The Council of All Beings

The best-known ritual in deep ecology, and the one most often run badly. Run well it is unforgettable; run in ninety minutes with a craft table it is embarrassing. Give it the afternoon.

How it runs

1. Go out alone and be found. Not “choose an animal”. Walk, sit, wait, and let a being of this place present itself — a beetle, a scrub oak, the dry riverbed, the topsoil, the wind. Forty-five minutes minimum.
2. Make its mask. From found and simple materials. Ugly is fine. Ninety minutes.
3. Come into the council in silence, wearing it.
4. Round one — introduction. I am ancient beech, and this is what I say to the humans.
5. Round two — the humans listen. Three or four people at a time remove their masks, sit in the middle, and may not speak. Everything is addressed to them. Rotate so everyone spends time in the middle.
6. Round three — the gift. Each being offers the humans one strength or capacity of its own: I, mycelium, offer you my ability to connect what looks separate.
7. Remove the masks deliberately, and say your own name aloud. Do not skip this. It is the closing of the container.
8. Eat together. Debrief the next morning, not tonight.

Facilitator notes

• The de-roling in step 7 is a safety measure, not a formality. People do go a long way into this.
• Set the frame honestly: this is a structured imaginative exercise from the deep ecology tradition, not a claim to speak for anyone.
• Grief will surface in round two. Have the space and the time for it, and do not hurry into the gift round to make everyone feel better.
• Masks are burned, buried or taken home. Never binned in front of the group.