COMING HOME TO THE PLEISTOCENEWhen we grasp fully that the best expressions of our humanity were not invented by civilization but by cultures that preceded it, that the natural world is not only a set of constraints but of contexts within which we can more fully realize our dreams, we will be on the way to a long overdue reconciliation between opposites which are of our own making.
Paul Shepard was one of the most profound and original thinkers of our time. Seminal works such as The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game, Thinking Animals, and Nature & Madness introduced readers to new and provocative ideas about humanity and its relationship to the natural world. Throughout his long and distinguished career, Paul Shepard returned repeatedly to his guiding theme and the central tenet of his thought - that our essential human nature is a product of our genetic heritage, formed through thousands of years of evolution during the Pleistocene epoch, and that the current subversion of that Pleistocene heritage lies at the heart of today's ecological and social ills. Coming Home to the Pleistocene provides the fullest explanation of that theme. Completed just before his death in the summer of 1996, it represents the culmination of Paul Shepard's life work and constitutes the clearest, most accessible expression of his ideas. Coming Home to the Pleistocene pulls together the threads of his vision, considers new research and thinking that expands his own ideas, and integrates material within a new matrix of scientific thought that both enriches his original insights and allows them to be considered in a broader context of current intellectual controversies. In addition, the book explicitly addresses the fundamental question raised by Paul Shepard's work, "What can we do to recreate a life more in tune with our genetic roots?" In this book, Paul Shepard presents concrete suggestions for fostering the kinds of ecological settings and cultural practices that are optimal for human health and well-being. Coming Home to the Pleistocene is a valuable book for those familiar with the life and work of Paul Shepard, as well as for new readers seeking an accessible introduction to and overview of his thought. >Amazon Link< In essence, Paul Shepard sees that we are genetically wild animals from the Pleistocene. Our genes expect us to be living a leisured life in the wilderness, in small bands, eating wild foods. We are not designed to thrive in cities, in overcrowded conditions. Living in the modern world destroys our bodies, minds, and spirits. Shepard takes us on a fascinating voyage through human history, with extended discussions on plant and animal domestication, and the horror that these grave mistakes brought to humankind. He recommends beginning the voyage back to a Pleistocene way of life. Shepard has done his homework, and this book is filled with provocative and head-spinning ideas. If you want to know WHY we got to where we are today, this book is a treasure. Nigel Shaw and Carolyn HillyerHER BONE BUNDLE / si knâmi grendyo ~ A Book of Words curated & woven by Carolyn Hillyer. A lyrical exploration into the mythic spirit of the Proto-Celtic ancestral mother tongue, and imaginative re-awakening for song, ceremony and celebration of the wild earth. With accompanying CD album of songs and chants collated from previous original recordings in the ancient mother tongue.
For the ultimate inspiration on how to recover and embody our ancient European Indigenous Knowledge directly, we can look to the work of Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer in fine art, music, ceremony, material culture and daily life that sings to the Celtic heart and sets our souls on fire. Deeply embedded in the Dartmoor landscape, Seventh Wave Music offers texts, poetry, music, artwork and musical instruments from richly-reconstructed Indigenous traditions affirming the Celtic, Nordic and Northern tribes of Europe. Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer “live and work on a thousand-year-old farm in the heart of Dartmoor, a mist-veiled landscape of wild hills and moors, and the inspiration for their work is drawn from the raw beauty, hidden spirit and ancient memory of this deep ancestral land.”[1] Music has the powerful ability to bring us back to our originating culture, and with hand-crafted drums, flutes, rattles and other musical instruments using locally-sourced wood, stone and other materials, the soundscape journeys and primordial rhythms of Seventh Wave Music restore us to the spirit of the wild landscape and the gifts of the land. “What is the story of our forgotten people? It is a story of return. It is a story of hearthstones and home; of amber from oceans and copper from earth; of men who soar with buzzards and women who weave heron feathers into their hair. It is also, however, the story of ourselves; in a landscape where time spirals rather than runs ahead of us in rigid lines, we look to our forgotten people to remember something about our own lives. Remembering our people, those who are connected to us by blood or clan or land or any other bond that serves to entwine hearts and souls, is part of rooting ourselves in our landscape and shaping the road along which we chose to travel. We learn from our ancestors in order to understand the ancestors we might become.”[2] (Carolyn Hillyer) With a foot in both worlds, Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer are immersed in the Old Ways, and have manifested ancient EIK on their Dartmoor land by building a Neolithic-style roundhouse using granite, oak and rye grass thatch, for ceremony and to evoke sacred space. Like a miracle from a dream or the answer to a yearning we never knew we had, hearing their music or reading Carolyn’s words transports us directly to our ancestral roots, reconnecting our hearts to the heartbeat of the Earth and the glowing hearth, to stone, bone, willow, reed, antler, feather, copper, and to the warp and weft of stories that are woven in the land. “we will build our dwelling from the bones of the earth we are wed to the body of the earth we will kindle our fire from the heart of the wood we are wed to the soul of the land now that the first hearth is set on the ground to the spirit of this place we are bound……”[3] (Carolyn Hillyer) The astonishing creative output of Seventh Wave Music and their hosted gatherings take us along ancient paths where we can reconnect with the energies of the earth, experience deep animist interactions with the nonhuman world, and feel the echoes of ancient forests, Atlantic coasts and stone circles once again. For over 20 years Carolyn has been offering workshop journeys for women, weaving together shared songs, chants, poetry, stories, ancient mythology, sacred symbols, hearth circles, ritual drumming, ceremony, oracle work, magical ways, rites of passage, wildcrafting, earth shrines, vigil, wayfaring, and interaction with the sacred wild sanctuaries of the land. Viewing her mixed-media art (“life-size images of archetypal spirit women, the ancient landscape in human form”[4]), and learning from the sacred prose and poetry of her mystic teachings can ignite our own deep well of remembrance and Indigenous talents as seer, bard, story-teller, hearthkeeper, healer, wanderer, hunter, gatherer, shapeshifter or lover of the land. “Ancient shadows of women spiralling/ through the coils of time we are part of those women spiralling with the song of the land and the dance of the moon inside.”[5] (Carolyn Hillyer) The work of reviving an ancestral paradigm can arise from different motivations, methodologies, groups or inspirations, and diverse sources can guide our passage back to the ancient clanmothers while evoking the vibrancy of our Celtic sensibility in the modern era. With their rich tapestry of music, performance, poetry, story, ceremony and hearthfire, the works of Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer give form and song to our personal journeys of cultural resurgence, and show us the way home to our EIK.
[1] Carolyn Hillyer, Sacred House: Where Women Weave Words into the Earth, Seventh Wave Books, 2010 [2] Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer, “About Seventh Wave Music: Words from the Wild Hills….” Seventh Wave Music, 2014. For information on music CDs, books, prints, hand-crafted instruments, concerts, events, Rivenstone, Festival of Bones, Thirteen Moons Womens’s Festival and Workshop Journeys for Women: Hearth, Trail or Threshold Weekends, see www.seventhwavemusic.co.uk [3] Carolyn Hillyer, Sacred House: Where Women Weave Words into the Earth, Seventh Wave Books, 2010 [4] Carolyn Hillyer, “Books and Prints,” Seventh Wave Music, 2014. www.seventhwavemusic.co.uk [5] Carolyn Hillyer, Sacred House: Where Women Weave Words into the Earth, Seventh Wave Books, 2010. AWAKENING THE HORSE PEOPLE RECOVERING A PRE-AGRICULTURE SEASONAL CALENDAR FOR ATLANTIC WESTERN EUROPEAN PEOPLES This image represents an annual cycle of deeply held, seasonal activities and movements (lifeway) for at least one band of Aquitainian (proto-Basque) speaking hunter-fisher gatherers of the Atlantic margin of France (see map) prior to their displacement by neolithic cultures. This ever-growing pool of cultural knowledge has been gathered over the last fifteen+ years through a process of ancestral recovery. Information presented in this calendar has grown from a variety of sources including scientific research, archeological findings, intuitive experiences, language recovery, and cultural practice. The ongoing accumulation of intuitive ancestral recovery combined with academic research allows for this calendar to grow and evolve. The calendar is offered especially for those persons whose ancestral recovery work takes them farther back in time than connection to neolithic or “Celtic” ancestors and ways of life. It is my deepest hope that this seasonal cycle will also serve as a source of inspiration for others to recover, grow, and follow their own people’s ancestral lifeways and seasonal relationships. This is ancestral recovery in its truest form – and yes, it can be done! by Awakening the Horse People Ancestral Recovery Yields Pre-Neolithic Calendar >LINK< ANCIENT SPIRIT RISING: |
 | Come back to your roots! Drawing on cultural studies and contemporary social justice, Ancient Spirit Rising examines the loss of our vital ethnocultural connection to tribe and place, and why there is a trend to borrow identities from other cultures. From the wealth of resources available today, an authentic self-identity can be reconstructed from old/new earth-centered societies, using the timeless values of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) as our model. A weaving of analysis, evocation and promptings of the heart, Ancient Spirit Rising offers strategies for decolonization, rewilding, restoring an ecocentric worldview, returning to the Old Ways, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community. With extensive notes and exhaustive references, Ancient Spirit Rising is an essential compendium for change! |
The Wisdom of the Past is the Seed of the Future
Reclaiming and co-creating ecological civilization today means rejecting and moving away from the over-emphasis on linear thinking which is the toxic legacy of Empire. The meme-carriers of western empiricism opined that “the birthright of our intelligence is calculation, not sensitivity,”[1] and this patriarchal ideology has perpetuated the rule of all that is mechanistic, disembodied, material and subject to control. Empire has taught us to ignore the holistic connections, to sort things into the appropriate categories, and to divide and conquer our own reality. The logic of domination views the land, elements and creatures in Earth Community as objects to be owned instead of kindred spirits, and the classification system of binary dualism has enabled conquest and ecocide all over the world. The misguided anthropocentric worldview of “man as ruler and pinnacle of creation” places human beings and their acquisitions at the center of the world, and renounces all care or responsibility to nature, natural processes or the other beings in Earth Community. In our time, challenging the insatiable entitlement and narcissism that this worldview has generated means including our hearts in the conversation, with a renewed focus on all that is intuitive and empathic. Becoming compassionate, loving and grounded, both in our physical bodies and the Earth, is a large part of our mutual re-indigenization process, and the emergence of holistic thinking in our time is a necessary rebalancing that is required after centuries of fractured, separatist patriarchal thinking.
Ultimately, to gain true knowledge and wisdom-in-action is to weave our scholarship with our own insights, experiences and unique promptings of the heart. Without referring to both spheres simultaneously, and embracing the balance of our knowledge and experience equally, errors and misconceptions can occur. We understand with our mind (theory), but what we come to value and how we respond to important ethical matters (practice) comes from the heart. We can achieve spiritual wisdom from a confluence of sources, but connecting the intelligence of the heart to the intelligence of the mind is how we grow fully into our own lives.
As we learn from animism, rewilding, voluntary simplicity and our own ancestral practice, leaving the buzz of civilization behind and immersing ourselves in nature easily and effortlessly puts us into the intuitive knowing of Indigenous Mind. Opening to the natural world with interaction and appreciation, and stilling our inner dialogue enables the mysterious unfolding of our hearts. Simply from being in nature we can 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 the harmonious and beautiful space of love, 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. Trusting in the balance, the wondrous gifts of the human heart and the human mind revolve as required, for nurturing and sustaining a good life for ourselves and all beings. Instead of identifying with the separatist and mechanistic worldview of industrial civilization in body, mind or soul, we find that we are at home again in the Sacred Circle of the heart. And in fact, we have never left.
[1] Philip Shepherd, New Self New World: Recovering Our Senses in the 21st Century, North Atlantic Books, 2010
ANCIENT SPIRIT RISING Stone Circle Press >Amazon Link<
Ultimately, to gain true knowledge and wisdom-in-action is to weave our scholarship with our own insights, experiences and unique promptings of the heart. Without referring to both spheres simultaneously, and embracing the balance of our knowledge and experience equally, errors and misconceptions can occur. We understand with our mind (theory), but what we come to value and how we respond to important ethical matters (practice) comes from the heart. We can achieve spiritual wisdom from a confluence of sources, but connecting the intelligence of the heart to the intelligence of the mind is how we grow fully into our own lives.
As we learn from animism, rewilding, voluntary simplicity and our own ancestral practice, leaving the buzz of civilization behind and immersing ourselves in nature easily and effortlessly puts us into the intuitive knowing of Indigenous Mind. Opening to the natural world with interaction and appreciation, and stilling our inner dialogue enables the mysterious unfolding of our hearts. Simply from being in nature we can 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 the harmonious and beautiful space of love, 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. Trusting in the balance, the wondrous gifts of the human heart and the human mind revolve as required, for nurturing and sustaining a good life for ourselves and all beings. Instead of identifying with the separatist and mechanistic worldview of industrial civilization in body, mind or soul, we find that we are at home again in the Sacred Circle of the heart. And in fact, we have never left.
[1] Philip Shepherd, New Self New World: Recovering Our Senses in the 21st Century, North Atlantic Books, 2010
ANCIENT SPIRIT RISING Stone Circle Press >Amazon Link<
FUTURE PRIMAL
 Mandala Diagram of Future Primal >>>The primal truth quest includes a core politics which in becoming self-consciousness promises a “leap in being.” All four quadrants and concentric circles are in continual back-and-forth, balancing relationship. |  |
Early societies, immersed in an unpolluted wilderness on which they depended absolutely, recognized the resonance between the natural world and human consciousness intuitively and explored it through their animistic systems of religion and healing. This attunement between inner and outer is capable of generating spiritual experiences we commonly call ecstatic or mystical, which have the effect of inspiring and ordering our lives. When we approach politics from such a perspective, magnificent possibilities open up - of ways of life profoundly “better, truer, and more beautiful” than our sad and frenetic destructiveness.
Louis G. Herman, Future Primal
How should we respond to our converging crises of violent conflict, political corruption, and global ecological devastation? In this sweeping, big-picture synthesis, Louis G. Herman argues that for us to create a sustainable, fulfilling future, we need to first look back into our deepest past to recover our core humanity. Important clues for recovery can be found in the lives of traditional San Bushman hunter-gatherers of South Africa, the closest living relatives to the ancestral African population from which all humans descended. Their culture can give us a sense of what life was like during the tens of thousands of years when humans lived in wilderness, without warfare, walled cities, or slavery. Herman suggests we draw from the experience of the San and other earth-based cultures and weave their wisdom together with the scientific story of an evolving universe to help create something radically new — an earth-centered, planetary politics with the personal truth quest at its heart. >Author Website< >Amazon Link< >Book Excerpt<
SACRED SHADOWS: ICE AGE SPIRITUALITY
 |  The Wolfenhowle Press |
Are you drawn towards the world of our ancient ancestors? The ancient past is always with us, just lurking beneath the surface. It influences what we are, what we do, what we will become. It even invades our dreams. This book shows how the memories that seem to haunt us are not lost but are waiting to be recovered, so they can form part of our spiritual life. Rediscovering out past, our ancient history, will ultimately help us understand the present and welcome the future, because the past never really goes away. Tyllua Penry pulls together many different strands including history, archaeology and Jungian psychology. The result is an exciting ride through the ancient past and our own psyche, backed up by extensive references, a full bibliography and index. >Amazon Link<
will lord of the stone age
 |  |  |
Learn prehistoric skills from the world's leading flint master, through immersive courses in the heart of Norfolk, UK, and master the art of ancient survival - foraging, weapons, hide-tanning, drum-making and many other skills. >LINK<
cailleach's herbarium
 |  |
BY SCOTT RICHARDSON-READ
Communalism, Reciprocity and hospitality were, and are, at the heart of Creideamh-sìth, fairy faith and Scottish animist belief. A different system of community was in place in Scotland before the impact of imperialism was fully felt - things could be hard, but because it was hard, folk knew their community and survival depended on cooperating and no one hoarding the wealth and. Some say this changed when the Statutes of Iona happened, as the lairds were kidnapped by the English imperial force and forced to sign the agreement, which meant, amongst other things, their descendants, and anyone worth more than 50 cows, were sent to be educated in the world of commerce in the English system.
This meant the idea of communalism, hospitality and reciprocity became overwritten in a top-down way, you might say, by the goals of commerce. At the heart of the communalism way of life was an understanding nature, and ecology was also part of the community, along with people, and we needed to work together to thrive. These ideas at the heart of the creideamh-Sìth. Of course, nature became less of a partner as things progressed and the reformation took hold, and the drives toward “improvement” were made. The notions of a collective working together became more about ownership, working for an employer and money for “them.”
If we hold to the Creideamh-sìth it means exploring these more connected ways of relating to one another, with an understanding that no one can survive alone or outside of nature. We need to rekindle these relationships as a matter of urgency, but how they might express themselves today is still hard to fully see. This is explored in the book "Mill Dust and Dreaming Bread" and through the writing on the Cailleach Herbarium website.
https://cailleachs-herbarium.com
Communalism, Reciprocity and hospitality were, and are, at the heart of Creideamh-sìth, fairy faith and Scottish animist belief. A different system of community was in place in Scotland before the impact of imperialism was fully felt - things could be hard, but because it was hard, folk knew their community and survival depended on cooperating and no one hoarding the wealth and. Some say this changed when the Statutes of Iona happened, as the lairds were kidnapped by the English imperial force and forced to sign the agreement, which meant, amongst other things, their descendants, and anyone worth more than 50 cows, were sent to be educated in the world of commerce in the English system.
This meant the idea of communalism, hospitality and reciprocity became overwritten in a top-down way, you might say, by the goals of commerce. At the heart of the communalism way of life was an understanding nature, and ecology was also part of the community, along with people, and we needed to work together to thrive. These ideas at the heart of the creideamh-Sìth. Of course, nature became less of a partner as things progressed and the reformation took hold, and the drives toward “improvement” were made. The notions of a collective working together became more about ownership, working for an employer and money for “them.”
If we hold to the Creideamh-sìth it means exploring these more connected ways of relating to one another, with an understanding that no one can survive alone or outside of nature. We need to rekindle these relationships as a matter of urgency, but how they might express themselves today is still hard to fully see. This is explored in the book "Mill Dust and Dreaming Bread" and through the writing on the Cailleach Herbarium website.
https://cailleachs-herbarium.com
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books & reviews
Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots
& Restoring Earth Community
BY PEGI EYERS
is an award-winning
book that explores
social justice,
nature spirituality,
the ancestral arts,
and resilience in times
of massive change.
Available from
Stone Circle Press
or Amazon
& Restoring Earth Community
BY PEGI EYERS
is an award-winning
book that explores
social justice,
nature spirituality,
the ancestral arts,
and resilience in times
of massive change.
Available from
Stone Circle Press
or Amazon
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We live in what we pridefully call civilization, but our laws and machines have taken on a live of their own; they stand against our spiritual and physical survival.
ERIC WOLF
ERIC WOLF
"We cannot surrender to the doomsday narrative that haunts us because
it serves to make us
give up on our dreams, and within our dreams
lie the memories of
the Earth and
our ancestors."
Ailton Krenak
Ancestral Future
it serves to make us
give up on our dreams, and within our dreams
lie the memories of
the Earth and
our ancestors."
Ailton Krenak
Ancestral Future
The earth is a generous mother, but she
demands respectful children.
TIBETAN PROVERB
demands respectful children.
TIBETAN PROVERB
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
you are surely lost.
Stand still.
The forest knows
where you are.
You must let
it find you.
DAVID WAGONER
you are surely lost.
Stand still.
The forest knows
where you are.
You must let
it find you.
DAVID WAGONER
When the ancient seers looked upon the world, what did they see?
They saw magic....
It is not so much
the Birch Tree that is important as it is....
seeing the magic in the Birch, its soul qualities.
ROBERT SARDELLO
They saw magic....
It is not so much
the Birch Tree that is important as it is....
seeing the magic in the Birch, its soul qualities.
ROBERT SARDELLO
There’s a great conversation happening on Earth, with the
animals, the elements
and the whole natural world. All of our human ancestors used to be engaged in this conversation.
We modern peoples…..need to
again become
participants in this.
That requires deep listening, which in turn requires having a still mind and an open heart. ANNA BREYTENBACH
animals, the elements
and the whole natural world. All of our human ancestors used to be engaged in this conversation.
We modern peoples…..need to
again become
participants in this.
That requires deep listening, which in turn requires having a still mind and an open heart. ANNA BREYTENBACH
When we remember
who we are.
When we live by our natural laws, spiritual protocols, and ceremonies.
When we respect the
Earth and one another.
When we rebuild our traditional values,
our relationships,
and our sense of responsibility to future generations.
Everything else can
begin to heal
and change too.
ᒥᔪᐋᐧᐯᐃᐧᐤ ᐅᐦᑯᒥᓯᒫᐤ
who we are.
When we live by our natural laws, spiritual protocols, and ceremonies.
When we respect the
Earth and one another.
When we rebuild our traditional values,
our relationships,
and our sense of responsibility to future generations.
Everything else can
begin to heal
and change too.
ᒥᔪᐋᐧᐯᐃᐧᐤ ᐅᐦᑯᒥᓯᒫᐤ
We live in a kind of
dark age, craftily lit
with synthetic light,
so that no one can
tell how dark it has
really gotten.
But our exiled
spirits can tell.
Deep in our
bones resides an
ancient, singing couple who just won't give up making their
beautiful, wild noise.
The world won't end
if we can find them.
MARTIN PRECHTEL
dark age, craftily lit
with synthetic light,
so that no one can
tell how dark it has
really gotten.
But our exiled
spirits can tell.
Deep in our
bones resides an
ancient, singing couple who just won't give up making their
beautiful, wild noise.
The world won't end
if we can find them.
MARTIN PRECHTEL
The first possible definition of the sacred
is that it is the opposite
of the profane…..
The sacred tree,
the sacred stone
are not adored
as stone or tree;
they are worshipped precisely because they
are heirophanies,
because they show something that is no longer stone or tree
but the sacred,
and the sacred is saturated with being.
MIRCEA ELIADE
is that it is the opposite
of the profane…..
The sacred tree,
the sacred stone
are not adored
as stone or tree;
they are worshipped precisely because they
are heirophanies,
because they show something that is no longer stone or tree
but the sacred,
and the sacred is saturated with being.
MIRCEA ELIADE
Stones are memories. They are the bones of
the land, the anchors
of myth. They may delineate boundaries;
may be fashioned
into fetishes,
objects of power;
or may be carried as reminders of where
we have been,
protecting us upon
our travels.
Stones may also be signposts, markers on
the land where we perceive enduring emblems of the
ancient world.
Hundreds, even
thousands of years
later, we can still see
the same surface of
the stone that the
ancient people saw.
Signs left on these s
tones appear as if
they were carved only yesterday, even though
a thousand years have flown their shadows across the surface of
the rock. Through
stones and the signs
made upon them,
the past speaks and reaches out to us.
ARI BERK
the land, the anchors
of myth. They may delineate boundaries;
may be fashioned
into fetishes,
objects of power;
or may be carried as reminders of where
we have been,
protecting us upon
our travels.
Stones may also be signposts, markers on
the land where we perceive enduring emblems of the
ancient world.
Hundreds, even
thousands of years
later, we can still see
the same surface of
the stone that the
ancient people saw.
Signs left on these s
tones appear as if
they were carved only yesterday, even though
a thousand years have flown their shadows across the surface of
the rock. Through
stones and the signs
made upon them,
the past speaks and reaches out to us.
ARI BERK