The Aries Full Moon is traditionally known as the Hunter’s Moon. Back in the day, this was a period of the northern hemisphere year in which hunting was of primary concern in order to fill and prepare food stores for the winter months ahead. Hunting wildlife, foraging for fungi and berries then preserving what was gathered became the time honoured autumn focus of hunter gatherer communities across the planet.

Humanity has come a long way from these once crucial social imperatives protected as we are by the comforting convenience store culture of modern living. If we need something, moreover if we simply just fancy something on a whim, most of the western world can simply go out and buy it or, failing that, order through Amazon.

Immediate satisfaction of even the faintest desire has been a driving force in consumer led capitalism. It has become synonymous with notions of a ‘free society’ to the point where consumer rights are conflated with human rights. We want what we want, and we want it now. Patience, skill and understanding as deftly exhibited by those ancestors dependent on their natural world awareness to survive the harsh realities of winter, are in ever shorter supply in the modern world. In a relatively brief period of human history, we have transitioned from a long term view of our survival needs to the short termism of impulsive demands. The long term perspective provided an overview built on the lived experiences of previous generations. Our short term, aspirational world considers very little other than its capricious greed for next day delivery. There is no thought beyond that tomorrow.

The future: the living experience of further generations resulting from our plainly unsustainable demands, is barely considered. Human colonies continue to concentrate in densely populated urban environments specifically designed to shield us from the realities of the wider environment and climate. We have built cities in deserts where previously human life could not be supported. We drive in air conditioned cars from one air conditioned building to another. Water instantaneously gushes from taps without even distant recognition of its ancient, landscape carved path of provenance. We have divorced ourselves from the very realities that birthed and still support us.

The results of our willful societal behaviour are irrefutable. The evidence has been delivered, the data flowing like torrential rains and global floods on a daily basis—we've fucked up on an unbelievable scale, and the climate catastrophe of our own making is well underway. The recent State of Global Water Resources report by the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) has shown, despite the worldwide proliferation of storms, deluges and flooding, that the planet’s rivers dried up at the highest rate in three decades in 2023, putting global water supply at risk. “Water is the canary in the coalmine of climate change,” said the WMO secretary general, Celeste Saulo. “We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems and economies…yet we are not taking the necessary urgent action. As a result of rising temperatures, the hydrological cycle has accelerated. It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which is conducive to heavy rainfall. More rapid evaporation and drying of soils worsen drought conditions.”

UN Water has estimated that 3.6 billion people (more than a third of the current global population) face inadequate access to water for at least one month a year, and this is expected to increase to more than 5 billion by 2050.

As I write, the Gulf Coast of Florida is assessing the catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Milton, having been ravaged by Hurricane Helene just days before. Milton was measured as the third-fastest rapidly intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic after Wilma in 2005 and Felix in 2007. The early suggestions are that the damage might amount to a repair bill of over 60 billion dollars—more than the annual GDP derived by 60% of national economies.

Media coverage has focused predominantly on the destruction wreaked in the US, but the same storm, preceded by Helene, has also caused significant infrastructure damage and loss of life in Mexico. The Yucatan peninsula took a battering two weeks in succession but hardly got a mention in press coverage.

In dismissing the symbiotic relationship of hunter and environment to a bygone era, humanity has unilaterally adopted the divisive role of consumer with disastrous consequences, dramatically evidenced last week in the Gulf of Mexico. Unwittingly, we have become takers rather than contributors to the unified field of ecology upon which we depend. Everyone in the developed world is on the take, pursuing maximum returns for the minimum effort irrespective of political ideology. And make no mistake folks, the developed world is the major problem here.

According to the UN Environment report published earlier this year, rich countries use six times more resources, generate ten times the climate impacts than low income ones. The Oxfam and Stockholm Environment Institute's comprehensive study of climate inequality determined that the richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, with dire consequences for vulnerable communities and global efforts to tackle the climate emergency. According to the report, this elite group accounted for 16% of all CO2 emissions—enough to cause more than a million excess deaths due to heat. If we weren’t so effective at ignoring the simple logics of cause and effect, we in the developed world might stand accused of willful, climate-induced genocide. The legal argument is already being tested in international courts of human rights with a view to reparations.

So how do those in the rich nations address the climate crisis elephant in our front room? How can we develop strategies on an individual level that might feed into positive change at a collective level? What actions can we take to transform the personal chaos and tragedy reflected in the evening news bulletin, into something more productive, even if that is simply finding closure to our own long-standing issues and overconsumption?

It would be a gross denial to think that our own emotional responses and actions didn't in some way contribute to the collective human consciousness focused on this planet. In accepting responsibility for the contribution our own thoughts, words and deeds make to the collective, we take a mature step towards ensuring that, at the very least, we don't make the current damage any worse. We can strive to not add our shit to the shitstorm already in motion. Moreover, we can start to examine where conflict exists in our own lives and become private peacemakers, internally turning discord into harmony. An inner act of kindness to self—essentially forgiveness—allows us to walk an outward path towards service and peace for others. Who knows, we might even start to eat less meat, take on an allotment, trade in the gas guzzling 4x4 for an electric bike, or take fewer flights abroad.

Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.

(Gautama Buddha)

What small acts of inner and outer kindness can we undertake that might add beauty and joy to the collective rather than suffering? Could consciously pursuing the joy of service help dilute the media borne, pervasive cultural negativity of which we should be so mindful? As such, committing to positive thoughts, words, and deeds immediately takes on powerful significance and purpose in the cause of benefit for All. Fortunately for me as an artist, those small acts translate easily into my creative practice, more often than not painting and drawing. Is it deluded to think that in doing and sharing what I love I might be changing the world for the better—or certainly making it no worse? For me, deluded or not, it has become a very tangible win-win!

In his book “The Vision of the Fool” mystic poet and artist Cecil Collins suggested, “The purpose of Art is to worship and praise life through wonder.” He argued it is not the job of art to explain life; art expresses life, is an extension of life, creating new pathways by which the unknowable essence of existence can be “contacted, experienced, and realised” while paradoxically remaining a mystery. By discovering ways in which we can reconnect with our wider self—the reality of our origins—art offers a route out of the mess our species alone has created, for if peace cannot be imagined, it can not be manifested. Through the time honoured application of symbol and mythology, new stories of redemption can be told, bridges can be built, devastation repaired, health recovered, division reunited. Art heals.

Throughout his essay of the same name, philosopher Timothy Morton maintains “All Art is Ecological”, it being the expression of our own indivisible, intrinsic ecological nature. Despite the illusions of separation we contrive to create in the modern world, we cannot break our unending connection to everything else.

You are a fully embodied being who has never been separated from other biological beings both inside and outside your body, not for one second. You are sensitively attuned to everything happening in your world, which is why you end up blocking some of it, because you are afraid the stimulation might be too intense.

(Timothy Morton)

But it needn’t only be the creative imperative embodied by Art that we pursue with service in mind. It could be gardening, singing, dancing, writing, cooking, walking, housework, helping out at the local food bank, volunteering to visit patients in hospice care, shopping for an elderly or vulnerable neighbour, going for a jog - anything in the primary pursuit of joyful service to the whole. In fact, with a bit of concerted practice, we can direct our conscious awareness toward any activity, be it a conversation in the street or tying a bootlace, with the genuine intent to make the world a better place for All.

In aligning with a wider reality rather than our own easily manipulated, purely selfish motives, we can find a clearer sense of what is or isn’t in the best interests of the whole. Under this Hunter’s Moon we can perhaps stalk a new quarry with which to replenish our barren stores. Perhaps we should target a greater love and respect for the natural world upon which we depend and insist that our political representatives and lawmakers do the same. In the grand scheme of things, humanity’s emergence and inevitable demise is barely a blink of the divine eye, so why not use this fleeting evolutionary opportunity to ensure everyone has an equal crack at enjoying the experience without man made impediment?

All good things are one good thing, there is no separate good, and that one good thing is creative imagination.

(Cecil Collins)