Greetings from a mind-meltingly hot desert, after a deep hibernation period, we’re excited to announce that Luna Arcana’s issue 6 is out. This issue is a whole new experience, completely self-funded, with no ads. It’s an exploration of the nuanced experiences around the threat to wilderness and ecological grief – and making space for grief … Read more
by Rohini Walker Click here The Migration of Memory, Part I It’s the in-between time here in the Mojave high desert, as winter shapeshifts into spring. Calm, sunny days are peppered with winds so wild, it’s a wonder the house doesn’t end up in some other, other-worldly faraway. On days like this from my remote spot, the wide … Read more
by Rohini Walker In a previous installment of Letters from Luna, we began some initial explorations into the nature of the soul – what Mary Oliver described as the ‘Third Self’, and James Hillman, borrowing from the ancient Greeks, called the ‘daimon’ or ‘daemon.’ This is – for me and for countless others who place inestimable worth on a commitment … Read more
by Rohini Walker A gentle summation of the year 2020, and – in here the U.S. – these first weeks of 2021, would be highly, deeply weird. We’re living in strange times. Yet, for those of us who have been paying attention for preceding years, decades even, and who recognize the cyclical, ever-in-flux nature of … Read more
by Rohini Walker / Illustration by Martín Mancha I’ve been playing a game with myself for the last couple of months. It revealed itself to me seemingly spontaneously, while out on a hike in the desert one morning with my beloved familiar, the black pitbull, Bodhi. A voice, the one I have come to call Lila, murmured: … Read more
“If you speak on the mythological level, you may speak of what the Divine is like because myth is not a falsehood as one uses the word in a sophisticated way. A myth is an image, a concrete image in terms of which man makes sense of the world.”– Alan Watts Click here for an audio … Read more
by Rohini Walker “I write woman: woman must write woman. And man, man. So only an oblique consideration will be found here of man; it’s upto him to say where his masculinity and femininity are at: this will concern us once men have opened their eyes and seen themselves clearly.” So wrote the Algerian-born French … Read more
by Rohini Walker Perhaps it is because it’s winter, and I, having recently returned home to the Mojave Desert from a deep-snow covered northern New Mexico, am inclined to meditate longer than usual on the subject of decay and dying. Perhaps it’s because I have chosen to live in a desert that I am one … Read more
Photo: Members of Syuxtun Collective inspecting plants at the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden. | Still from Tending Nature by Rohini Walker What does it mean to participate? In Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, a beautiful, indispensable meditation on the gifts of reciprocity and participation with nature, she writes: S2 E2: Holistic Healing with the Syuxtun … Read more
By Jessica Dacey / Photo by Carly Valentine “I think it comes from your spirit, maybe your heart. Is your heart your spirit?” It’s dusk, and Victoria Williams is walking her dogs. As we weave through the desert bush, she is explaining how to sing in tongues. “I wasn’t raised in a church that people … Read more