Love, Nature, Magic

In this inspirational and instructive book, gardener Maria Rodale – whose grandfather founded the famous organic health brand – shares her shamanic conversations with the spirits of plants and animals, each of whom has its own message to her personally and for humanity. The title indicates the key themes and reminds us of our intrinsic belonging as well as the aliveness and intelligence of nature. She sees love as primal but also as a path that opens up a magical world. Gardeners will recognise the perennial adversarial struggle against weeds, but there is a deeper message here from such species as mugwort and thistles. Mugwort tells her that her anger at weeds is bad for her heart, and that ‘plants rule the world’ – besides, the plant is good for the heart! The message of the thistle is to dig deep, and more generally that we need to listen to and work with nature rather than attempt to dominate everything in our own interests.

Some journeys are more uncomfortable, for instance ticks, mosquitoes and vultures representing death and rebirth – in this journey, she is told by a dragon that ‘the more love you feel, the bigger and brighter your energy will be. The less love you feel, the smaller and weaker your energy is.’ (p. 47) Deer tell her ‘We keep things in balance, but we need more wildness to thrive. In return, we nourish you.’ (p. 114) Snakes represent earthly pleasures as well as wisdom, saying that ‘we are all evolving and travelling upward on the spiral of life’ - adding that ‘domination does not bring love. And love is the only thing that satisfies our hunger… our job here as a whole planet is to move towards love.’ (p. 132/4) Weather is responsible for keeping Earth in harmony while our role as humans is to follow a path of respect, kindness, gentleness, reciprocity and appreciation. We are also encouraged to sing and dance: ‘sing the world into being’, say the fungi: ‘We are magic. You are magic. The universe is magic.’ (p. 202)

It is the tick that tells her to stop trying to control everything and that we should groom ourselves and each other. The cicada speaks of the relationship between the lower, middle and upper worlds in terms of a universal law of scale, adding that ‘we all need the darkness to grow’, and that ‘your job is to grow from darkness to light, from ignorant to knowing and wise, from hate and fear to love’ (p. 181) – all this is part of the dance of life. So we need to dream a new dream on the basis that ‘everything in nature is conscious, sentient, intelligent, and highly aware. Anyone can listen, hear, and understand the voices of nature. You just need to be willing to open yourself to them and listen. Nature wants us to know.’ (p. 205) Maria concludes that ‘our unique role in healing planet Earth is to heal ourselves. Healing ourselves means healing our hearts, and healing our hearts means learning how to love.’ (p. 206) In this respect, reciprocity and regeneration are our magic wands, and, ‘by using our power for good, we can create a future that is not dominated by fear, war, and suffering.’ (p. 208) There is so much deep wisdom here if we are prepared to listen.