ABOUT ACCIDENTAL GODS
We are two women, Manda Scott and Faith Tilleray, dreaming of a different future.
MANDA’S Story
This dream began for me at the winter solstice of 2018 when a series of visions with the dark-nights fire opened up the possibilities that became Accidental Gods.
The Membership arose first – a whole suite of meditations and visualisations designed above all else to bring people to the emergent edge of what Indy Johar of Dark Matter Labs calls ‘Inter-Becoming’. Our world is so busy harvesting our attention, but it seemed to me then – and still seems now, years later – that technology can be used to help us grow in our connections to the living world, to re-discover our birthright as intimately connected beings who have a role to play in the ever-unfolding wonder of our animate earth.
The Membership has evolved over time to suit the needs of the moment: first in the pandemic and then later as the pressures of the meta-crisis have become increasingly apparent. The old world is dying. The new is in the process of arising and our dream, always, is to lead as many people as possible towards a tipping point where we are all working together to create the astonishing, beautiful world that is still possible, and that we will all be proud to leave to the generations that come after us.
This last is the explicit aim of the Accidental Gods podcast. Originally planned as perhaps a dozen episodes, it passed the two hundred mark in the autumn of 2023 and is still airing (at least) once a week. The guests are an eclectic mix of economists, spiritual leaders, regenerative farmers, visionaries, political changemakers, elders, architects, writers, industrialists and activists – all of whom are working all day every day towards an equitable, just and flourishing future in which humanity is an integral part of a thriving web of life.
All of my life has been aiming towards this, although it’s taken a while to realise it.
Writing, Teaching, Meditating…
When I wrote the Boudica: Dreaming books, I thought I was opening up the concepts of who we in the islands of Britain were before the Roman invasion and colonisation – that if enough people understood, we’d reach a tipping point where we’d abandon the Roman values of extraction, consumption and destruction in favour of a more connected life.
The Dreaming Awake contemporary shamanic training arose when people asked how we could do this and back in 2004, it seemed that small group, in-person training was the best way forward.
Later, building the Membership and podcast, and more recently writing the Thrutopian novel, Any Human Power, it has become ever more apparent that our collective job now is to mend the centuries of separation from the animate earth and come into a new sense of what it is to be human – and that our technology enables us to bring ideas and practical guides to so many more people. The winter fires back in 2018 said that teaching needed to happen at scale – and so now we have both the means and the messages.
Nothing is static. Now, we ask all the shamanic students in Dreaming Awake to engage in both major programs within Accidental Gods and are finding their learning accelerates and deepens. The early foundation training in DA been taken over by my senior apprentice, Louise Mayor, freeing Faith and I up to keep evolving the Membership, to keep creating new Gatherings and to delve more deeply into whatever is most useful at any given time.
As I write, Any Human Power is about to launch (30th May) and I’m working on ideas for a sequel. The world is in flux. Leaning into the speed of change is the only thing we can do. It feels terrifying at times, and there are days when I yearn for old certainties. But the path forward is alive, and full of potential and there is no choice but to walk it, so we may as well enjoy every waking and sleeping moment.
Manda can also be found at:
https://mandascott.co.uk
https://thrutopia.life
https://dreamingawake.co.uk
FAITH’S STORY
My part in this dream started on a long train journey to Edinburgh with Manda in early 2019. We began the journey talking about climate change and bio-diversity loss but thankfully the momentum of the train and being in the right place at the right time meant that our conversation morphed into what we could usefully do together – something that would help to make a difference and that would use both of our skills.
I’ve been designing websites for the last few years and have been moving, increasingly, to only taking on projects that I believe in – projects that are bringing something useful to the world. But as we whizzed through the Lake District, seeing the hills that would once have been covered in trees so bare and sheep-bitten, my thoughts turned to spending my teenage years in Wales, roaming in primrose woods and cowslip meadows and sadness that my grandchildren will never see such things washed over me. I knew I wasn’t doing enough…
Sharing the journey…
I looked into myself and wondered how, after sitting out in our field on the hill and feeling so connected to the earth in those moments, I could slip back so easily into living a comfortable life – a life not changed enough by love for all that is being lost.
I realised that fleeting moments of connection aren’t enough and that I needed to love the earth, the trees, the grass and the tiny plants among the grass whose names I don’t even know, so fully that it would transform me. The amazing experience of becoming a grandmother showed me how new kinds of love are always possible and I knew I needed to feel that intensity of love for the natural world around me, the world that I am part of.
We spent the rest of the train journey talking about what has become accidental gods – our joint project of love for the world. It’s heart-rendingly exciting and I can’t wait to start the program myself. I’m not ‘good’ at meditating, having always been full of good intentions but less good at following through. This feels real and I’m hopeful that the program that Manda’s created and that I’ve had some much fun building online, can be key to my own journey of transformation.
I’ll look forward to sharing this journey with you.
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