The sixth annual edition of the prestigious Emergence Magazine has been released with launch events in Berlin, London and California. This is more than just another magazine: it’s an award-winning independent publication that is celebrated for its visionary storytelling on themes of ecology, the environment, culture, and spirituality.
Founded by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, an acclaimed author and documentary filmmaker, Emergence seeks to illuminate the deep connections between humanity and the living Earth in both words and pictures. Volume six: Seasons explores the cycles of the earth that unfold around us as we journey through spring, summer, autumn, and winter. The accompanying book of seasonal practices, titled Requiem, Invitation and Celebration, is similarly thoughtful. Together, they contemplate the often-paradoxical ways that the different seasons invite us to embrace our intimate – and vital – relationship with the Earth.
Emergence Magazine – Seasons: an uplifting publication
Reflecting upon a world where snow no longer arrives when expected and annual species migrations fall out of time, and yet those first blossoms still bloom, Seasons is a surprisingly uplifting and moving publication full of energy and light. Reading it feels like attending an intense wellness retreat. As large as a comprehensive book, the magazine is bursting with a vibrant collection of haiku, essays, short fiction, and poems, all illustrated with beautiful photographs. It celebrates what isn’t there as much as what remains, returns, and regrows as the Earth continues its journey and the seasons change.
The magazine opens with a quote from the 13th century Sufi mystic Rumi: ‘Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world. The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same.’ This is followed with a thoughtful essay by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee about the seasons, both literal and figurative: ‘From the very beginning of the human story, we depended on the seasons for the many life-giving forces that sustained us, be that rain, sun, warmth, growth, or food.’ People were more aligned to the ‘rhythms and patterns present within the living Earth.’ We now have ‘an evolving relationship with the seasons’ and this is the theme addressed by each of the contributors. Vaughan-Lee ends on an optimistic note, saying, ‘regardless of the great loss that the annual turn of the seasons reveals, the Earth in all Her ever-giving abundance and grace is constantly inviting us to return to Her. This if nothing else is cause for celebration.’
The magazine is divided into chapters. The first, Requiem, begins with the words, ‘Earth storm, an ending I can almost feel, longest night…Tasmanian Tigers pace the underworld.’ Other chapters include Dara McAnulty’s moving words about our avian friends in The Thread of Belonging: ‘The barn owl came silently, and we silenced our revelry, as outstretched spectral wings caught our breath in its wake.’ McAnulty is a multi-award-winning naturalist and environmental campaigner whose passion shines through in this writing.
Marie Mutsuki Mockett offers a Japanese perspective in Five Hundred Words, accompanied by a translation of key seasonal phrases into Japanese kigo. She quotes the haiku poet Basho, who wrote these lovely words around four hundred years ago: ‘The ancient pond – A frog leaps in – The sound of the water’ (translation by Donald Keene). Later, David George Haskell muses on the unexpected beauty of wildflowers ‘and the search for home’, writing, ‘What do plants do when life gets hard? Strew the world with floral beauty.’ That thought that has stayed with me since my first reading.
Seasons is beautifully illustrated and includes some stunning, frame-worthy, black and white photographs of clouds by Bear Guerra. The final section of photographs, Five Studies on Light,by Studio Airport and Boris Acket, is an adaptation of a dynamic and immersive sound and light installation of the same name that was shown at the launch events.
Seasons closes with a quote from the 15th century Persian poet Jami: ‘The entities were all colored windows upon which fell the rays of Being’s Sun. In every window – red, yellow, blue – the Light appeared in the window’s colour.’
Emergence Magazine: an accompanying book
The magazine is accompanied by the release of a new book, Requiem, Invitation, and Celebration: A collection of Seasonal Practices by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee and Lucy Wormald, also published by Emergence Press. This small hardback collects 50 short reflections, or meditations, on the seasons. From the first, Bird Song, ‘for when you hear the music of dawn’, to the last, The Presence of Silence, ‘for when all is still’, these are perfect little musings, or mantras, that will echo in your mind as you look at the clouds or walk through the rain.
Emergence Press is the publishing imprint of the Emergence Institute which is based on the unceded ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok people in present-day Marin County, California.
Emergence Magazine Vol. #6 Seasons, £36.00 (USD $50). Accompanying book Requiem, Invitation, and Celebration, £18.00 (USD $25); magazine and book £50.00 GBP if purchased together.
