Initiating the Archaic Renaissance - Reversing Civilisational Collapse
How do we reawaken our ancestral intelligence and repair our broken relationship with the Earth?
Humankind has long known how to respond to ecological collapse, yet our collective action remains tepid. We have an intellectual grasp of the crisis, but not an embodied one. Modern civilisation has lost the visceral, lived Connection to Country that First Nations peoples have always known — a deep physiological awareness of belonging to the biosphere.
This workshop invites participants to explore what happens when that connection is restored. We will consider how the Enlightenment’s legacy of separation — the idea of human dominance over nature — has trapped us within a delusional bubble of modernity. By reawakening the ancient knowledge encoded in our DNA, we begin to dissolve the boundaries that isolate us from the living world.
Drawing inspiration from Terence McKenna’s notion of The Archaic Revival, we will look at how past civilisations sought renewal through rediscovery of older wisdom. Just as Renaissance scholars revived classical Greece to rebuild Europe’s intellectual foundations, we too stand at a turning point — one calling for a return not to abstract reason, but to embodied belonging and ecological participation.
The crisis we face today is total — it affects every person, plant, and creature. Our inherited worldviews, shaped by both religion and science, have reached their limits. The task before us is to cultivate a new kind of awakening: an Archaic Renaissance that honours both ancient wisdom and modern insight.
Through reflective discussion, guided visualisation, and simple experiential exercises, participants will explore ways to:
Reconnect to ancestral awareness and the living biosphere.
Recognise the physiological dimension of belonging to Country.
Understand the role of plant teachers and natural intelligence in personal and planetary healing.
Envision pathways toward a new symbiotic “Garden State,” where human creativity supports ecological regeneration.
The window of opportunity is closing, yet hope remains. By rekindling the ancient covenant with Nature — through reverence, awareness, and active participation — we can begin to reverse the civilisational collapse already underway.
