Reviews

Book Review – Nature Spirits and Elemental Beings: Working with Intelligence in Nature by Marko Pogacnik

Book Review
Nature Spirits and Elemental Beings:
Working with Intelligence in Nature
Marko Pogacnik
Published by Findhorn Press
254 pages
Publication date: February 1, 2010 (Second Edition)

 

 

For over thirty years, Marko Pogacnik has worked with Earth’s energies to heal and balance places where trauma or violence has occurred. He uses a process called lithopuncture – placing large stones at specific points in the landscape – similar to acupuncture. Nature Spirits and Elemental Beings: Working with the Intelligence in Nature is the result of his first encounters during lithopuncture work with the intelligent forces and beings who shape and protect Earth and her processes. Pogacnik wrote the first edition of this book in 1997, after his initial encounters with these beings in the early 1990’s. In this second edition, he expands upon the insights he gained from the additional decade of interaction with them. He has added 54 commentaries, interspersed throughout the text to supplement and clarify his original understanding and to answer questions he received from readers following the publication of the first edition.

Pogacnik provides us with an intriguing story of the evolution of his sensitivity to earth energies from using dowsing rods to discerning patterns of energy in the movements of his hands. Different points in a landscape caused his hands to move in different patterns: slow rotations rather that short fast circles, for example. He was led deeper into the energies of his own body and ultimately, to a sense of connection with the earth elementals when an exploration of his own heart trouble took him on a past life journey and he encountered dwarves in an underground cave guarding a heart like a holy relic. This awakened his sense of his emotional connection to the Heart of the Earth, and shortly afterwards, he “met” a water elemental in the form a fish, representative of the Earth Soul. And he was off and running, meeting in meditation additional archetypal representatives of Earth Consciousness, the primal intelligence of Earth.

In the next phase of his “entrance into an unknown world,” as he called it, he began to see the souls of nature beings – the image of a shining woman inside a bear, for example. And then, he began to see the elementals who accompany the growth of trees – fauns. The tree provides an opportunity for the faun to experience matter, and in exchange, the faun shares its consciousness to support the tree’s growth in harmony with the surrounding environment. They are connected as if by an umbilical cord, for the life of the tree – as long as there is life in the roots. The fauns of trees in an area work share consciousness and resources to support each other. I have always understood that trees (and all plants) are sentient, but my understanding has been taken to a new level through Pogacnik’s work. His description of the suffering of these elementals when there is damage to the trees they inhabit is incredibly moving. This is separate from, and in addition to, the physical suffering of the trees themselves. It is an emotional torment that is hard to digest. It helps to explain some of the intensity of distress we feel as earth changes intensify.

The book continues with Pogacnik’s stories of meeting additional categories and classifications of elementals, of earth, air, water and fire. He further describes the levels of elementals within each of these categories. They reminded me of Machaelle Small Wright’s work and Rudolph Steiner’s descriptions of nymphs, sylphs, pygmies and salamanders as beings of water, air, earth and fire. Pogacnik develops this work and expands the structure and hierarchy. He also describes a “new” elemental being which represents the spirit of earth changes, as each of the elemental categories undergoes initiation into becoming a bearer of the “change” process. What I found most engaging was Pogacnik’s discussion of why certain landscapes feel special or sacred and the work that nature beings do at these places.

Nature Spirits and Elemental Beings: Working with the Intelligence in Nature is Pogacnik’s story of how this work evolved for him. It is not a how-to manual, although he provides exercises to help the reader perceive elemental beings, including a “personal” elemental. Pogacnik’s one-line illustrations of many of the beings he met are lovely and enlightening. This is a book I will read several more times in order to fully grasp it. It is full of information and perceptions that were too much to absorb in one reading. I would love to read more about the development of his work; I had questions about the interdimensional openings in certain landscapes, for example. I am hoping for a 3rd edition that adds to this one!


Marko Pogacnik is an international consultant, UNESCO Artist for Peace, a specialist and seminar leader on earth healing and lithopuncture, and the president of the Hagia Chora school for geomancy in Germany. He is the author of Christ Power and the Earth Goddess; Earth Changes, Human Destiny; Healing the Heart of the Earth; and Touching the Breath of Gaia. Find out more at www.markopogacnik.com

 

Nature Spirits & Elemental Beings on Amazon

 

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About the Author:

Susan Rossi is a Practitioner and Teacher of Shamanic Arts. She is a long-time explorer of The Mysteries – the connections between mind, body, spirit and how to live in right relationship to all of the energies streaming through the cosmos. She works with clients as an astrologer, coach, ceremonialist and guide to the wisdom that each of us has the capacity to access. Her focus is on guiding clients to unblock and rediscover their inner wisdom. Art, exploration of the birth chart, ceremony, legacy writing, hypnotherapy, energetic healing practice and creation of sacred tools are integral pieces of her practice.

Susan trained in Soul Level Astrology with master astrologer Mark Borax. She delights in exploring with individuals the planetary pattern under which their soul choose to incarnate.

Susan Rossi

Open Channel Astrology www.openchannelastrology.com

Flying to the Heart www.flyingtotheheart.com