Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard

Class IV: Back to Nature

power, the forests that surround our sacred groves,

the plants and animals that are our teachers. This is

best accomplished three different ways:

1. By a community or circle getting together to pur-
   chase a special piece of land, replant it, re-sanctify
   it, and setting up a land trust or land use agree-
   ments that can help to protect it in the future.


2. By deeply loving and committing to a favorite park,
   nearby river or forest—visiting it regularly, bond-
   ing to it and its resident spirits, getting in touch
   with its will and needs, and committing to its integ-
   rity and well-being. This can include cleaning up
   trash left by others, planting native seeds along
   streambeds, and putting up a fight if anyone ever
   tries to pave over, degrade, or destroy it.


3. By personally resisting the destruction and devel-
   opment of every remaining wild and magickal
   place—through educational outreach, art and ar-
   ticles, petitions, lawsuits, creative public demon-
   strations, and civil disobedience actions.

Like Wizardry, ecology is the practice of relation-

ship and the directing and balancing of energies, and

environmentalism is rooted as much in ecospirituality

as science. The great American conservationist John

Muir acted out of a clearly mystical relationship with

nature. Aldo Leopold reinvented the land ethic not

through any brilliant conclusions, but as a result of

the magickal epiphany he called being “one with the

mountain.” Redwoods heroine Julia Butterfly writes

that it was her spiritual connection to the tree she

called “Luna” that allowed her to stay a hundred feet

up in it for so many months while besieged with police

loudspeakers, loggers’ saws, and Winter storms that

assaulted her tiny aerial platform.

True Wizardry is not just inspiration and the abil-

ity to make things happen. Nor is it simply our reward;

it is our assignment. It’s part of the “great work,” long

shouldered by the generations of Wizards and seek-

ers, Earth lovers and Earth warriors. It includes the

always vital practices of awakeness and wonder, sen-

tience and sensuality, perceptivity and awe. Of ground-

ing and connecting, revering and celebrating,

protecting...and championing. Of our taking any risk

and paying any price, in order to do what this pre-

cious Earth—and our flawless hearts—tells us is right.

Lesson 3. Camping Out

If it is possible for you to go to summer camp or join

the Boy Scouts, I urge you to do so. If your folks are

1. Introduction: Getting Out There

Y MOST IMPORTANT TEACHER HAS AL-

ways been Nature Herself. From

the time I was a little kid, I have

always spent as much time as I

could alone out in the woods. I

would climb up into trees in the

Spring and sit so still that the birds

would get used to me being there,

so I could watch them build their nests, lay their eggs,

hatch, and feed their babies. I would go out into mead-

ows where I saw deer grazing, and sit quietly under a

certain tree day after day until they learned to ignore

my presence, and would come within a few feet of me.

I would climb out of my bedroom window on the nights

of the full Moon, and wander among the Children of

the Night. As I mentioned in my Lesson on Water, I

grew up near a crystal clear lake, and I rigged up an air

pump and hose so I could stay underwater for long

periods and watch fish making their little nests in the

sandy bottom and laying their eggs. And from my

mid-30s through early 40s, I lived for eight years in the

middle of 5,600 acres of undeveloped land in the Misty

Mountains of NorCalifia, with no electricity, radio, tele-

vision, or telephones, and raised wild animal babies,

foraged for wild foods, and experienced the turnings

of the seasons from the Earth to the Stars. I consider

the foundations of my Wizardry to be rooted in such

experiences, and I strongly encourage you also to get

out into Nature as often as possible. There is only so

much you can learn from books!

Lesson 2. Giving Back:

Wizards as Earth Warriors

—by Jesse Wolf Hardin

Wizards draw power from the spirits and entities of

the sacred, living Earth. In turn, we’re each called to

do all we can to restore, nourish, and celebrate the

natural world...as well as defend her from the destruc-

tive tendencies of our own human kind. By “responsi-

bility” I don’t mean “obligation,” but rather, the “abil-

ity to respond!” And that’s what we Wizards do best:

respond to the needs of the immediate moment, in-

cluding its many dangers and threats—with a potent

combination of instinct and intuition, insight and em-

pathy, passion and skill, assertive action and applied

magic.

We give back to the Earth by ritually acknowledg-

ing the land where we hold our Circles, but also

through hands-on service such as tree planting and

wilderness restoration...and by guarding the places of

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