“Here, I pray all day long and with my whole body, for my limbs are a moving benediction to the Holy Wild.”
~ Danielle Dulsky, The Holy Wild

It’s true. I bit into the forbidden fruit. I even dipped it in forbidden honey, fresh from the wild hive, outside the garden, but within tantalizing reach.

As its potency touched my tongue my eyes went wide. I felt my mouth explode as if an orgasm.

And I wanted more. My body opened to a new Knowing – that this delight was sacred, and consuming what I was told (what we all were told) was forbidden was exactly what I needed.

As if it was a key unlocking a stiff unused gate that leads outside society’s well-manicured garden, I savored the taste of freedom.

I knew in opening my eyes more fully I could never close them to the machine’s underbelly.

That’s why the fruit is forbidden. Because we are not in a garden. Not really. And we are certainly not in the wilderness. And very certainly not in the wildness. We are in the machine that is modern day society. We are in the land of supersize and micromanage. We are the minions of Big-gov, Big-ag, Big-pharm. Our minds are shackled to screens. Our bodies have forgotten the delights of the ground, of mud and ferns.

Come. Taste my fruit, if you dare.

Re-wild yourself.

A storm is coming. Prepare.

And you ask, as you look at the forbidden in your outstretched hand,

How? How do we prepare?

By being fully in our bodies.

Dance ecstatically.

Make tools with your fingers, your teeth, your toes.

Forage to put wildness back in your belly.

Make love under the sun, under the moon, under the stars.

Draw together and lend a helping hand.

This is not the time to batten down the hatches and stay inside. You must go outside, into the rain and thunder and lightning flashes. Feel the storm reverberate in your body.

Become the storm’s echo.

Become a force of Nature.

State your proclamation by eating the forbidden and become one with the storm, “I am Witch! I am Wayfinder! I am a force of Nature! I am the living antidote to the toxins of the machine. I am the sacred elixir of Wildness.”

Arianna Alexsandra Collins, naturalist, poet, writer, wild edible enthusiast, and Wiccan High Priestess lives in Ashfield, MA.

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This piece was inspired through writing activities in Danielle Dulsky’s The Holy Wild.