“…I who am the beauty of the green earth and the white moon among the stars and the mysteries of the waters,
I call upon your soul to arise and come unto me.
For I am the soul of nature that gives life to the universe.
From Me all things proceed and unto Me they must return…”
(from ‘The Charge of the Goddess’ Traditional, by Doreen Valiente, as adapted by Starhawk)
There are very few clear evening skies in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. If you’re rushing up Byres Road on the way home on one of those rare nights, especially when you cross the Queen Margaret Drive bridge, look out for a small woman standing still, gazing at the sky. That’ll be me, admiring the wonderful, fragile beauty of the waxing New Moon.
Even in the city, in the increasingly hurried pattern of 21st century life, it is possible to maintain a connection to the cycles of the seasons and the rhythms of nature. It’s increasingly recognised that regular contact of this kind is an important component in establishing and maintaining the kind of inner balance and peace that promotes happiness.
One of the many advantages of living in a small country like Scotland is that access to the great outdoors is not difficult – half an hour out of Glasgow, for example, it is possible to disappear into lovely countryside and forget the existence of the city very quickly. Try it !
It doesn’t matter how stressed you are, how much angst you are carrying. A couple of hours of tramping across the hills, often in rain and wind, focusing on nothing more complex than where you put every footstep in order to avoid disappearing up to your waist in a bog, is guaranteed to purge out at least some of it.
Over many years of walking, I have offered the hills both my joys and my sorrows, and have found validation for the former and solace for the latter. In homeopathic medicine, broadly speaking, you treat an ailment with a very dilute form of the toxin which caused it.
I have found the homeopathic principle works very well with bleakness of the soul or spirit. That condition can be effectively treated by choosing weather and landscape to match your mood, and immersing yourself in it for a few hours. Meeting bleakness with bleakness has a powerfully cleansing effect.
Complementary to this is the powerfully life-affirming effect that natural beauty can have.
Standing on top of a favourite hill on a sunlit day, looking at stunning panoramic views, listening to the joyous song of a skylark, feeling at one with the wind and the landscape, has on numerous occasions made me feel so glad to be alive that I have wept for joy.
These experiences may fade in the face of the rigours of an average life. But if you repeat them often enough, you develop a sense of being part of the great round of nature, where joy and sorrow, youth, maturity, decline, death and rebirth all have their part. You also learn, slowly, the importance to being a happy person of being able to “grasp the joy as it flies”, celebrate the moment, “seize the day.” “
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ENDNOTES
(This is an edited version of an article first published in “Self & Society”(The Journal of Humanistic Psychology) (UK)Vol 27 No 5, November 1999, then http://www.innerself.com : Innerself Magazine (USA), and most recently – March 09 – in ‘ The Drumlin’, the Newsletter of Glasgow Botanic Gardens as “Happiness and the Healing Power of Nature” . )
550 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2016
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
This is a beautiful musing, Anne, thank you. And I so agree … I’m a fellow ‘walker’. It’s likely in my bones and ancestral memory, the need for regular walking and proper walkabouts. That you’ve noted the homeopathic remedy of walking in ‘like’ weather and/or scenery is insightful indeed. I’m looking forward to a good walk this afternoon, in fact … gets the energy moving, and transmuting! Blessings and happy walking. J
Thanks, Jamie. Not the least surprised that you are a fellow walker, by the way!
Beautifully expressed, Anne. The feeling of oneness with nature is something to behold…a natural drug to suit any mood.
Thanks, Bev. as you say…’a natural drug to suit any mood’. I like that!
I’m curious about the title. You have it as a quotation — perhaps you’re simply highlighting it. I’ve spent more time thinking about it than the rest of your post — which I happen to recognize as being filled with multiple truths!
But to say “I am the soul of nature” — Sometimes I miss the obvious, of course, so I could have entirely missed your point. It could be a difference in language, too. I still can’t figure out how going up the apples became an expression for going to bed.
What I do know is that sundering ourselves from nature not only harms us as individuals, but also as communities. We’ve gradually come to the point where many believe that control of others is all: witness the demand for “safe spaces” in the universities, and the demand for censored speech. A good dose of life in the world of nature should disabuse anyone of the notion that final control is possible!
In response to your comment, I have begun the post with a fuller extract from “The Charge of the Goddess” which contains the title I’ve given the post. I’m so familiar with this invocatory “Charge” that I mistakenly assumed the quote would be self-explanatory. Thanks, Linda! Never assume…and do not get me started on the ‘safe spaces’ issue…I think that the only possible ‘safe space’ from the challenges and uncertainties and risks of this life is – six feet under!
Ah! Now it makes more sense — and it’s even more lovely. Thanks so much for the addition. Between Ecuador’s earthquake, Japan’s earthquakes, and our current flooding, nature certainly is front and center in many peoples’ minds. It’s not all butterflies and daffodils.
No, it certainly is not. Nature can be savage and brutal. As can we…
This is superb. Truth in the simplest form. Connecting with nature is like an orgasm for soul. Loved your thoughts
Many thanks for this lovely comment! Much appreciated.