Spirit in the Stones

It’s been quite a while since I blogged. Life just gets in the way sometimes, and with so many maddening things going on in the world right now and demanding our attention it sometimes feels like there’s simply too many targets to write about. Anyway, a week’s break in the depths of rural Herefordshire on the edge of the Forest of Dean has cleared my headspace enough for a few thoughts to trickle out onto some digital paper.

Quite often it’s a throwaway comment, a snatch of conversation or a line on Facebook that sparks off a line of thinking. In this case, it was a friend who openly pondered the possibility that animals and other things might have souls. Now, of course, to someone from a remote tribe, or the distant past, or even a modern pagan, Buddhist or mystical Christian the answer would be of course they have souls – everything does! Such an obvious truth would be self evident.

However, for someone who has been born into the industrial age and raised on a steady diet of science and materialism, such a question is not just debatable; it’s absurd. As such, my friend fielded a reply from someone who took issue with the idea that souls might be evenly distributed among things – living or otherwise – in the material world. “I’m willing to accept that humans might have souls, and perhaps even some animals,” he offered generously, “but where do we draw the line? Birds? Frogs? Worms? I refuse to accept that!”

It was perhaps surprising that he was willing to consider that humans might have souls, as it’s common now to assume that a “soul” has some sort of material correspondence that science hasn’t got around to categorising just yet, a complex chemical compound, perhaps. Nevertheless, his line of reasoning seemed to be that “we”, as the alpha species to emerge from a randomised matrix of replicating cellular organisms, get to decide the non-material attributes of other lifeforms based on some kind of arbitrary code. It’s a common enough attitude, and it’s convenient to view – say – a cow as a walking unit of tasty meat if you enjoy eating burgers and steaks. Whether the cow has some form of intrinsic worth or not becomes uncomfortable to ponder, especially if you’re someone who has a pet cat or dog living in your home.

But what about a worm? The Bijago people, who live in the Bissagos Islands off the coast of Guinea Bissau would have no problem assigning a soul to a worm. In fact, like most people who’ve managed to evade the industrialised world to a great extent, they view the whole of nature as a kind of cosmic soul soup in which we’re all ingredients. For them, no single species floats on the top like a spiritual crouton, we’re all in it together. Perhaps that’s why their islands are still a fecund paradise of biodiversity, covered in trees, surrounded by mangroves and packed with a riot of critters, including some of the deadliest snakes in Africa (whom they manage to get along with just fine).

But why stop at just living things? Can’t other things have a soul as well? What about the rocks, the rivers and the mountains? Or human-made things, such as computers and concrete carparks? How about planets such as the one you’re sitting on? I remember well when I first came across the idea that things are composed of spirit and have souls when I read an account by the travel writer Norman Lewis about his encounters with tribal people in modern India. In A Goddess in the Stones, Lewis seeks out some of the 50 million or so non-modern people living in the Subcontinent, most of which are animists. I was only about 20 when I first read it, but by the time I’d finished the book I had become intrigued by the idea that we are all woven together from the same cosmic wool.

Of course, the materialistic culture in which we are swimming (drowning?) rejects such ideas. It has to, because it’s a growth-hungry monster that demands to be fed forests, rivers, fish, night skies and organic human beings in ever greater amounts. If it stops growing it dies, and if more than just a tiny fraction of people were to wake up to the idea that they are connected to everything else within a vast web, then they would refuse to feed the monster. As above, so below goes the maxim; if we cut down a forest, we cut down a part of ourselves. It’s an arrangement without a long-term future.

But how do we free ourselves from this pernicious trap? Well, a good first step is to turn off the telly. A second step would be to throw it out of an upper storey window (after thanking it for its service – even TV’s have souls). After that, all that’s required to connect yourself to the real world-wide-web is a sense of stillness and an opening of the senses. Of course, that’s often denied us these days, with our overly-stimulated and frenetic way of life – and it seems designed to keep us like that – but getting out into nature can allow you to tune out the noise and pick up on the important frequencies and messages.

A couple of days ago I went on a walk in the forest, which was flush with new life of spring. The weather was damp and drizzly, but I didn’t mind – in such conditions it often feels somehow more mystical, and the stillness invites contemplation. No sooner had I stepped within its boundary did a small, solitary muntjac deer appear from some undergrowth, almost close enough to reach out and touch. Its antlers – Pan-like – were mere nubs protruding above an innocent face. We examined one another momentarily before it melted back into the undergrowth.

The forest was inviting and fresh. Huge beech trees and Scots pine towered over me as I walked along the trails between carpets of green. Lesser celandine and wood anemones brightened the scene, while patches of bluebells added splashes of colour to the glades. Wood spurge, with its unusual shaped leaves, grew in abundance, while ferns began to unpack themselves from the earth as they awoke after their long sleep – you could almost hear them yawning. Clear streams tumbled over stones, eager to reach the great River Wye, which flowed wide and slow like liquid glass in the valley below. In the forest on that Beltane day, it was easy to feel the soft embrace of the earth goddess, for which different cultures give different names.

On the way home I picked wild garlic from the roadside and made a pesto of it, eating it with mozzarella cheese on a sandwich. My muddy companion, Storm, happily chomped on the cleavers, whose delicate and sticky stems were poking up by the million. Being out in nature can feel like a world away from the busy city, with its hysterias and its dangers. But even in a city you can usually find nature and its rhythms in many places if you look for them.

So anyhow, now I’m back at the place we’re staying, and as I’m sitting here trying to work out how to finish this piece I hear a sound outside the window. It’s a soft mooing sound. I get up and look – some young bullocks in the next field are looking up at the window. I snap a picture of them with my phone – I’ll let them have the last word …