Spirit Rising 
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