Spirits of Nature

Someone on FaceBook posted that they were writing some black magickal fiction short story, and it reminded me of Frabato the Magician, by Franz Bardon. An excellent story, though it reads like a Simon Iff story. I don't know why that minimalistic story telling style became so popular, but it's effective enough.

I was reading through it and came across the phrase, "the beings of nature are especially fond of the people who likewise feel close to nature." It immediately got me thinking of my youth, when I would go into the mountains of Colorado and hike trails and make friends with the local genii loci, without knowing that's what they were called.

I've always felt connected to nature. From the time I was a child, making mud soup in a five gallon bucket in my backyard, nature has spoken to me, called to me. I wandered in rural fields and sparse forests all my life, hiked trails and climbed granite walls, and more recently frolicked with the undines of the sea as they crashed against the shore. I had friends whose physical bodies were trees, colonies of insects, and streams that passed through counties and states I'd never visited. As I observed nature's processes, I'd hear a running narrative that sounded like a documentary, explaining what was going on and what it meant, how it all worked together in the ecosystem.

I never did anything to conjure these spirits, they were just sort of always there, at the periphery of my awareness. They still are. On the way home the other day, I was feeling stressed out and preoccupied with work on my commute home. I was at one of the last intersections before I reached my house, on a busy road lined with lots of trees to cut the traffic noise down for the residents with homes close to the road. I glanced up at the leaves on the trees, and a face formed, a great big laughing face. The spirits of the trees were getting my attention, sharing the joy they felt as the sun fell down on them and they swayed in their stationary dance in the wind.

I don't know how many other people have that kind of connection to nature. I like to feel special, so I pretend there aren't that many, but I suspect everyone has moments when they feel intimately connected to our spiritual brothers and sisters who incarnate in forms other than human. Our distant cousins who are as much a manifestation of the breath of God as we humans are.

Still, as Bardon says, I think the spirits of nature are especially fond of me, and people like me who take time to participate in that feeling of closeness to them. They are beautiful, and they seem to think we are too.

This evening I'm heading up to one of the highest waterfalls in our state. It's cut a stream through the granite hills (I've lived in Colorado, so I can't call them mountains) and there's a pool beneath the falls that is just deep enough to swim in. The falling water creates a cloud of negative ions that make people feel better. Crashing waves create the negative ions too, and you get a similar feeling of subdued awe and relaxed one-ness with the Earth on the beach. The falls are on a national park, and it's frequently filled with gatherings of teens, but the presence of the spirits of nature there are so thick, and the negative ions so calming that they behave themselves, carrying on conversations in hushed tones, playing diving games (there's a spot just deep enough to accommodate divers) and just having good old fashioned fun, without the cussing, fussing, and general angst they have everywhere else. While I'm there, I'll store up the negative ions in my bloodstream, and create a snapshot in my memory that I can return to in times of stress.

Before I leave, I'll collect some of the physical water, and make an offering to the spirits of place. I'll take the time to recognize and commune with them, as they have with me so many times before.