Declaration of the Four
Sacred Things
The earth is a living, conscious being. In company
with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things
as sacred:
air,
fire,
water,
and earth.
Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood,
and body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as
symbols of the interconnected systems that sustain life, we know that
nothing can live without them.
To call these things sacred is to say that they
have a value beyond their usefulness for human ends, that they themselves
become the standards by which our acts, our economics, our laws, and
our purposes must be judged. No one has the right to appropriate them
or profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails
to protect them forfeits its legitimacy.
All people, all living things, are part of the
earth life, and so are sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than
any other. Only justice can assure balance: only ecological balance
can sustain freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we
call spirit
flourish in its full diversity.
To honor the sacred is to create conditions
in which nourishment, sustenance, habitat, knowledge, freedom, and beauty
can thrive. To honor the sacred is to make love possible.
To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will,
our courage, our silences, and our voices. To this we dedicate our lives.
--from Starhawk, The
Fifth Sacred Thing
Related Links...
