Tarkind: Painting a Living World Back Into View

We began Tarkind in 2022 as a small collective, myself and my son Zach, invertebrate biologist Dr Keith Martin-Smith, and palawa woman Gemma O’Rourke, to weave science, story, and art into everyday care for place. We are excited to announce our 2025 Tarkind community art and citizen science day! Firstly I want to share why we want to educate about living systems.

Why a living-systems lens?

In Tarkind we work from a simple conviction: life works in relationships. Fritjof Capra calls this the systems view of life: living beings, communities, and ecologies are networks of relationships whose health depends on patterns, flows, feedback, diversity, and rhythm, rather than on single parts. For Capra, this isn’t only biology or ecology; it’s also ethics and meaning. When you see the web, a quiet spiritual intuition follows: we belong to something larger. That belonging is not a doctrine; it’s a practice of attention, of noticing consequences, caring for cycles, and letting our actions be accountable to the whole.

Daniel Christian Wahl extends this into culture. His question is: what kinds of cultures help places to heal? He invites us to design for regeneration, work that leaves people and places more capable than before. That means place-sourced learning, bioregional thinking, circular use of materials, and stories that grow responsibility rather than extraction. In his frame, art, education, and landcare are not extras; they are cultural technologies that renew our capacity to live well together.

How this shapes Tarkind

• Walk, notice, name. We use iNaturalist and field journaling to see the web, Capra’s patterns are therefore made tangible.

• Paint what we felt and found. The art is how the insight lands in the body and the community; it keeps the story alive.

• Plant and repair. Regeneration is Wahl’s litmus test: did our time together leave the place more resilient?

This is also the heart of my Con Viv work, head, heart, and hand in one movement, supported by David Orr’s reminder that all education is environmental education, and Satish Kumar’s call to hold soil, soul, and society in balance.

Photography by Ness Vandeburgh Photography

Why it matters: a living-systems worldview builds tolerance (difference is an asset), love (care becomes structure: roles, rhythms, and repair), and a gentle spiritual stance (reverence for the whole we share). If more of our schools, councils, and neighbourhoods worked this way, conflict wouldn’t vanish, but it would have somewhere useful to go, into listening, making, planting, and the slow renewal of culture.

What is citizen science?

Citizen science is everyday people helping do real science. We notice, record, and share observations, photos, sounds, simple measurements, and those data feed into research, conservation planning, and education. It’s hands-on learning that turns curiosity into evidence: you don’t need a lab coat, just attention, respect for place, and a phone or notebook. For kids and adults alike, it builds ecological literacy, confidence, and a sense of belonging to the living world.

Photography by Ness Vandeburgh Photography

Who are the Great Southern BioBlitz?

The Great Southern BioBlitz (GSB) is a southern-hemisphere biodiversity event held each spring that invites communities to document as many species as possible over one long weekend using platforms like iNaturalist. Local groups host walks, workshops, and mini-surveys; participants upload what they find; volunteer identifiers help name species; and the pooled results give scientists and land managers a richer picture of local ecosystems. We collaborate with GSB to connect our Tarkind walks and art sessions to this wider effort, so every observation we make together becomes part of a bigger, shared map of life in our region.

Next event: Magical Farm × Great Southern BioBlitz × Magical Farm Landcare Group, Sunday 26 Oct 2025, 10:00–2:30. We’ll gather at Magical Farm, convoy to Allens Rivulet Track for the Bioblitz, then return for a shared lunch, Tarkind community art, and a short planting. Bring iNaturalist, warm layers, water, a plate to share, and an art canvas (large or small) + paints. Families welcome. Message me for details.

Tarkind is a reminder: when we live with life, the future stops being an abstraction and becomes something we can touch, tend, and paint together.

From Clash to Pattern: A Living Systems Guide

The human world hums with tension. Meetings flare into argument, social feeds crowd into outrage, and kitchens, workplaces, and councils echo with competing voices that rarely feel heard. Con Viv, which simply means “with life,” treats this heat as living energy rather than waste. In living systems disturbance is not an error but information, so the real question becomes whether we can build vessels strong enough to hold that energy and transform it into insight, relationship, policy and practice.

Jung’s insight is helpful here. When two poles lock against each other, a “third” thing is missing. The “Third” is not a bland compromise but a new form that appears only when opposites are consciously held long enough to reveal a creative synthesis. Our public life often fails at this, since we either suppress conflict in the name of peace without truth, or inflame it in the name of truth without peace. If we want to move beyond that binary, we need containers that invite the Third to appear, which is a cultural and institutional task rather than a purely emotional one.

Anthroposophy offers a clear shape for healthy community life. It says culture thrives with freedom, our shared rules should treat people as equals, and our economy should be based on mutual support. When we mix these up, trust breaks down. When we keep them distinct and in balance, love becomes something you can build with. Roles are placed where they fit, relationships are cared for, and decisions follow a steady rhythm so care can move through a community reliably. Con Viv turns this into practice through head, heart, and hand: seeing clearly, meeting each other warmly, and making things together. We move through a simple cycle of notice, hold, transform, and act. The aim is not to remove conflict but to guide its heat into learning and useful patterns.

On the ground this looks ordinary and practical. Listening spaces give people a way to speak without fear so that heat turns into information that everyone can use. Rights containers make decision paths visible with transparent timelines, rotating facilitation, small trials that run for a set period, and a public review that invites revision rather than punishment. Mutual-aid prototyping redirects arguments into safe-to-try projects such as verge care, herb plots, walking routes, tool libraries, and shared maintenance days, so trust grows sideways through work done together. Creative activation turns disputes into raw material for theatre, music, murals, and story-gathering, since new forms often appear first in image or gesture before they can be legislated. Individual containment gives each person a way to hold strong feeling through journaling, contemplative movement, boundary practice, or a quiet walk, which is less about private self-help and more about civic hygiene that prevents projection from flooding the commons.

The virtue that names the tone of this work is Michaelic courage, a clear and warm quality of attention that meets the dragon without becoming one. In practice this looks like precision instead of blame, imagination instead of cynicism, and rhythm instead of rush. It is a kind of heart-thinking where understanding is shaped by interest in the other, which keeps the social field from hardening into camps and slogans. Conflict will not vanish, nor should it, since friction keeps systems alive. What changes is the destination of that energy. Within a living container the spark falls into a wider field and can ripen into a third thing, perhaps a pattern other places can reuse, a pilot that becomes policy, or a poem that restores language where it had collapsed.

This is the seed-vision here… Love becomes infrastructure that shapes decision making, convivial governance, and everyday interaction, while Con Viv offers a choreography for the passage from heat to practice. Jung gives us the organ of perception for the Third, and Anthroposophy gives us a social anatomy that keeps freedom, equality, and mutuality in honest relationship. Together they sketch a future life system that is robust enough to hold our heat and gentle enough to help us grow. Here, friction is fuel and the vessel that turns it into life is made, maintained, and renewed in common.

Stop Funding PDFs. Start Funding Patterns.

Australia doesn’t have a shortage of climate, local food and resilience strategies. For example, the university of Sydney legal team mapped 2,266 local-government food policies and plans across NSW and Victoria and found the same priorities repeating across councils (University of Sydney, Law & Food Systems Lab, Policy Database assessment, 2024). The ideas aren’t the problem; the translation is. We need fewer PDFs and more living patterns in everyday life. By “patterns,” I mean reusable design moves that are human-scale solutions to recurring problems, drawn from 1970s architect Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language. They’re not rigid plans but living templates you can adapt and combine so good practice spreads.

At the same time, Canberra has launched big resilience funds. The Disaster Ready Fund (DRF) commits up to $1 billion over five years from 1 July 2023 (Australian Government, National Emergency Management Agency, DRF Program Guidelines, 2023). Before that, the Preparing Australia Program was $600 million for risk reduction (Australian Government, Home Affairs/NEMA, Preparing Australia Program Overview, 2021). Are these necessary? Yes, absolutely. The trouble is the money still arrives as big, stop-start programs routed through state channels which are paperwork-heavy and practice-light, so we end up with glossy program sheets and thin local muscle memory. So why don’t we flip it? By reserving a small, steady slice for place-based facilitation, prototyping, and pattern-writing on the ground, so people can try, learn, and repeat safely, creating true local capability, beauty and resilience.

Add to that an ongoing appetite for external advice, federal consultancy contracts approaching $1 billion in 2024-25 despite pledges to reduce reliance (Commonwealth procurement data; ANAO briefings, 2024–25), and it’s easy to see why many communities feel resilience happens on paper. Reports multiply while practice stalls. Meanwhile, Tasmania’s ‘local government reform’ debate is consumed by boundary maps and amalgamation talk rather than the everyday practices, skills, and permissions communities and councils need to host small experiments and build & enable local capability.

What if we funded patterns, not PDFs?

A pattern is a small, hosted experiment that takes one sentence from a policy and turns it into a safe, try‑it‑now activity that people can run next month in a street, a hall, or on a farm. For example, you might set up a seed library with a simple crop‑swap that runs like a regular class; host a shared evening meal and organise a roster for a local food co-op; or in bushfire prone areas walk the neighbourhood together to tidy verges, check access points, and, where appropriate and led by a local knowledge holder, carry out a careful cultural burn that builds understanding and reduces risk. Each pattern stays small, has clear edges about time, numbers, noise and care, uses only a few light measures to see what changed, and finishes with short notes that others can follow. If it helps, you write a one‑page ‘how we did it’ so the next street can repeat it tomorrow.

Photography of Magical Farm Herbs and Cart with a Heart by Ness Vandebourgh Photography

This is Con Viv, “with life”: keeping culture (freedom), rights (fairness), and economy (reciprocity) in rhythm (Threefold social theory; Con Viv fieldwork, 2010–2025). And it’s not theory, we’re doing it at Magical Farm: prototyping a cob herb-drying shed before a bigger barn; running a seed library that grew into a crop-swap; hosting regenerative workshops that build neighbour and community capability. Each trial is documented so others can repeat, adapt, and federate (link up as a commons network) enhancing local community (Magical Farm prototype notes, Regen Era Design 2024-2025).

The point is simple: we already spend enough to make the kind of work I am describing normal. The question is what slice of those budgets pays for local capability, facilitation, prototyping, and pattern-writing, so experiments can run safely and repeatedly without bureaucratic drag? The DRF’s billion could reserve even 1–2% as a Patterns Fund to seed hundreds of micro-trials nationally. Councils could match from existing climate/adaptation, community development, and economic development portfolios (City of Hobart Annual Plan & Budget 2025–26; Kingborough Operational Estimates 2025–26; Huon Valley Annual Plan & Budget 2025–26). States could underwrite insurance templates and light governance so trials are easy to host and easy to assess.

Would consultants still have a role? Sure, but as pattern stewards, not report factories: helping councils package what worked into simple, copy-ready guides; building the national pantry of patterns any town can draw from. Pay for reusable know-how and skills not shelfware. If this sounds small, that’s the point. Small is a safety feature. It’s fast, neighbourly, and honest. A micro-trial that doesn’t help can be retired without fuss; one that works can spread sideways, not from a press release but from a WhatsApp group and a one-page host sheet.

So let’s ask the only questions that matter right at this crucial point: Will we keep funding documents, or will we fund the ability to try things? Will we keep outsourcing resilience or will we grow local practices: the skills to host, measure lightly, and share patterns? Australia doesn’t need another plan to say “community matters.” It needs a permission culture that makes everyday experiments ordinary, with enough budget to back the people who host them, the templates that de-risk them, and the notes that help them travel.

Stop funding PDFs. Start funding patterns.

Dr Emily Samuels-Ballantyne is a regenerative designer, writer, and regenerative farmer based in southern Tasmania. Through Regen Era Design and Magical Farm Tasmania, she develops Con Viv, practical, hosted experiments that turn policy into everyday patterns. Her work focuses on community economies, convivial governance, and low-overhead ways to grow capability street by street. She led the award winning Huon Valley Food Hub project, which implemented Con Viv in practice.

Endnotes

• Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein, A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).

• University of Sydney, Law & Food Systems Lab, Policy Database assessment (NSW & Victoria), 2024.

• Australian Government, National Emergency Management Agency, Disaster Ready Fund Program Guidelines, 2023.

• Australian Government, Home Affairs/NEMA, Preparing Australia Program Overview, 2021.

• Commonwealth procurement data summary; ANAO briefings on consultancy spend, 2024–25

New Moon Plantings: Imagining Governance Rooted in Care

As I tend hundreds of seedlings for the Magical Farm nursery…replanting rhizomes, stirring biodynamic preparations, making my living compost, I notice how plant rhythm steadies the day. Weeding, watering, planting: each gesture is a small prayer, a promise that care and reciprocity are the real foundations of community.

Alongside this, I’m navigating the maze of council planning. The demands, endless forms, fees that run into the thousands, compliance without care, reveal a system that separates rather than connects. Ratepayers fund these bureaucracies, yet the very people building homes, gardens, and farms find little guidance at the point of need. It’s a design that outsources stress back onto households and small farms.

What if we turned the model on its head? What if planning became a service rooted in care? Imagine planners who walk alongside residents: site visits, practical advice written straight into a plan, co-design rather than nit-picking from afar. That is convivial governance: trust and reciprocity instead of suspicion and separation; service in place of control.

This Super New Moon in late Virgo invites a different rhythm of learning, one that moves like a living process. I want to acknowledge the Astro Priestess Roundtable, Cayelin Castell, Jaime Goldstein, and Mar Guerrero, for supporting me to listen for this season’s question. At the heart of our time is the call to be peacemakers, in our hearts, our homes, and our institutions. For me, that means bringing Michaelic courage: naming what harms without hardening the heart, meeting the system as it is while standing for what it can become.

So here are the seeds I’m planting:

• From policing to partnering. Replace desk-bound critiques with on-site guidance and co-authored notes that become part of an application.

• From opacity to clarity. Publish simple, visual checklists for common rural projects (nurseries, sheds, composting, no-dig beds).

• From delay to rhythm. Introduce predictable timeframes and modest fees for small, regenerative works; scale support with community benefit.

• From extraction to reciprocity. Measure success by soil health, safety, and community capacity, not just processed forms.

May this eclipse season help us remember that governance, like gardening, is sacred service. May we design systems that grow trust, reciprocity, and care. And may our collective roots find fresh ground.

With love,
🌿 Dr. Demeter (Emily Samuels-Ballantyne)

P.S. If this speaks to you, tell me one small policy “seed” you’d plant in your own street or council. Let’s practice, integrate, and share, so the learning reproduces and the garden grows. It’s so important to cultivate a new imagination and culture in this space.

Beyond Left and Right: A Life-Systems Politics for Our Time

By Dr. Emily Samuels Ballantyne | Magical Farm Tasmania

Do you sense the old binary abstracted labels have stopped making sense? Left. Right. Progressive. Conservative. None of them speak to the kind of politics I live, breathe, and grow.

I wrote my PhD in a permaculture garden while institutions told me my work was too plural, too holistic, not theoretical enough, didnt have a business model!? etc. For over a decade, I brought projects to life in small cracks between funding rounds and bureaucratic resistance. I created real impact, but always from the edges. I’ve joined herbal circles, I’ve made tea for Aboriginal artists and sat with their stories. I’ve worked in Italian community gardens and European Union policy forums in collaboration with a creative design studio in Brussels.

While others pursued careers in law or business to change the system from within, I chose another path: I became a systems theorist, regenerative designer, yoga teacher, a kinesiologist, a sword fighter who incorporated ancient martial arts approaches, a biodynamic practitioner, astrologer, a folk natural builder specialising in Cob, a folk herbalist, Jungian practitioner and a budding anthroposophical philosopher. I studied ancient cultures and learned from land and lineage. It wasn’t the conventional way but it was deeply disciplined, rooted in care and a fierce belief in alternative life systems.

The cost has been real... I’ve been rejected by reductionists in universities, dismissed by NGOs who shuffled paper or were too focussed on resistance, and told again and again that my work doesn’t “fit.” Not even so-called progressive spaces could hold me. And yet, I’m still here. Not because I was welcomed, but because I stayed true to my garden politics. Still, I rise. From the compost of rejection grows my conviction: we need a new way. I’m not here to climb the ladder I’m here to dismantle it and plant something different in its place. I campaign for a politics of decommodification, of beauty, of imagination, a politics rooted in gardens, in kinship, in Gaia. A politics that honours not just what we produce, but how we live.

And so I offer this not from a place of institutional power, but from the soil. I’ve felt the failings of the system in my own body and I know I’m not alone. What we need now is not reform, but we need regeneration.

Proposal of a convivial governance vision

Convivial governance names the shift from bureaucracy-for-its-own-sake to structures that serve life: clear roles, lean paperwork, transparent accountability, and decisions made as close to place as possible. It pairs with foundational economics, prioritising the everyday systems that actually hold a society together (care, food, energy, housing, local transport), so budgets and procurement nourish common goods rather than extract them. This is care governance and common-sense governance: organised, yes, but rewarded for outcomes in soil health, community wellbeing, cultural vitality, and fair livelihoods, not for shuffling paper. Across the world, good leaders on left and right, and philosophers at the fringes, are calling for fairer, justice-based systems; they sense what many communities already know: when public institutions are tethered to corporate interests, the social fabric is thinning. Realignment is due, toward the public interest, local economies and communities, and nature as a living creditor. Everyone has a role: councils and agencies, co-ops and farms, schools and households. The work can be peaceful and beauty-led, seasonal rituals, shared meals, dignified spaces, and practical tools that invite participation so governance becomes something people do with each other, not something done to them.

If leaders ignore this signal, the risk is not abstract: when people are shut out of decisions about food, energy, housing and land, systems grow brittle. Legitimacy thins, compliance drops, services fray and disinformation rushes into the gap, ruptures in social, cultural and economic realms leak. By listening now, many “big” problems can be defused with small, place-based fixes and clearer and transparent governance. Choosing convivial governance and foundational economics trades scandal cycles for trust cycles and keeps change peaceful, beautiful and shared.

Let me illistrate my point:

OIKOS = household. Both economy and ecology come from this root. A household works because money, care, and chores are close to the people affected. When budgets drift too far away, we lose the household sense—waste goes up, trust goes down. The fix isn’t anti-scale; it’s nested households: street → neighbourhood → town → region, each with a small, visible purse and clear stewards.

Run public money like a good kitchen:

• Five jars on the bench: Food • Energy • Care • Learning • Commons. (A set % is locally controlled and can’t be siphoned off.)

• Fridge-door ledger: one-page, weekly spend & forecast; names + phone numbers of stewards.

• Shopping list first, receipts later: commit to outcomes (meals served, beds planted, kilowatts saved), not paperwork volume.

• Seasonality rules: shift spend with the year (winter energy, spring planting, harvest festivals/markets).

• Leftovers become tomorrow’s lunch: savings in one jar can top up another within the oikos (with a public note).

This is convivial governance + foundational economics in practice: small purses close to place, simple rules, public ledgers, and seasonal planning. Keep the big treasury, yes, but push predictable, ring-fenced envelopes down so streets, schools, clinics, and farm co-ops can act quickly and show results you can taste, touch, and tally.

Life systems politics

I’m coming out not as left or right, but as a life-systems political being, so my politics isn’t about opposition, it’s about composition. And Poli means People, its about Humans in place. It’s not about taking sides. It’s about taking root… I am interested in problem solving, creative dialouge with people from all walks of life.

This is a politics grounded in the soil, in care, in cycles of regeneration. I believe that the most important political acts happen in kitchens, community gardens, forest clearings, and co-designed circles where decisions are shaped by those who live their consequences. It’s a politics of collaboration not ideology and its purpose is not performance but transformation.

This is what I call foundational economics and convivial governance: a reclaiming of the essentials food, energy, housing, care, learning as public, shared, and regenerative. The term “economy” comes from the Greek OIKOS, meaning “the household,” a lineage brought forward beautifully by Gibson-Graham in their feminist reframing of economic life. In their work, the economy is not a machine, but a garden, tended through relationships, reciprocity, and responsibility.

This is not a fringe idea. It is already being practiced, quietly, powerfully by people across the world. Tyson Yunkaporta reminds us that Indigenous systems of governance are not based on power-over, but on kinship, pattern, and place. Joanna Macy teaches that the Great Turning begins with seeing with new eyes, with feeling the grief of the world and choosing to act from love, not fear. Helena Norberg-Hodge offers a path of local futures, where real wellbeing arises from reweaving local food systems, community agency, and deep connection to place.

This is the politics I practice every day at Magical Farm Tasmania. It is not perfect. But it is alive. It listens… It grows…It heals…I’m no longer interested in polarised debates that harden the heart and soul and distract from the work. The real question is not who’s right, but what is sacred? What are we growing, together? What do we want to root, repair, and regenerate?

This is not about opting out of the system. It’s about composting the old to nourish the new - life systems informed institutions and governance. This is sacred activism. This is a politics of love, for ourselves, each other, and the Earth. It begins where all true economies do: at home, in the OIKOS.

About the Author
Dr. Demeter (Emily Samuels-Ballantyne) is an eco-philosopher, regenerative farmer, and founder of Magical Farm Tasmania. With over 20 years of experience in community economies, ecological design, and grassroots policy innovation, she weaves together deep listening, land stewardship, and life-systems thinking. Her PhD, Con Viv: Designing Convivial Food Systems in Everyday Life, explores relational design as a tool for transformation. Emily writes, grows, and teaches from her farm, where politics is practiced through care, creativity, and sacred activism

Imagining Healing: The Third Path for Tasmania

Tasmania is at a crossroads and there is a great opportunity to make this beautiful island a place of renewal. The debates that dominate our island aquaculture expansion, forestry, tourism, renewable energy, are often framed in binaries: jobs versus environment, growth versus preservation, progress versus collapse. These debates are real, but when they harden into opposites, something deeper is lost.

Rudolf Steiner called this the hardening of the soul. In modern life, thinking becomes mechanic and abstract, feeling grows dulled, and willingness is outsourced to bureaucracies and machines. Carl Jung described the same danger in psychological terms: when opposites split apart, we risk paralysis or rage unless we awaken the Third, a symbolic organ of integration, a space that can hold tension long enough for something new, whole, and healing to emerge. The challenge before us is not just political or economic but tis spiritual and psychological. Tasmania needs the Third. Not neutrality, not compromise, but the courage to imagine beyond the binary. 

The Third as Social Practice

The Third is not a theory, it is in fact a lived practice. It shows up in a community food hub, a biodynamic farm, a seed library, a convivial festival and even a thought process that holds complexity without jumping to a conclusion. ‘Third’ places and mindset are where imagination, justice, and reciprocity can breathe together. Third ways of thinking, being and doing act like acupuncture points in the social body: small but intentional mind and/or physical spaces that release vitality into the whole. Steiner’s vision of the threefold social organism gives us a map. A healthy society balances:

• Cultural freedom: imagination, education, and spirit free to unfold.

• Political equity: governance grounded in fairness and rights.

• Economic mutuality: livelihoods based on reciprocity, not extraction.

Applied locally, these principles are deeply practical. They remind us that social healing begins not with abstract strategies but with lived experiments, participatory action, and transparent processes that keep head, heart, and hands together. I love the deep green design Prof Seaton Baxter (from Scotland) theory called “way of the prototype” - much of my work is based around this methodology. 

Local Government: From Strategy to Practice

Nowhere is this more urgent than in local government. Councils produce endless strategies, reports, and consultation papers, yet communities often see little translation into practice. Strategy is not an outcome and true outcomes happen when policies take form in gardens, services, cultural initiatives, housing solutions:  the fabric of everyday life. Fair local government means shifting from paperwork to practice. This doesn’t mean abandoning strategies, but holding them accountable to lived results. People in communities (rate payers) deserve transparency: to trace how decisions are made, where funds are spent, and how outcomes are measured. Without this, government risks serving mechanical and abstracted systems instead of people they are there to serve.

Imagine a local government that functions as an enabler, not just an administrator? Councils can support neighbourhood initiatives, co-design projects with residents, and facilitate cooperation across sectors. In this way, governance itself becomes a Third space: not caught between bureaucracy, process and populism, but a living practice that restores vitality to communities. Tasmania, small enough to be nimble and rich enough in imagination, has the potential to pioneer this. If we can re-root governance in action, ensure transparency, and honour community-led practice, we can show how local government can become not just functional, but regenerative.

Magical Farm Tasmania Festive Agriculture event 2025

Feminised Intelligence and Plant Allies

Ecofeminist thinkers remind us that what the world needs is not more domination but feminised intelligence: cyclical, regenerative, relational, rooted in care for land and community. This intelligence is already alive in Tasmania in community gardens, co-ops, and creative economies but it needs recognition, resourcing, and policy support. Even plants point the way. Yarrow teaches us to heal what is torn and to hold paradox. Rosemary sharpens memory and discernment. Nettle brings courage and vitality. Together they embody what the Third requires: integration, clarity, and action.

The task before us is not neutrality but imagination, beyond binaries. This heart shaped island Tasmania must reawaken the Third, and inspire other places to do the same. The Third is a space where grief can be honoured, paradox can be held, and new forms of life can be designed. The future of this island will not be built by choosing sides in collapse. It will be built in the Third space where we move from abstraction to life systems and community practice becomes the foundation of renewal.

The Wound, the Third, and the Healer: A Virgo New Moon Reflection

Under this Virgo New Moon, as the world turns its gaze toward conflict and complexity in the Middle East, we are invited into a quieter, deeper listening. Beyond political positions or media cycles, a deeper symbolic story is unfolding, one that asks not for sides, but for soul. One that asks us to become not louder, but more whole.

Virgo is the priestess of Earth, the keeper of the detail, the weaver of fragmented things. Her medicine is found in tending, in ritual, in what has been overlooked. It is fitting, then, that this New Moon arrives with the presence of Raphael, archangel of healing, the guide of breath, clarity, and the sacred ‘middle’ way. Together, they call us not to solve what is beyond us, but to participate differently: with presence, humility, and care.

This reflection offers seven symbolic threads, drawn from Jungian depth psychology, planetary wisdom, and current world events, that seek not to explain the Israel-Palestine conflict, but to witness it and to examine the psychic landscape surrounding it.

1. The Earth Priestess and the Forgotten Wound

Virgo teaches that healing begins in the small, the practical, the real. She is not a sign of abstraction, but of embodiment. She reminds us that care is political, and that repair starts in the soil, of land, of body, of psyche. This is a moment when a wound, long suppressed and twisted has erupted again in collective awareness. Not only in Israel and Palestine, but in each of us. It is the wound of disconnection: from one another, from nature, from the sacred, from history, and from paradox.

2. Raphael and the Element of Breath

Raphael, whose name means “God heals”, is associated with the element of Air, the realm of thought, language, and breath. In the flood of commentary and ideological fervour, we are reminded to return to breath, to clarity of heart, to the healing power of stillness. Raphael does not arrive with punishment or triumph. He arrives beside the wounded, offering presence. He calls us back to relationship and attentiveness to the other. His presence blesses those who walk toward complexity, not away from it.

3. The Wound as Portal

The land called holy is now a site of unbearable trauma. Each people involved carries a deep ancestral scar: exile, displacement, occupation and genocide. These are not historical footnotes, they are living psychic facts and each side believes its suffering is not seen. From a Jungian lens, this is the domain of Chiron, the Wounded Healer. The one who cannot heal himself but can, through his own suffering, guide others to healing. In this conflict, we see shared pain unacknowledged, so instead of becoming medicine, the wound becomes a weapon. But Chiron’s teaching is clear: the wound is the place where the light enters, if we can hold it long enough to learn.

4. The Loss of the Third

Jung warned of what happens when the psyche splits into opposites with no reconciling force: we lose the Third and the middle space collapses, and this is where that glue and connection of dialogue becomes impossible. Each side demonises the other and public discourse now reflects this binary psychosis. In symbolic terms, the Third is not a compromise, rather it is a sacred space where opposites meet and something new is born. It is the alchemical vessel, the fertile void, the room of imagination. Virgo’s gift is to restore this space through ritual, through exactness, through attention to what is real and alive. The Third may not yet exist as a shared political solution and the ground between remains scorched by history and division. But it must begin as a psycho-spiritual space within us, where paradox can be held and new possibilities imagined beyond the reflex of sides.

5. Projection and the Global Mirror

This conflict has become a projection screen for collective shadow. For some, it evokes unacknowledged guilt (from the Holocaust and from colonial histories); for others, suppressed rage or inherited trauma. People do not only respond to the conflict itself, they respond to what it touches in them. Jung called this “complex activation”: when an outer event triggers inner unresolved material within the human. This is why the discourse is so charged and so reactive. We are not speaking only of Israel or Palestine, we are speaking of ourselves, without knowing it. Discernment is Virgo’s core gift and is the medicine here. What part of this is mine? What am I projecting? What grief am I avoiding by becoming righteous?  Yes, this conflict touches something deep in me, my own grief, guilt, and longing for justice. I share these reflections not from a place of certainty, but as part of my own process of reckoning and return.

6. The Silenced Anima

In the deeper layers of our collective psyche, the Anima: the soulful, feminine energy of grief, care, and connection, has been pushed aside. What we see instead is a flood of harshness: arguments, ideologies, and certainty that leaves no room for feeling. But the Anima hasn’t disappeared and she lives in the cries of grieving mothers, in the silence of mourning, in the deep longing for peace.

Virgo, connected to this quiet, healing force, reminds us that real healing isn’t fast or loud. It’s slow, grounded, and tender and found in presence, in tending the land, in prayer, and in care. She gently asks us: What beauty will you choose to serve, even in the face of pain?

7. Becoming the Healer

Important work in this whole space is becoming part of a field where the psyche can begin to recollect itself. Where the story doesn’t collapse into sides and grief can be shared. To become the healer in this moment means to become a sanctuary. To hold paradox without flinching and to stop feeding the binary. The speak the beauty way into the broken field is a sacred act of healing inwards and outwards.

The number seven, echoing through this moon and this reflection, is the number of completeness, mystery, and cosmic rhythm. Seven days of the week. Seven chakras. Seven classical planets. Seven colours of the rainbow. Seven wounds of Christ. Seven biodynamic preparations. Seven times we fall and seven times we rise. It is the number of soulful return.

🌿 Closing Plant Allies: Yarrow & Rosemary

Let us close with two herbal essences that may help us anchor this reflection in the body and breath.

• Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is the plant of integration and boundary, sacred to Chiron, the Wounded Healer. It holds the paradox: it heals both wounds and walls. Named after Achilles, who was both warrior and healer, yarrow knows how to bind what has been broken, to hold the line without hardening the heart. Its essence supports us in holding contradiction, in weaving together what has been torn apart, within and without. You can purchase our beautiful essence at the Magical Farm Apothecary.

• Rosemary is for remembrance and clarity and it clears the fog, brings warmth to the heart, and helps us honour what must not be forgotten. Rosemary essence supports right remembering, not of sides, but of soul, of life, of what we are here to protect. You can purchase this essence at the Magical Farm Apothecary.

Together, they offer a way to move through this time: with integration, memory, and sacred attention. May we hold paradox bravely, walk with discernment, devotion, and soul.
This is the call of Virgo.
This is the blessing of Raphael.
This is the healing path forward.

The Tao of the Chicken: A Virgo New Moon Reflection

Tapping in will forces, healing currents, and unexpected teachers under the new moon and royal star

Regulus, one of the four Royal Stars of ancient Persia, shines as the healer’s guide, connected with Archangel Raphael and the direction of the North…the place where higher destiny calls us. I have written about the way finding whale also going North. Under this Virgo New Moon we are invited to open to the Divine within (Virgo is connected to the high priestess and sacred ceremony). We are reminded to listen to the heart-centered intelligence that unfailingly guides us toward beauty, truth, healing, and connection.

Astrologer Tami Brunk reminds us: change is not the enemy. We must FLOW. As I opened my farm gate this evening (day of this new moon), I looked at a sign I have there with the word flower on it. I saw FLOWer, and now I will think about flowers with yet another dimension. Resistance is so often just the trembling before the unknown. What if we are more ready than we realise? And it is only the mind that lags behind the body, the spirit, the soul?

This moon asks us to soften, to trust, to allow the currents of life to carry us, especially when we feel clumsy, resistant, or unsure. I’m reminded how often I forget that I don’t have to hold it all together, or force a path forward. Sometimes, the clarity comes not from pushing, but from surrendering into the moment as it is. May we each awaken, again and again, to the colossal field of love that holds us, even when we tense up and even when we forget…. lets get into the flow of it all.

Here at Magical Farm, the new moon has already delivered its first lesson, and I have a funny story to share. Earlier today, six rogue chickens, wing-strong, garden-scratching, and impossible to catch…became my unexpected teachers. For 90 determined minutes, I leapt, chased, and wrestled until, one by one, I caught every single one. Their will forces were immense, but I discovered mine too. This afternoon, I was reminded of my own endurance and determination, not on a fencing piste, not in a policy meeting, nor while designing futures through my studio, but here on the farm, where the forces of life make themselves known. The Tao of the Chicken: when the time comes, strength meets strength, and balance is restored.

Even more beautifully, my son Raphael joined me in the chase! Full of passion, support, laughter, and determination. With Archangel Raphael’s star shining above and Raphael’s hands beside me, I felt the healing current of will, love, and joy moving through us both.

So may this Virgo New Moon gift you too with the will forces to complete what needs finishing, and to initiate what longs to be born. We are powerful beings, woven into rhythms larger than ourselves.

If you would like to tune into your will forces consider Dandelion Flower Essence from Magical Farm to support you.

See link to the farm’s FLOWer Essence Shop here: 🌼 Dandelion Flower Essence for Strength in Flow: Hand-harvested at Magical Farm, this essence captures the spirited resilience of dandelion thriving even in wild places, just like the unexpected lessons of farm life. Dandelion helps release tension stored in the body from over-effort or resistance, supporting you to meet life’s challenges with grounded determination rather than force. It’s the perfect ally when your will is strong, but your muscles are tight reminding you that true strength moves with the current, not against it. Take when life feels like a wrestling match, and you’re ready to find power in the now.

With love, soil and soul…
Dr. Demeter

High Magic in the Soil: Planting a Venus - Jupiter - Sirius Intention for Gaia

By Dr. Demeter | With gratitude to astrologer Jaime Lee Goldstein for illuminating the cosmic timing of this moment

This week, as astrologer Jaime Lee Goldstein describes, the two brightest planets Venus and Jupiter, draw near to the brightest star Sirius! Such a conjunction, seen by ancient eyes, was not just an astronomical event; it was an opening, a moment of high magic. The benefic planets joined the “Wishing Star” in a rare, exalted union which was a signal to seed what must endure, what must be blessed, what must be healed.

At Magical Farm, I feel this “high magic” most keenly in the soil and across the farms glow. The paddocks hold the happy ducks, geese and chickens, laughter of my children, those who have convened here in joyful moments, the soft night-steps of wallabies. Here, the farm is not only a livelihood but a hearth, a place to hold family, community, and the prayers I carry for the wider world.

Yarrow basket at Magical Farm Photography by Ness Vandebourgh Photography

Rudolf Steiner spoke of imagination as the first stage of spiritual knowing, and in the Michaelic path, imagination becomes courage: the will to picture a better world and bring it into form. In biodynamics, this is lived daily, stirring the preparations, planting to the moon, tending soil as a living being, each act a quiet magic in service to the whole.

In this rare alignment, I sense a vision wanting to be planted:

• Fields alive with bees and wildflowers, from my farm, across Tasmania, Australia and the world

• Economies that serve the people places and planet

• Governance as a weaving of many voices and traditions

• A political will that bends toward beauty, justice, and reciprocity

• A living Gaia where soil, sea, and sky are cherished kin

A High Magic Practice for August 11 and 12th…!

1. At dawn, face the eastern sky. If you can see Venus and Jupiter, greet them; if not, close your eyes and feel their light entering you. Sirius will be near, carrying the higher heart’s purpose.

2. Hold a seed, from your own land if possible and feel it as a vessel for your intention.

3. Speak one clear sentence for your home, for your community, and for the earth. Keep it as distilled as the seed itself.

4. Plant it in the soil. If you can, stir water in a figure-eight to awaken its life forces before you pour it over the planted seed.

A Collective Circle
I invite all who read this to join me, wherever you are in planting your own intention at this rare conjunction. Imagine our seeds, scattered across continents, joined by a filament of light running from Sirius through Venus and Jupiter into the soil of the Earth. This is high magic: intimate, domestic, and cosmic all at once.

The ancients knew that the brightest lights in the sky speak also to the brightest visions within us. This is high magic for the world we are willing to tend together.

✨ Magical Farm Yarrow ‘Acelia’ Essence
Gather the rare blessings of Venus, Jupiter, and Sirius into your own heart. This gentle yet powerful ally weaves protection and openness, so what is seeded in love may endure and flourish. Take it as a prayer in liquid form, a bridge between heaven’s light and the fertile soil of your life.
→ Order Yarrow ‘Acelia’ Essence from Magical Farm

✨ Full Set Offering

The Magical Farm Alchemy Set
For those who wish to journey deeper, this complete set of 17 Demeter’s Drops is handcrafted in Tasmania from herbs grown in our fresh, vibrant landscapes, infusing each drop with the life and rhythm of the land. Serving as your compass through the seasons of life, each drop supports integration, clarity, protection, and heartful action, creating a tapestry of living medicine to guide and harmonise body, mind, and spirit. Explore the full set and carry the farm’s magic, grounded in Tasmanian soil, wherever you go.
→ Order The Magical Farm Alchemy Set

Beyond the Hashtag: Why Progressive Platforms Must Build Futures, Not Just Protest

In today’s hyperconnected world, moral outrage travels fast. From War and injustice to salmon farms and destruction to ancient forests. Activists and leaders with platforms flood social media with sharp critique and heartfelt calls for justice. Yet, for all the powerful voices and viral hashtags, the conversation often stops short of what comes next. Moral clarity is necessary but not sufficient.

“When progressive leaders wield their megaphones only to condemn without creating pathways forward, they cede the future to corporate boards, militaries, and political hardliners”

The real challenge is not just to name what’s wrong but to build convivial governance, systems where communities are invited into genuine conversation, co-creating the institutions they will live within. Convivial governance treats imagination as an organ essential to democracy. It insists that governance must be of the people, not imposed from above; it thrives on dialogue, shared responsibility, and an openness to diverse futures. This methodology is urgently needed in places like Tasmania, where industrial salmon farming disrupts ecosystems and silences community voices; in forests under threat of over-extraction; and in global hotspots like Gaza, where decisions are made far from the lived experience of those most affected.

“These struggles, though geographically distant, share a common thread: the failure of top-down governance and the absence of meaningful participatory design”.

Tools for convivial governance already exist.

• Barcelona’s Decidim platform empowers tens of thousands to propose and vote on policies.

• EcoPeace Middle East models cross-border cooperation between Jordan, Israel and Palestine around water resources.

• Local councils in Rojava show how self-rule can resist authoritarianism and fragmentation.

  These case studies are working examples of how conversation can turn outrage into architecture.

Yet, too often, influential thinkers like Naomi Klein illuminate the systemic roots of injustice without stepping into the generative space of scenario-building and solution design. She speaks powerfully about global crises but rarely opens her platform to the messy, grounded work of co-creating alternatives with affected communities.

Progressive leaders with reach bear an ethical responsibility: to shift from reactive outrage to proactive convivial conversation, inviting followers into structured, inclusive spaces where futures are imagined, tested, and refined together. This is how movements mature and how change becomes sustainable. Without this shift, the “day after” will always belong to someone else.

It is time to move beyond the hashtag, toward using our imagination as the most important organ of our time.

✨ Magical Farm Rosemary Essence
Awaken the clarity and courage to move from outrage to action. This bright, grounding ally sharpens vision and memory, helping you see the pathways forward and walk them with purpose. Take it when you need to weave truth into the architecture of a more just and participatory world.
→ Order Rosemary Essence from Magical Farm

✨ Full Set Offering

The Magical Farm Alchemy Set
For those who wish to journey deeper, this complete set of 17 Demeter’s Drops is handcrafted in Tasmania from herbs grown in our fresh, vibrant landscapes, infusing each drop with the life and rhythm of the land. Serving as your compass through the seasons of life, each drop supports integration, clarity, protection, and heartful action, creating a tapestry of living medicine to guide and harmonise body, mind, and spirit. Explore the full set and carry the farm’s magic, grounded in Tasmanian soil, wherever you go.
→ Order The Magical Farm Alchemy Set

About the Author
Dr Emily Samuels-Ballantyne (also known as Dr. Demeter) is an eco-philosopher, farmer, and author of the forthcoming series The Spiral Shelves: Living Library of Magical Farm Tasmania. Her work bridges policy design, ecological healing, and the spiritual-cultural renewal of place. She works at the intersection of community resilience, regenerative governance, and embodied stewardship, inviting new myths and models for living well together in times of great change.

Sword, Soil, Silence and Soul: Speaking from the Wound during Chiron Retrograde

by Dr Demeter | Magical Farm Tasmania | August 2025

There are some wounds that never fully close, not because we are broken, but because we are still listening. During this Chiron retrograde, I’ve been reflecting on a quiet ache that has followed me through many seasons. It’s the ache of trying to speak from a living, plural, and embodied place in a world that often only recognises binaries. Right or wrong, fast or slow, professional or emotional…

This ache isn’t just intellectual. I feel it in my throat, in my belly, and in the soil beneath my feet. It appears when I try to express something that matters, something layered and regenerative and it gets flattened, misheard, or pushed aside. Not because it lacks value, but because it doesn't fit into the dominant way of listening.

Often, the systems we are asked to work within seem unable to hear what doesn’t follow linear logic, individualism, or urgency. They struggle to hold nuance, community truth, or ideas that come from lived experience rather than institutional authority.

For me, this is where Chiron’s wound lives: in the longing to be truly heard and deeply held, even while speaking in ways that don’t conform to what the world rewards. We all have different Chrion wounds depending on where in our chart.

I’ve found guidance in unlikely places:

The sword teaches me how to hold boundaries with precision and grace, how to speak clearly, without attack.

The soil reminds me that everything meaningful takes time, decay, and transformation.

The silence shows me how to trust what is not yet fully formed.

And the soul? The soul carries the memory of what it feels like to be fully met, and keeps reaching for it, no matter how many times it has not been.

Chiron in Taurus, especially in the house of communication 3rd house, which is the case for me, invites us to stay with the discomfort of not being immediately understood. It reminds us that speaking with integrity is not about winning arguments or performing knowledge. It’s about being in relationship, with the land, with language, with each other.

This wound is not mine alone. It’s shared by many who are speaking from the edges of systems, from in-between spaces, or from bodies and traditions that are routinely dismissed. But within that wound is a medicine: the capacity to listen deeply, to honour what doesn't fit, and to compost the patterns that silence us.

So I offer this reflection as a marker in the morphic field, not to solve anything, but to signal resonance. If you have ever felt like you are both too much and not enough, too complex and too slow, or simply misunderstood for the way you communicate care, then know you are not alone.

There is another way emerging. It’s quieter, slower, more relational. It’s already growing in the compost, in the fencing hall, in the kitchen garden, in the shared breath of those willing to listen differently.

And you, my love, are part of it.

—
YoFence sessions, flower essence support, and regenerative farming workshops dialogue offerings are here to support you. All are welcome.
📞 0473 378 445 | 🌐 magicalfarm.org

What Is Your Business Model, Local Government?
By Dr Emily Samuels-Ballantyne (Dr. Demeter), Magical Farm Tasmania | Regen Era Design

A Poem to Begin: 

“The Land of Forms in Triplicate”

 They paved the way with paper,
and called it governance.
Ink spilled where rivers once ran.
Strategies replaced stories.
Budgets replaced breath.

 In this land of forms in triplicate,
spirit became ‘stakeholder,’
soil became ‘asset,’
and the commons became a ‘commodity’.

Community is something to be ‘engaged.’
Healing, is something to be ‘workshopped.’
And care, is nowhere in the budget.

 But place remembers.
The roots remember.
The gardens and gutters, the creek behind the depot, they wait.

And we, people of compost and complexity are remembering too.
That governance is not a meeting: It is a meal shared, a neighbour helped and a harvest honoured.

 So we ask again:
What is your business model, Local Government?

Because if Local Government cannot hold the life of this place, it is not fit to hold our future.

Composting the Brief

For nearly twenty years, I’ve sat in fluorescent-lit rooms, usually across from a local government officer, clipboard in hand who looks me in the eye and asks: “What’s your business model?”

On the surface, the question seems reasonable. But when applied to regenerative projects such as social gardens, food prescriptions, community harvest festivals, First Nations land care, shared meals, it becomes something else entirely. It becomes a subtle but powerful form of erasure. Behind it lies an ideology that insists all value must be extractable, measured, and packaged for reporting. That care must be justified. That soil must have a spreadsheet. That festivals must become outputs.

After decades of working with, alongside, and occasionally in resistance to local government, I believe it’s time to turn the question around:
What is your business model, local government?

Too often, what I see is not governance, it is performance. Policy schemes are launched in Canberra, filtered through state policy teams, passed to local councils, and translated into glossy reports by consultants. Somewhere in that chain, the actual work, the living, breathing regeneration of people and place is lost.

“We are governed by a machinery of abstraction”.

These are not “projects” to be measured by quarterly deliverables. They are civic acts of repair. They nourish relationships, regenerate ecosystems, and rebuild the social fabric that holds communities together. They are precisely what public service should exist to support. Because taxpayer funds, from all tiers of government, are not just for roads and rubbish. They are for the shared infrastructure of life: food, care, culture, and belonging.

Or are they?

If the local government insists that its role is limited to “rates, roads, and rubbish,” then we must confront a hard truth: it is abandoning its purpose. But we must also look upstream. Because much of the abstraction, bureaucracy, and performance culture we see at the local level is a direct result of state and federal frameworks, schemes designed in distant offices, bound by KPIs, and filtered through layers of reporting and compliance.

In this model, local government becomes a delivery arm, not a site of innovation or regeneration. Officers are trained to manage grants, produce engagement plans, and commission consultants and not to nurture relationships, co-design with community, redistribute resources, or respond to real-world complexity.

So we must ask: if our current system of governance cannot meet the needs of this time, if it cannot support the work of resilience, justice, and renewal, then what is it for?

Because the deeper work of climate adaptation, food system transformation, and social healing cannot be boxed into three-year funding cycles or flattened into “outputs.” It must be rooted, relational, and long-term. And it must be governed by those who live it.

This does not mean we abandon public institutions. It means we transform their role. It means shifting from control to trust. From managing community to co-creating with it, which means there is a shift from performance to participation.

If local, state, and federal governments are willing to evolve, to fund what matters, to cede power where needed, to become stewards of community-led change then there is immense hope. If not, communities will continue to build parallel systems: land trusts, energy co-ops, food commons, healing spaces. Not as resistance, but as necessity.

This essay is an invitation…

The Machinery of Abstraction

Australia has 566 Local Government Areas (LGAs). In theory, these councils should be the closest and most responsive tier of government. In practice, they are often the most entangled in the bureaucratic performance of care, not the delivery of it.

Let us say a new federal scheme is announced and it is focused on “community resilience.” It originates in Canberra. State agencies translate it into frameworks, templates, and planning guides. These are passed down to councils, where internal staff or external consultants are tasked with “community engagement.”

Engagement is held, then reports are written, diagrams are made and rarely, if ever, is meaningful funding directed to the real work the policy claims to support. The idea becomes a product and its power diluted by process. As theorists like Guy Debord, Ivan Illich, and Henri Lefebvre remind us of spectacle, abstraction, materialism and performance culture:

• Debord wrote of governance becoming spectacle, performance over substance.
  
  
  

• Illich warned of tools turning into systems of control.
  
  
  

• Lefebvre described the rise of abstract space, where lived experience is overwritten by bureaucratic grids.

This is not a crisis of intention. It is a structural condition. But conditions, like soil, can be composted. And that is the work I’ve been quietly doing for well over a decade, redirecting policy briefs toward life.

A Tactic of Integrity: Redirecting the Brief

Twelve years ago, I began applying a concept I learned from the philosopher and design theorist Tony Fry: redirection of the brief. Rather than rejecting state frameworks outright, I learned how to bend them and reground them and in turn redirect them, so they served life, not paperwork.

One example: the Huon Valley Food Hub.
Originally, the council budgeted $70,000 for consultants to conduct “community engagement,” and just $10,000 for implementation. I flipped the model. We ran engagement and co-design in-house, and redirected funds into community activation.

With that $70,000, we delivered:

• Ten farm-gate blitzes across the valley
  
  
  

• A regenerative food prescription program for twelve families
  
  
  

• A First Nations-led garden activation at Sacred Heart College
  
  
  

• The Growing Together festival: four seasonal dinners, markets, and seed libraries
  
  
  

This was not just a budget tweak, it was a philosophical pivot which moved funds from consultation to participation in the community. Shifted the culture of outputs towards outcomes.

Grounded in Strategy: A Tasmanian Opportunity

The Future of Local Government Review (2023–24) presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shift how local governance works. With 37 reform recommendations, ranging from voluntary amalgamations and regional service-sharing to participatory democracy and structural review, Tasmania is on the cusp of change.

The Priority Reform Program (2024–26) charts a roadmap for implementation ahead of the 2026 council elections. It offers five key pillars: governance, accountability, democracy, funding, and structure. But success depends on depth, not just design.

The Local Government Association of Tasmania (LGAT) rightly warns that top-down reform risks eroding the very local nuance councils are meant to protect. Likewise, journalists and citizens across Tasmania have resisted forced amalgamations and centralised planning power. We must be careful. We must ask not just how government is structured, but why, for whom, and to what end.

The Officer as Facilitator: Beyond Structural Reform

It’s time for a wake-up call. How can council officers, managers, planners, executives continue to prioritise paperwork over place? Strategy over soil? Reports over relationships?

This isn’t a failure of individuals. It’s a failure of the system, but systems can change.

Too often, local government reform debates get stuck on “how things are carved up”: amalgamations, shared services, and administrative boundaries dominate the conversation. Yet the more fundamental questions about what local government actually does, how it does it, and why these essential activities remain sidelined.

I hear the refrain all too often: “Local government doesn’t have enough funds.” Yet I also see bloated bureaucracies, roles created to shuffle papers rather than nurture communities, and funding lost to endless consultants and reports that gather dust.

No one is calling out the elephant in the room: the culture of local government itself. If local government is to transform, it must start with honest reckoning: recognising waste, shedding performative practices, and shifting budgets away from bureaucracy toward community resilience. Public funds must be reclaimed to support the living, breathing work of care, not the maintenance of paperwork.

In a regenerative future, council officers are not gatekeepers of grants or custodians of compliance. They become facilitators of public trust, partners in community-led change, and stewards of resources that nourish people and place. This requires reform that moves beyond rearranging structures to transforming culture, function, and purpose.

Public money must not simply “deliver programs.” It must build capacity, belonging, and resilience. Here is my usual style I offer some imaginative and practical solutions through a design methodology of scenarios: 

Seven Regenerative Scenarios for Local Government

The following scenarios offer a regenerative expansion of Tasmania’s reform process, grounded in lived examples and place-based activation.

1. Local Co-Governed Food & Health Hubs
Reform lever: Reallocate “engagement” budgets into long-term community infrastructure.
Example: Huon Valley Food Hub
Outcome: Funding follows participation, not paperwork. Healing is enabled through food, culture, and care.

2. Community-Owned Energy & Infrastructure Commons
Reform lever: Enable councils to support community-led solar, battery storage, and energy hubs.
Example: Scenario Two: Powering Regeneration (Regen Era Design Studio)
Outcome: Energy becomes a local commons. Resilience becomes a civic responsibility.

3. Regional Planning Alliances for Liveability
Reform lever: Foster inter-council collaborations across bioregions and catchments.
Example: Greater Hobart planning alliances, extended to rural and cultural corridors.
Outcome: Planning is no longer siloed. Local government plans for culture, care, and country, not just roads and bins.

4. Scaled Shared Services with Local Identity
Reform lever: Share admin services while preserving localised leadership and identity.
Example: Regional hubs for climate adaptation, emergency preparedness, asset management.
Outcome: Economies of scale without cultural erasure.

5. Place-Based Co-Design & Workforce Development
Reform lever: Reform officer training; create new jobs rooted in facilitation, regeneration, and cultural capacity.
Example: Co-design fellows, Indigenous planning roles, food system facilitators.
Outcome: Councils grow talent that knows how to work with (not manage) communities.

6. Transparent Accountability & Participatory Democracy
Reform lever: Enshrine a “Charter of Place” in legislation.
Example: Community hearings, budget transparency dashboards, regenerative indicators.
Outcome: Trust rebuilt. Communities become co-authors of their future.

7. Living Policy Pilots for Regeneration
Reform lever: Bundle grants into flexible “living lab” experiments.
Examples: Healing yards, food festivals, seed libraries, tool shares.
Outcome: Pilots judged by lived impact, not admin metrics.

Reclaiming the Public Brief

The word “brief” once meant a letter of trust, an invitation to act on behalf of the common good. What if we reclaimed that? What if the next “policy brief” was not a checklist, but a compost heap: rich with place-based wisdom, complexity, and care?

Let us name what no longer serves: the over-reliance on reports, consultants, abstraction and let us grow what will: capacity, relationship, and shared stewardship.

So I ask again:
What is your business model, local government?

Because mine is this:
Care for place and people.
Participation that grows roots, not paperwork.
Regeneration that feeds both soil and soul.

This is not just a model. It is a way of life.

And if councils adopted even a portion of this approach, we would begin to see a new kind of public service emerge, one rooted in trust, and capable of holding the complexity and beauty of real life.

About the Author

Dr Emily Samuels-Ballantyne (also known as Dr. Demeter) is an eco-philosopher, farmer, and author of the forthcoming series The Spiral Shelves: Living Library of Magical Farm Tasmania. Her work bridges policy design, ecological healing, and the spiritual-cultural renewal of place. She works at the intersection of community resilience, regenerative governance, and embodied stewardship, inviting new myths and models for living well together in times of great change.

Dr Demeter – Here in the brushstrokes,the unseen becomes seen.

The cells of life speak in dots,
not isolated, but woven,
like the constellations above
and the mycelium below.

In this living tapestry,
each mark tells a story
as First Nations art has always known,
each dot a breath,
each curve a songline
of ancestors and stars,
of country and kin.

Look into the microscope:
life dances in fractals.
Peer through the telescope:
the cosmos pulses in patterns.
And here in the brushstrokes,
the unseen becomes seen.

This is a remembering,
a message passed
from sky to soil,
from pigment to presence.
It is not new,
It is always.

Con Viv

painting by Emily / Dr Demeter

Locky was painted on the lake at Loch Sport, where wind, tide, and feeling meet. Spiral strokes track the push–pull of currents and the work of holding heat without hardening. Turquoise and green carry the breath of the etheric; rose warms the heart field; rusts steady the will. The name plays on loch/lock: a place and a threshold, what holds, what opens.

The Tree That Spoke: A Living Message from the Roots

Dr Demeter: Listening to the land beyond sides, beyond slogans, toward wholeness.

In January year, as part of a land healing workshop, I found myself sitting beside a pomegranate tree. I hadn’t gone seeking visions or answers. I was simply sitting. Breathing. Letting the earth speak in her own time.

Then, without warning, something stirred. A soft, clear message emerged, not in sound, but in knowing:

“I am in misery,” the tree said.

This was not a metaphor, the tree was literally looking unwell. At its base, a fungal infection had taken hold. The trunk was split. And on one side, growing into the tree’s very body, was a piece of plastic, long embedded. A human intervention, likely intended to help, had become part of the wound.

As I sat with the tree, listening with more than ears, an image arose:

The left side of the tree was one people. The right side was another.

Two limbs of the same being. Split, but not separate.

The left was discoloured, twisted, compromised by synthetic interference. It held movement, emotion, and the ache of dispossession. The right stood straighter, more rigid, offering structure and strength, but needing the left to breathe, to flow. Neither side could live without the other. 

I asked the tree: Do you want to be pruned?
A firm no.

What was needed wasn’t division. It was healing. Not isolation, but restoration.

The tree gave me five messages from the left: change, loss, resistance, grief, yearning.
And eight from the right: resilience, stability, defence, safety, endurance, tradition, fear, and loss.
Then came the number six for both. A balance. And one word that pulsed through the roots:

Love.

Not sentimental love. Not conditional love. But the kind that lives in root systems. That remembers we belong to each other, even in pain. 

As a regenerative farmer and practitioner of biodynamics, I knew what to do. I prescribed a tree paste, a gentle, living salve made with yarrow, the warrior-healer plant. Not to remove the wound, but to protect it. To allow the tree’s own healing wisdom to rise again.

Because that’s the thing about trees: They don’t divide, they integrate. They don’t perform politics, but they live season by season.

We live in a time where people are expected to choose sides. To perform outrage or prove virtue. But the tree offered another story.

It said:

“The foundations of life are in the seed” (this was the clear message I channelled).

In reflection… “The foundations of life are in the seed” is not just a truth of nature, it is a radical invitation to reimagine how we live. From the outside, the seed may seem small, humble, even invisible, but within it lies a profoundly different resonance, one that carries the sacred codes of renewal, interconnection, and life beyond domination. This message is a call to shift our power source, from control and reaction, to reverence and regeneration, planting new ways of being that grow slowly, but transform everything.

What if we remembered that?

What if activism became a balm, not a blade?

What if we built peace the way we heal trees,
By tending the roots,
Not severing the limbs?

—
by Dr. Demeter
Eco-philosopher and regenerative farmer
Founder of Magical Farm Tasmania

A tree channeling by Dr Demeter…a message from the unseen

This is the Reckoning: What Ancient Wisdom and Living Systems Science Demand of Us Now

By Dr. Demeter, Magical Farm Tasmania

Con Viv

We were never meant to be alone,

The earth speaks still, in root and stone.

Four hundred years, the thread was torn,

But deeper truths are being reborn.

This is not the end, but a beginning of a reweaving,

There will certainly be much conceiving!

Of compost, courage, soil, and heart.

Awaken! It's time to wake up to life for a new start.

In a time when the earth trembles beneath our feet (the Fault Line Series I am writing certainly reflects this), ecologically, economically, politically, spiritually we are called to remember something ancient and vital: that we are not separate from life, but participants in a great, dynamic whole. This is not merely metaphor, but a cosmological orientation held across millennia by First Nations peoples the world over. And not only First Nations: all ancient cultures, from the Andes to Anatolia, from Aotearoa to Africa, held interwoven cosmologies in which land, life, spirit, and human were inseparable.

Four hundred years ago, with the birth of modernity in Europe, it was a moment often tied to the Enlightenment, colonisation, Cartesian dualism, and the scientific revolution; the ancient and woven interconnected worldview was systematically shattered. The world was reclassified as inert. The soul was extracted from matter and nature was rendered lifeless, and so it could be owned, measured, and controlled. This shift was not progress it was amnesia.

“We need rewoven philosophies of life, I often refer to Con Viv! But there are many others we can weave with”.

In recent decades, systems theorists have begun to glimpse truths that ancient cultures never forgot: that life is relational, dynamic, complex, and sacred. First Nations ontologies have long known this sacred knowledge through Country, kinship, songlines and Dreaming…and living systems science and theory is just beginning to name.

This essay explores the profound resonance between First Nations worldviews and living systems theory, and asks what it would mean to take these ontologies seriously, not as symbolic nods or ethical aspirations, but as foundations for redesigning our lives, institutions, and futures. This is not a polite invitation to explore, I propose it is a necessary reckoning…the time to wake up is now.

Living Systems and Living Country

James Grier Miller’s Living Systems Theory outlines seven nested levels of life: cell, organ, organism, group, organisation, community, society, and supranational system. Each level interacts through flows of energy, matter, information and is self-organising, adaptive, and open. In parallel, First Nations ontologies speak of relational flows between all things: humans, land, ancestors, animals, weather systems, spirits, and laws. In Australia, Country is not a passive backdrop but an animate, sentient being with agency. You don't own Country…you belong to it.

This worldview dissolves and mends the Cartesian separation of mind and body, subject and object, human and nature. It collapses the Western notion of the isolated individual and instead foregrounds what Miller would call the “relational interiority of systems”. You are not in relationship, you are relationship. And until we digest this perspective and live and feel it in our bones we will continue designing systems that kill what they claim to serve.

A Different Ontology of Time and Responsibility

In many First Nations epistemologies, the past does not lie behind us but lives within us. The Dreaming is not a closed chapter of history but a living, breathing force animating the present moment. Elders remind us that the Dreaming is at once ancestral archive and ever-unfolding story: law and pattern, song and relation. It moves in silence, in ceremony, and through those who embody its ways.

Margo Neale, editor of the First Knowledges series and senior Indigenous curator at the National Museum of Australia, does not proclaim the Dreaming with grand declarations but lives it through her presence. To her, Country is kin, not abstraction; those who walk beside her sense stories woven into her bones and guidance rising in her breath. As she moves across the land, Country itself seems to listen. Her enactment of justice is not about platforms or punishment but about reweaving the unseen threads that bind people to land, spirit to soil.

With Margo Neale, living systems are never abstract concepts but lived realities. She teaches without formal lessons, showing that the Dreaming is not confined to the past or to ritual, it lives in the way one sits by a river, listens to the wind, or speaks to a child. To carry the Dreaming as she does is to become a bridge across generations, across worlds.

This ontology of time and presence resonates deeply with living-systems theory: in both, meaning emerges through patterns, feedback loops, and relationships; the past and the future coexist in dynamic tension with the present; and the deepest form of knowledge is not mere information but embodied integration.

This is not mysticism but an urgent invitation to decolonise our land, our thinking, our language, and our institutions. It is time to relearn what our systems have forgotten.

Repatterning the Self and Society

If we took seriously the convergence of these two ontological frameworks, the implications are radical:

• The Self becomes less about ego and more about eco. We reinhabit our bodies not as private containers but as microcosms of place, memory, and spirit.
  

• Family expands from a nuclear unit to a web of intergenerational, multispecies kinship. Grandmother trees, river cousins, star siblings.
  

• Community becomes not a service recipient but a dynamic living system, held together by ritual, reciprocity, and shared story.
  

• Institutions must evolve from extractive bureaucracies to regenerative infrastructures. Schools become places of initiation into life’s patterns. Hospitals, spaces for soul-tending as much as symptom-management.
  

• Economy ceases to be a measure of growth and becomes a practice of nourishment. Circular, foundational, seasonal, and enough!!
  

• The Cosmos is not out there it is in here. Astronomy returns to cosmology; physics finds its complement in myth.
  

• The Soil is not dirt, but the oldest ancestor. We listen before we plant.
  

“To ignore these transformations is not neutral, it is violence by neglect. We must be fierce in naming the unseen systems that are severing the roots of life. And we must be bold in creating new ones”.

Implications for Design, Policy, and Praxis

To live as if this ontology were true because it is would mean a wholesale reorientation of systems thinking from mechanistic management to sacred stewardship. It invites the co-creation of what Colombian scholar Arturo Escobar calls the pluriverse: a world where many worlds fit.

We would reimagine:

• Education as initiation into living systems and Country.
  Governance as facilitation of local wisdom, not enforcement of central plans.

• Health as coherence across inner and outer ecologies.

• Justice as relational repair, not retribution.

• Economics as a layered and grounded foundational movement of resources an organ-sation of life, not a system of extraction.

• Activism as a regenerative force, not only resistance, but reimagining. Less protest against, more living for. A call to become composters of culture and midwives of the future.

• Art and Story as central nervous systems of collective transformation, no longer peripheral, but essential. Through image, sound, myth, and symbol, we reweave our imaginations and seed the futures our souls remember. as a regenerative force, not only resistance, but reimagining. Less protest against, more living for. A call to become composters of culture and midwives of the future.

Importantly, it is not enough to translate First Nations knowledge into Western terms. The invitation is to unlearn, to humble ourselves before epistemologies that have held resilience across fire, flood, invasion and genocide.

Returning to Belonging

We are now living in what the ancient I Ching calls Period Nine, a time of fire, vision, feminine leadership, and truth-telling. But it is also a time of composting. Systems are breaking down. Myths are decomposing. False certainties are decaying. This is not a crisis, it is a rite of passage.

At Magical Farm Tasmania and Regen Era Studio, we have committed to this work of composting. For nearly twenty years, we have been dreaming, growing, fermenting, and tending the conditions for a regenerative way of life to emerge. And now, as Period Nine unfolds over the next two decades, we recognise this as a planetary composting cycle, clearing the old to make fertile ground for what is to come.

This is a sacred practice of continuity, rooted in land, love, and living systems. It is our offering to the cycle. And when Period One returns, it will not be as it was before but renewed by the compost of this time.

We are here to support the turning. We are not starting from scratch but we are remembering.

The convergence of First Nations ontologies and living systems theory is not just a conceptual insight. It is a threshold moment and a call to restore reverence, reciprocity, and responsibility. It asks us to remember that we are not systems managers, but participants in a sacred dance of emergence and decay.

When we re-pattern our sense of self and society through this lens, we begin to heal the split at the heart of modernity. We move from disconnection to belonging, from extraction to regeneration, from domination to deep listening.

In the language of my farm, we begin again with soil and soul.

Dr. Demeter is an eco-philosopher, farmer, and author of the forthcoming series The Spiral Shelves: Living Library of Magical Farm Tasmania. Her work bridges policy design, ecological healing, and the spiritual-cultural renewal of place.

GLOSSARY

Ontology
The branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of being, existence, and reality, what kinds of things exist and how they can be grouped and related.

Epistemology
The study of knowledge: how we know what we know, the limits and sources of knowledge, and criteria for belief and justification.

The Fault Line Series: What Is Your Business Model?

By Dr. Demeter, Magical Farm Tasmania

For nearly 20 years, I’ve sat in fluorescent-lit rooms, usually across from a middle manager, clipboard in hand, who looks me in the eye and asks: What’s your business model?

The question appears benign. But when applied to regenerative community projects, like social gardens, food prescriptions with regenerative produce, food hubs, harvest festivals, and healing gardens, it reveals more than it asks. Behind it is an ideology that says value must be extractable, quantified, and packaged for reporting.

After decades of designing alongside, within, and around local government, both as a community builder and policy writer, I now feel it’s time to turn the question around: What is your business model, local government?

Because from where I sit, too often the business of governance has become a business of performance. Schemes are launched in Canberra, handed to state policy units, filtered into local strategy, and finally passed to consultants who produce reports. Somewhere in that long chain, the actual work of regeneration is lost.

But it doesn’t have to be.

The Machinery of Abstraction

Australia has 566 Local Government Areas (LGAs). In theory, these should be the closest and most responsive tier of government. In practice, they are often the most entangled in layers of policy choreography.

Let us say there is a new federal scheme focused on "resilience." It originates in Canberra, crafted with national objectives. This is then dispatched to state-level policy officers, who produce frameworks, templates, and research documents. These are then sent to the local government, where internal staff and external consultants are engaged to translate these frameworks into engagement strategies and planning briefs.

In this process, consultants are hired, community sessions are held, reports are produced, and graphics are designed. Yet rarely is meaningful funding directed toward the tangible outcomes that the policy itself claims to support. The idea becomes commodified, its meaning diluted through layers of abstraction.

Drawing on the work of theorists such as Guy Debord, Ivan Illich, and Henri Lefebvre, we can see this clearly:

• Debord reminds us that governance has become spectacle: a theatre of documents, dashboards, and launch events.

• Illich critiques the institutionalisation of care and life, naming how tools meant to serve living systems become means of control.

• Lefebvre speaks of "abstract space," where lived reality is erased by grids and schedules.

This is not a crisis of bad intention, it is a structural condition. But conditions can be composted. And that is what I’ve spent the past decade doing, and through Regen Era Design plan to do further composting work. 

A Tactic of Integrity: Redirection of the Brief

Twelve years ago, I began applying a concept I learned from Tony Fry: Redirection of the Brief. It means strategically redirecting the purpose of a project or policy, not to subvert it, but to realign it with life.

One example is the Huon Valley Food Hub. The original budget allocated around $70,000 for community engagement and only $10,000 for on-ground outcomes. I flipped that model. We ran engagement and co-design in-house, and redirected the funds toward community activation.

With the $70,000, we delivered:

• Ten farm gate blitzes across the valley
  

• A regenerative food prescription program for twelve families
  

• A First Nations garden activation at Sacred Heart College
  

• The "Growing Together" Harvest Festival featuring four seasonal dinners, markets, and seed library installations
  

This was not just a tactical shift, it was a philosophical one. From consultation to participation. From paper to practice. From performance to presence.

Deep Roots: Rethinking Governance from the Soil Up

Helena Norberg-Hodge has long critiqued the impacts of global trade and centralised systems. She shows how even local governments, under pressure to "perform," replicate corporate metrics and market-based models. The result is a hollowing out of public life. Seed libraries become KPIs. Community gardens become pilot programs. Festivals become outputs. But the living relationships that sustain a place? These are rarely recognised, let alone funded.

We need a shift in governance: not toward more management, but toward regenerative participation. We need a life systems worldview that sees communities not as service recipients, but as co-creators. This means investing in what is slow, rooted, and relational. It means resourcing the invisible infrastructure of care, trust, and local knowledge.

A New Brief for the Public Good

The word "brief" once meant a letter of trust, an invitation to act on behalf of something larger than oneself. What if we reclaimed that meaning? What if the next time we crafted a policy brief, it was not a checklist but a compost heap rich with complexity, local flavour, and the wisdom of those who live it?

So I ask again:

What is your business model, local government?

Because mine is this:

• Care for place, people and planet.

• Participation that grows roots, not paperwork.

• Regeneration that feeds both soil and soul.

• Local nutrient dence food supplied to schools and those who really need it.
  

And that, to me, is not just a business model. It is a way of life. Because ultimately, taxpayer funds are meant for the public good. Whether or not a project fits a conventional profit model, public funding should serve people, place, and planet not just generate documents and paperwork.

In future writing, I will offer more 'scenarios' for how local government might evolve toward regenerative practice. But first, we must begin the composting process, naming what no longer serves, and imagining what might grow in its place. And that starts by being clear about what the problem really is. Because ultimately, taxpayer funds are meant for the public good. Whether or not a project fits a conventional profit model, public funding should serve people, place, and planet not just generate documents and paperwork.

If local governments changed their business model even slightly to reflect this, our entire society would begin to shift. We would see the emergence of a new kind of public service: one rooted in care, participation, and tangible outcomes. This would mean a workforce skilled not only in administration, but in co-design and place-based activation design.

It would also mean that policy schemes must begin with ground-up knowledge not the siloed abstractions of policy wonk worlds, but the lived wisdom of those who know the land, know the people, and know what actually works.

Dr. Demeter (Emily Samuels-Ballantyne) is an eco-philosopher, regenerative designer and farmer, and founder of Regen Era, a consulting and design studio working to reimagine public systems for the 21st century. With over 20 years of experience in community economies, policy design, and ecological regeneration, she collaborates with local, state, and federal governments to embed place-based activation, co-design, and living systems thinking into public strategy. From community gardens to climate policy, she helps redirect the brief, away from paperwork and toward people, place, and planetary wellbeing.

An Ode to the Bread Man

by Dr. Demeter, Magical Farm Tasmania

A Poem to Begin
He came each week with bags of bread,
No trumpet sound, no words were said.
Just loaves for birds, for geese and hen,
And care unseen by policy men.
A quiet trade, a thread of grace,
The Bread Man’s gift to time and place.

For several years, a man has come quietly to share bread with my farm. He delivers bags of out-of-date bread, not for sale, not for waste, but for my chickens, ducks, and geese. His visits have become a gentle ritual, one of those small, consistent acts that knit together the fabric of community life.

This simple act such as bread for birds is more than just an exchange. It is a living expression of the circular economy in action. What would otherwise become landfill becomes nourishment. In turn, my animals fertilise the soil, lay eggs, and play their role in the symphony of regenerative farming. All of it kept in motion by a relationship, by trust and care.

But recently, I learned that the Bread Man’s family-run business is going under. Despite years of service, of quiet contribution to the community, there is no support. No government safety net. In fact, in some ways, the systems in place have actively made it harder for small businesses like his to survive.

While global corporations receive generous subsidies, navigate regulations with armies of lawyers, and get propped up in the name of “jobs,” small-scale, heartful businesses are folding. One by one. These are not merely businesses, they are stories and places of care. They are part of the hidden relational infrastructure that actually keeps life going.

Here, I think of Ivan Illich, who wrote of conviviality, not as a nostalgic return to the past, but as a radical reclaiming of tools, relationships, and knowledge systems that support human freedom and mutuality. Illich warned us decades ago that when tools, be they economic, technological, or institutional, cease to be convivial, they become destructive. They erode autonomy. They sever relationships. They make life harder under the guise of making it more efficient.

The Bread Man’s generosity is a convivial act. A countercurrent to the extractive logic of industrial food systems. He models what Illich called tools for conviviality: systems scaled to the human hand, embedded in relationships, rooted in place, and governed by mutual trust rather than distant authority.

The irony is painful: the very policies that claim to secure our futures are making it impossible for the people who actually care for life, be it through food, community, or craft to survive. Bureaucratic churn is replacing these beautiful human-centered businesses. Data replaces wisdom and compliance replaces care.

And so, this essay is a call: To bring relationships back into economics…To resist the seduction of streamlining and mechanisation and to honour the artisans, the growers, the givers, the oddballs, the ones who remember your name.

Let’s bring back the market stall, the hand-tool repairer, the baker who knows your bread. Let’s revive the practices that make life rich, not just efficient. The erosion of society is happening in these small disappearances. We must not sleep through it.

So here’s to the Bread Man!
And to every quiet contributor.
To those who still live and give with life.
May our choices, from where we shop to how we share, create a society that truly nourishes.
Not just profits, not just scale, but soul.