ABOUT VERIDITAS HIBERNICA

“In wildness is the preservation of the world” ~ Henry David Thoreau

VERIDITAS HIBERNICA The revolution is happening!

Veriditas is the healing, greening power of Nature; healing the wounds of the Earth and the natural web, including the interior wounds of humans; Hibernica means Irish.

Plants are the creators of our environment and sustainers of all life; they are our ancestors and our teachers. Even the smallest of plants is an alchemist; using only sunlight, carbon dioxide and water they are able to manufacture their own food, release the oxygen necessary for life to exist on this planet, and to make the most amazingly sophisticated molecules with elegant physiological effects on other species. Each plant has several elaborate means of communication; they communicate with members of their own species, but also with insects, animals and other plant species.

As the forests of the world have been decimated (over 35% lost in the last 50 years), as people have moved off the land and become urbanized, we have seen significant shifts. As people move out of their relationship with the natural world they stop eating wild food and start to experience more ‘Western’ diseases; they stop experiencing the soul food that walking in nature and working within nature provides for our sustenance on every level. Contact with the natural world and the wilderness brings us to an awareness of our own true self, the wildness within and allows us to recognize the process of human domestication for what it is.

The process of human separation began long before the time known as the Age of Enlightenment. However, Cartesian science deepened the epistemological shift towards viewing the Universe (and therefore everything in it) as a machine; people began to shift their cosmology to believe that they were external to, and in some way superior to, the natural world. As humans separated from nature they came to view the rest of the natural world as a resource to dominate, to exploit and plunder; they forgot that they are part of nature. For some nature became something to fear. When we forget that we are an intrinsic part of nature we see ourselves as outside the rest of nature’s web, rather than seeing that we are an intrinsic part of nature with an ecological function. We ignore our true role to the detriment of our physical, mental and emotional health. We start to disconnect from ourselves, viewing our own bodies as machines. Our own natural physiological processes (including pregnancy, birth, ageing, death and any other physiological change) become objects of fear and we withdraw further. We no longer feel capable of making decisions about our own health and nutrition. Instead we hand over our power in these areas to industrial giants and further sever our connections to the web that can provide our nourishment and healthcare.

Once upon a time the people of this land, and throughout the world, saw themselves as part of the natural web and revered nature. This does not mean that they worshipped nature but that they saw it as sacred; they recognized that they were part of the web and that it was only due to the bounty of the Earth that they had clean air, clean water, fertile soils, sufficient food, building materials; and that plants made their therapeutic properties available for the healing of people, their herds, the wild animals and other plants. They saw the necessity of co-creating within their environment and knew that they had to treat it sustainably in order to continue to be care-taken by the environment. Peoples such as the Shuar people of South America still know that this is true.

  Veriditas Hibernica is about finding ourselves again through reconnecting with our teachers – the trees and the plants.
  Veriditas Hibernica is about how we restore and reclaim our proper place in nature.

We believe that all that we need is at our feet and that by caretaking locally we can support global shifts. It is time to move away from the anthropocentric view of the biosphere and see exactly how small and how big we are in the scheme of things.

Veriditas Hibernica is dedicated to realizing this vision.
To read more about how we envision doing this work explore some of the other sections of this site.

If you decide you would like to join in then please contact us…