'The Gathering'

The mycorrhizal network — the underground fungal web connecting the roots of trees in a forest — was not understood by Western science until the late twentieth century. But indigenous peoples had described something like it for centuries without the vocabulary of mycology: the forest as a community, the trees as relatives, the soil as a living conversation. The Potawatomi botanical tradition, described by Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass, understands plants as the “oldest people” — the original teachers, the ones who arrived first and have been holding the world together ever since.

The Hermetic tradition encodes the same truth differently: “The All is One. The One is All.” What appears as separation is the surface of something that is not separate underneath. The separation is the illusion; the connection is the substance. The gathering is not an event that creates community. It is a recognition — the moment when what was always true becomes visible to those with eyes to receive it.

You were not separate. You simply forgot the language of the network for a while.

This is for the woman coming back to the web — who is realizing she was never actually outside it.