Natural Wonder & Spiritual Ecology

It's not like we ever really left the space of our imaginings. We operate each day with enough future projection and past rehashing that if we're honest, we live primarily in the world of imagination and not in the present reality of the moment. The bubble of the thought-world keeps us bobbing along like buoys on the water, but untethered, ungrounded, and wholly disembodied. I think about how it was imagining as a kid, though, and how grounded into the moment I truly was. I felt electric with the field around me, picking up on the slightest shift in the energy, so tuned in to the natural world I could hear it speaking to me. I knew where my pets were, how engaged or unengaged they were, I had a sense of my imaginary friends and toys, where they were in space and what might be going on in their worlds. I had my own little network of imagination and it was as alive as I was, and I was more alive for it.

This is what I think about when I think about genius loci or spirits of place and the natural spiritual ecology of an area. I know seasoned magicians would probably be irritated by my naivete when it comes to this kind of description and would find my way of relating reckless, but here's the thing: I've known since I was young that the innocence of spirit that a child has is something humans take advantage of, not spirit. We tend to project our evils on to that of the Other, as we well know, and we have a tendency to categorically define spirits this way, too. Maybe it's the renaissance grimoire tradition that was so steeped in fear-based Christian worldview that, for whatever, never came to be questions. The transactional nature of the relationship was justified in the idea that if we didn't dominate the spirit, we'd be taken advantage of, possessed, harmed.

But the vision of myself as a child, walking the forest floor completely at peace with the world around me isn't some exotified notion of paradise, it's the reality of my life and my lived experience. Most of my lessons in life have been turning to face what we fear and to find in it ally, not enemy. That's not to say I'd waltz up to a wild animal expecting a warm welcome and that's especially not to say I'd walk up to any spirit and expect familiar reception, honesty, and openheartedness. But that's conditioned from experience. I'd treat humans harshly, too. Look at the precedent that's been set. If we're not downright abusive, we're manipulative. If we're not manipulative, we're at least coercive. And if we're not coercive, we're still wanting something and only arising the idea of the meeting to get the thing we want.

I do believe in the essential goodness that can be found in any living thing, human or spirit, though, and it's fundamentally how I live my life. I've honed the skill of discernment to get a read on a being fairly quickly and it's served me well: I've seen through the human-manipulator and through the spirit-trickster, even when the dare to take the shape of someone I love. And, ultimately, the discernment comes in knowing if you can reach out and touch that essential goodness or not and acting accordingly. Sometimes it's clear off the bat, there is already deception at play and I'm not one to abide that foundational exchange unless there's a clear receptivity to being called out. But that comes with experience, practiced discernment, and common sense. The heart never closes, but the opportunity for engagement might.

Nonetheless, we live in a world filled with beings and generally only interact with the human, the pet, and maybe the local flora and fauna, if we're especially tuned in. If we're really taking it a step further, we might be attempting to operate from a sort of animistic understanding, acknowledging the presence of tree, squirrel, bird with a bit more sentient exchange. But the tendency to still operate in human-centric ways, whether through conscious engagement and feelings of various degrees of guilt or shame, or through the unconscious ways society expects us to operate, it leaves little room for engaging casually and intentionally with the unseen spirits of the place and places we move through.

I want to change that. Perhaps naively, I want to change that more foundationally than just for the border-dwelling goetic practitioner. I want us all to understand the network of aliveness that exists around us and in us at all times. And by all of course I mean the ones receptive to it. But nonetheless, I want this information widely disseminated and spread through the land.

We knew it as kids, the unseen is something we can engage with that is just as real as what our physically senses pick up on. We live in a weird time where we actively already engage with the unseen through the internet, our tvs, our phones. Sure, there's a physical representation we can hold, touch, but do we not perceive the evidence of the spirit, too?

The world is always speaking to us. The land, the spirits, the natural world. Whether we hear it with our physical ears or the sense organs of our inner self, we felt these things were no different when we were young.

We have this tendency to hate ourselves as a species for the things we've done, the negligence we've had as caretakers of this earth. But the natural world wants to be in relationship and the conditionality of how we perceive our worthiness means much less to beings living in a state of more naturalness and ease. We've never left the place our imagination used to take it, but we've exiled ourselves from its wonder, and it's time to begin to reclaim this natural relationship to what is and everything around us.

Starting in the spring 2026, I'll be teaching about relational magic, animism, and how to begin coming into relationship with the world around us and how to do so with humility, confidence, and personal groundedness. As Robin Wall Kimmerer says, "paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart." This kind of reciprocity is the first step to begin engaging with the fullness of who we are and what the world is around us. It's are way back to engaging with the vital web of existence and healing our feeling of being dispossessed by our very existence.

It's time to start engaging our childlike wonder, natural senses, and receptivity once more and find ourselves tuned into the larger network of our world and its many inhabitants.