Traditional Peoples
"Traditional peoples live within their own poem even if we sometimes lack the ability to translate their lives into a language that we understand. My nomad friends taught me to respect their existence for what it is: simple, uncluttered, wild. It may not produce great works of art or scientific discoveries of note, but it does have the power to explore the most mysterious realm of all — that of the interworld. Let us give praise, then, for their discovery of what is purely imaginary within ourselves: the wild spirit of nature that lies in the fathomless gaze of all animals when they acknowledge us as being at one with them."
— Letters from a Wild State
Living Through Their Totem
"Paul Valery was right when he wrote that if each man were not able to live a number of other lives beside his own, he would not be able to live his own life. My nomad friends regard this as their reason for consciously living through their totem, [identifying with a special animal] for their totem gives them access to other lives, the opportunity to fulfill their own by inhabiting that realm we know of as the imagination. . . . Their totem partakes of what is most secret in themselves. Like mistletoe, it draws energy and is sustained by what is most rooted in a man's heart. Yes, you are right, it is his sense of wonder that encourages him to look beyond himself."
— Letters from a Wild State
Desacralized Sacred Dances
"He informed me then of the sadness he felt at watching one of his tribal dances enacted by uninitiated children. You see, this man was conscious of the danger which can arise when events are desacralised. In his opinion the children of his village were not privy to the esoteric knowledge that made the dance a ritual enactment. Performance without any understanding of the hidden meaning meant the dance had been reduced to a mere husk in the interest of entertainment."
— Letters from a Wild State
Wild Places
"I now realise that a man requires intimate and solitary contact with wild places if he is to survive. When he is deprived of this state he begins to withdraw into himself, a prey to inner demons and the psychic wallpaper that passes for his estrangement from any genuine inner life. Since we have lost our thirst for limpidity, we have sought instead to invest our outward persona with all the heraldic mantling of modern life. The physical world has become our shield upon which we fashion all the augmentations of material well-being and status."
— Letters from a Wild State
Nature as a Tonic to the Soul
"We should never forget how important the wild world of nature is as a tonic to the soul. Religious doctrine may give form to the great metaphors, the myths and rites that govern our lives. It may grant us mystical insight by the way of ascetic disciplines such as those experienced by St. John of the Cross, Maximus the Confessor or Dante. It may even lead us along paths of spiritual enlightenment whereby we personally attain a deeper sense of well-being, even bliss. But it is to the earth upon which we walk that we should occasionally look if we are to preserve our intellectual and spiritual heritage. If we destroy this because of our insensitivity to it as a metaphysical environment, we are in danger of destroying ourselves.
"This is the great lesson all traditional peoples can teach us: how to protect who we are by protecting what made us. As one old tribesman remarked to me, 'If we do not sing the songs, the animals will go away. Then we will all die.' Clearly the act of expressing the connateness between man and earth is important to the survival of all species."
— Letters from a Wild State
No Cares
"The realm of traditional peoples holds a strange fascination for many of us who live outside its frontiers. On those few occasions when we do manage to cross over into its territory, we often find ourselves affronted by its wild and untrammeled spirit. It seems to us that such people have no cares, nor do they look to the future with anything like the same concern as we do. They appear to exist in a timeless vacuum whereby their immediate concerns are confined to survival and the ritual practice of their beliefs. In no way do they embrace the broad spirit of our age, with its emphasis upon achievement, success, and the acquisition of goods."
— Messengers of the Gods
Cult Heroes of Aboriginals
"Aboriginal men and women still perform secret rituals associated with their veneration of the Sky Heroes of the Dreaming. These cult heroes take the form of spirit beings whose shape and dimension resembles various species on earth. Marlu the Great Kangaroo or Maletji the Law Dog, Ungud the Rainbow Snake or the mouthless Wandjinas — all of them are celestial beings whose origins lies in the Dreaming. They are world creators and lawgivers, each a spirit being of a particularly luminous splendor whom all Aborigines revere through the enactment of secret rites, songs, and totemic dances. The Sky Heroes are not gods as such, but celestial entities capable of acting as companions and guides."
— Messengers of the Gods
Reverence and Awe
"Whenever I discussed spiritual matters with my friends, I was struck by the sense of awe and reverence that permeated their thoughts. At these times they were no longer tribesmen afflicted with the normal worries and cares of this life; they had become men of distinction, wise men, seers almost, as they expounded the mysteries of nature. They reveled in the opportunity to escape conventional reality and tramp the lofty summits with their spirits and Sky Heroes. There they felt freer, more able to be themselves — or more exactly, to be somebody other than themselves. They had allowed a state of mysterium tremendum to wash over them like a gentle tide, filling their minds with the tranquil mood of deepest worship."
— Messengers of the Gods
