Declaration of the Four Sacred Things

The earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water, and earth.

Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the interconnected systems that sustain life, we know that nothing can live without them.

To call these things sacred is to say that they have a value beyond the usefulness for human ends, that they themselves become the standard by which our acts, our economies, our laws, and our purposes must be judged. No one has the right to appropriate them or profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfeits its legitimacy.

All people, all living things, are a part of the earth life, and so are sacred. So one of us stands higher or lower than the other. Only justice can assure balance: only ecological balance can sustain freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call spirit flourish in its full diversity.

To honor the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment, sustenance, habitat. knowledge. freedom, and beauty can thrive. To honor the scared is to make love possible.

To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will, our courage, our silence, and our voices. To this we dedicate our lives.

-Starhawk

from "The Fifth Sacred Thing" published by Bantam Books, New York c.1993. Please read it, it's worth it.