A Druid’s Primer on Land Healing Part IV: The Process of Unfolding

For the last month or more , we’ve been exploring the nature of land healing and we will continue that journey over the next few posts.  I’ve been doing this work intuitively for a very long time, and its taking time to unfold from my mind and spirit through my fingers and into written form!  In the first post in this series, we explored the different kinds of “healing” work that we could do both physically and energetic. In the second post, I shared the two kinds energetic healing through a visit to two sites – boney dumps (energetic healing) and fracking wells (palliative care). The last post examined what we mean by “energetic” in energetic healing.  Starting with today’s post, we are into the “how-to” part of this guide–methods, rituals, ceremonies, and more of energetic healing. Today’s post explores the first of the magical practices for land healing – the process of unfolding.

The Preliminaries: Magic, Power, and Hope

Magic as a means of enacting physical changes upon the landscape has been around as long as humanity, and it wouldn’t have survived in such a multitude of ways and settings if there wasn’t something to it, something that worked. For a discussion of what magic is and why it works, and for those wanting a sound introduction to magical philosophy from a druid perspective, I’d suggest John Michael Greer’s Druid Magic Handbook as well as his Inside a Magical Lodge book (which is one of his most fantastic, if under-read, books). Any of the works of Dion Fortune are also very good for this (her novels are especially approachable). You don’t need these magical theories, but I find that they are very helpful for deepening your own understanding.

Whatever your philosophy on magic, the important thing is this–despite all of this destruction that you are bearing witness too, all over the lands–you are not powerless. We must shed that sense of powerlessness if we are to help the land heal at all.  An inner sense of empowerment is particularly critical for land healing work–if you go into the work saying, “I’m not going to make a difference, but I’m going to do this anyway” then you infuse your work with “I’m not going to make a difference.” If you go into it with the attitude of “I’m going to help heal this land” then that is what you infuse your work with. This is not to say that you can’t feel anything else–we are hit with a range of emotions when we see lands in need of healing. Those are human, feeling responses, and they too can be channeled into the work at hand. I would be more worried if you didn’t feel anything (and so many people don’t!)  What I am saying, however, is that the defeatist attitude of “I can’t do anything” is not one to bring with you into the healing work.

I want to say one more thing here concerning the preliminaries–anyone, anywhere, can do this work. You can be brand new to this work, to being a druid or new to walking any other earth-centered path, spiritual or otherwise–and that doesn’t matter.  What matters, here, is a willingness to learn, to grow, and engage in the work of healing.

Step One – The Process of Unfolding: Deep Listening

The first step in any healing work–energetic, physical, or palliative–is to pay attention to the needs and messages of the land. You might think about this listening process as similar to building any other friendship. Let’s say you meet someone on the street and you get talking. This person appears fairly run down, old coat, wearing gloves, possible chronic illness, and so on. You wouldn’t immediately give this person $20 out of sympathy or a new set of gloves–perhaps she doesn’t want those things or need those things, or perhaps you were mistaken in your assessment. The only way you can know for sure is to actually get to know this person and see if there is any actual help you can provide that is appropriate and reasonable. Lands, especially damaged lands, need the same kind of respect. They won’t automatically “like you” and be open to you; assuming what they need before actually finding out is a real problem.  In fact, many lands are quite the opposite–they have been actively harmed by humans and are very closed off to human activity. So the question is–how can you build that friendship?  How are you any different than others?

This first step is directly connected to both druid spiritual practice and permaculture design and represents a synthesis between them. On the side of druid practice, one of the very first things new druids often do is to spend observing nature. AODA teaches this in two ways spending time in nature in stillness and in focus. These ways of observing (which I blogged about in detail last year) help us see, the physical landscape. But there is also the matter of observing with your intuitive senses, those beyond the original five (see Deep Listening, below).

Permaculture design also provides a similar suggestion to druid practice; the first design principle in permaculture is to observe and interact. Before we do any physical regenerative work on a site, we must first observe and interact with that site to understand it so that we are able to work with nature’s flows and rhythms. As a permaculture designer, this would happen through what we call site analysis and assessment–where we’d look at the wind, rain, slope, ecology, light, pollutants, and so many other features. As an energetic land healer, this assessment still takes place, but through deep listening.  In permaculture design, the recommendation for observing and interacting before making changes to the landscape is a full year.  The idea here is that we can’t get a full sense of the land or what changes would be best if we don’t spend time first understanding it in all its cycles and seasons–and this is wise advice for land healing. I don’t think that this longer time frame is unreasonable for land healing either in many cases, truthfully, and we can learn much from understanding that speed is not ideal in most cases (we’ll look at one case where it is critical in an upcoming post, however). I wouldn’t prescribe any set time for the process of deep listening as a land healer, but recognize that this first step may likely not happen in one sitting :).

Deep Listening. To begin the healing work then, we need to do deep listening to the land on the inner planes and outer planes (please see my posts on tree workings for additional specific methods of doing this deep listening). This deep listening to the needs of the land is critically important for the healing work you are going to undertake–what does the land want and need? How can you best serve the land? The question of how to go about this healing is an important one. Depending on how long you’ve been on this path, and what your own gifts are, you may not need any advice in this area. But for those of you who are newer to this work and are still developing your gifts, there are many ways to listen, and here are a few of them:

• Gut feelings and inner knowing. All of us have “gut feelings”, although the nature of them depends on how much we’ve honed that intuitive gift.  Sometimes, when I meet new land that is in need of healing–and in want of that healing–I get a strong gut feeling about it. I just know what I am to do, its like it unfolds from within. I won’t immediately act on it, but rather check it with other methods of deep listening.
• Listening on the outer planes. Deep listening involves listening with both your ears and your soul. Just like you were sitting with that person you met, listen to the sounds and the silences of the landscape. The silences are just as important as what is said. This is particularly true as the silences of the natural world are descending on the landscape–what sounds should be there but are not there? What else do you hear or not hear?
• Other Senses on the Outer Planes. When we listen to someone, say, a friend who is telling us of his suffering, we don’t just listen with our ears.  We look at them, we may use our sense of touch or any other senses.  Your other physical senses are also part of this deep listening work.  By this, I suggest paying attention to the plants, animals, waters, wind, birds, etc.  Walk around the site and observe.  Sit still–for at least 30-45 min–and observe. The land can speak through many forms–pay attention to all that you see.
• Listening to the inner planes. Deep listening involves listening with both your ears and your soul. There are many strategies for inner listening, and I gave a number of them in my post on Druid Tree Workings (and I refer you there). One of the best strategies I use for meditation is to sit still, quiet my mind, and open it to the land and see what messages come. This takes practice–we have to quiet our own thoughts enough to hear the land.  But with pratice, and time, messages will come. Messages may be in many forms, depending on your own gifts–you may hear inner messages, see images (like see you doing something), get a strong feeling, etc. If you are new, it might be that you will learn how to do this through the process of deep listening in this particular spot–so come back often, and know it takes time to develop these senses. Be open to these, and don’t doubt your intuition.
• Divination. I usually like to check my responses against some form of divination. You can use tarot, geomancy, a pendulum, iChing, ogham, etc.  Use that to ask questions about the nature of the messages you receive.  I like to use this as a secondary approach, to confirm my suspicions.

Small, Slow Solutions. The second principle of permaculture that interacts with this step is the idea of small, slow solutions. Land healing is a process of unfolding.  It’s a process that may unfold over seasons or years–this is the time under which the land lives–and these are the same cycles and seasons that govern our own lives, even if we have become disconnected from them. What this means is that sometimes, this listening will take time, many visits, and intuition. You may not get a clear sense of what to do on your first visit. The land works on the seasonal cycle and moves at a different pace than you do. Nature heals slowly, but surely, and so it may take time for you to ascertain what, if anything you are to do. Begin by taking the time, the real time, to listen to the land.

Step 2 – Ascertaining the Nature of Healing Work and Building Trust

The whole point of step one is to take the time to ascertain the nature of the healing work on two levels. First, ascertain the kind of work that needs to be done: Is this physical land healing work? Energetic healing? Palliative care? Should I be doing any work at all? The most important thing you can do, if you are doing energetic work, is to ascertain which kind of healing you should be engaging in or should not be engaging in. Part of this is that you need to understand the history of the land in terms of past use by humans, present use, and future use by humans.  Some of my earlier posts in the series looked into this in more detail.  And so, this second step is about now that you’ve done your deep listening, you can ascertain the nature of the work at hand.

One of the key questions above is the last one I listed–should I be doing any work at all?  In some places, nature prefers to heal on her own and does not want outside help. And if that is what your deep listening has revealed, respecting that boundary, and honoring it, is a tremendous healing step forward for the land. I know this seems counter-intuitive, but I encourage you to think about it this way: the land has repeatedly had boundaries crossed by humans without its consent. A human who respects and honors a boundary is a tremendous step forward and shows the land that not all humans are there for exploitation. So if this is the message that you receive, do as is asked, and understand that that, too, is a deep kind of healing work.  It might be that you are asked to walk away permanently, or, perhaps at a later point months or years later, when you return, you are then invited to do healing work.  Walking away can be a kind of test, or it might be the genuine desire of the land at that time.  Regardless, when you are told not to engage, respect that voice and leave.

A good deal of this initial work–deep listening, walking away, planning for healing–also functions to build trust between you and the land.  If you are healing the land, it’s because something or someone (most likely humans) damaged it. Trust is critical for real healing to begin. Again, I’ll go back to our human analogy here–someone who has been tremendously hurt by others may not want you running up and giving them a big bear hug–trust is slow.  The land is no different: trust must be built.

Conclusion

I think some might respond to what I’ve written in this blog post today and say, “wait, there’s no actual magic here!”  Yes, what I’m talking about above is magic, although not in the ceremonial or ritual sense. You can’t be effective in a ritual sense if you don’t do this magical groundwork.  In fact, you’ll notice I’ve been taking quite a bit of post to get into the actual magical practices of land healing work. This is very much by intention–the groundwork, the preparation, is so key for this. If you don’t do this work, the rituals will not have the effects you want them to have. I think there’s this idea in the earth-based spiritual communities of finding a ceremony or ritual or whatever, from whatever source, that sets the intention and then does it. You look it up in a book, do the works, and wait for the results. Land healing is not like this and because it’s healing work, it must be done slowly, intentionally, and respectfully.  The magic is in the process of unfolding, and the ritual or ceremony is the final stage of that work in some cases. I also want to mention here that not all healing is ritual or ceremony–there are many other ways of healing, and we’ll be exploring those in detail as well. So if you’ve followed along this far, hopefully, what I am saying here is clear to you–next week we’ll delve deeper into the magic of land healing and move on to the next steps! (And yes, the ritual and ceremony are coming, when we are ready to talk about them! :P)