Animism Exercise: Flowing With The River Spirits

I invite you to listen to what the flow of water has to say…

You seek to understand who I am? Then take a moment to listen to my tale. For I have been waiting for your kind to finally ask. 

What my beginning is, I do not know myself. Time is not my realm, or at least not in the same way as for you. I am this moment. I am change. I am movement and I am flow. If you seek to understand me, that is the essence. I have no beginning and I have no ending. These are but my sisters. They are born out of me, and I out of them.

What you see when you look at me are my thoughts and feelings. Those little waves and droplets that sparkle in the sunlight are my words.

So what do I feel? To whom do I speak? What are the songs I sing? Listen. Come and visit me, and you will understand. Come. I invite you. For this next song is for you. 

You are more than you imagine. You are a place of connection, and a place of song. But so many of you seem to have forgotten. And so instead of having you read my words on a computer screen, I will invite you to sing with me. Here is a simple ritual that I would love us to share.

• First, come to me. I am the spirit behind all rivers and streams, so come to the place that your heart calls you to. This need not be the place of greatest natural beauty. On the contrary, it would be better if you chose a part of me that is neglected and is hungering for connection. If there is an open sewer near you, or a manmade canal or a river that is forced to stream underground, then go there. We can rebuild their spirit if we work together.
• Now, talk to me. It does not matter what you say. Simply open up your spirit and allow it to flow through you and out of you.  Visualize how you and the river become a single being. Let it flow through you and flow through it. Allow it to cleanse you, and cleanse it in return.

As you do this, you will find that you think and speak like river. And you will find that you have found a friend and a string that binds you to your surroundings. For as we have shared with you, so we share with all the life surrounding us.

We are communication. We are the lifeblood of the earth. Without us, there would be no life. For it is us who make it possible for lifeforms to share their existence with each other. Why else do you think that water is the thing that every single being on earth needs to survive and to live? 

The reason why we ask you to reconnect to us and to the land in person is because we are worried for you. You are lonely. You think you have gained so much these last few decades through the invention of modern means of communication, but in using them you are also forgetting part of yourself. You forget that you are not a data-processing robot, but a being of flesh and blood. And you have been made flesh and blood so that you can experience physical connection to the world around you.

So go. Live. Be. Sing.

And, as a simply courtesy, regularly revisit that river you chose and keep the connection alive. Become its caretaker and you will find yourself richly rewarded for that service.

Thank you for listening.

Beith is a druid who likes to wander through the forest, inviting the trees to be her teachers in life. She also runs a personal blog about her druid journey, that can be found at wandering-the-woods.com. In real life she’s a mathematician, trying to walk the boundary between the rational and the irrational.