Becca Tarnas Published by ReImagining Magazine: Education, Culture, World , Spring 2016 TOWARDS AN I MAGINAL ECOLOGY BECCA TARNAS “To speak, to ask to have audience today in the world, requires that we speak to the world, for the world is in the audience; it too is listening to what we say.” 1 With these words James Hillman opens his essay “Anima Mundi ” in which he speaks of the return of soul to the world. Such is the task we face as a species, as human beings, as we learn to cultivate a different kind of relationship with our planet, the Earth which supports our very existence. But what eyes can we use to see the soul of the world? What languages can we speak to call out to the anima mundi ? With what ears shall we listen to hear the Earth’s voices in reply? During a lecture on Deep Time and the Great Turning, the ecophilosopher Joanna Macy gave voice to an idea that can begin to answer these questions. She said that one cannot perceive relationship with the physical eyes: rather, it can only be seen with the eye of the imagination. Imagination allows us to perceive relationship. Such an understanding of imagination and relationship led me to think of the practice of ecology, one of the ways we approach the Earth. Ecology is usually defined as the branch of biology that studies the relationship between organisms and their environment, which includes other organisms. By these two definitions —of imagination and of ecology—I came to realize that the practice of ecology may only be possible through the organ of the imagination. The imagination plays many roles in our practice of ecology upon this exquisite, blue and green celestial gem named Earth. Our planet continues to suffer the ravaging destruction of industrialization and the consumptive growth of human greed, but humanity is at least beginning to re-imagine its purpose in relationship to the Earth. The imagination is 1 James Hillman, The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World (Putnam, CT: Spring Publications, Inc, 2007), 91.