Council of Gnomes Blog

Really, when Julie and I drove to Ben Lomand to pay our respects to Barbara I didn’t expect anything special to happen. I accept my slow trajectory and imagined I would just add a brick or two to the edifice, inching along to gnome recognition. But the weekend was more complex and quietly marvelous than that. To carve a “space out of time”, ritual is helpful, if not required, and so is the breathing in and out from group to individual, active to contemplative, reflective to expressive. Barbara…

As a long-time student of Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy, I was delighted with Tanis Helliwell’s story of Steiner recruiting leprechauns who would help narrow the chasm between nature spirits and humans. It added a fanciful flavor to what I have often experienced as Steiner’s stern demeanor. Picturing him in the elemental world, though still on an urgent mission, somehow allowed me to imagine him kicking up his heels and laughing—though perhaps still wearing the long black frock coat of the photographs. This seriousness and delight mingled together in…

Tanis Helliwell, in Summer with the Leprechauns, writes that she rented a cottage in the west of Ireland with the intention of staying there until she reached enlightenment. She was immediately engaged and subsequently re-routed in her goal by a leprechaun gentleman, Lloyd, whose intention was to find out about her as she already was. At one point he tells her how, as a young leprechaun, a human being had come to his realm asking for volunteers to connect with and learn about humans—a need for reconnection and…

“We are truly real. We are not a figment of your mind. Your mind has had to be developed and fine tuned to be able to do this work. Your mind is the instrument. We are the teachers. Please, please stay open, stay present, stay real.”   – Mano to Barbara Years ago, after reading Sandra Ingerman’s books on soul retrieval, I had a shaman do one for me. She brought back the news that my totem animal is the red-tailed hawk, and then she asked me to…

Here in my Nevada City pine woods I have a new friend and neighbor, Julie, who is a botanist. Her arrival at that title—with Latin names and scientific expertise—came after her heart’s awakening to wild flowers. And so we have begun meeting for a couple of hours each week to pursue this heart direction of crossing communication thresholds to connect with elementals, plants, animals, and the beings of earth, water, air, and fire. Julie’s intense interest in and love for plants blossomed when she found herself with a…

These were Barbara’s “waking thoughts” on September 11, 2013, and I am so happy to turn this blog over to her directly. “I have concern that humanity seems to be very disconnected from nature. People think that their life needs are supplied by Wal-Mart, Costco, Safeway, Rite Aid, and Best Buy. I saw this innocence and ignorance played out in my own life when, years ago—before I entered my spiritual path and conscious eating—my little daughter was so surprised to learn that lemonade came from real lemons and…

As I’m learning to address plants, animals and nature spirits directly—speaking, as David Abram (in Becoming Animal) advocates, “not about but to the natural world” and calling myself “into the vital presence of that world,” I often come rather quickly to a point of awkwardness. I acknowledge my progress in remembering to greet the nature spirits and trees each morning, to express my admiration and gratitude, but then what?  The following transcript from one of Barbara’s sessions with the Council of Gnomes gives a good sense of how…

“With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.”   –William Wordsworth I recently began reading Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology by David Abram. In his opening paragraph he talks about “blending our skin with the rain-rippled surface of rivers, mingling our ears with the thunder and the thrumming of frogs, and our eyes with the molten sky. Feeling the polyrhythmic pulse of this place.”  He also says, “the power of language remains, first and…

After reading a few blog entries, one of my brothers (not the scientist) asked, “What is a gnome anyway?”  This struck me as a fine question, and one that gets us closer to the heart of the matter. Mano, Barbara’s gnome mentor, makes clear that the nature beings are of the Earth and are willing to appear in whatever way we need them to in order to make contact. This gives a lot of leeway, though many of us, nonetheless, picture bearded little fellows with red pointed hats…