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, February 28, 2025

Planet

This morning this planet is covered by winds and blue.

This morning this planet glows with dustless perfect light,

enough that I can see one million sharp leaves

from where I stand. I walk on this planet, its hard-packed

dirt and prickling grass, and I don’t fall off. I come down

soft if I choose, hard if I choose. I never float away.

Sometimes I want to be weightless on this planet, and so

I wade into a brown river or dive through a wave

and for a while feel nothing under my feet. Sometimes

I want to hear what it was like before the air, and so I duck

under the water and listen to the muted hums. I’m ashamed

to say that most days I forget this planet. That most days

I think about dentist appointments and plagiarists

and the various ways I can try to protect my body from itself.

Last weekend I saw Jupiter through a giant telescope,

its storm stripes, four of its sixty-seven moons, and was filled

with fierce longing, bitter that instead of Ganymede or Europa,

I had only one moon floating in my sky, the moon

called Moon, its face familiar and stale. But this morning

I stepped outside and the wind nearly knocked me down.

This morning I stepped outside and the blue nearly

crushed me. This morning this planet is so loud with itself —

its winds, its insects, its grackles and mourning doves —

that I can hardly hear my own lamentations. This planet.

All its grooved bark, all its sand of quartz and bones

and volcanic glass, all its creeping thistle lacing the yards

with spiny purple. I’m trying to come down soft today.

I’m trying to see this place even as I’m walking through it.

— Catherine Pierce

“Planet” appears in Here, Poems for the Planet, edited by Elizabeth Coleman

To read previous musings click here.