Remembering our original instructions

a conversation with Madison Murphy Barney

an image of red capped and white spotted Amanita mushrooms growing on a lush green moss covered log. Photo by Bernd 📷 Dittrich on Unsplash

Dear reader,

In the time of the Great Turning, we need to remember our responsibility as humans on the Earth. We must shatter the illusions of domination, extraction, and separation and consciously choose cooperation, reciprocity, and interdependence.

We belong to this magnificent planet and have unique roles to care for, protect, and steward life. Sometimes we just need help finding our way.

Remembering our original instructions is not easy. If we’re not born into a community or lineage with shared cosmology, myth, and ritual, it can feel like floundering in the dark. Add cultural erasure, intergenerational trauma, and systems of oppression to the mix, and the journey to remember who we are becomes an arduous trek.

Over the years, I’ve turned to astrology, ancestral reverence, community organizing, Earth based spirituality, ecology, tarot, and writing to try and answer the big questions. Who am I really? What lights me up? What are my unique creative gifts? How am I meant to contribute in this lifetime?

This is why I believe in the power of expressing ourselves and sharing our stories, passions, and wisdom to help others find their way. The right book, essay, song, podcast, gathering, or intimate conversation at just the right time becomes a light in the dark.

This week’s guest Madison Murphy Barney just published her first book to guide those of us asking how do we live healthy, abundant, just lives in the face of so many challenges? Madison suggests we turn toward ancestral wisdom and the mycelial kingdom to remember our original instructions.

Our Ancestors Want Us To Be Mushrooms is an enchanting nature-based guide to living in deeper relationship with ourselves, our communities, and our planet by embodying the innate qualities of the wondrous mycelial world.

Madison’s book comes at a time when many of us are looking to our beyond-human kin for guidance on how to flourish. Lately, I’ve been turning to the Oaks as teachers of how to root deeply, grow slowly, and nourish my community. Fungi show me how to connect across differences and share skills and resources. Butterflies remind me that metamorphosis is necessary to evolve and thrive.

Our Ancestors Want Us To Be Mushrooms is another tool in our belts for the time of the Great Turning. There is so much we can do to co-create a livable, sustainable future. All we have to do is look to our ancestors, one another, and the Earth.

Tune in wherever you listen to podcasts to hear Madison Murphy Barney and I discuss…

• Being guided by our ancestors and connecting with them through ceremony, community, creativity, and humor

• How the mystery, diversity, and magic of mushrooms make them potent guides and doulas for creating a livable, vibrant future

• Remembering our interconnectivity and how to become villagers even when it’s inconvenient and hard

• Uncovering our original instructions and sharing our unique creative gifts

If you’re feeling the call of Venus and want to go deeper, join the Gates of Venus waitlist. Gates of Venus is a 7-week transformational experience during the 2026 Venus retrograde. This program is for the artists, dreamers, and healers building a better world. It’s a space to practice ritual, attend weekly community gatherings, and receive potent transmissions as we journey the underworld together.

Thank you for being a reader and listener of Soil and Stars. I am grateful for your presence and support. It would mean a lot to hear from you.

What have you learned about yourself from the natural world? What creative gifts do you love to share? Reply to this email or connect with me in the comments below.

In soil & stars,

Emily

---

Feeling inspired and nourished? Sustain this project by becoming a patron for $5/month or $50/year.

---