Soulcraft Musings

Today, January 20, 2017, we inaugurate Soulcraft Musings, a new offering from Animas Valley Institute (see below). This is the same day America inaugurates a new president, a cultural upheaval currently mobilizing thousands of response teams worldwide. On this day we commence our humble project of Soulcraft Musings in support of the deepening, diversification, and flourishing of all life. At this time in the world, may we all inaugurate actions and projects that collectively give birth to a life-enhancing society.

The journey of descent to soul has largely been forgotten in mainstream culture, but there is nothing more essential in the world today. The experiential encounter with soul is the key element in the initiatory journey that culminates in true adulthood. And true adults — visionary artisans — are the generators of the most creative and effective actions in defense of all life and in the renaissance and evolution of generative human cultures.

The encounter with soul is not a weekend workshop but an unfolding journey over many months or years. Harvesting its fruit and feeding the world with its bounty plays out over the rest of one’s life. Every day holds opportunities for each of us to prepare for the journey to the underworld of soul, or, once we have embarked upon the journey, to take our next steps, or to gather its mystical treasures and hone them into practical shapes, or to fashion never-before-seen delivery systems for carrying these gifts to the Earth community.

We, at Animas Valley Institute, would like to gift you with this weekly email of trail markers (cairns) on the journey to soul. These Soulcraft Musings, although each only a couple minutes of reading, will be, we trust, valuable guidelines and support on your journey. Each includes references for further reading, study, and practice. And each features a resonant image and poem.

The central theme that ties together all the Musings is, of course, soul and the human encounter with soul. But even the original depth meaning of the word soul has been lost to the modern mind. What we at Animas mean when we speak or write about soul is not what you’ll find in contemporary religious, spiritual, philosophical, or psychological traditions or in everyday conversation. We’ll explore these and many other fundamentals and principles in Soulcraft Musings.

If you’re already on our list, you’ll receive an email with a Soulcraft Musing once a week. If you’re not on our list and would like to subscribe, please click here.

And please feel free to share Soulcraft Musings widely with friends, family, and colleagues.

In wildness and wonder,

Bill Plotkin

Founder

Animas Valley Institute

View Previous Musings

Friday, December 5, 2025

The Hymn

It began as an almost inaudible hum,

low and long for the solar winds

and far dim galaxies,

a hymn growing louder, for the moon and the sun,

a song without words for the snow falling,

for snow conceiving snow

conceiving rain, the rivers rushing without shame,

the hum turning again higher—into a riff of ridges,

peaks hard as consonants,

summits and praise for the rocky faults and crust and crevices

then down down to the roots and rocks and burrows,

the lakes’ skittery surfaces, wells, oceans, breaking

waves, the salt-deep: the warm bodies moving within it:

the cold deep: the deep underneath gleaming, some of us rising

as the planet turned into dawn, some lying down

as it turned into dark; as each of us rested—another woke, standing

among the cast-off cartons and automobiles;

we left the factories and stood in the parking lots,

left the subways and stood on sidewalks, in the bright offices,

in the cluttered yards, in the farmed fields,

in the mud of the shantytowns, breaking into

harmonies we’d not known possible, finding the chords as we

found our true place singing in a million

million keys the human hymn of praise for every

something else there is and ever was and will be:

the song growing louder and rising.

(Listen, I, too, believed it was a dream.)

—Marie Howe

To read previous musings click here.