The Chlorophyll Mandala

Our friend Karen recently gave Pica a copy of the new book The Earth Path, by Starhawk. Starhawk wrote this book in part because she’s seen that many members of Pagan communities, though professing to a nature-based spiritual practice, actually have had little contact with nature. Much of this book consists of exercises to help ground each of us in nature and place. I love this stuff, and there are many practices described therein that it would do me well to start carrying out. Such as finding a home base, a little nearby natural spot to return to time and time again to hang out and observe. I used to have several such spots, and with the creek nearby, I certainly should have one now.

I like Starhawk’s imagination. One of her ideas is take twenty-five or more friends, and make a mandala of the chlorophyll molecule, with people forming the atoms. As she says:

If we had a Gaian Goddess temple, the chlorophyll molecule would make a lovely stained-glass window or floor mosaic. But, in the spirit of not taking ourselves too seriously, here’s a story and directions for making a chlorophyll molecule—an enterprise that can be done with a minimum of twenty-five children or childlike adults.

I also think it’s also time for me to start observing the seasonal holidays of the Celtic year, on the solstices, equinoxes, and midpoints between. Why, Brigid, or Imbolc, is coming right up on 1 February. Along these lines, I’ll point interested listeners to a wonderful Paganish CD entitled The Almanac: Time and the Turning Wheel, featuring the fiddler Shira Kammen. The very Wiccan song “The Wheel of the Year” on the album is quite apropos. (It may be legally downloaded from the not-evil record distributor Magnatune on this page, as well as other tracks from the album.)