Monday, September 5, 2011

The Tribe's relationship to the Land

In The Apple Branch, Alexei Kondratiev wrote that the Tribe must establish a relationship with the Land:
If the Tribe is truly to become her kin, she must be accepted in all her aspects, not just the immediately attractive and 'useful' ones. Spiders, adders, and wasps, thistles, gorse, and nettles, are as much the Land's children as domestic animals and crops or the showier birds, butterflies and wildflowers....While the Tribe's economic needs will necessarily have an impact on the appearance of the Land, care must always be taken that the changes not lessen its variety, that no aspect of its being -- however unattractive or irrelevant to the Tribe's everyday life -- be lost as a result. If the Tribe comes to dismiss such concerns and places its need above that of the Land, the balance in broken, the Land's blessing is withdrawn, and before long the forces that sustain life cease to serve humankind, as we see today.
I like the way this makes clear why nature study and sustainable living practices are integral to druidry.

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