The fith sacred thing

by Starhawk.,

Paperback, 1994

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Publication

New York : Bantam, 1994.

Description

Fantasy. Fiction. Literature. HTML:An epic tale of freedom and slavery, love and war, and the potential futures of humankind tells of a twenty-first century California clan caught between two clashing worlds, one based on tolerance, the other on repression. Declaration of the Four Sacred Things The earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water, and earth. Whether 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 usefulness for human ends, that they themselves became 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 profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfeits 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 we call spirit flourish in its full diversity. To honor 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. Praise for The Fifth Sacred Thing�??This is wisdom wrapped in drama.�?��??Tom Hayden, California state senator �??Starhawk makes the jump to fiction quite smoothly with this memorable first novel.�?��??Locus �??Totally captivating . . . a vision of the paradigm shift that is essential for our very survival as a species on this planet.�?��??Elinor Gadon, author of The Once and Future Goddess �??This strong debut fits well against feminist futuristic, utopic, and dystopic works by the likes of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ursula LeGuin, and Margaret Atwood.�?�… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member lamericaana

I've never stopped thinking about the message in this book and I read it ages ago. It will make you stop and reconsider the way you and we all live our lives in modern society.

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LibraryThing member hrissliss

A semi-sci-fi book written by everyone's (Everyone's?) favorite writer of Wiccan instruction manuals. This book is set in mid 21st century San Francisco. The world has succumbed to global warming, and pollution; holes in the ozone layer make it darn difficult to be white, and polluted grounds and

waters make it difficult to be anything. Still, San Francisco has survived -- by being taken over by hippies. These neo-hippies have set up a utopian society wherein everyone does their fair share of work (arts are included in work, btw) and everyone gets what they need to survive. But evil Southern California's leaders want to take over San Francisco. Southern California has been taken over by an extremely authoritarian government, which is engaged in the slave trade and selective breeding of humans for fun and profit (most of their soldiers, for example, were bred in soldier pens). This novel details how the San Franciscans defend themselves without compromising their non-violent ideals/way of life. It's an interesting (and difficult) experiment, which I think Starhawk is mainly successful at. Not completely, of course -- the San Franciscans are sometimes so nicely idealistic they made me want to hit them (which is ironic, yes?) and the other society gets no real description beyond "the Great Evil" -- but it hits the mark most of the time. 496 pgs 7.5/10

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LibraryThing member paolasp

Absolutely loved this book. It's brutal and beautiful. It's full of hope and fear. It's steeped in magic and in reality.

seriously all analogies aside..this book makes me want to live in an earthship you know those houses that are all eco friendly and get together with my pagan family. I want a big

ole pagan poly family like in the book.

I heartily recommend this book and am so glad I got it on Bookmooch.

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LibraryThing member kmgallo

Fun, Easy Read. This book I have read a number of times, if only for the feeling of possibility in a potentially dismal future.

LibraryThing member Virtual_Jo

A chilling yet uplifting vision of a future ravaged by war, in which a small group of people build a new kind of utopian community. Violent and shocking in places yet very thought-provoking and well worth a re-read!

LibraryThing member witchyrichy

A stark portrait of the future where good and evil do battle. The lines between good and evil were a little too clearly drawn for me although the "good" characters are shown at least some soul searching. Meanwhile, the "evil" characters are a bit too flat. Starhawk depicts the consequences of

decisions that we are making right now, particularly as it relates to the environment and water rights. I was put off a bit by the violence and even skipped to the last few pages just to make sure that the torture scenes were "worth it." They were...although I skimmed pretty quickly.

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LibraryThing member satyridae

11/2012 I find more to love each time I come back to this book, this time being no exception. I come to this book like water in the desert and it purifies and magnifies me.

2/2011 Unequivocally, I love this book. I live inside it and believe in it with all my heart. It feels like home, the society

depicted herein, with its collective collaborative hippie soul. Sure, it's preachy and even didactic in parts. I find I don't mind preachy, so long as I'm sitting in the choir.

After reading the stark and scary natural histories I've been dipping into lately, this utopia of the possible- although it's a hard-won utopia indeed- feels comforting to me.

I believe that people can work together and create a society which honors the earth and the sacred things thereupon, that people can honor one another and find new ways to relate to their environments. I have to believe it, otherwise I'd give up. This is the book I turn to when I think about giving up.

3/2008 A re-read. I love this book unreservedly. I'm not particularly fond of the whole new age ideology. I'm not a believer in any of the recognizable religions, including Paganism. I worship at the altar of science. And yet I buy this book completely. I inhabit it like a second skin.

This book is the rhetoric of hope, of redemption, of bravery and of transformation. I don't know if it's particularly well-written, I've never noticed in the score of times I've read it. I don't care if it's not. I fall in and am consumed.

It helps that, religious overtones aside, I share the values espoused here. I'm a Utopian at heart, I suppose. Free love and tomatoes for everyone! Never thirst.

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LibraryThing member EsotericMoment

I thoroughly enjoyed this futuristic vision of our future. The vision of a peaceful city working together to honor each other and the earth was powerful. The characters draw you into their tale and make you hurt and hope for them all as if they are members of your own family. I hope this is vision

that we can all work towards.

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LibraryThing member engpunk77

The utopia (very pagan/wiccan)is threatened by an almost foreseeable dystopia in which human values are gone and corporations are the new dictatorship. Freaked me out, as each year more and more aspects of the dystopia seem possible.

LibraryThing member kukulaj

How would an eco-spiritual community defend itself against an imperialist invasion? Starhawk's novel is set in California around 2048... hmmm, we're now, in 2016, about halfway there from the time of the writing of the novel in the 1980s! Global industrial civilization has collapsed. San Francisco

is an idyllic eco-spiritual community while Los Angeles is run as a police state.

To what extent does our present industrial approach to military power drive our level of environment destruction?

This was a very good novel - the plot kept me turning the pages. It switches back and forth between two characters, a man and a woman. They each spend some time in San Francisco and some time in Los Angeles.

I read this on a long train ride - perfect!

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LibraryThing member willszal

Phenomenal. Extremely intense and violent. Don't be fooled: there's nothing utopian in this book. Realistic. An important book to read if you're alive during these times.

LibraryThing member juniperSun

There is much that I admire in this tale of a community that seeks a non-violent defense against an agressor who has set loose a manufactured virus epidemic in preparation for an invasion.
Set in California after a social upheaval, Madrone's egalitarian hometown is threatened by a

militaristic-hierarchical-fundamentalist-racist community to the south. Chapters alternate between her point of view, that of her grandmother Maya, one of the original activists from the 1990's, and that of her friend Bird who is imprisoned in the south. Starhawk gives a good overview of how the utopian society works, alternative healing, their consensus decision-making, their creed of the 4 sacred things (air, earth, fire, water) that all are committed to protecting.
There are some internal inconsistencies that need to be ignored (such as how come the rest of the world doesn't have a presence), and moments when the characters get a bit preachy. Overall, tho, this is just the book I wanted to read during the "pandemic" about which our media & politicos are trying to frighten us.

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LibraryThing member jerame2999

A good book should make you think, laugh and cry. This book did all of those things for me. It is in no way perfect. However for the first time a while I was invested in character of a story and not just the plot. There were moments where I didn't like the main characters and that brought depth to

the relationship I had with this book. It's 1:30 in the morning so I will not go deep but I think this book is very good but the switching of sexual partners was annoying at the beginning of the book. For a book so back loaded with depth I just didn't feel the sexualization of every character was needed.
I will update this review later with more.

It's good enough to lose sleep over. How about that?

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LibraryThing member elahrairah

A beautiful, surprising, and challenging book; a book where it is difficult to remember whilst reading that magic isn't real and events depicted withing couldn't happen. A book that also shows a glipse of a beautiful future that could be possible!

LibraryThing member mmparker

A deeply flawed book that grapples with a lot of interesting questions. Read it with someone who has a different perspective on nonviolence.

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