The Lost Languages of the Earth

(an invitation to whole earth animism)

My mother was a magical gardener. A gardenia, the size of a VW bug, was in constant, fragrant, ecstatic bloom in our dining room. The fig tree in the kitchen dropped its fruit, ripe and sweet, at our feet. The ferns in the living room had tendrils that wrapped around the piano, the stereo system, the standing lamps.

I once asked my mother, when I was still little, when I realized that other people’s houses weren’t exactly like ours, how she did it. “What’s your secret?”

She looked at me, as she studied one of the rose bushes climbing up the side of our house, typically distracted, vaguely appalled. “I just put them where they like to be.” She pulled a beetle off a leaf and squished it between her fingers.

“But how do you know where they like to be?"

She turned to me, an expression of disdain on her face that withered my soul. Somehow I’d missed the transmission. I might speak fluent housecat, with a smattering of inbred golden retriever, but I didn’t know how to talk to plants. My mother couldn’t believe it. Her daughter, her daughter, had no idea what the plants were saying.

She did not teach me how to do this. She offered no instruction. I don’t think she even dared acknowledge what a witch she was. But that was the day I began listening and realizing that all beings were speaking to each other just not necessarily with words we knew or languages we could study. We could only grow quiet, immerse ourselves in their presence, and begin to accept their guidance.

Anyone who has listened to The Telepathy Tapes knows that there are more ways of communicating, probably better ways of communicating, with each other than just talking.

The truth is we all know how to do this, we all speak many more languages than we know—we can receive the messages of the moon, the love letters of the trees, and the prophecies of the birds. We can begin to know where all things like to be—including ourselves.

When I finally met my husband Clark Strand, we both quickly realized that we shared a conversation with the unseen world and we helped each other to step into an entirely different belief-sphere than modern materialism insisted was real. The world was speaking. We were listening.

That is the belief-sphere we want to invite people to share with us this coming year. How do we receive the wisdom of the dirt, what happens when the trees become our teachers, how can we become fluent in the languages of the earth again? Whole Earth Animism promises to be a feral and fecund exploration of all that we might grow in our lives—and in this world—if only we knew where everything liked to be.

Find out more here:

https://takebackthemagic.com/whole-earth-animism/

And if you haven’t yet listened to The Telepathy Tapes…what are you waiting for? Disclaimer: I found the first two episodes kind of boring and pedantic BUT by the third I was hooked and by the sixth I was shouting with joy and relief. Yes! This kind of slow methodical scientific introduction is what many people need to recover these lost ways of knowing and being. AND the series is a tribute to Mothers—who pay attention, who trust their hearts, listen to their intuition, and recognize their children for who they really are.

If you are fascinated by my mother (everyone was), then you can find out a lot more about her in my paid subscription pieces where I share excerpts from my coming book about her: Mothers of Magic.

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Perdita Finn is the author of Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World and the forthcoming Mothers of Magic. With her husband Clark Strand she is the founder of the anarchic ecological fellowship The Way of the Rose and the co-author of the book of the same name.