Declaration Of The Four Sacred Things

The earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different time and places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water, and earth.

We see them as the breath, energy, blood, and body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the interconnected systems that sustain life[;] we know that nothing can live without them.

To call these things sacred is to say that they have a value beyond their usefullness for human ends, that they themselves become the standards by which our acts, our economics, our laws, and our purposes must be judged. No one has the right to appropriate them, or to profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfits its legitimacy.

All people, all living things, are part of the earth life, and so are sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than any other. Only justice can assure balance; only ecological balance can sustain freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing [that] we call spirit flourish in all its diversity.


To honnor the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment, sustenance, habitat, knowledge, freedom, and beauty can thrive. To honor the sacred is to make love possible.

To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will, our courage, our silences, and our voices. To this we dedicate our lives.

~Starhawk The Fifth Sacred Thing