Walking the Ways Week 1 ~ Earth
Prompts for Practice for All. Recording of Our Intention Setting Session and Overview Booklet at end for Paid Subscribers. Plus a survey on continuation of the Exploratorium
Elemental Connecting Weekly Flow with Prompts for Practice: Earth
An offering from Soul Path Sanctuary to the Shining Tribe that you can participate in each week as we go toward the Solstice—or not. Details on this offering are here.
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder
Day One - Earth Connection
Prompts for Practice
Today you are invited to contemplate an image of earth: the words and image from this element’s title page, your favorite Tarot card from the suit connected to Earth (Pentacles, Disks, Stones, etc.), or the view from your window be it the green of growing things or the concrete of the solid sidewalk.
Then ponder your connection and understanding of the element of earth. This is the place from which you begin. Use your own current definitions and understandings to contemplate these questions.
When you hear the word earth what does it encompass?
What do you already know about the earth element (from the Tarot’s earth suit, or connecting physically with the earth, or from your spiritual tradition’s teachings about earth)?
Is there a place or an activity that especially connects you to earth?
What lessons and gifts might come from connecting with the earth?
What gifts can you offer to earth?
Day Two - Earth Guides
I will not give you the answers but I will help you find them for yourself.
The voice of The Hermit from Spiritual Tarot
Prompts for Practice
Today invite, select, and welcome your Way Showers and Guides for encountering the element of earth.
As we are working with the Lovers all season, you may want to carry the Lovers each week.
Because the language of nature and the elements is not immediately apparent to us humans, we can ask for help from the Tarot, oracles, or any other inspirational form we know well. Here are some options for making your selection:
If working with a Tarot deck, take out the cards from the suit of Pentacles/Earth and the Major Arcana. Shuffle this part of the pack and select a few cards to travel with (4 or 5 is a good number).
For a Tarot or any oracle deck, if you have a relationship with a wisdom figure(s) represented on a card that seems to have a special connection to earth, feel free to find and wander with this card.
Working with a Tarot deck is not required. You could create your own set of cards that guide through images or words. You could, for example, take a poem that offers you special inspiration related to the earth element (one from Wendell Berry or Linda Hogan, for example) and write lines or stanzas on different index cards. Select a few or bring the whole poem in parts to carry with you.
You could combine approaches and carry cards from more than one deck/poem/container for inspiration.
If this seems like too many options - and you have a Tarot deck - just go with the first option and see how it works for you.
Spend some time today meeting the one(s) who have emerged to travel with you.
Day Three - Earth Element Communion, Part 1
Life is rock rearranging itself.
Biologist Elisabet Sahtouris
Prompts for Practice
As you walk through your day, observe the earth element as it manifests around you. What belongs to earth? What belongs to other elements? You won’t need to and won’t be able to ignore the presence of fire, water, and air. All the elements mix to make our dynamic world. But you can tune your attention to what seems to you to be most elementally earth. Starhawk’s The Earth Path offers guidance on particulars to direct your attention toward:
Ground and what you are walking on whether it be the duff of the forest floor or the cement of a city sidewalk.
Rocks. These most solid of nature’s offerings perhaps come quickly to mind around the element of earth. How big is the rock you are seeing: boulder, pebble, sand? What has been happening with slow changing rocks in your area?
Soil. Our food comes from dirt. What is going on with the dirt that you discover?
Growth. What is growing and how much of it?
Decay. What is passing away? How is this decay treated or greeted?
Seeds. Do you see them or evidence of their existence?
Fungi. So much of what we call mushrooms grows below the surface in an interconnected web. What can you glimpse of that web?
Bones. What bones are present? Can you see them? Maybe only your own will be out and moving around.
Plants and Trees. What is growing around you? And how do they grow together in communities of support?
You might want to select a few to focus on as you move through your day. Feel free to bring your Way Showers / Guides selected yesterday to travel with you as tune into the element of earth.
Day Four - Earth Element Connection, Part 2
The Stones, in fact, are the most spiritual as well as the most ordinary of Minor cards. We have learned in the Tarot that the sacred does not exist in some separate universe but permeates our world.
Rachel Pollack, The Haindl Tarot Companion Book
Prompts for Practice
Growing out of Western traditions and including insights added by contemporary practitioners with eclectic influences, the Tarot gives each element a range of meaning. The earth element – most commonly associated with suits named Pentacles, Disks, Stones – has gathered meanings such as:
Essence: Receptive. This element serves as the container.
World: The physical world that includes nature, our bodies, our homes, the garden.
Tasks: We are all born into the physical world left to us by those that came before, and move through spirals of growth, decay, death before becoming the material foundation of future generations. Here, we take care of practical matters. We gather the resources needed for living. We do the daily actions that seem small, but when repeated (or neglected) consistently can have long-term impacts.
Senses: The physical senses of sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing belong to the earth element.
Pace of the Journey: An earthly pace is slow but steady. If you lay out your earth-connected Tarot suit, you may see a journey that includes hard work, pauses, persistence, attention to detail, and recognition of both difficulty and abundance, neither of which stops the journey.
Practice: Earth practices open us to a physical spirituality in which our body is the conduit for the divine. This is a path of action and embodying. A few examples include: gardening; dancing; Yoga and Tai Chi; caring for a household / doing laundry; serving justice by protecting and preserving land / preventing the pollution of earth, air, and water; tending the burial places of the ancestors; and Wisdom Wanders, too!
To tune into this list, you can consider on or all of these questions:
What here resonates with your physical experience of the element from yesterday? What seems different or outdated or not useful?
If you have drawn your Guides / Way Showers cards for the week already, which of them seems most attuned to these ideas? What lesson of earth are they offering?
Do any of the cards that you have drawn look like they are doing a practice? and/or Or is there a practice above that particularly speaks to you? Can you take some time to do that today? You may want to weave it into your Earth Wisdom Wander.
Day Five/Six - Invitation to Wander
The freedom in walking lies not in being anyone; for the walking body has no history; it is just an eddy in the stream of immemorial time.
Frederic Gros. A Philosophy of Walking
Prompts for Practice
Today - or when you can fit it into your weekend - you are invited to take your first formal Wisdom Wander focused on the element of earth. Your goal is really to be goalless and as open as the Fool to whatever comes your way. All you need to do is wander at your own pace. Possibly carrying your Guide cards pulled earlier in the week (or right before you go). Possibly taking some pictures or scratching some scribbles as you make your way.
You may want to begin by making a connection to the earth. Here is my summary of a process suggested by Starhawk in The Earth Path:
Stand with eyes open and feet about shoulder-width apart and knees bent. Breathe and feel the breath circulating. Tune into your feet and feel how they are supported by the ground.
Imagine that you have roots coming from your feet and going down into the ground. Feel the energy of earth come up your roots and move through your body. Enjoy the support. Enjoy the flow of energy that you are actually feeling or imagining flowing through you.
If thoughts distract you from being present to earth, you can send them down through the roots that connect you earth. The earth loves to compost no longer needed garbage.
You will need to move your feet to wander, but you can hold on to the sensation or imagine that the roots are moving with you. They are flexible and movable, adding spring to your step.
Start moving slowly. Let each rise and return of your foot connect to the earth. How does your connection to earth feel the same or different from your normal walking?
Day Seven - Gathering Questions
Whatever you eye falls on - for it will fall on what you love - will lead you to the questions of your life, the questions that are incumbent upon you to answer, because that is how the mind works in concert with the eye. The things of this world draw us where we need to go.
Mary Rose O'Reilley, The Barn at the End of the World
Prompts for Practice
As we wander, we are loosening up and stepping out of our usual routines and roles – at least for a short time. We are letting ourselves be like children who ask questions rather than give answers. As we make our way toward the Solstice, we are gathering questions that inspire rather than rushing toward answers.
To gather out Earth-themed questions, we can draw upon the strength of our weakness. Here I continue to be inspired by Starhawk. In The Earth Path she confides that she didn’t come to her connection to the earth naturally. She grew up in an apartment and didn’t garden or study ecology. She’s not the fittest person in the world. But she suggests that these “weaknesses” can be strengths because they help her – and we who would emulate her – to be curious and wonder about what is happening instead of knowing and coming to a quick answer.
You might wonder why particular plants grow close together or how anything can grow on rock. You might wonder about the connection between the meanings of your Earth Guide / Way Shower cards and what you observed on your Wisdom Wander.
These wonderings, perhaps recorded as you are out on your Wander or coming from reflections afterwards, can be prompts for some research into the workings of nature. You can also use your wonderings in a way similar to how you might use a Tarot or oracle image by looking at what your questions reveal about your curiosities and longings as well as what you are open to exploring.
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Below is the Overview Booklet and Link to Our Intention Setting Session with The Lovers for Paid Subscribers