Stephan Harding has been an important influence in the ongoing development of the theoretical foundations of Relational Forest Therapy. I am pleased to count him among my friends. Here he announces his new book, Gaia Alchemy. I have been able to peruse an advanced copy and I am confident many forest therapy enthusiasts will want to add this insightful volume to their libraries.
—M. Amos Clifford
I was trained as a scientist specialising in the behavioural ecology of wild ungulates, but, despite my love of these animals and of nature in general, I have always felt the extreme dryness and lack of soul in science. For me, the remedy was to become one of the founders of Schumacher College at Dartington in Devon, England, where we have developed a soulful approach to science which we call “holistic science” in which we explore the connections between our factual, data-based knowledge of the world with intuitions and feelings about the living soulfulness of the world.
My first book, Animate Earth (2006 and 2009) was an early attempt to show how these two parts of ourselves, long disconnected ever since the scientific revolution, could be put back together in relation to Gaia, our living planet. My new book, Gaia Alchemy (2022), goes further by reaching back to the pre-scientific understandings of the Western alchemists who, as psychologist C.G. Jung pointed out, discovered a great deal about the soul of nature without (sadly) uncovering much of scientific value.
The Soul of the World – the anima mundi – spoke to the alchemists through images which they have handed down to us so that we in our times can follow in their footsteps in our own ways. Thus, in this new book I explore how key alchemical images such as the Tabula Smaragdina, The Azoth mandala and The Rosarium Philosophorum, amongst others, can help us to enter deeply into the soulful self-regulating dynamics of our planet by bringing these images into the science and the science into the images by means of storytelling, craft work, meditations, contemplations and time spent in one’s “Gaia Place” in the very heart of nature. I hope that the book is a bold exploration of the reintegration of rationality and intuition, science and soul, to foster individual and planetary healing by exploring how the four components of the living earth: biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere, mesh with the four elements of alchemical symbology and the four functions of consciousness as understood by depth psychology.
The result for me represents an early contribution to this particular and perhaps unexpected pathway for healing the split in Western culture which is so desperately needed in this time of severe global ecological and social crisis. I can only hope that both readers and authors in future will take up the challenge of enacting and developing Gaia Alchemy in their own lives and in their own particularly individual ways, especially in conjunction with shinrin-yoku, a domain which pioneers such as M. Amos Clifford are already exploring.
Gaia Alchemy by Stephan Harding has been published by Bear & Co.