method · all tools
Council of All Beings
A communal ritual in which participants set aside their human identity, are "chosen" by another life-form, often make simple masks, and then sit in council speaking AS that being — voicing what the humans cannot hear otherwise: what it is like to be a river, a moth, a mountain now. From an hour to a whole weekend; the mask comes off deliberately at the end.
Prerequisites
- Voluntary role-taking; participants choose their level of sharing (CLARITY's adaptation makes this explicit for classrooms, ages 12+)
- Speaking as a threatened being can open real grief; the de-roling close (removing the mask, returning to human) is structurally required
- Hold the ritual frame with respect — done ironically it curdles; done earnestly it is one of the strongest connectedness practices there is
Practical
- Time
- 60-240 min + 30 landing
- Group
- 5–40 · small-group, large-group
- Settings
- in-person, outdoors
- Materials
- Mask-making materials (optional); circle space, ideally outdoors
- Mechanisms
- perspective-taking, ritual-container, creative-expression, emotional-processing
- Change scope
- state → capacity · one-off
Instructions
- Where
- workthatreconnects.org/resources/council-of-all-beings — The Work That Reconnects (Joanna Macy & Molly Brown), open
- Availability
- Open online — published at the link, free to read
- Licence
- Open source — "a gift freely given" (Work That Reconnects); acknowledge the source: WTR, Joanna Macy as root teacher, and named adapters
Source link checked 29 Aug 2026 — unchanged since we recorded it on 28 Aug 2026
This directory describes and points home; the instructions stay with the people who made them.
Origin
Joanna Macy & John Seed — The Work That Reconnects / deep ecology (Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes)
In this directory via The Work That Reconnects (Joanna Macy & Molly Brown) · CLARITY Toolbox and Teacher's Guide
Dual-sourced: WTR original, carried into climate education by CLARITY (activity 3.1.1, ages 12+). Its junior sibling "Giving a voice to plants" (CLARITY 3.1.2, ages 6+) runs the same mechanism at depth 2 / holding 2.
status: checked · added 2026-08-25