We Dwell in the Living World

On the world as animate and inhabited rather than inert — a core statement of Sam's Pagan cosmology.

A short credal poem — closer to a statement of faith than an essay. Its refrain is a single claim about where Pagans live: not in inert matter to be used up, but in a world that is itself alive. Stars, oceans, rivers and mountains are named one by one, each granted its own being and integrity, each worth keeping for its own sake rather than for what it yields.

From there Sam draws the consequence. If the whole world is ensouled — feeling and self-preserving, even where it is not biological and not human — then it is owed respect rather than management. We are not standing outside it looking in; we participate in the world and the world participates in us, so its wellbeing and ours are the same question asked twice.

The closing turn is the sharpest. Where other traditions revere a book, Pagans revere Nature, because Nature is the scripture — whether one reads it as the oldest and most developed technology or speaks of it intimately as Mother. To consume that world, on this reading, is not merely unwise but the final blasphemy. The piece ends by turning the title into a question aimed at the reader: what do you live in?

Originally published at samwebstermage.com →