Starhawk's "The Fifth Sacred Thing" becoming a movie

 

The Fifth Sacred Thing is the fifth element, Spirit, at the center of the union of the Four Elements of  Earth, Wind, Fire and Water.  It represents unity and balance, and is represented by the color white.  In the illustration above, Starhawk and her collaborators have chosen the wheel of the 4 elements with a spiral in the center, the "fifth element".

Starhawk is a powerful writer, activist, community facilitator, and true visionary for our time.  She is also a Witch, one of the founders of Reclaiming, and her book was my first introduction to the realm of the Goddess.  I use the term witch in the sense of the actual roots of the word:  "witch, wick, wicca" - weaver, woven.  She is a true Weaver.

I read Starhawk's book back in 1995.  As a native Californian who lived in Los Angeles, but attended Berkeley, I remember well the prejudices between progressive Northern California and materialistic Southern California, and had to laugh when Starhawk imagined an utopia in San Francisco with Southern California becoming an autocratic, fundamentalist corporate state. Starhawk has been a terrific inspiration in my life - in 1986 her book "The Spiral Dance" was the inspiration for a show I had at the University of Arizona.  More than a decade later, when I moved back to Berkeley, I joined Reclaiming, Starhawk's collective, and created the  Masks of the Goddess for the Spiral Dance in San Francisco.  Once again she and her colleagues set me on a path of powerful inspiration.

So I was delighted to learn that Starhawk's book THE FIFTH SACRED THING is in the process of becoming a movie, which as she herself says, is a long process.  Here's the video introduction to the Project which I received recently below.

"The novel describes a world set in the year 2048 after a catastrophe which has fractured the United States into several nations........The story is primarily told from the points of view of 98-year-old Maya, her nominal granddaughter Madrone, and her grandson Bird. Through these and other characters, the story explores elements from ecofeminism and ecotopian fiction." ......Wikipedia

"Making a movie is a long, long process!   But along the way we’ve created a  video, to quickly explain the story to those who haven’t read the book, and to show off some of the art and music we’ve created.  Pictures speak louder than words—so here it is:   http://www.fifthsacredthing.com  Also on YouTube:   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lROCSDQg9WM.     I wrote the narration, Olympia Dukakis speaks it and our lead producer Philip Wood put the video together and edited it.  Joshua Penman did the music.  Yes, it’s a long haul, but we’re all feeling the growing momentum!"

In gratitude,

Starhawk