Written by There are a lot of words being bandied about today in the conservation and ecological movements. Biodiversity. Deep Ecology. Restoring nature.
It all sounds good until I hear the catch cry, “We follow the science.”
Well, science is a fluid thing. It changes and grows as the scientist does. Science is often limited to a person’s worldview. Sometimes science gets it wrong.
Today, I invite you to remember something deep in your bones — older than memory, older than words. A truth that sings in the wind and whispers in the breath of wild things.
We are not outside nature — we are part of her.
And in the ancient Celtic tradition, this was never questioned.
All Beings Are Kin
In the old Celtic ways, all species were kin — wolf and wren, bear and bee, horse and human. Every animal had a purpose, a wisdom, a role in the Great Weave of life.
The wild horse was revered. Sacred. A symbol of freedom, sovereignty, intuition, and connection between worlds. The horse was not just an animal. She was an ally, a teacher, a guide.
In myth, it was the horse who could cross the veil between this world and the Otherworld. Think of Rhiannon, the horse goddess. Epona, guardian of horses and riders. Macha, who outran kings while heavy with child. These were not stories to entertain. They were truths encoded in tale, passed down so we would not forget the sacred nature of our animal kin.
So let me write today for the horse—especially the wild horse—and for all the wild ones who are being silenced, displaced, and misunderstood.
Wild Horses: Healers of Land and Spirit
In Australia, wild horses are often cast as invasive or destructive, blamed for damage and dismissed as pests. But this narrow view fails to see what the Earth sees.
Mother Nature doesn’t make mistakes. When a species arrives somewhere, even through human hands, there is often a higher purpose at play — if only we have the humility to look deeper.
What if Country called these beings here, and they came, usually on ships with humans as their form of transport?
Mother Earth doesn’t make mistakes. And every being speaks the universal language of silence. So that doesn’t make them introduced. It makes them welcome.
Wild horses are ecosystem engineers. Their concave hooves don’t destroy the soil. They break up hard soil, allowing water to penetrate. Their dung seeds plants and feeds insects. They create pathways and ponds that other animals use. They fertilise. They move. They awaken the land.
When Science Forgets the Sacred
There’s a story that demonstrates the point I am trying to make, told by Bill Mollison, the father of Permaculture.
It goes something like this:
In the 1950s, scientists in the U.S. decided that animals like prairie dogs, gophers, and moles were a threat to desert grasslands. These animals dug holes. Too many, said the scientists. And so, they launched eradication programs to eliminate them all.
But what they didn’t see—what they failed to understand—was that those holes were the Earth’s breathing tubes. The burrows allowed for water infiltration. They aerated the soil. They fed insects and plants. These animals were part of an elegant, unseen design. Like alveoli in the lungs, they kept the land alive.
Once gone, the land stopped breathing. The grasses died. The soil hardened. A thriving ecosystem died.
This is what happens when science forgets the sacred. This is what happens when humans desecrate the sacred. Like when they poison all those animals and their families because one person’s limited perception thought they created “too many holes.” Clearly, this was a scientist who was disconnected from the understanding that every animal has a place and a purpose.
And we see it again now — right here in Australia — with our wild horses.
Often labelled “invasive” or “feral,” wild horses are misunderstood. Some scientists have gone as far as to call them “destructive” and use the emotional, inflammatory cry that wild horses, instead of fulfilling the role of our missing megafauna, are harmful to our native fauna and flora.
They completely “forget” that after 200 years these horses are wildlife, remembering how to live lightly, symbiotically and listen to Country. They are part of Country now.
They also “forget” the human use of the poison 1080, which destroys both soil and many animals outside the “target” speicies, or humans driving four-wheel drives and motorbikes, using the land for tourism, ski fields, construction, logging… the list goes on.
Instead.. they blame the brumbies. They say the horses are the ones that are the problem.
Science can get it very wrong when they forget the sacred.
Let’s take the Canberra university professor who made wild claims that these brumbies were cannibals. He published a photo of a horse pawing a dead horse on the ground.
Ludicrous, if for no other reason than horses are strictly plant-eaters.
More than that, anyone observing wild horses, or who lives with them, understands the deep bonds of love they hold for family, and the deep, deep grief they experience because of that love. What the picture was probably of was a child begging his mother to wake up, pawing at her frantically. No being likes to lose their Mother.
Horses mourn. They bond deeply. They remember.
It’s time we started seeing with more than just our eyes.
In Celtic spirituality, the horse is sacred. A messenger. A carrier of souls between worlds. A teacher of sovereignty and grace. In indigenous worldviews, animals are never “mistakes.” If they’re here, they’re meant to be. They bring medicine. In the sacred understanding of that word. Horses are medicine. They bring change. They bring life. They are children of Earth.
The Earth is a living being. And she is asking us to listen — not with fear or domination, but with respect. Listening is how we heal. Listening is how we rewild.
Let’s stop labelling our animal kin as problems to be solved. Let’s honour their place in the great circle of life. Let’s return to sacred listening.
Because the Earth knows what she’s doing.
And if we forget that — if we forget the sacred — we lose the very wisdom that could save us all.
The Call to Sacred Listening
The Earth is not silent. She is calling to us, through the movements of animals, the patterns in the waters, the changes in the wind. She is asking us to listen. Not with our ears only, but with our spirit. This is what the ancients did. The Celts. The First Nations. The old ones who knew how to sit beneath trees and hear their dreams, to read the tracks of deer as messages, to honour the arrival of an animal as a visitation.
We must return to this way. Because without sacred listening, without relational understanding, we will not heal the Earth. We will continue to harm what we do not understand.
Sovereignty of the Earth
In Celtic spirituality, sovereignty was not just about kings and queens. It was the land herself. She chose the rightful ruler. She offered her abundance to those who honoured her. If disrespected, she withdrew.
Australia’s land — this ancient, dreaming land — is also a sovereign being. And she is speaking. She is weary of destruction. She is asking for a different kind of leadership — not dominance, but kinship. Not control, but collaboration.
It is time to see animals not as resources or problems to be managed, but as guides and guardians of the living world. The wild horse is not here by accident. She is here to remind us of our own wild nature, our own forgotten connection, our own need to run free and live in harmony.
Reweaving the Web with Love and Listening
We are at a tipping point. But Celtic wisdom, indigenous knowing, and the voices of the animals all point in the same direction: healing comes through relationship. Through respect. Through listening.
So I ask: what if we treated the Earth like a mother again? What if we walked with animals as elders again? What if we listened to the wild, not with fear, but with reverence?
Then, perhaps, the web can be rewoven. The breath can return to the land. And we will remember—at last—that we were never separate.
We belong to each other. And it’s time to come home.