DECLARATION
OF THE FOUR SACRED THINGS
The Earth is a living, conscious being.
In company with 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 we cannot live without them.
To call these things sacred is to say
that they have a value beyond their usefulness for human ends,
that they themselves become the standards by which our acts,
our economics, 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 part of the earth life and so are sacred.
No one stands higher or lower than any other.
Only justice can assure balance:
only ecological balance can sustain freedom.
Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing that 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 sacred is to make love possible.
To this we dedicate
our curiosity, our will, our courage, our silences, and our voices.
To this we dedicate our lives.
from The Fifth Sacred Thing
by Starhawk
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