The Dragon: Nature of Spirit, Spirit of Nature
Francis Huxley (1979) 96pages

The dragon has haunted the childhood of the human race from time immemorial with is serpent form, its magic jewels, and its power to suggest that there is an immortal self in all things. For its nature is to be the animating spirit in every form, just as it is also the spirit, or genius of the natural world. As the "one in two and two in one" it is the outer aspect of an inner knowledge, taking substance through images of desire, hunger, and death; and when reflected in the waters seeing itself as the mother of all life. This, together with its mysterious powers of transformation, is part of its divinity. A title in the Art and Imagination series, with 155 illustrations, 16 in colour. (Thames & Hudson, 1992)

The Fruitful Darkness: Reconnecting with the Body of the Earth
Joan Halifax (1993) 240pages

The Fruitful Darkness is in part the story of the journey that took me through an encounter between the body of Buddhist practice and the body of tribal wisdom, especially shamanism. "Our own life is the instrument with which we experiment with Truth," wrote Thich Nhat Hanh. This book is a description of such an experiment. It is grounded in direct experience, practice, and intuition. My personal experiences are the main source for the text; the information and inspiration in this book are rooted in my life....The book is also about the practice of ecology, an ecology of mind and spirit in relation to the Earth, an Earth that sees initiation as a way of reconciling self and other, an ecology that confirms the yield of darkness, the fruit of suffering, an ecology of compassion....There are many roads into the territory of non-duality. I have chosen to reflect on those that I have travelled. What follows are observations, notes, stories, and realizations that point to pathways that link self and other - ways that often take one through the Valley of Darkness. I also suggest that the fruits of understanding and compassion grow in this Valley. - from the author's Preface (HarperSanFrancisco)

Geography and the Human Spirit
Anne Buttimer (1993) 285pages

For each facet of humanness - rationality or irrationality, faith, emotion, artistic genius, or political prowess - there is a geography. For each geographical interpretation of the earth, there are implicit assumptions about the meaning of humanness. Neither humanism nor geography can be regarded as autonomous field of inquiry; rather, each points toward perspectives on life and thought shared by people in diverse situations. The common concern is terrestial dwelling; humanus literally means "earth dweller." What does it mean to dwell? Civilizations have varied greatly in their modes of understanding and dealing with the rest of the biosphere. In each civilization, the human spirit has sought to discern the meaning of earth reality in mythopoetic as well as in rational terms. The criteria of rationality and truth in every culture have always been derived from its foundational myths. Each civilization has a story to tell. The unfolding patterns of the earth around us invite a sharing of these stories as one essential step toward discovering mutually acceptable bases for rational discourse and wiser ways of dwelling. Part 1 of this book introduces two sets of interpretative themes: meaning, metaphor, milieu (Chapter 1) and Phoenix, Faust, Narcissus (Chapter 2). Part 2 explores the larger drama of geographical thought within the general social and intellectual contexts in which disciplinary ideas and practices have unfolded in Western history. Four root metaphors are presented as dramatis personae in Western intellectual history, and the following chapters trace the story of how each negotiated the interests of meaning and milieu over time: world as mosaic of forms (Chapter3), as mechanical system (Chapter 4), as organic whole (Chapter 5), and as arena of spontaneous events (Chapter 6). The concluding chapter returns to the questions of specialization in research and the problem of integrating knowledge, relating these to the tensions of local and global horizons. It points toward the need to reach beyond the realm of Western myth and metaphor and understand ways in which other cultures have constructed the nature and meaning of their bio-physical environments. It also draws some conclusions regarding geography's potential role in clarifying the contemporary challenge of terrestial dwelling. - from the author's (Johns Hopkins University Press)

Interior Landscapes: Gardens and the Domestic Environment
Ronald Rees (1993) 190pages

The objective of this book is to show how persistent landscape has been as a motif in decorative art and to explain the significance of this. The book is an exercise in the history of culture and environment, not in the history of art or design, and thus the emphasis is on the cultural significance of gardens, landscapes, and their constituent plants, not on the manner of their representation...Representations of garden and countryside, whether painted, woven, or sewn, are regarded as expressions of landscape preference or taste, not as subjects of art... In essence, Interior Landscapes is an extended essay based on a wide-ranging survey of the evolution of landscape and decorative arts in the Mediterranean, continental Europe, and especially Britain and North America. - from the author's Introduction (Johns Hopkins University Press)

Landscape and Memory
Simon Schama (1995) 652pages

Our entire landscape tradition is the product of shared culture, it is by the same token a tradition built from a rich deposit of myths, memories, and obsessions. The cults which we are told to seek in other native cultures - of the primitive forest, of the river of life, of the sacred mountain - are in fact alive and well and all about us if only we know where to look for them. And that is what Landscape and Memory tries to be: a way of looking ; of rediscovering what we already have, but which somehow eludes our recognition and our appreciation. Instead of being yet another explanation of what we have lost, it is an exploration of what we may yet find...Landscape and memory is not meant as facile consolation for ecological disaster. Nor does it claim to solve the profound problems that still beset any democracy wanting both to repair environmental abuse and to preserve liberty. Like all histories, this is less a recipe for action than an invitation to reflection, and is meant as a contribution to self-knowledge rather than a strategy for ecological rescue. But if by suggesting that over the centuries cultural habits have formed which have done something with nature other than merely work it to death, that help for our ills can come from within, rather than from outside, our shared mental world, this book may not entirely have wasted good paper pulp...We cannot help but think of fire as the element of annihilation. But both mythographers and natural historians know better: that from the pyre rises the phoenix, that through a mantle of ash can emerge a shoot of restored life. So if this is a book of memories, it is not meant as a lament at the cremation of our hopes. Rather, it is a journey through spaces and places, eyes wide open, that may help us keep faith with a future on this tough, lovely old planet. - from the author's Introduction (Vintage Canada)

Lilies of the Hearth: The Historical Relationship Between Women & Plants
Jennifer Bennett (1991) 191pages

I finally realized, by the time, I had gathered countless bits of information about Mother Earth, witchcraft, botany, flower gardening and the like, that the prehistoric association of women with useful plants, fertility, nurturing and the earth is so deeply ingrained in humanity, it has never really been lost, whatever changes societies have endured and however separate from nature the modern world may seem to be. Throughout the centuries, this relationship has been manifested in different ways., but always, it has simultaneously limited, defined and freed women. That long, floral, sweetly scented, dangerous, romantic path women share with plants is expressed at the end of the 20th century in the environment movement, with its renewed appreciation of Mother Nature as both creator and destroyer. In writing this book, my aim has been to produce not an encyclopaedia of women in horticulture but a general overview of what became, for me, a fascinating perspective on the history of women. - from the author's Introduction

The Man Who Planted Trees
Jean Giono (1954) Wood Engravings by Michael McCurdy Afterword by Norma L. Goodrich 52pages

We see from the opening sentence of the story how Giono interpreted the word "character," an individuality unforgettable if unselfish, generous beyond measure, leaving on earth its mark without thought of reward. Giono believed he left his mark on earth when he wrote Elzeard Bouffier's story because he gave it away for the good of others, heedless of payment: "It is one of my stories of which I am the proudest. It does not bring me in one single penny and that is why it has accomplished what it was written for." - from the Afterword by Norma L. Goodrich (Chelsea Green, 1985)

Myths of the Sacred Tree
Moyra Caldecott (1993) 214pages

Essential to life on earth since the beginning of time, trees hold a special place in our collective consciousness: rooted in the earth, reaching skyward, nourished by the elements, and enlivened by the sap running through their veins, they provide a metaphor for what it means to be human. Trees have figured prominently in the myths of all people - from the Kabbalistic Tree of Life to the bodhi tree of Buddha's enlightenment - representing the unfolding of the human spirit through the experiences of life on earth. Mrya Caldecott has gathered here a collection of myths celebrating the rich symbolism of trees. Included are myths from Africa, Native America, China, Sumeria, Russia, India, Greece, Scandinavia, Europe, South America, Arabia, all brining to life a time when the natural world was deeply respected and trees and forests were thought to be inhabited by spirits and divine beings. Fifteen ink washes by London-based Anthea Toorchen illuminate the myths and lend the text a beauty of their own. ( Destiny Books)

The Occult and Curative Powers of Precious Stones
William T. Fernie (1907) 486 pages

An old Rosicrucian word of wisdom begins with the profound statement; " I have laid the eternal Word of Creation into the stone." - In the utmost depths of physical existence the silent stone guards and protects the Word of Creation, hence in the manifold literatures of the world the precious and semi-precious stones are represented as centers of well-nigh miraculous influence upon Nature, including human life. A wealth of learned tomes dating from medieval times exists in which the properties and influence of semi-precious and precious stones upon humanity are presented with extraordinary insight and detail. This book, originally published in 1907 in England under the title: Precious Stones: For Curative Wear; and other Remedial Uses; Likewise The Nobler Metals, is the crowning literary expression of active medical practice. - from the Editorial Preface by Paul M. Allen (Steinerbooks,1992)

A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds - New & Selected Prose
Gary Snyder (1995) 263pages

This collection draws on some forty years of thinking and writing. It can be considered a further exploration of what the "practice of the wild" would be. / The ancient Buddhist precept "cause the least possible harm" and the implicit ecological call to "Let nature flourish" join in a reverence for human life and then go beyond that to include the rest of creation. These essays are Buddhist, poetic, and environmental calls to complex moral thought and action- metaphoric, oblique, and mythopoetic, but also I hope practical. Ethics and aesthetics are deeply intertwined. Art, beauty, and craft have always drawn on the self-organizing "wild" side of language and mind. Human ideas of place and space, our contemporary focus on watersheds, become both model and metaphor. Our hope would be to see the interacting realms, learn where we are, and thereby move toward a style of planetary and ecological cosmopolitanism. / Meanwhile be lean, compassionate, and virtuously ferocious, living in the self-disciplined elegance of "wild mind." - from the author's Note (Counterpoint)

The Poetics of Gardens
Charles W. Moore, William J. Mitchell, & William Turnbull, Jr. (1988) 258pages

We begin by exploring those qualities of a place that create the promise of a garden...we go on to consider the acts that make a garden: molding the earth, defining and connecting spaces with walls and ceilings and paths and monuments, irrigating, planting and tending, weaving patterns of recollection with names and images and souvenirs, and possessing the place by rituals of habitation...Next we present a score of landscapes and gardens, not just as a bouquet of pleasures but as sources, lodes to be mined for materials, shapes, relationships, and ideas. This is the heart of the book; we draw each place carefully (mostly in large axonometrics), guide you through it, tell something of its history, and examine the most important patterns and ideas that it contributes to the lore of gardens...our examples range from ancient Rome to modern England, from the court of Ch'ien Lung to the Magical Kingdom of Walt Disney, from monasteries high in the Himalayas to convict settlements on the shores of Botany Bay. Finally, we examine the transplantation and adaptation of the great garden traditions of the past to North American soil. - from the authors' Preface (MIT Press,1995)

Re-Visioning the Earth: A Guide to Opening Healing Channels Between Mind and Nature
Paul Devereux (1996) 304pages

... in seeking ways and means to use the Earth as a healer of our view of it, we want to identify certain conceptual tools cognitive science has to offer us. Perhaps the most important from our point of view here is that the world we perceive is no more, and no less, than an informational model. ... / The following chapters of this book identify five areas of psychological dynamics involved in mind-environment interactions that I suggest would need to be built into the foundations of an overarching ecopsychology. Each chapter is highly eclectic - it draws on a range of information from many sources in an attempt to show us ways to modify gently the automatic viewpoint of our present cultural worldview... All the time, we must remember that our subject is the mind, not the Earth. Its is the world view we are trying to heal, not the world. / The nature of this book is therefore exceptionally cross-disciplinary, and it will become readily apparent that all of the five areas are interrelated in various ways.... (the) common denominator is "mythic consciousness," or, to use an equivalent term "imaginal consciousness." Indeed, this book is essentially an essay in mythic dynamics. - from the author's Introduction (Fireside)

The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World
David Abram (1996) 326pages

Humans are tuned for relationship. The eyes, the skin, the tongue, ears, and nostrils - all are gates where our body receives the nourishment of otherness. The landscape of shadowed voices, these feathered bodies and antlers and tumbling streams - these breathing shapes are our family, the beings with whom we are engaged, with whom we struggle and suffer and celebrate...The simple premise of this book is that we are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human. Direct sensuous reality, in all its more -than-human mystery, remains the sole solid touchstone for an experiential world now inundated with electronically-generated vistas and engineered pleasures; only in regular contact with the tangible ground and sky can we learn how to orient and to navigate in the multiple dimensions that now claim us. (Vintage)

A Tree in Your Pocket
Jacqueline Memory Paterson (1998) 149pages

This is a beautifully illustrated, pocket guide to the world of trees. It includes descriptions of seventeen trees, and reveals the myths and legends, magical properties and healing power that surround them. The trees are: English Yew, Holly, Pine, Hazel, Blackthorn, Silver Birch, Apple Tree, Hawthorn Tree, Ash Tree, Oak Tree, English Elm, Beech Tree, Rowan Tree, Alder, Willow Tree, Elder Tree, Poplar Trees. (Thorsons)

Why We Garden: Cultivating a Sense of Place
Jim Nollman (1994) 312pages

People often turn to gardening to re-create a bit of paradise within an imperfect world. The gardener's vision of paradise is simple and organic...Gardens are real places. They exist right now... Gardening is hard work; it doesn't make life any easier, although it often makes it more fulfilling. An individual seeking the gardener's brand of paradise has to knuckle under to some very strict natural rules... Gardening encourages a hands-on complicity with local nature. I call the perceptions that inform this participation a sense of place. - from the author's Introduction (Henry Holt)

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