Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community

by Pegi Eyers

Ancient Spirit Rising is the recipient of a 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Award in the Current Events/Social Change category. Come back to your roots! Drawing on cultural studies and contemporary social justice, Ancient Spirit Rising examines the loss of our vital ethnocultural connection to tribe and place, and why there is a trend to borrow identities from other cultures. From the wealth of resources available today, an authentic self-identity can be reconstructed from old/new earth-centered societies, using the timeless values of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) as our model. A weaving of analysis, evocation and promptings of the heart, Ancient Spirit Rising offers strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, rewilding, restoring an ecocentric worldview, returning to the Old Ways, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community. With extensive notes and exhaustive references, Ancient Spirit Rising is an essential compendium for change!

Genres: Spirituality, Nonfiction

410 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

Author of "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community" Pegi Eyers is occupied with challenging worldviews, contributing to the paradigm shift and working with the uncolonization process in herself and others. A Celtic Animist who sees the world through a spiritual lens, she is a devotee of nature-based culture and all that is sacred to the Earth. Pegi Eyers is an advocate for our interconnection with Earth Community and the recovery of authentic ancestral wisdom and traditions for all people. She lives in the countryside on the outskirts of Nogojiwanong in Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg territory (Peterborough, Ontario, Canada) on a hilltop with views reaching for miles in all directions.

Reviews

[Jules · Rating 5 out of 5]

A genuinely fearless work seeking to provide a road map to allyship to both indigenous peoples and the earth itself. While not a flawless piece of scholarship, it is the book I will hand to those needing a primer on cultural appropriation, decolonization, and ally theory. It accessibly moves across a number of vital social justice theories and wove a beautiful call to action. A deeply important work for our times.

[dori · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE this book, a sort of "textbook for the rest of us" - if you're not a college radical anymore, especially, and need to get in tune with where we've arrived at this point, this is a phenomenal place to begin (though honestly, I think it would also be a great college textbook). Yes, it's true, I started reading it in May, 2017 - and yes, it's true, I'm not finished with it.

The first several chapters are a lot to chew on, and for many of us, even those of us who've already put a lot of effort into cleaning up our acts, it can be a heavy read. I had to put it down and come back more than once, reading some page-turner fiction in between to assuage the "oops, ugh, damn I'm sorries" - getting through that, however, brought me to a really great "ally checklist" - as in, lots and lots of great advice on how to be one without being a guilt-ridden, non-effective, emotional-labor-placing fool.

Then, the book took a turn, and honestly, I got a little lost for a minute. Genetically, i'm a European mutt, mostly southern European, but culturally, I have no defined spiritual identity. I'm a fierce defender and protector, yes, a feminist, a mother, a woman with a wife, I and share some common beliefs of what is referred to here as "indigenous knowledge" but the rest? I don't know yet. This book is written for me.

Recently, there was a big discussion on the internet about two little girls who were dressed up in "Indian" costumes for a photoshoot. The photos went viral. The photographer claimed they had "Native heritage" but clearly, they grew up as white girls. They had NOT grown in up in Indigenous culture and thus, were stereotyping, perhaps even MOCKING indigenous culture (arguments such as "they're just children" I found to be equally as offensive, because seriously - even so, it seems the parents' responsibility to identify and put a stop to this, because really? that's what you want to teach your kids? That it's okay to appropriate or stereotype a culture because they are children? Erm, nope...)

Anyway I digress, but I bring this up because I went through this particular argument with myself reading this book. How can I "reclaim" something I've never really honestly been a part of? Despite the fact that the majority of my DNA is Maltese (hello, ancient goddess temples!) and the rest is mostly British and Irish, no one REALLY knows who built those temples on Malta or what their practices were, I don't feel a call to Celtic Revival and I haven't yet encountered a "goddess spirituality" that is gritty and unappropriative enough for me (sorry but calling in both Quan Yin and Hecate doesn't sit right with me - I get to call for any goddess I choose? From any culture? I dunno...). I'm not a flowy-white-clothes kinda goddess girl, either. I'm way more of a "stir the compost" kind of person, and Starhawk's Reclaiming tradition is, so far, as close as it's gotten as far as anything organized.

It has been determined that DNA does not define culture, so having .003% "Cherokee" roots doesn't make you Native. So, how can I reclaim European indigenous knowledge? I'm not a Pagan-with-a-capital-P, I'm not a Wiccan, I'm not a Druid, nothing I've found in modern Strega or vague Hellenic practices shouts "HEY THAT'S ME!" either. So how do I approach this without blindly appropriating others' spiritual practices in the process?

Our sad disconnect is several generations in at this point. Pegi opens a lot of doors to this aspect of the discussion, too, and offers a massive heap of researched advice on how we can approach this dilemma when, like for me, it's not a clear path at all.

Also - my goodness, the references. From this book alone, you could read associated materials for the rest of your life and never finish. She's done her research. Thanks, Pegi. This book is necessary.

[Louise Hewett · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the contents page of Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community by Pegi Eyers, we find two subheadings: Stolen Treasure and Authentic Treasure. But this book is in itself a treasure. With a great amount of research, detail, vision, passion and compassion, Pegi Eyers invites the reader on a quest to unravel and heal the harms that the colonisation of indigenous peoples by white Europeans has caused. She addresses those of European “white” ancestral background, those who by virtue of their birth inherit the spectrum of privileges from dominant Western dominator and colonising culture, and while her focus remains on the people of Turtle Island the reality of colonial invasion, theft, possession and appropriation rings true for the experience of Indigenous peoples worldwide. And that makes this book relevant to us all. No “stone” remains unturned in this exploration of the why, what and how colonial attitudes, racism and spiritual appropriation manifest in our times. A very important and relevant subject discussed, particularly given that this book is at the root a book about re-membering and re-weaving ancestral indigenous knowledge and eco-spiritual practise, is the critique of New Age spiritual philosophies and practises, both esoteric and consumerist. Offering different perspectives on any ideas proliferated in the contemporary alternative spirituality market place is a way of challenge, refinement and, of course, a call to integrity.
Ancient Spirit Rising is packed with excellent and pertinent quotes, and a sturdy bibliography of resources and sources consulted. With sub sections covering cultural appropriation, racism, white privilege, unpacking the new age, and indigenous mind – just to give an idea of the comprehensive resource list – there is ample guidance for where to go once your mind, heart and spirit have been stimulated to query, critique and explore the path of ahead. This path calls those of us of European ancestry to return to our own indigenous roots and restore meaning in our own lives and communities, as well as decolonising our minds and bodies whilst working to create healthy co-existence with the indigenous peoples with whom we share our environments.
I will be returning to this book again and again for personal need and in the community and spiritual work I engage in as a writer and artist. In my mind, Ancient Spirit Rising is a call to action, and a beacon of hope.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

ok first of all this book seriously needs an editor! like, seriously. there is a lot of information repeated and disorganized and it would be a much more powerful read if the writing was pulled together into a more coherent spiral.

that said: solid resource laying out the case for why white people need to stop appropriating indigenous (to turtle island) spirituality & why/how to "re-indigenize" ourselves (to the lands our ancestors are from, NOT pulling a joboy & playing pretendian on these territories) / start living by our own ancestral & indigenous knowledge to join a circle of earth-centred people.

if anyone has recommendations for pathways towards this that are explicitly queer & trans affirming, i'd love to hear them. the problem with trying to uncover pre-christian animist traditions is that lots overlap with TERFs & SWERFs and those are not part of my sacred practice.

[Rob McDonald · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think the content is super useful, but this book badly needs more editing. Sentences and topics run on and on with irrelevant or repetitive text. I skipped sections because I got the point of what she was saying long before she was done saying it.

[NormaCenva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actual Rating 6 awesomeness Stars

Great book with a lot of useful info that is helpful and stransformative in it's approach regarding a bunch of very important current issues!

[Thalla Rothach · Rating 1 out of 5]

The second half of the book is the bad part, because she no longer cites Native American authors, instead using crystal-waving yahoos in California as references. In the first half, which discusses the plight of Native Americans and their struggles with autonomy and decolonization, the sources of the information are impeccable and is an excellent introduction, for White people, wanting to understand Native American issues.

The second half, about White people re-indigenizing, throws everything learned in the first half out the window. It's a complete reversal, and eventually I had to stop reading because I couldn't put up with the bullshit anymore, having studied pre-colonial and pre-industrial history for decades.

The fundamental reason for why the book fails is Ms. Eyers' philosophy: an extreme primitivist who basically believes the only correct way to live is naked, under a bush, eating berries-which is the exact opposite of re-indigenization.

Despite the promise of the first half, Ms. Eyers' fatal flaw in writing it was that she has never studied history-the historical cultures of Native Americans, only their modern problems. She has never studied pre-industrial Europe-she has no idea how indigenous cultures function.

This became glaringly apparent on pp. 274-5, where she states: "...hunting, trapping, captivity" of animals is the "deepest injustice and barbarism." All pre-industrial societies must ingest animal protein because wild plants don't have enough protein to keep humans functional.

So, though she expresses the wish for Native Americans to restore their cultures in the first half, if they eat a single grasshopper, they're not but savages to her in the second.

The only one true way to live, according to her, amongst a hundred pages of ecomystic fluff, is this: to "rewild" oneself by "unlearning the habits of civilization" (pp.268-9) via "paleo diet, walking barefoot, loose clothing, drinking spring water, and 'primal movement'[???]" (p.267) that we may at last purge ourselves of "the impulse to build civilization" (p.277).

In a nutshell: civilization is Pure Evil, and any Native Americans trying to restore their former glory will be evil in her eyes.

But I managed to survive that crap. It was only when I reached p.280 that the bullshit-o-meter went into the red with this turd nugget: "...many indigenous cultures of Europe were wiped out long ago."-because anything that does not involve living naked under a bush eating berries is not indigenous to her. She wants us all to live like chimpanzees again.

Half the book is complete garbage, so it's pretty much a waste of money.