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.

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.