Animism

In May 2022, Mike and I bought a half-built, abandoned house on a sheep-cropped hill in west Wales. Yggdrasil—an ancient ash named for the World Tree of Nordic myth—stands sentinel over the hill and the Cothi River below. From the beginning, the land’s request was clear: “More life, more life,” challenging me to put years of animist practice and enquiry into native traditions of land care and co-relating with all life into practice.

I find myself in a recurring conversation about the grinding tectonic plates of old paradigm and new; the struggle to let go of outdated ways of being and doing, and the creativity and courage it takes to reach new solutions. This re-shaping of our world is played out in the intimate spaces of life as much as in boardrooms and on global political platforms. It’s brutal and confronting; it brings up our ‘stuff’ and asks for heroic acts of humility and an almost super-human cap

Wrens - they may be small, but they are mighty! In these Isles they are mythically ‘king of the birds’. Traditionally, in Pembrokeshire, one was caught and placed in a wren house and paraded around field perimeters to bless the land with fertility on Boxing Day - also known as Wren Day - such a wealth of ‘lore’ surrounding these feisty pot-bellied, loud voiced little beings! The other day I was sitting at the top of the hill here and noticed three wrens flitting and hopping b

This is an old way of belonging, though that word doesn’t really hit the meaning - our Welsh word ‘perthyn’ is better, retaining an older remembering of the relationship available between people and place. It means ‘related’ - I am related to this place, the beings of this land are my kin, and I am theirs. This quality of belonging is being lost in our fast paced ever mobile lives, but our bodies and souls remember, and it takes so very little if we remember how, to plant roo