Wild Earth, Wild Soul A Manual for an Ecstatic Culture
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Pfeiffer’s Wild Earth, Wild Soul is a recipe for realizing our greatest
longing: to live in a culture rooted in the Earth where each of us is
treated with love and respect. Filled with indigenous wisdom; this
rich, practical offering provides a way for small groups to
experience that now as well as hope for the well-being of future
generations.
Thom Hartmann
A bridge is being built between indigenous beliefs that have been
environmentally successful for millennia and the wise probing
recently of intelligent non-Indians. Pfeiffer is an excellent bridge
builder. Wild Earth, Wild Soul is a must read.
Ed Eagleman McGaa
Pfeiffer offers a valuable step forward in advancing our lives and the
lives of our children—a life not only of compassion but also of
ecstasy.
Manitonquat (Medicine Story)
Bill Pfeiffer’s book is a generous and deeply felt articulation of how
we can approach sustainable habitation of this planet that is our
home. And, most uniquely, it supports people in feeling, rather than
suppressing, the deep emotions they have about the damage to our
planet. And from those deep feelings, to trust the crafting of a
genuine individual response to that damage.
Stephen Harrod Buhner, author of The Secret Teachings of Plants,
The Lost Language of Plants, and Ensouling Language.
Wild Earth, Wild Soul: A Manual for an Ecstatic Culture is a major
contribution to indigenous wisdom at a time when it is much
needed by an ailing modernity. It provides an insightful entry into
life-giving changes much craved for, and must be read with deep
reverence.
Malidoma Some
First published by Moon Books, 2013
Moon Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., Laurel
House, Station Approach,
Alresford, Hants, SO24 9JH, UK
[email protected] www.johnhuntpublishing.com
www.moon-books.net
For distributor details and how to order please visit the ‘Ordering’
section on our website.
Text copyright: Bill Pfeiffer 2012
ISBN: 978 1 78099 187 0
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or
reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner
without prior written permission from the publishers.
The rights of Bill Pfeiffer as author have been asserted in accordance
with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library.
Design: Stuart Davies
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
We operate a distinctive and ethical publishing philosophy in
all areas of our business, from our global network of authors to
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CONTENTS
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 Why a Wild Earth Intensive?
Chapter 2 How to Use This Book
Chapter 3 A Note to Guides and Facilitators
Chapter 4 A Spiritual Permaculture
Chapter 5 Getting Started: Guidelines and Overview
Chapter 6 Listening
Chapter 7 Feeling and Healing
Chapter 8 Nature Immersion and Connection
Chapter 9 The Power of Story
Chapter 10 Ceremony
Chapter 11 Altered States of Consciousness
Chapter 12 Play
Chapter 13 Stillness
Chapter 14 Elders and Mentors
Chapter 15 The Magic of Mentoring: Including an Interview with
Mark Morey
Chapter 16 Art and Music
Chapter 17 Vision and Manifestation
Chapter 18 Final Thoughts
Appendix: Wild Earth Intensive Sample Schedule
Reference Notes
Selected Bibliography
For Ariel, Aminy, Abby, and Emily, daughters of the Earth.
May they continue to shine like the sun.
Foreword
by John Perkins
I’ve known Bill Pfeiffer since he first came to one of my workshops
in the mid-nineties. The subject of the workshop was ecstasy and
indigenous wisdom. I noticed that a fire was starting to burn within
him to really know this subject—not as a temporary high but as a
way of life.
During that time, I led many trips to the Amazon and the Andes
where a wild and connected relationship with nature was part of the
present, not a relic of the past. I shared with Bill much of what I
learned. Bill, in turn, told me about his adventures in Siberia. There
he experienced the ecstatic culture of several indigenous tribes
embedded in a dazzling mosaic of rivers, steppe, and snowcapped
mountains.
A bond formed between us, centered on this common experience
and a common aspiration. How could we preserve ancient wisdom
and adapt it for our own people? How could we change the modern
vision that “technological progress will provide ultimate fulfillment”
into an Earth-honoring dream?
A Shuar shaman deep in the Amazon once told me:
The world is as you dream it. You in the North have dreamed of lots
of cars, huge buildings, extreme materialism. Your dream came true
and now threatens to destroy the Earth as we know it. But you can
change that, create sustainable societies among your people. Just
help your people change that dream.
Wild Earth, Wild Soul sprang from the Earth herself. It takes complex
concepts and puts them together in a user-friendly way. It doesn’t
merely ask, “What if?” It shows the reader how to. It is a manual for
creating a culture that works with, not against, nature. Bill makes it
clear that to achieve this balance, we must go deep into our own
souls. It’s not about duplicating the customs and mores of Native
cultures, but rather is about having the courage to take the amazing
journey into the depths of who we are. On that journey, we can find
a different way to see; reality becomes a high-definition experience
that is malleable and full of possibility.
Talk is cheap. Bill invites you to see for yourself through his Wild
Earth Intensive. You will soon find out what that is.
And he takes the long view. Yes, we need to do everything we
can to slow and stop the Earth-destroying juggernaut of materialistic
consumption, but at the same time we need to start putting in place
the kind of culture our descendants will inherit with gratitude. That
will require patience, discipline, and tenacity. Bill’s recipe makes
this sacred work a joy.
What’s most original about Wild Earth, Wild Soul is not the parts,
but the whole. Where else are you going to find the ingredients of a
thriving nature-based culture all in one place along with a practical
method of experiencing them?
Read it and take it to heart for our children’s sake. And also take
it to heart if you long to inhabit a world imbued with beauty.
Acknowledgments
If it were not for Larry Buell, Jeffrey Weisberg, Moses Draper, Nika
Fotopulos-Voeikoff, Cathy Pedevillano, Ivan Ussach, Llyn Roberts,
and my dear mother, Naomi Pfeiffer, this book would not have been
written. They have provided invaluable inspiration and support.
Thank you!
Chris Crotty, Jeremiah Wallack, Erjen Khamaganova, Shanti
Gaia, Shen Pauley, Jackie Damsky, Shea McGovern, Chas DiCapua,
Heart Phoenix, Una Gallagher, Mark Morey, Jim Beard, Miriam
Dror, Jason Cohen, Pam McDonald, Hilary Lake, Paul Rezendes, Jari
Chevalier, Susan Cutting, Dave Jacke, Kemper Carlsen, Lydia Grey,
Jim Farnham, and Ann Kaplan have kept me on track, filling in key
pieces at just the right moment. Thank you!
I am deeply grateful to Roberta Louis, who managed to continue
superb editing through most difficult circumstances, and to Lorrie
Klosterman for making sense out of the chaotic mess that I first
handed her. And to the indefatigable Lynnette Struble, whose copy
and line editing, and many other outstanding contributions to the
book defined the term excellence.
Thank you to the one hundred and twenty-six people who
contributed financially. I know who you are and you are greatly
appreciated.
My deepest thanks to my human elders and teachers: Joanna
Macy, John Perkins, and the late Leon Secatero. And especially to
Thomas Berry, who made his transition into the spirit world a few
days before the impetus for writing this book occurred.
And most of all, praise and gratitude to our cosmic parents,
Mother Earth and Father Sky, who always teach unconditional love.
Introduction
All will come again into its strength:
the fields undivided, the waters undammed,
the trees towering and the walls built low.
And in the valleys, people as strong and varied as the land.
And no churches where God
is imprisoned and lamented
like a trapped and wounded animal.
The houses welcoming all who knock and a sense of boundless offering
in all relations, and in you and me.
No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond,
no belittling of death,
but only longing for what belongs to us and serving earth, lest we
remain unused.
—Rainer Maria Rilke
It was the twelfth of June, 1998. My friend and I had just returned
from the deserts of Utah, where we had been on a vision quest that
seemed rather ordinary at the time. It had been beautiful and
powerful, yet in a very modest kind of way. There had been no
“fireworks,” no messages from on high. But, after having prayed and
fasted for four days, I was not concerned about the outcome of the
quest, because the beauty of the red rock was now in the marrow of
my bones.
That evening, the two of us had dinner and went to sleep at the
Prospector Lodge in the small town of Moab. The name of the motel
would soon prove portentous. To my complete surprise, a “vein of
gold” would appear just a few hours later, when I awoke from one
of those vivid, Technicolor dreams that make waking life seem black
and white by comparison. I immediately grabbed some paper and
started to write down whatever streams of ideas I could hold on to
from the torrent of information that had flooded through me during
the dream. There was no premeditation or sense of control as I
wrote. “I see a vision of peace” was the first line. “I see the Warriors
of the Rainbow* remembering who they are” was the second. The
feeling tone was one of both exhilaration at the possibilities for
human transformation and urgency about completing certain tasks
before “The Change.”
The Change—a shift of gargantuan proportions for the human
race that I was convinced lay just ahead, in my lifetime—rever-
berated through my consciousness. I had thought about it a lot as an
intellectual concept, but at that moment, as I awakened from the
dream, I experienced what felt like a tidal wave of revelation. The
Change is not about fire and brimstone, floods, or war, as many
have predicted. It’s about a complete break with an environmentally
unsustainable past. This vision did not promise that negative
scenarios were out of the question, but that they would not have the
last word. Something would outlive the death grip of industrial
civilization and it would be good.
I kept writing, and writing. A dozen pages later, there were three
overarching “instructions” in what had emerged on paper, all
written in a metaphorical and stilted style. In essence, they were:
