Consulting the Genius of the Place
Alexander Pope, the 18th century English poet, giving advice on garden and landscape design, wrote, “consult the genius of the place in all, that tells the waters to rise, or fall”. These lines have been understood to recommend a primary principle in landscape architecture, to consider the context of the location when designing. The poet was invoking a religious idea from ancient Rome, the idea of the Genius Loci, or the spirit or god of the place. In the ancient world, the land was considered to be inhabited by spiritual entities which had to be propitiated with prayer and sacrifice before any kind of work could be attempted on the land. Each grove of trees, each spring, each creek or river, every hill or mountain had its own spiritual beings, who were variously known as fauns, nymphs, dryads, satyrs, lares and gods. Proceeding to fell trees, plow ground or sow, without their approval was to court disaster. No respectable Roman would fail to honor the genii locorum in any agricultural operation. Cato the Elder in his farming manual De Re Rustica, stated that it was the sacred duty of a farmer to sacrifice a pig to the god of the grove before cutting down a single tree! The care of the local spirit population was as essential to proper agriculture as good plowing techniques and sowing the right seed at the right time.
This is a far cry from the merely aesthetic sense meant by our poet, Pope. This is a deep spiritual relationship with the intelligences of the land and brings a reverence, not without perhaps a bit of fear of incurring the wrath of the land spirits, to the relationship between the farmers and the land they tend. This idea of the natural world as haunted by spiritual entities didn’t begin to fade until the Protestant Reformation supplanted the animistic sentiment of the peasantry with the empty theology of a remote God. Later, after the enlightenment, having largely depopulated the countryside, finally banished the fairy faith in all but the most remote corners of Europe with scientific education.
The Roman poet Virgil, author of the poetic agricultural manual known as the Georgics, which is rich in the rural spiritual lore of the ancient Roman farmers, addressed all the gods and goddesses who preside over the farmer’s life at the beginning of the First Georgic; Ceres goddess of grain and agriculture, Pan, “keeper of the flocks”, the fauns, “presences of the fields”, the dryads, spirits of the oak trees, Neptune, who created horses, Minerva, who created the olive tree, Liber, Dionysus, giver of the vine, Sylvanus, god of the forest. He praises,
“You gods and goddesses who, with such kindness,
Watch over our fields and vineyards and who nurture
The fruits that seed themselves without our labor
And all the crops with rain that falls from heaven.”
So what does “consulting the genius of the place” mean to us?
To me it means first on a practical level just as Virgil recommends (again, the first Georgic):
And yet, if the field is unknown and new to us,
Before our plow breaks open the soil at all,
It’s necessary to study the ways of the winds
And the changing ways of the skies, and also to
Know the history of planting in that ground,
What crops will prosper there and what will not.
In one place grain grows best , in another vines;
So on the material level, consulting the genius loci could mean to take into careful account the ecological conditions of the land, sun, drainage, soil type, slope, local weather, what crops grow well in your area, etc. The kind of thing that the science of agronomy concerns itself with. This is necessary knowledge and I myself spent years reading every agronomy book I could get my hands on. But it's not enough to only heed the material conditions of the land.
Consulting the actual spirits who inhabit your land pays on a practical level because they are real, even if you can’t see them. Things just start to go better, crops are more healthy, animals thrive, you have fewer problems with pests, maybe more favorable weather, perhaps fewer accidents and breakdowns. I know I’m heading into crackpot territory here, perhaps, but this is my experience. I’m not saying you’re not going to have problems if you neglect basic agronomy, but never forget to pour out a libation for Demeter before you plant. Far from it, you must put in the physical work for the magic to work. Careful agricultural technique also honors the spirits of the land. Working the soil at the right time, when the moisture conditions are right, planting at the right season, in the right phase of the moon in the right sign (more on this in a later post). All of this pleases the land spirits. And let's not forget that our crops, the little plants we tend, are also spiritual entities that also respond to our thoughts, words and intentions, so they can hear us when we pray for them and wish them well.
A true sage who worked at my side for eight seasons, a gentleman from the mountains of rural Mexico named Salvador, would pause while we were engaged in some manual job like hoeing or weeding and extend his hands in a gesture that took in all the surroundings and he would say, poetically, in Spanish, “All this has life, the trees, the sky, the clouds, the earth, the water, everything around us, and we are in contact with this life because we are in contact with He above who gives it life and when we need something all we need to do is ask and He will make it happen if we have faith.” That man is the best gardener I have ever seen, his half acre patch is a testament to what a prayerful and reverent approach to plants and farming can do, and not just his garden, his whole life! He would begin every day by commending the day's work to God, and every time we planted, he would bless the first seed or plant in the name of the Trinity and with the sign of the cross. That level of spiritual attention applied to the sacred work of agriculture is what I’m talking about here.
Now Salvador’s devout Roman Catholicism is beautiful and I have immense respect for him and his faith, but it is not my way. But prayerfully reaching out to the Source in whatever name one finds most appealing whenever we begin any major agricultural operation is an excellent practice. Perhaps the Homeric or Orphic Hymn to Gaia or Demeter if you are of a classical bent, while pouring out a libation of wine and or olive oil, before you plow or work ground. Asking the creator to bless the seeds you are about to plant. Honoring the phases of the moon, the rising of the sun, the planets and stars are all good ways to spiritually connect with the spirits of nature and the spirits of the land. I always make sure to start and end my prayers with the Source, the One, from whom all things come, but that’s just my way.
A more specific way to connect with the Genii Locorum is to find a power spot in nature near you, a hollow tree, a spring, a cave, a large oak tree, a hill, something that seems like a gateway, a liminal space. On two farms I have lived on I have found a large oak tree growing next to a spring and have gone occasionally to leave offerings and ask favors from the genius there, I meditate briefly and go on my way.
I am wary of adopting overly specific European ways of relating to the land on which I live, and also am wary of attempting to imitate the practices of the indigenous people who once inhabited this land. Gaia and Demeter, in the example I gave above, are universal deities who while they were goddesses who originated in a particular place, their worship wasn’t limited to only one place. Although the mysteries of Demeter were celebrated at Eleusis,near Athens, she was a goddess of agriculture all over the Greco-Roman world. To a certain extent your personal imagination colors how you see the inhabitants of the imaginal realm. I wouldn’t expect my fairies to speak with an Irish accent or my lares to wear togas. Robert Kirk, the 17th century Scottish seer, said in his treatise on the faery folk, The Secret Commonwealth, that, “their apparel and speech is like unto the people and country unto which they live.”
The Cherokee, whose lands are a bit to the south of where I live now, have a well developed folklore of supernatural beings. I imagine the Shawnee people who used to hunt on what is now my land did too. As did the Adena and Hopewell people whose arrowheads I find in my fields and whose mounds dotted the Creek bottoms in the valley below my farm. One Adena mound was excavated in the 1950’s and was found to contain the skeleton of an unusually tall man, who had had two of his front teeth removed so he could insert a “spatula” made from the upper jaw palette and front teeth of a timber wolf! Obviously incorporating the teeth and jaw of the wolf to give himself the powers of a wolf somehow. This was found two miles from here. I call him the Wolf Shaman and I feel like I have felt his presence before, as a protector and guardian of the land. I would like to know what happened to his remains. I heard that they are probably in some drawer in a museum somewhere, poor guy.
In the Celtic countries the genii of the Romans were known and called by many names in the various districts. The Gaelic people called them the Sidhe, which is also the word for the Neolithic barrow tombs where they were thought to dwell. Many scholars say there is a continuity between the Sidhe and the Gaelic gods, the Tuatha de Danaan, who were dethroned and driven into the mounds by the advent of Christianity. They are known in Wales as the Tylwyth Teg, in Cornwall as Piskies, in France as Fae, in Germanic countries as elves, perhaps in Muslim lands as Djinn, and in English speaking countries by the appellation of fairies, a word which has been so thoroughly Disnified, although the process of taming the archetype of the fairy was begun long before Tinkerbell ever graced the silver screen.
These beings were much feared by pre-modern country people, and were variously blamed for illnesses in man or beast, birth defects, insanity, disappearances, and all manner of mishaps and mischief. Stories of misfortune following the violation of taboo, such as cutting a fairy tree or bush, or plowing a mound or otherwise trespassing on the sacred sites of the fae, abound in folklore and are too numerous to report here, perhaps a good topic for another post. Much of the fairy mischief in the literature is the result of either the innate mischievous tendencies of the good people, as they are called when one wants to avoid offending, or of failing to properly propitiate them with offerings of milk or butter.
As an aside, several years ago I had a Jersey milk cow just wander off and leave her three month old calf ( which is unheard of, these are animals who are the very archetype of motherhood!), disappear into the woods never to be seen again. She had been acting strangely, mooing, pacing and looking off into the distance. I just thought she was in heat (although, we had a bull in the pasture, who was resting with the rest of the herd under a tree at the time.) and would get over it. We had a social engagement to attend and when we returned she had (again, uncharacteristically) charged through our electric fence and disappeared into the hundreds of acres of woods that surround our farm. It was not lost on me at the time that this is exactly what the folk traditions of the Celtic nations were referring to when they spoke of prize milk cows being “taken” by the fairies or being “pisky led”. I should have been more diligent in leaving out my offerings of butter!
But the fae, as we shall call them, were also helpful bringers of blessings when properly propitiated. The folklore abounds with stories of helping spirits like brownies, who assisted with domestic chores, like cleaning and milking cows. I imagine that this help is not to be taken literally, there are times on the farm when a routine job that should take a long time goes easily and without mishaps in half the time. In moments like that I always think about how my friend Salvador would pray to St. Isidore, the patron saint of farmers, to send angels to help us in particularly hard tasks. And the job was accomplished more easily than expected, without the problems that so often accompany routine farm tasks. Or maybe they literally meant that upon awakening they discover that the house had been cleaned, pots scoured and cows milked by invisible helpers while the farmer and his family slept.
Many, by now, will have heard of the road being built in County Clare, Ireland in 1999, that was rerouted to avoid having to destroy a sacred fairy tree, which would have had dire consequences according to the local people. My question is why is this custom unique to Ireland? Why don’t the people of, say, Kentucky, where I live, honor the land spirits like they do in Ireland. The answer is that many do honor the spirits of the land. There is a deep culture of love for the land, alive and well here in my home state, whose most famous exponent, agrarian novelist, poet, and essayist Wendell Berry, lives, writes, and farms only a few miles from me. The Appalachian region also is home to a land honoring culture which extends beyond the state lines encompassing the entire mountainous region. Love of land and a spiritual devotion to place is not limited to any one region and is found among good people everywhere.
I have lived here in rural Kentucky more than half my life and many of my friends neighbors have earned their living by farming, forestry or operating land clearing machinery and some of them have had a shall we say less than reverential attitude to the land. One neighbor lady told me years ago point blank that God gave us animals and plants and nature in general for us to do what we want with! One young man I know whose logging operation I drove by this morning as they had the trunks of several ancient oak trees loaded on the trailer of his log truck is most certainly not mindful of the spirits of the land while he is engaged in turning these majestic beings into lumber. These neighbors are for the most part kind, decent and hard working people who are making their living, as I do, by bringing natural products into the modern marketplace to be sold. We all rely upon forest and farm products as did our more reverent ancestors, but the difference is that now these are extracted without piety, without regard for the sacred life of the land, and we are increasingly paying the price on every scale for our lack of reverence.
What are the consequences of incurring the wrath of the genii locorum? You only have to examine the lives and communities of those involved in land exploitation to see the consequences of despoiling the natural world. Addiction, crime, abusive relationships, lawsuits, accidents, chronic illnesses, misfortunes of every kind follow from living a life out of balance with nature as surely as a cart follows an ox, to paraphrase the Buddha. Hubris (pride and disregard for the divine order of things) is followed by ate (folly or delusion), which is followed by Nemesis (the goddess of vengeance who punished evildoers) as the Greeks believed, which refers to an ever increasing cycle of arrogance and pride in humans that is followed by divine punishment. And not just on a personal level. The spiritual life of the entire region, the nation and the world is out of balance with nature and many of our social ills can be traced back to this broken relationship between humans and the spirits of the land. I’m not saying that by honoring the spirits of the land you can avoid fate, which is all of our mistress, or death and illness which is the lot of all mortal flesh. But I am saying that if you honor the Gods as you see them and the spirits of the land which gives us all life, your life will be more fortunate and more happy than it otherwise would be. So let's make up our mind to begin to incorporate practices of reverence toward our divine source, the forces of nature and the spirits of the land on which we all live and depend, as just see if it doesn’t begin to improve our lives, our gardens, our land, and maybe also our luck!
Volumes have been written on the disenchantment of modern life, the meaningless and nihilism which is implicit in the materialist worldview and value system of the society in which we live. One way of escaping this pervasive psychic rot is to engage in a life affirming spirituality which has meaning for you and your life and to drop out as much as possible from the false values of consumer society. I don’t want people to think that I am here advocating the adoption of antiquated superstitions wholesale, we have modern science and it has given us many gifts. But at what price?
I am advocating a re-wilding of the imagination by allowing ourselves to see the world as our pre-modern rural ancestors did to the extent that it is beneficial and to the extent that it is even possible.
For me re-wilding the imagination looks like adopting a pre-modern view point as if it described a spiritual reality, as is the case in astrology where we know that the physical cosmos doesn’t literally correspond with the cosmology which underlies traditional astrology (i.e. there are no crystal spheres, and the Earth is not literally the center of the cosmos.) astrology still describes eternal archetypal correspondences in the world and in the soul. The spiritual world underlies the physical as, as Heraclitus said, “latent structure is the master of obvious structure”. So the genii locorum, the fae, the gods and angels, execute the will of the creator here in the world of manifestation, administering the world of nature accordingly. They are forces with whom we can interact and form relationships to our benefit and that of the world and the human community.
So how to proceed in practice? Some practical steps I mentioned in passing above, which I will repeat here, along with some others which I haven’t mentioned, as well as some books and resources I consider helpful to those who are interested in entering into a closer relationship with the spirits of the land.
Libations and offerings at appropriate times. A libation is an offering of a drink, often wine, but it could be juice or milk, partially consumed and partially poured out for the entity for whom it is offered. It was a long standing custom to leave bread and milk out at night for the fairies in much of the Celtic world. This link can tell you how to proceed: https://hellenicfaith.com/libation-format/
Food or other offerings left outside, or on an altar, or at a sacred spring.
Prayers and blessings, performed anytime any significant projects undertaken on the land, i.e. felling a tree, plowing or otherwise working ground, planting crops, harvesting, et cetera. Link to classical Greek and Roman prayers here:
https://classicalpolytheism.wordpress.com/
Link to Celtic Christian prayers for all purposes here:https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/cg1/index.htm
Portuguese author Jose Leitao’s book The Precious Apothecary also has many Catholic prayers and blessings for many purposes. Link here:https://www.amazon.com/Precious-Apothecary-Catholic-Jose-Leitao/dp/1910191191
Marking the turnings of the year and seasons, i.e. the solstices, equinoxes and cross quarter days with prayers relevant to the occasion. Celtic Pagan Wheel of the Year link here: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/witchonfire/2022/09/witches-2023-astrological-calendar-magickal-planning-black-moon-aries/ If you follow a Christian path many of these seasonal festivals correspond with major feasts in the liturgical year. Liturgical calendar link here: https://www.usccb.org/resources/2023cal.pdf
Finding power spots in nature where you can sense the presence of land beings and enter into communication with them. A pendulum can be helpful for this.
If you are a bit thick about receiving messages from the nature spirits (like I am) look into geomancy, which is a method of divination which basically involves making a series of marks in the dirt or sand and deriving either a yes or no answer or a whole astrological chart from them. This book can help: https://www.amazon.com/Earth-Divination-Magic-Practical-Geomancy/dp/1567183123
When meditating on the spirits of the land and practicing visualizations I try not to be too specific as regards ethnic and cultural characteristics. I really like Josephine McCarthy’s visualization practices for getting in touch with land spirits from her Magical Knowledge Trilogy. (Link here: https://www.amazon.com/Magical-Knowledge-Trilogy-Josephine-McCarthy/dp/1911134558 ) She has several visualizations for accessing the faery realm, one for meeting the goddess of the underworld, which I like to practice at my spring by the oak tree. I’m not going to make any extravagant claims, but this is my practice and it makes me feel like I’m part of the cosmos and the world in which I live, like I belong here and am a part of it, which is what it’s all about. Josephine’s Magic of the North Gate is specifically about connecting with land spirits and is available free in PDF format from her excellent website. Link here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/539af6bee4b0cef061847e36/t/5ee8c431f2f4ab793cf1f186/1592312888451/magic%2Bnorth%2Bgate%2Binterior.pdf
Just getting outside, into nature, night or day, into nature and speaking from your heart to the power there, in prayer or song or silence, with as much or as little ceremony as you are comfortable with will change your life more than you can imagine. And with repeated practice comes a deeper relationship with the land and its visible and invisible inhabitants.
Lovely post. I also always think of the Japanese kami in this context. For us urbanites, one also should pay attention to the household gods, another grand old Roman practice :-)