The planets are our ancestors; the stars our kin
It’s a simple concept that nonetheless still evades our modern, western understanding. “We are made of star stuff,” Carl Sagan famously...
As we learn to translate the language of nature, there is more than mere astonishment at what we uncover; at the knowledge - nascent to science, ancient to native cultures the world over - of what trees feel and how they communicate, or of how other animal consciousnesses experience the world. There is magic - the realest, rawest form of magic we can access in an unsuperstitious world grounded in science but willing to soar beyond it, into other, non-materialist modes of perception.
- Maria Popova