185 / The Gods Have Fled / Ramon Elani

In this episode, I speak with heathen writer and poet Ramon Elani. In exploring his unique prospective on how to address the converging social, spiritual, and ecological crises on this planet, we examine three essays published for Gods & Radicals, which include Land, Home, and the Gods, World’s End, and Our Rage Against The Modern World, co-written with Rhyd Wildermuth. “Let the home and the idea of the home become a pillar of strength. Let the home become a site of defiance, a bold denial of industrial society. Let the home be made into a bulwark against the modern world.” Often, when I try to get at the vast moral dilemma we are forced to address in the face of the global climate crisis, the extinction of human and non-human life, and the hollowing of community and connection to the land implicit in the “progress” narrative of industrial civilization—the notion of addressing these converging crises on a collective level seemed apparent and obvious. While that may be true, another truth emerges from the prose of Ramon. In this interview, I ask Ramon to expound on the themes he’s presented in three essays on the subject of modernity, and that to “reestablish humanity’s relationship with the gods is also to reconnect with the land, for the land is the gods. The present crisis, which devastates humanity and the biosphere, is defined in both material and spiritual terms.” Ramon’s prose is intoxicating, blunt, poetic, beautiful, heartbreaking, and clarifying. Ramon doesn’t shy away from obvious truths implicit in modernity and the reality it has forged in its attempt to subject the Earth and its living systems to the logic of “progress” and endless growth. In Ramon’s work, the home and our relationship with the land becomes the center of our resistance to the life-destroying forces that are despoiling the planet. Modernity is reckoned with in these terms, as Ramon has thoroughly and lucidly explored in his writing, which I have delightfully read and incorporated into my own worldview. “For hundreds of years, humanity has expanded its domain over the earth, at the enormous cost of non-human life and human spiritual and physical well-being. Every moment that this world continues to exist means suffering and extinction for non-human life and soulless misery for humanity. We cannot stop what’s coming and it best that we do not try, for only in the death of this world is there hope for a new future to bloom.” // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/ramon-elani // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast