My 2020 Vision

by Nicholas Kingsley

My 2020 Vision:
This new decade that dawns carries with it a vast wave of possibility, a magick started long ago. This spell of change dates back to our elders and beyond. 2020 is not just any year, but the latest in a long cycle of creative renaissances. It is in these moments, when the baton of paradigm shifting power is passed, that those who stand to inherit the responsibility, make ready.

While these first 20 years of the new millenium have been shaped in many ways by conflict, I believe it is with the experience of these events that the Leaders of tomorrow will be able to develop empathy and understanding. I believe that these next few years will see a change in the way humanity views the world, and how we interact with it for the better. Working towards renewable energy, and exploring the heavens beyond our world for new answers. Whist there has been war, so too has communication and interconnectivity taken root and grown like a weed. Never before has it been so easy to speak with a friend on the other side of the country, or make a friend on the other side of the world!. In the years to come I see this interconnectedness continue to grow and flourish.

In this turning of the Age I see an opportunity to grow, heal, and live in a world we’ve only ever visited in our dreams.

For 2020 I set forth this intention, and wave my spell; Let those who come to power, be guided by the Wise and the Kind. Let good will for our fellow man be the hallmark and standard of all nations. Let the most ancient magick, shared by all sentient things, be proclaimed as that which moves mountains and tears down walls. Love. Let those who come, to lead and guide, do so out of love, and for the betterment of those they serve.
So mote it be!🧙‍♂️

Paul Hawken’s Blessed Unrest Review

Reviewed by Alder Moonoak

Environmentalist, entrepreneur, and journalist Hawken subtitled his 2007 book “How the Largest Social Movement in History is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World,” and in its pages he investigates groups across the planet with varying projects and agendas that are bringing about what he believes are profound transformations in human society. It’s an account of the people who are redefining “our relationship to the environment and to one another, healing the wounds of the Earth with passion and determination.” The book emerges from the author’s hundreds of lectures at which people from every walk of life approach him and share their personal or group work relating to environmentalism, peace, social justice, or indigenous wisdom. In time, the interconnections and dependencies between these groups became clear, along with their sheer number and scope—the author estimates there are over 100,000 such groups in the world, constituting the “largest social movement in history.” As Hawken counted the vast number of organizations, he began to postulate that the movement he observed was somehow organic or even biologic. He writes that this movement has a distinct history, “what poet Gary Snyder calls the great underground, a current of humanity that dates back to the Paleolithic.” The work of Reich, Ferguson, Thompson, Ray, and Anderson can be considered ‘surfacings’ of this underground and examples of its periodic recognition. 

Blessed Unrest begins with a general overview of the ubiquitous “movement,” each group sprouting “like blades of grass after a rain” and spreading across the globe. Because of its decentralization, the movement cannot be divided, because of its egalitarianism, it tends to disperse concentrations of power, and because of improvements in information technology, its growth has been significant. Hawken regards the movement as humanity’s response to crisis by persons with a particular set of values. 

Collectively, it expresses the needs of the majority of people on earth to sustain the environment, wage peace, democratize decision making and policy, reinvent public governance piece by piece from the bottom up, and improve their lives—women, children, and the poor.   

However, like Ray and Anderson, Hawken laments the movement’s virtual invisibility, which he attributes to the fact that cultural developments often do not fit conventional categories and to the resulting difficulties defining cultural changes on the gradual scale of generations or even centuries. Neither does the movement have strong ideologies to clearly identify and delineate it from the background cultural milieu or to create conflict between competing ideas and their supporters. Instead of grand normative isms, regional processes, community needs, pragmatic solutions, and compassionate responses lead to radical democracy uncorrupted by corporations or modern nation-states. The movement is vast, but because of corporate media myopia, its message, numbers, and underlying unity are lost to the public and the members of the movement themselves. 

The basic questions of Blessed Unrest concern that group of people who, invisible or not, form the minority progressive vanguard. Having attained a certain level of conscious awareness about the larger pictures of human and global interdependence, they act to deepen relationships between persons, groups, and Earth, and to heal wounds endured during the march of industrial civilization. 

This book asks whether a significant portion of humanity has found a new series of adaptive traits and stories more alluring than the ideological fundamentalisms that have caused us so much suffering.  

The “adaptive traits” characterize a change in behavioral patterns based on new knowledge and its dissemination through a population, and the “stories” indicate the changing of cultural mythos from the assumptions of modernity to the pragmatic necessities of what Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry call the Ecozoic Era. Old cultural stories begin to lose their power before the next story can fully develop. The passion of progressives for this fresh perspective is based on excitement for the project of developing the next culture founded on unique characteristics of the Ecozoic period. 

Hawken divides his book into chapters dealing with individual histories and influences of the movement, beginning with “The Long Green,” an examination of environmentalism. He argues that “The first generation—our own—to worry about global threats like nuclear proliferation and climate change is effectively ahistorical.” In other words, ecological concerns are unprecedented in history, and unique global issues require a holistic and transnational perspective with a planet-wide consciousness. The author traces the history of the environmental branch of the movement from Emerson’s Nature and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species to Carson’s Silent Spring and Brower’s Earth Island Institute, including the writings of Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, James Lovelock, and Stewart Brand. 

In the chapter “Immunity,” Hawken speculates that not only may the Earth be a single living entity, but humankind itself may form a collective organism integrated in mysterious and inexplicable ways. The answer to current difficulties is the nurturance of the human collective consciousness which has the power to initiate global innovations individuals or small groups can’t. The author further submits that such a massive mind acts as the planet’s immune system, responding to toxins like political corruption, economic disease, and environmental degradation. 

Just as the immune system recognizes self and non-self, the movement identifies what is humane and not humane. Just as the immune system is the line of internal defense that allows an organism to persist over time, sustainability is a strategy for humanity to continue to exist over time.

Comparing the human species in its capacity to rectify and correct disease in its collective body to the individual body’s complex system of protection gives a global perspective to the meaning of immune response. In similar fashion, the diverse network of organizations proliferating in the world today act to heal and maintain the planetary body, each group targeting specific pathogens to eliminate. Many people are now aware that the Earth is sick and that human history is rife with unnecessary human-made suffering. The process is slow and often discouraging as the same problems repeat over and over in a seemingly endless cycle of destruction. Most groups remain small with few resources, and it’s not easy creating a system with no antecedent; however, as with our previous authors, Hawken is optimistic, seeing momentous organizational energy forming to meet the monstrous tasks.

Groups are divided into several major categories: Keepers, Watchers, Friends, Defenders, Alliances, Conservancies, Incubator NGOs, Networks, Workers, Street performers, Culture jammers, Billionaire philanthropists, Social entrepreneurs, Foodies, and Free accessors. Each has its niche, but all share values relating to easing suffering, protecting the environment, supporting innovation, creating sustainable enterprises, addressing a specific need, or offering a service. The question is whether these groups can work together. Being separate entities working on different areas with varied goals does mean unification is challenging, but the underlying values and ultimate purposes of each collective provides a framework for finding common ground. Hawken suggests that diversity is strength and unity follows recognition.

If anything can offer us hope for the future it will be an assembly of humanity that is representative but not centralized, because no single ideology can ever heal the wounds of this world. This is the promise of the movement: that the margins link up, that we discover through our actions and shared concerns that we are a global family.    

The understanding that in our diversity we are whole represents a profound shift in consciousness, from isolated individuals to a unified community, millions of different human and organizational antibodies that can lock on to antigens, neutralize the invaders, and simultaneously signal for help. Hawken lists some of the antigens being actively addressed:

  • corrupt politics
  • climate change
  • corporate predation
  • death of the oceans
  • governmental indifference
  • pandemic poverty
  • industrial forestry and farming
  • depletion of soil and water

In the chapter “Restoration,” the author finds solace in the fierce efforts of the movement and its diversity. Such redundancy encourages resilience so that damage can be done on social and ecological levels and the system as a whole will continue to flourish. The interaction between humans and Earth must be stabilized, however, lest a serious disequilibrium develop which must be repaired by ejecting the source of the problem (us). The movement stimulates equilibrium by being balanced itself without requiring overriding structures, central authorities, or dominance that limits flexibility or calcifies porous boundaries needed for interconnectivity, cooperation, and growth. 

Hawken reminds us that spaceship Earth is powered by a mother ship, the Sun. In order to create real sustainability, humankind must learn to mimic the waste-recycling habits of nature so that, if possible, what was once pollution is reused. A trilogy of concepts—‘cradle to cradle,’ ‘waste equals food,’ and ‘staying within current solar income’—forms the basic tenets of the greening of industry and elimination of pollution and misuse. In other words, we need to realize that future generations will have to pay the price for current trends of gluttony and waste, that all waste is actually the food for some other element in the system, and that the Sun provides all the energy we could possibly need if we simply harvest it. The technical means for achieving a stable state economy exists; only the collective will is missing. The will is founded on more than expertise, outrage, or even suffering—it needs a source of passion and transcendence wherein the daunting problems we face can be overcome. It needs spirituality.

It has been said that we cannot save our planet unless humankind undergoes a widespread spiritual and religious awakening. In other words, fixes won’t fix unless we fix our souls as well.  

From spiritual teachers like Jesus and the Buddha who emerged during the ‘Axial Age’ come perennial values such as the Golden Rule, the sacredness of all life, and an active love for the world despite its imperfection. Hawken submits that “Compassion and love of others are at the heart of all religions, and at the heart of this movement.” It would seem that, like our other books, Blessed Unrest evinces a spiritual element to the community of faithful workers, whether they consciously regard themselves as spiritual or not. It takes a kind of faith to labor towards the unimaginable, to re-imagine the world in a way that fosters hope in things like growth without inequality, wealth without plunder, work without exploitation, and a future without fear. Through the spirit of healing, forgiveness, and determination to be born again can we transcend the wounds of the past and step into the sunlight of a new future.

For Hawken, the movement has no defining moment, no charismatic leaders, no book to fully describe it, because it’s “the breathing, sentient testament of the living world.” It constitutes an outgrowth of natural processes we see all around us. The movement is as organic as wildflowers and wind. In this way, the movement’s participants are following the natural course of the Earth itself as agents of the planet. We’re inseparably linked by a common destiny bound up with our ability to collectively turn the ship away from the rocks and into safe harbor. The author is optimistic that the dominant thinking of the movement will eventually influence every person, group, institution, and the whole planet’s consciousness, and will “change a sufficient number of people so as to begin the reversal of centuries of frenzied self-destructive behavior.” Commerce, government, schools, churches, and cities will learn to re-image the world from the bottom up based on the principles of justice and ecology. Remove whatever prevents the system from healing itself, and the future will dawn bright as sunshine. 

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THEAGENESIS: The Birth of the Goddess

by Oberon Zell

This paper represents the first published account of what has come to be known as “The Gaia Hypothesis” (the name suggested by novelist William Golding in 1972). It was the immediate result of a visionary experience that Oberon had on the night of September 6, 1970. This “revelation” was delivered in the form of a sermon to the congregation of the Church of All Worlds on September 11, 1970. Subsequently, it was published as the lead article in Green Egg—the vanguard journal of the Neo-Pagan movement—Vol. V, No. 40 (July 1, 1971), republished in the first issue of The Witches Broomstick magazine (Feb. 2, 1972), excerpted in Dr. Leo Louis Martello’s book, Witchcraft; The Old Religion (University Books, Inc. 1973), and delivered as a keynote lecture at the Third Annual Gnostic Aquarian Festival in Minneapolis, MN, Sept. 21, 1973. This updated and annotated edition was prepared for the California Institute of Integral Studies’ symposium on “Gaia Consciousness: The Goddess & the Living Earth,” April 6-10, 1988.

Conceptualizations of Divinity vary from religion to religion, with adherents of each faith misunderstanding, often grotesquely, the nature of the Divine as understood by the members of other faiths. Thus conservatives of a given religious system often tend to feel that all other religions are “false” but their own, and that other people all worship the Devil, while liberals will go to the opposite extreme and contend that all religions essentially worship the same Deity, under different guises and customs. Both of these points of view grossly misrepresent the fundamental distinctions among the various religions, and try to adapt alien world-views to fit into their own frameworks of experience.

It may be said that all religions are “true,” as indeed are all sincerely held opinions, in the sense that personal reality is necessarily subjective. In other words, what you believe to be true, is true, by definition. A Voudoun death-curse is as real to its victim, and as effective, as being “saved” is to a Christian fundamentalist, or the kosher laws are to an Orthodox Jew. A flat Earth, with the stars and planets revolving around it, was as real to the medieval mind as our present globe and solar system are to us. Hysteric paralysis and blindness are as real to the sufferer as their organic counterparts. The snakes and bugs of alcoholic and narcotic deliria are real to the addict, and so is the fearful world of the paranoiac. From the standpoint of human consciousness, there is no other reality than that which we experience, and whatever we experience is therefore reality—therefore “true.” We can only distinguish the experience of the objective world from those which lie entirely within our own minds when we compare notes with other people and arrive thereby at a consensus of reality. This consensus, however, is also subjective within the entire community, and is also liable not to be synonymous with objective reality (as in the case of the Geocentric cosmos). The question then arises, “How can we know objective reality?” and the answer, of course, is that we can’t; not totally. However, we can arrive at very close approximations of objective reality by careful applications of the scientific method combined with creative insight, and by refusing to fill in the gaps in our knowledge with blind “leaps of faith.”

Thus religions may be considered more or less objectively true (while recognizing that they are all subjectively true) by evaluating how much they depend on blind faith and belief over scientific understanding (and recognizing that we only speak of belief in the absence of knowledge; no one would say “I believe two plus two equals four”); how much they depend on tradition and authority over intellectual curiosity and honesty; how much (or how little) they are able to accommodate new discoveries in science and how much (or how little) these discoveries substantiate their theories and world-views. These are the criteria for objective validation of religious viewpoints. No subjective validation is needed (or even possible).

Ancient tribal peoples—that is, Pagans—diversified though they were, held among them certain common viewpoints. Among these were: veneration of an Earth-Mother Goddess; animism and pantheism; identification with a sacred region; seasonal celebrations; love-respect, awe and veneration for Nature and Her mysteries; sensuality and sexuality in worship; magic and myth; and a sense of humanity being a microcosm corresponding to the macrocosm of all Nature. These insights, however, were largely intuitive, as science had not yet progressed to the point of being able to provide objective validation for what must have seemed, to outsiders, to be mere superstition. 20th-century Neo-Paganism, however, has applied itself and the science of its era to that validation, and has discovered astounding implications.

A single cell develops physically into a human being by a process of continuous division and subdivision into the myriads of cells eventually required to comprise an adult body; groups of cells specializing to become the various organs and tissues needed for full functioning of the organism. Now, when a cell reproduces, the mother cell does not remain intact, but actually becomes the two new daughter cells. Since the same protoplasm is present in the daughter cells as was in the mother cell, the two daughter cells still comprise but a single organism; one living being. The original cell ceases to exist in that form, but its life goes on in the continuous evolution of the growing organism. Thus, the three trillion or so cells of the adult human body continue to comprise a single living organism, even though different cells may be highly specialized, and some may even be mobile enough to travel independently around in the collective body. No matter how complex the final form of the adult organism, no matter how diversified its component cells, the same thread of life of the original cell, the same protoplasm, continues coursing through every cell in that body. Since the gametes, or sex cells, are also included in this ultimate diversification of a single original cell, the act of reproduction carries this same thread on in the offspring, combined with the equivalent threat of protoplasm from the other parent. Thus your children, while spatially distinct from you, are in fact as much a part of your growing, evolving organism as your blood cells (which can easily be removed and survive independently of your collective body) or somatic cells (which can also be extracted and grown in independent tissue cultures). Your children are still “you”—your own living protoplasm continues on in their cellularly-diversified bodies. And in your children’s children for all generations to come. All the cells in all your descendents will still comprise but ONE LIVING BEING.

Tracing our evolution back nearly four billion years, through mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and so on, we eventually wind up with ONE SINGLE CELL that was the ANCESTOR OF ALL LIFE ON EARTH. Even though there were undoubtedly many proto-cells formed in those ancient seas [or clays, as is now thought—OZ, 1988], the first one to develop the capacity to reproduce would have quickly consumed all the available free proteins and amino acids floating in the sea, effectively preventing the development of any competitors. Cell reproduction occurs at a fantastic geometric rate, which, unchecked, would result in all the planet being buried beneath the progeny of a single cell within months. Obviously, what checked this fantastic reproductive potential was a limited food supply, which would have included any not-yet-formed or newly-formed competitive cells. But when this original mother cell reproduced itself, and continued to do so for aeons, some of its daughter cells mutating and evolving into new forms, it still, as in the human body, continued to comprise but a SINGLE total organism. When a cell divides and subdivides, NO MATTER HOW OFTEN, the same cellular material, the same protoplasm, the same life, passes into the daughter cells, and the granddaughter cells, and the great-granddaughter cells, FOREVER. NO MATTER HOW OFTEN or for how long this subdivision goes on, the aggregate total of the new cells continues to comprise ONE SINGLE LIVING ORGANISM!

[Note: Lewis Thomas, in Lives of a Cell, 1974, observes: “The uniformity of the Earth’s life, more astonishing than its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some single cell, fertilized in a bolt of lightning as the Earth cooled. It is from the progeny of this parent cell that we take our looks; we still share genes around, and the resemblance of the enzymes of grasses to those of whales is a family resemblance.”]

[Note: Science News “News of the Week,” Jan. 16, 1988: “Seekers of Ancestral Cell Debate New Data: A new, computerized method of analyzing bacterial genes is stirring controversy among biologists seeking to characterize the ancestral cell from which all life evolved. The novel program predicts that all living things evolved from a single-celled organism that had a penchant for living in boiling sulfur springs. The prediction conflicts with the popular notion that life began in a tepid primordial soup…” —SN, Vol. 133, No. 3]

Every amino acid (except glycine) found in the proteins of living organisms can exist in two forms, each one the mirror image of the other. Since they have the same spatial relationship as a pair of gloves, one type is arbitrarily designated “right-handed” (D, dextro) and the other “left-handed” (L, levo). The two forms are identical in chemical composition and physical properties. Were it not for the fact that they rotate a beam of polarized light in opposite directions, they would be indistinguishable. Now, when amino acids are synthesized in the laboratory, an equal amount of D and L forms are produced. Moreover, NASA recently [1970] reported the discovery of 17 different amino acids in a meteorite, with an almost equal number of D and L forms. In any given cell, of course, only one of these two variant forms can exist; either all the cell’s protein would contain D-acids, or they would all contain L-acids. And when the cell divides, whichever form was contained in the mother cell would be perpetuated in the daughter cells. If all life on Earth did not originate with a single cell, we would expect to find various creatures and plants with D-acids and others with L-acids. However, this is not the case: it is an established biochemical fact that ALL LIFE ON EARTH CONTAINS ONLY L-AMINO ACIDS! The equivalent D-acids are simply not found in any living organisms on this planet. Therefore, it is a biological fact that ALL LIFE ON EARTH COMPRISES ONE SINGLE LIVING ORGANISM! Literally, we are all “One.“

The blue whale and the redwood tree are not the largest living organisms on Earth; the ENTIRE PLANETARY BIOSPHERE is.

[Note: Dr. Leslie Orgel of the Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA, commenting on origins of Life on Earth: “But the evidence that interests us most…is the uniformity of all living systems on Earth today…If life had arisen and evolved spontaneously here…it seems at least possible that many very different forms of life would be competing with each other. But in fact we know that all living things have evolved from a single cell, which inhabited Earth about three or four billion years ago—and there don’t seem to be any traces of any extinct competitors which arose in different ways…” The implication was obvious. The first living cell, a single seed of protoplasm, a single microscopic organism, might have replicated itself billions and billions of times in short order. Its replicas would adjust to warmth or cold, evolving accordingly. In the course of time they would branch out along many different paths, and evolve as enzymes, genes, insulin, hemoglobin; they would organize into bone and muscles and organs and coordinate their work; they would begin the beating of hearts, the pumping of lungs, the vibrations of nerves, and ultimately, the flashes of thought. —In Search of Ancient Mysteries by Alan and Sally Landsburg, 1974, Bantam.]

Let us consider the following corollaries:

An organism is composed of many organs—more, obviously, in complex organisms than in simple ones. As an embryo develops, groups of cells specialize into each of the organs that the adult organism will require. At very early stages in cell differentiation, unspecialized cells can be moved from one part of the embryo to another, and the transplanted cells will still develop into whatever organs are needed in their new locations. Just so, the Planetary Organism (to which I will hereby give the scientific name of “Terrebia”) needs various organs in order to function properly. 

 [Note: As is customary in scientific nomenclature for living species, I based my name for the planetary organism on the Latin for “Earth life.” When, in 1972, James Lovelock independently came up with the observation of the organic unity of all terrestrial life, his friend, the novelist William Golding, suggested the name of the ancient Greek Earth Goddess: “Gaia.” Even though Greek is customarily used only in designating extinct species, in this case I yield primacy of the name to Golding, as I much prefer the connotations thereof. But I will use the American spelling, “Gaea,” to distinguish my development of the concept from Lovelock’s. Henceforth in this updated edition of my paper I will replace “Terrebia” with “Gaea.”—OZ, 1988]

Continuing the analogy with the human body, each animal and plant on Earth is the equivalent of a single cell in the vast body of Gaea. Each biome, such as pine forest, coral reef, desert, prairie, marsh, etc., complete with all its plants and animals, is the equivalent of an organ in the body of our biospheric Being; sub-structures and tissues consisting of types of plants and animals, such as trees, insects, grasses, predators, grazing ungulates, etc. All the components of a biome are essential to its proper functioning, and each biome is essential to the proper functioning of Gaea. If some essential elements of a biome are removed or destroyed, it may be possible for relatively unspecialized “cells” of plants and animals to differentiate out by adaptive radiation to become all the required components. The most classic recent case of this is the radiation of marsupials in Australia, following the demise of the dinosaurs, to fill all the ecological niches occupied elsewhere by placentals with creatures virtually identical in structure and habits with their placental equivalents. Moreover, recent [as of 1970] papers and books on the genetics of evolution, including Biophilosophy, stress that modern Darwinian theory has abandoned the notion of individuals determining the direction of the evolution of a species. Rather, the entire species seems to migrate towards a fortuitous ecological niche as if it had a sense of whither it needed to go. If all the mutations in the direction of such a change are destroyed, the species will produce more.

The non-living components of the planetary structure of the Earth itself serve the developing organism if Gaea much as the non-living components of our own bodies serve us. These components are the Lithosphere, the Hydrosphere, and the Atmosphere. The Lithosphere, the rock and mineral foundation of our planet, functions in the body of Gaea much as the skeleton functions in the human body—as foundation and structural support (like the Lithosphere, our own skeleton is largely mineral). The Hydrosphere, the water of oceans, lakes and rivers that covers three fifths of the surface of the Earth, functions homologously with the plasma in the blood of the human body, which, incidentally, has a composition very like the water in those primeval seas wherein life first appeared. The ocean tides may even be viewed as our planetary pulse, driven by the heartbeat of our orbiting moon. The atmosphere serves the great organism of Gaea much as it does us, as individual “cells”—in a carbon-cycle respiratory process, involving breaking down carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen by plants and building carbon and oxygen back up into carbon dioxide by animals. 

[Note: The observations which led to Lovelock’s formulation of the Gaia Hypothesis were concerned with the Atmosphere, in the same way that my own observations were of the Biosphere. Lovelock, an atmospheric biochemist, analyzed and noted a remarkable homeostasis of atmospheric composition and surface temperature over the past three billion years, and concluded that this could only be attributed to a biospheric regulatory mechanism.—OZ, 1988] 

What is the ultimate source of energy for Gaea—her “food?” Sunlight, which, through photosynthesis in green plants, converts materials of the Lithosphere, Hydrosphere and Atmosphere into the materials of life: the Biosphere.

Now, it follows that if a biomic component occupies a particular ecological niche in a given biome, it does so because it belongs there and is necessary to the proper functioning of that biome, and hence of Gaea. Further, if some plant or animal is missing from a particular biome, it is probably because it doesn’t belong there. Now, everybody realizes that the human body will not function properly if one removes, replaces or rearranges parts of it. You may survive if your leg is amputated, but you certainly won’t walk as well as before. This same principle of coherency applies to Gaea, as we are beginning to learn only too well. We cannot kill all the bison in North America, import rabbits to Australia, clearcut or burn off whole forests, or plow and plant the Great Plains with wheat and corn without seriously disrupting the ecosystem. Remember the dust bowl? Australia’s plague of rabbits? Mississippi basin floods? Recent drought in the Southwestern US? Gaea is a SINGLE LIVING ORGANISM, and her parts are not to be removed, replaced or rearranged without consequence.

Just as in the human body the brain and nervous system is the last organ to develop, so in Gaea the last biome to develop is the Noosphere, composed of Earth’s aggregate population of Homo Sapiens. 

[Note: “In man,” says Lovelock, Gaia has the equivalent of a central nervous system and an awareness of herself and the rest of the Universe. Through man, she has a rudimentary capacity, capable of development, to anticipate and guard against threats to her existence. For example, man can command just about enough capacity to ward off a collision with a planetoid the size of Icarus. Can it then be that in the course of man’s evolution within Gaia he has been acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to ensure her survival?” —”The Quest for Gaia,” New Scientist, Feb. 6, 1975] 

What function does humanity, as the Noospheric organ, the planetary “brain,” perform? It would seem at the present stage of evolution that the function of a biome of awareness would be to act as steward of the planetary ecosystem. Humanity’s purpose in Gaea, our responsibility, is to see that her whole organism functions at its highest potential and that none of her vital systems become disrupted or impaired. We might judge the state of humanity’s functioning in the macrocosmic realm by evaluating our performance of this organic responsibility.

[Note: Since writing the preceding paragraph back in 1970, I have radically altered my perception of humanity as a kind of planetary cerebral cortex, which function I am now firmly inclined to attribute to the Great Whales. Apropos of this attribution, I am now even more appalled than ever at humanity’s near-extermination of these vastly-brained leviathans, as I cannot avoid viewing it as a kind of planetary lobotomy. I have developed this idea at some extent in another paper, entitled “Mind Beneath the Silver Sky.” Regarding our own proper function, I have come to perceive us in a far different role: that of a reproductive system. For it is not true that the brain and nervous system is the last organ to develop in an organism; the ultimate objective of a living system is to reproduce itself, and the reproductive organs are the final product of physical development, be it embryological or evolutionary. Maturation essentially means achieving repro-ductive capability. I envision our greater purpose, capability and destiny as agents of planetary reproduction via extraterrestrial colonization and terraforming. However, I still include an ancil-lary and continuing function of ourselves as peripheral neurons and planetary stewards; after all, we as humans need not die in childbirth, but ideally continue to live long and productive lives beyond merely reproducing ourselves. —OZ, 1988]

When in the human body some cells start multiplying all out of control and excreting toxins into the bloodstream, we have a cancer. One of the ways cancer can be controlled is by radiation treatment At this moment, humanity as a species is multiplying wildly out of control and excreting vast quantities of deadly pollutants into the air, water and soil, If our own cancerous population growth is not halted—indeed, drastically reduced—our numbers and poisons will severely cripple or kill our planetary organism, Gaea. Perhaps nuclear war—a global “radiation treatment”—will be needed… But it is still to be hoped that it is not to late for us to wake up to our responsibility of stewardship. 

 [Note: In reading these words, 18 years later, I am appalled at how casually I invoked nuclear holocaust as an antidote for the cancer of our species. Studies on the “nuclear winter” scenario, as well as the recent discoveries concerning asteroid/comet impacts as agents of massive extinctions in the past, have severely curtailed any prospect of Gaea’s ability to survive a nuclear war. She has her own devices for regulating overpopulation: plague, famine, drought, flood, etc. Or we could save ourselves a lot of grief and just decide not to have so many children…—OZ, 1988]

Gaea is nearing maturity. All the physical ecological niches have been filled, and the recently developed Noosphere now extends over the entire globe. . . Projecting a bit, it would seem most reasonable that Teilhard de Chardin was correct in his vision of an emerging planetary consciousness, what he called the “Omega Point” (The Phenomenon of Man) and Carlton Berenda calls “The First Coming of God” (The New Genesis). The maturation of a Planetary Biosphere requires the evolution of total telepathic union among the “cells” of its Noosphere (its most intelligent species; humanity). When such an intelligent species ultimately develops telepathy to the extent that it eventually shares a single global consciousness, a PLANETARY MIND awakens in the “brain” (Noosphere) of the Biosphere. 

 [Note: “Lewis Thomas can readily see the worldwide community of humans as a kind of giant brain, exchanging thoughts so rapidly ‘that the brains of mankind often appear, functionally, to be undergoing fusion.’ With mankind as its ‘nervous system,’ the whole earth becomes, in one of Thomas’s highest flights of fancy, a breathing organism of finely meshed parts, all growing together under the ‘protective membrane’ of the planet’s own atmosphere.” “The Boswell of Organelles,” Newsweek, 6/24/74] 

This is our human destiny—our ultimate function in the organism of Gaea. 

[Please, gentle readers; forgive this hubris. I’ve outgrown it. I consider that we could—and should—be participants in this awakening of planetary consciousness, but I hardly believe any longer in our exclusive claim to sentience on this planet! As I mentioned earlier, I heartily do believe that whales, for instance, are way ahead of us in this department. Actually, I think that the planetarization of consciousness would, by its very nature, include “all creatures great and small…”—OZ, 1988] 

And just as the brain in the human body is capable, via the conscious mind, of controlling virtually everything that goes on in the body and a good deal that goes on outside it, so a planetary consciousness would be in complete control of virtually everything that goes on in the planet—from earthquakes to rainfall to ice ages to mountain building to hurricanes—and perhaps influence the rest of its local stellar system as well. 

[Note: Dane Rudhyar writes: “…mankind is to fulfill a definite function in the total operation of this vast, yet closely integrated, system of activities which we call the planet Earth—provided we do not think of the Earth as merely a mass of matter. This function appears to be to extract consciousness out of all the activities within the Earth-field—a field which may extend at least to, and perhaps in a sense include, the Moon.” —The Astrology of Self-Actualization and the New Morality, pp. 24-25]

At this point it becomes necessary to define Divinity:

Divinity is the highest level of aware consciousness accessible to each living being, manifesting itself in the self-actualization of that being. Thus we can truly say, “All that groks is God” (Heinlein; Stranger in a Strange Land). Divinity is a cat being fully feline, grass being grassy, and people being fully human. Collective Divinity emerges when a number of people (a culture or society) share enough values, beliefs and aspects of a common life-style that they conceptualize a tribal God or Goddess, which takes on the character (and the gender) of the dominant elements of that culture. Thus the masculine God of the Western Monotheists (Jews, Christians, Moslems) may be seen to have arisen out of the values, ideals and principles of a nomadic, patriarchal culture—the ancient Hebrews. Matrifocal agrarian cultures, on the other hand, personified their values of fertility, sensuality, peace and the arts in the conceptualization of Goddesses. As small tribes coalesced into states and nations, their Gods and Goddesses battled for supremacy through their respective devotees. In some circumstances, various tribal divinities were joined peaceably (often through marriage) into a polytheistic pantheon, being ranked in status as their followers’ respective influences determined. In other circumstances, one particularly fanatic tribe was able to completely dominate others and eliminate their own deities, elevating its God to the status of a solitary ruler over all creation, and enforcing His worship upon the people, usually upon pain of death. However, no matter to what rank a single tribal deity may be exalted by its followers, it still could be no other than a tribal divinity, existing only as an embodiment of the values of that tribe. “Gods are only as strong as those who believe in them think they are” (Alley Oop). When the planetary consciousness of Gaea awakens, She too will be Divinity—but on an entirely new level: the emergent deity Carlton Berenda postulates in The New Genesis. Indeed, even though yet unawakened, the slumbering subconscious [and dreaming?] mind of Gaea is experienced intuitively by us all, and has been referred to instinctively by us as Mother Earth, Mother Nature—The Goddess for whom She is well named. Indeed, this intuitive conceptualization of feminine gender for our planetary Divinity is scientifically valid, for biologically unisexual organisms (such as amoeba or hydra) are always considered female; in the act of reproduction they are referred to as mothers and their offspring as daughters.

[Note: I came later to the conclusion that Gaea may have indeed achieved consciousness in more ancient times, and that she was actually “knocked unconscious” by the worldwide cataclysms and attendant destruction of Her worshippers which ended the Bronze Age and ushered in the Age of Iron around 1600 BCE. This hypothesis is more fully developed in my 1977 research paper, “Cataclysm and Consciousness—From the Golden Age to the Age of Iron.” —OZ, 1988]

Thus we find that “God” is in reality Goddess, and that our ancient Pagan ancestors had an intuitive understanding of what we are now able to prove scientifically. Thus also we expose the logical absurdity of a concept of cosmic Divinity in the masculine gender. These few pages, however, have only been the briefest of introductions to the implications of a discovery so vast that its impact on the world’s thinking will ultimately surpass the impact of the discovery of the Heliocentric structure of the solar system. This is the discovery that the entire Biosphere of the Earth comprises a single living Organism.

Oberon Zell was the first person to conceive and publish the biological and metaphysical foundations of what has become known as the “Gaia Theory”—the unified body and emergent soul of the living Earth. Oberon’s profound reconciliation of science, mythology and spirituality inspired and infused a worldwide neo-Pagan, panentheistic movement. His visionary sculpture of the ‘Millennial Gaia’ is a three-dimensional revelation, an artistic masterpiece that fuses evolutionary biology with sculptural elegance. For 36 years he has been writing and lecturing on Gaian consciousness!

Ralph Metzner, Ph.D. Founder-President, The Green Earth Foundation

[In 1970] Tim Zell began writing about the planet Earth as deity, as a single living organism, and this became the Church of All Worlds’ central myth. Since 1971, the myth has been revised constantly and has become a unique eco-religious perception…

    [Zell] took the reader on a long tour through biology, cell division, reproduction, and evolutionary theory. The central idea of his tour was that all life had seemingly developed from a single original cell that divided and subdivided, passing its cellular material on and on. All life was interconnected, part of a single living organism.

    Several years after the [TheaGenesis] articles were written, Newsweek magazine, as well as a number of less popular journals, mentioned the work of British scientist James Lovelock, who had posited the ‘Gaia Hypothesis:’ the living matter on Earth, air, oceans, and land was all part of a system that Lovelock called after the Earth-Mother Goddess, Gaia… Zell entered into a correspondence with Lovelock, comparing their world views.

Margot Adler, from Drawing Down the Moon; Beacon Press 1979

The Gaea hypothesis was developed by Oberon Zell (formerly Tim Zell)… The genesis of Gaea was a profound vision experienced by Zell on September 6, 1970… In the vision, Zell reported that he saw Earth as a single biological organism that has evolved from a single original cell, making all life forms on the planet ‘a single vast creature.

Rosemary Ellen Guiley, from The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft, Facts on File, 1989

Though Lovelock’s scientific Gaia hypothesis has gotten most of the attention, the truth is that another controversial figure was developing a similar concept about the same time. Tim Zell, leader of the Pagan Church of All Worlds, formulated a theology of ‘deep ecology’ that was called TheaGenesis. It had to do with ‘the interconnection of all living things to each other and to Mother Earth, a sentient being in her own right.’ Zell, who now goes by the name Oberon Zell, describes the ‘Mother Goddess’ as ‘a living, sentient being with a soul-essence that can be perceived by humans

Cliff Kincaid, Director, American Sovereignty Action Project

Aleister Crowley: “The time is just ripe for a natural religion”

Aleister Crowley advocated the use of lunar, solar, and seasonal nature-based rituals. As far back as 1914 he had written to C.S. Jones of the North American O.T.O. about a ritual of Isis that his Lodge had performed:

I hope you will arrange to repeat this all the time, say every new moon or every full moon, so as to build up a regular force. You should also have a solar ritual to balance it, to be done at each time the Sun enters a new sign, with special festivity at the Equinoxes and Solstices.

In this way you can establish a regular cult; and if you do them in a truly magical manner, you create a vortex of force which will suck in all the people you want. The time is just ripe for a natural religion. People like rites and ceremonies, and they are tired of hypothetical gods. Insist on the real benefits of the Sun, the Mother-force, the Father-force, and so on, and show that by celebrating these benefits worthily the worshippers unite themselves more fully with the current of life. Let the religion be Joy, but with a worthy and dignified sorrow in death itself, and treat death as an ordeal, an initiation… In short, be the founder of a new and greater Pagan cult.

The growth of modern Witchcraft and Neo-Paganism has shown that Crowley’s vision of the revival of natural religion—“a new and greater Pagan cult “—was prophetic. Gerald Gardner (who met “The Great Beast” briefly just before Crowley’s death in 1947) had that same vision and applied it successfully to his “Wiccan” religion, initiating his first initiate in 1950. And so have so many of us, before and since, from many independent sources, flowing together like streams into the great River.

Why We Need a New Religion

By John Poppy, Jan. 13, 1970

[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the Jan. 13, 1970 issue of Look Magazine. As a subscriber, I was blown away, and I rushed right out to buy extra copies. But when I looked for this article in the newsstand copies, I was astonished to find it wasn’t there! In fact, in my subscriber’s copy, the page wasn’t even numbered, and the rest of the signature was nothing but ads. Moreover, that turned out to be the final issue of the magazine! I couldn’t find it online either, so evidently this article doesn’t officially exist. But I kept my copy, and drew upon it for inspiration in developing the Church of All Worlds and the Pagan movement. I reprinted it in Green Egg Vol. XXII, No. 88 (Feb. 1, 1990). This is now 2020, and I find it particularly relevant at this time to see how we’re doing with the New Religion we have been developing for the past 53 years since I first claimed the religious identity of “Pagan” on Sept. 7, 1967. –OZ] 

There I was, ten years old, spending two weeks at YMCA camp on Chesapeake Bay, doing my best to explain to a counselor who had asked, “Why did you go into town for Mass of you aren’t Catholic?”

“Not yet, we aren’t,” I corrected. Religion, I’d deduced, was just like Boy Scout badges. Your family worked up from Baptist or Methodist or something—I wasn’t sure—through Episcopalian (which we were), then High Episcopalian (fancier) and finally to the fanciest religion I’d seen, the equivalent of Eagle Scout. “Just a few more tests,” I lied, lusting for status, “then we’ll be Catholics.”

It all got straightened out, but at that point I was acting out the Establishment view of religion in the United States. Millions of peo0le walk into churches every week, sit a spell, and walk out unchanged. They’d feel better if they spent the time planting geraniums. They pray in public to get credit for piety or to strike some bargain with God. One thing I never bothered to wonder in my childish fantasy was, who gives the tests?

Not religion, not any more. Just one of many indicators is the Gallup Poll: In 1957, 14% of Americans thought religion was losing influence on the nation’s life. By 1969, the figure had blimped up to 70 percent.

We have used up the land’s ability to lend us meaning. Setting up th new country took Americans well into the 19th century; screwing wealth out of it brought us this far into the 20th. We looked out to the West, not into ourselves—but when the human tide reached the borders of the land and turned up like a great comber curling back on itself, men and women started to wonder, “What am I doing here?”

We need a new religion. The United States has arrived at a moment in which we must have—and can afford—a motive force less cruel and divisive than the dynamic, imperious Judeo-Christianism that has pervaded our civil religion for more than 200 years. All of our Protestant-ethic primness, technology, economic planning and social tinkering have helped us blitz a continent, but they have not been enough to make us whole. Dualism has gone wild, splitting God from Nature, sacred from secular, pleasure from duty, man from woman. It is sad, here in 1970: Ministers wonder if those Gallup figures are somehow their fault. Young people look outside any church for ways to combine their sense of wonder with a sense of purpose. Older people, anxious, feel abandoned by churches that seem less interested in comfort than in social activism. Oppressed people look for escape.

This is no attack on old approaches. I am only saying that we must go beyond them. In the future, men and women will find life bearable only when they deliberately tune every action to a search for deep purpose in themselves and each other.

We need a religion not of abstraction but of events—celebrations in which people can touch the mysteries of the universe by touching each other., We need a religion that will carry the words of “Do ye even so to them…” into action. Its rites would celebrate brotherhood in an intense sharing experience, akin to modern encounter groups of the koinonia—fellowship of the committed—of New Testament days. So that people could look forward to them, these might be the only scheduled events of an otherwise loosely structured religion. Such deep sharing of “ultimate concern”—a Paul Tillich definition of religion—might not appeal at first to traditional inner-directed churchgoers who resist touching each other, so new forms will have to develop outside the established ones. People can choose what they want. If the experience of parishes now experimenting with modernized Masses is any clue, the new forms will win converts fast. 

By deliberately celebrating the links between all beings, we can reunite the private and the public life, the inner and the outer man—and pull the holy blanket off authoritarians and power-seekers. No more talk about a Lord, an Almighty, a Heavenly Father who sits in judgment (loving or not) somewhere above and aloof. Such talk has been used mainly to frighten people since the Middle Ages, when lords were something real for serfs to fear; it conditions is to Pavlovian obedience to smaller bosses down here on the ground.

We need a religion that can forget merit badges and hierarchies, knowing it lives on the energy arcing between believers. Administrator-priests of the past have made churches but not religions. With confidence that every move they made is sacred, ordinary people could minister to each other in their own ways, giving and seeking comfort. Clergy would be worker priests, not full-time professionals. Except for a few beautiful cathedrals, churches would go the way of idols. Freed from the drudgery of caring for buildings and budgets, priests could afford more personal involvement with people. Celebrating liturgies in homes, in small groups, in places rented for the purpose.

We need a religion that is life-oriented enough to deal with death. Instead of viewing natural death as a catastrophe and offing hints of afterlife as apology, we might concentrate on living fully—postponing neither pleasures nor obligations—so that death in old age can be accepted as part of the ecological cycle. Untimely death, from war or carelessness, could be an occasion for mourning designed to change its causes.

We need a religion that will make cruelty to other humans, to animals, plants and the Earth itself not just “bad” but as crazy and painful as hacking off your own foot. A new religion would honor those who live in harmony with the Earth instead of trying to subjugate it.

We need a religion that will bring the body and the senses up out of neglect, so that they and the intellect can grow together.

We need a religion that will expand our sense of reality. We must involve ourselves in powerful rituals, and must seek the insights of the shamans among us. We must welcome the part of our inner selves that wants to wander joyfully out of control once in a while.

Ritual has always been one way for people to share feelings and express the almost inexpressible. Of course, it has to grow naturally. The Russian gov’t is learning, to its confusion, that artificial; rites are soon exposed as state “measures” that turn off people who don’t like to be manipulated.

The shaman—a prophet, wizard, oracle who usually operates in a trance—perceives messages in the forces of Nature, listening to voices most of us do not hear. We must heed the claim of poets like William Blake and scientists like Teilhard de Chardin that the true universe does not reveal itself to the rationalistic, mechanical, skeptical mind alone. A vital religion must open itself to deeper (or different) forms of consciousness, even through rock musicians, drug-takers, faith healers, housewives or whatever. Historian Theodore Roszak writes: “Besides our eyes of flesh, there are eyes of fire that burn through the ordinariness of the world and perceive the wonders and terrors beyond.” The tightly controlled “objective” mind sees beauty in order, formula, predictability. “In contrast, the beauty of the magical vision is not one of order, but of power… We are awed, not informed.” An older authority, St. Augustine, said, “If thou couldst comprehend him, he were not God.”

All this does not mean a throwback to pure superstition. We couldn’t go back even if we wanted to; reason and science are probably embedded in American genes by now. We must, however, welcome a thrust toward wholeness, toward the integration of some nearly forgotten talents with our newer ones, toward an end to our accursed dualisms. A you can see in the rest of this issue, a fresh religious attitude does not have to be invented. Its elements are already loose, struggling to be born.

If you consider yourself religious, try staying open to all the forms of search and worship around you. Something new might confirm what, deep down, your already knew.

In 2020, we will be releasing a grand egregore into the evolving wave

by C. Theodore Walker 

Email: seetedwalk@gmail.com

URL: http://scarletbarn.com

Something which has been on my mind for, I’m gonna say around 10 years or so was the visual meme of the number “2020”. In the past, ABC had a show called “20/20” which was a rider of an ever present meme in our human psyche: clear vision. Every knows about 20/20 vision being “clear; perfect”. As the years ticked by, I was awoken to the crawling presence of a year in perfect alignment with this cultural meme; not only a year which will herald the election cycles in our country and in other countries of the world, but also a world event in the Olympics and something else completely forgotten, cultural renaissances.

Our country and much of this world are being woken up from previous ideas which have now grown stale. Look around you. Now, more than any time period in human history, we are witnessing renewed human awakening. Atheism and Satanism are shown in clear vision without fear of recriminations, and adopted into common culture; Paganism has begun to sweep over many as a culturally acceptable spiritual practice as millions now begin to embrace the Old Ways, casting aside overly stratified and spiritually bankrupt systems of monotheism. Why, even the country of Norway has embraced a return of the Norse religion. This is a time of awakening. This is the time for clear vision. 

I propose something to you my friends and others who are reading this: 2020=20/20 – align your vision – see your path. On the tolling of that New Year on January 1 2020, I would like to ask you all to sit with the present thought you have. Not very long, so instead of going for that first celebratory toast of champagne, stand in presence of your friends and family gathered and you all share a moment of silence for yourselves. What lessons were acquired? Which lessons will serve you in the year and those to follow? How do they serve you? Who are you? It seems silly to request something so far in advanced, so I will make a constant effort to remind us all what is to come.

What may come, will be a call to personal inventory. As it was mentioned to me once before, renaissances occur in 60 year ripples. Our last cultural ripple was in 1960, fomenting revolutionary ideas setting humans towards reinvention. In 1900, we saw a changing of ideals and social constructs past the Victorian age. 1840, a change in how America would be seen in the world; independence from Great Britain and a gold rush in the western part of the country. These timely ripples shook foundations in established institutions; and soon, once again.

Here today, I present a manifesto towards the Clear Vision Project 2020, or CVP2020. This labor I share with you all now as we prepare for what is to come. What I project to be, will be something akin to what those in the 60’s hoped to witness; the Age of Aquarius coming into its own. In the previous years, the growth has been tumultous and callous for many. These times to come will be awareness to understanding your relationship with the divine process, and dare we state it, the Divine itself. 

OBJECTIVE: to create an artistic meme based toward collective magickal activism, awareness of personal sovereignty and call to divine purpose, thus immenentizing the eschaton. 

PROCESS: CVP2020 is a pan-structural event occurring on the beginning of January 1, 2020. it will be widespread, hopefully global, as the focus is on individual human power presented with a choice of ruling our directions and disenfranchising our power elite structure; using multimedia expression in art and literature, as well as sports and sciences, there is a desire to spread via grassroots support. all must be reached in what ever vibration and harmony they attune with.

the process is already in place with a common meme for eyesight: 20/20 vision. the idea is to piggyback that and inject the collective’s perception to expand consciousness. another common meme is the Eye of Horus on the back of our money and in common print of books, magazines and clothing. the world is surmounted by these images at present, where much of it causes comfort to some and fear in others. much of that fear beaten into Judeo-Christic-Mohammedan cults seeking to race towards Armageddon. 

our goals are counter to theirs; we do not seek destruction of the other, rather we seek annihilation of our dualism. thus the perfection of the 2=0 formula expounded by Aleister Crowley, staying in frame of the Aquarian mindset to harmonize and pull together collectives for cooperation in common competition; the assurance of clean air, land and water. the cause of this lack is in part to our unclean passions directed toward no end or purpose. our passion, perverted to cowardice and consumption, instead of will and industry. The main driving form; divisive, destructive capitalism.

our collective competitive consumerism, based upon a destructive model of unsustainable capitalism, has created an unhealthy relationship for humans in achieving our growth potential. our ghoulishly mindless handling of carcinogens which poison drinking water and empty consumption of “food” not even fit for consumption by farm animals, creates our deepest fears in flesh; the zombie mythos. the monster of no mind that devours without consciousness and unsated. 

it is not our intent to bring harm; yet those who stand against this manifest will, shall be undermined. there are few targets, however their disruption is in hope of rousing the attention of the demons, eventually drawing them out to harness them and refocus the power to be absorbed into the collective politic. the purpose is more to treat the malady within of our sickness in relationship to commerce and the symptoms emerging from capitalist competition. capitalism is not the sickness, it is merely a symptom of a darker more insidious perception of value in our human character; how some are graded due to perceived class placement and motility through money and perceived values of property.

methods: CVP2020 will be fostered immediately after the Weloveution2018 project, where we will begin the process of building awareness of political goals and ambitions of personal political power. from this project, we hope to inspire digital and fine graphic artisans to empower themselves toward this new arena. we will be using sneak-peek exposures during these demonstrations of ability. 

the focus and goal is to be this: getting the individual to see what they like/dislike in themselves and how we project it towards others. the meme should be introspection as a tool for extropection: as above, so below.

tune in…

 recognizing the waveform of the divinity purpose within the actor

drop in…

 activating and liberating the divine purpose through magickal daily practice

live in.

 dwelling in the divine body to actualize the actor’s True Will.

Reviews of 2020 Vision article

The visionary beliefs and actions required in this century are being written on hearts and minds by postmodern prophets like Oberon Zell, founder of the NeoPagan grok flock The Church of All Worlds. Without these visions, we have no cultural story to battle the demons of climate change and violence plaguing the world. In his “2020 Vision” article, Zell offers one of the most cogent and exciting documents I’ve read in years. It articulates many of our finest dreams and most grounded hopes, maps out practical lines of the future, and provides guidelines for activism within the context of deep community. As profound as it is practical, the 2020 Vision supplies the right ideas at the perfect time. Join the movement and help create a tomorrow our great-grandchildren can celebrate. 

Alder MoonOak, PhDGainesville, FloridaProfessor, College of Central Florida