A Handbook for Survivalists

Written while under a wildfire evacuation warning, with bags packed, A Handbook for Survivalists explores the true nature of our survival at this pivotal moment in our shared journey together with the Earth. The present pandemic and its accompanying economic crisis, together with the widespread wildfires and flooding, have shown the fragility of our global systems and a dangerous imbalance with the natural world. Lengthening food lines and burned buildings, smoke-filled skies, have given us a foretaste of a future of climate crisis and radical uncertainty. What are the real values we need at this time when confronted by the divisiveness of our present culture in which the poor suffer most, and how can we transition into a future which respects the more-than-human world to which we belong?

Looking deeper than merely physical survival, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee explores the roots of this present imbalance in our separation from the Earth, and a vital need to reconnect, to regain the knowing of our ancestors who walked on sacred land. Returning to a deep awareness of our interconnected oneness with the living Earth, this book gives us the foundation for a new story for humanity, one not based upon exploitation and greed. A Handbook for Survivalists offers us tools to help in this transition, both in the resilience needed to survive the coming environmental and social breakdown, and in the ways to give birth to a living future. It explores subjects such as destiny, living with chaos, and the central theme of death and rebirth—how to seed a sustainable future for both humanity and the Earth.

A Handbook for Survivalists is full of encouragement of how we can transition into this future without glossing over the catastrophes and hardships that we are already encountering. Combining an understanding of the potential for a real shift in consciousness with an awareness of the global forces resisting any such change, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee takes us on a journey back to when our spiritual nature was bonded with the Earth and its magical nature. This is spiritual empowerment in its deepest sense because it transforms not just the individual but our relationship with the Earth and its diverse community to which we belong.

A core element of this empowerment comes from understanding our spiritual nature in relationship to the Earth. Indigenous Peoples live this awareness through prayers, ceremonies, and other practices. We have mostly forgotten this dimension of our spiritual nature, but in our soul and within the world around us is a divine light that is needed to help us heal and nurture the web of life we are destroying. Learning to work with this light—which belongs to mystical and shamanic traditions—we can continue the practice of our ancestors and help to keep the world in balance.

Finally this book offers a love story for the Earth. We can help the world remember what our culture has forgotten—how the soil, the seeds, the rivers and the stars all carry a central message of love. In all its diverse forms, its different ways of being and breathing, the living Earth is a celebration of love. And now it is calling out to us, crying to us to remember its sacred nature.