We live in a time when the material world is often mistaken as the only reality. Productivity, consumption, and measurable progress dominate how we value life. Yet, in the rush to master the physical, many have forgotten that life is upheld by invisible threads--the ancestors, the spirits of the land, the energies of dreams, the pulse of the earth. When these are neglected, a sense of emptiness creeps into our lives, manifesting as anxiety, alienation, and disconnection. Prechtel reminds us that remembering, honoring, and feeding the spirit world restores the sacred reciprocity that sustains us.
The Spirit World as Kin
In many Indigenous traditions, the spirit world is not abstract or distant--it is kin. The land, animals, ancestors, winds, rivers, and even stones are recognized as living relatives who hold their own intelligence and agency. To take care of them is to treat them with the same respect and attention one would offer to beloved family.
This care takes many forms: offering prayers, leaving gifts of food or flowers at sacred places, singing songs of gratitude, or remembering ancestors with stories. Such acts are not superstitions but essential gestures of acknowledgment. They keep the relationships between human beings and the unseen realms alive and reciprocal.
Prechtel writes about how, in the Mayan village where he lived, neglecting these obligations would be unthinkable. Without tending the spirits, people believed crops might fail, children could fall ill, or the community would suffer. By contrast, when the spirits were fed and remembered, abundance and harmony returned.
The Poverty of Forgetting
Modern culture often suffers from what could be called a "poverty of forgetting." In the rush toward progress, many have cut ties with ancestral traditions, lost rituals of remembrance, and neglected offerings to the unseen. As a result, the spirit world grows hungry. This hunger appears in subtle ways:
- A sense of being rootless or adrift.
- Disconnection from place, nature, or community.
- A gnawing emptiness that material success cannot fill.
- A collective grief that has no name.
When the spirit world is ignored, the balance of reciprocity is broken. Just as neglecting a friendship eventually causes it to wither, so too does ignoring the invisible realms weaken the flow of nourishment and blessing in our lives.
Feeding the Spirits
So what does it mean to "take care of the spirit world"? The answer is not found in one prescribed ritual, but in an attitude of reverence expressed through acts of beauty and offering. Some ways include:
1. Gratitude as Offering: Speaking words of thanks to the land, sky, ancestors, and elements each day is a form of spiritual nourishment. Gratitude acknowledges the unseen forces that allow us to live.
2. Creating Beauty: Prechtel emphasizes the importance of beauty as food for the spirits. Singing, painting, dancing, making altars, or tending a garden are all ways to feed the world beyond the visible. Beauty is not frivolous; it is necessary sustenance.
3. Ritual Remembrance: Lighting a candle for ancestors, leaving offerings of food or flowers, or telling old stories keeps the dead alive in spirit. By remembering them, we feed their presence in our lives.
4. Reciprocity with Nature: Planting trees, caring for water, honoring animals--these are acts of spiritual reciprocity. To give back to the earth is to give back to the spirits who animate it.
5. Living Generously: Acts of kindness, generosity, and compassion also feed the unseen world. Spirits are nourished when humans live with open hearts.
How the Spirits Take Care of Us
When the spirit world is cared for, life feels different. We find ourselves moving in harmony with unseen currents. Opportunities unfold, synchronicities arise, and a deeper sense of belonging infuses daily life. The spirits respond to our offerings not in transactional ways but through mysterious, life-sustaining gifts.
Prechtel writes that when the spirits are remembered, they bring sweetness to life--what he calls "honey in the heart." This sweetness is not about avoiding suffering but about feeling supported, connected, and held by something greater than ourselves. It is the taste of living in a world that is alive, reciprocal, and enchanted.
Reweaving the Sacred
The call to take care of the spirit world is especially urgent today. Our planet faces ecological crises, social fragmentation, and spiritual disconnection. Yet beneath the chaos lies the possibility of reweaving our relationships with the unseen. Each act of reverence, each offering of beauty, each word of gratitude helps mend the frayed threads between worlds.
To begin, we do not need to appropriate rituals from other cultures. We can start with what is near: the land beneath our feet, the ancestors who walk with us, the simple acts of gratitude that remind us we are not alone. Prechtel reminds us that beauty, offerings, and remembering are universal languages.
A Way of Life
Ultimately, "take care of the spirit world and the spirit world will take care of you" is not a slogan but a way of life. It asks us to live in reciprocity, to recognize that the invisible is as real and vital as the visible. It calls us to live not as consumers of life but as participants in a web of mutual care.
When we feed the spirits with beauty, gratitude, and remembrance, we restore balance. In turn, the spirits feed us with guidance, protection, and sweetness. Life becomes infused with meaning. The heart grows honeyed. And we rediscover what it means to be fully human: a being woven into both the visible and invisible worlds, responsible for keeping the threads strong.
About the Author
Martin Prechtel's life, well documented in his books, has taken him from the Pueblo Indian reservation in New Mexico, where he grew up, to the Guatemalan village of Santiago Atitlan, where he was the student and eventual successor of a powerful shaman. Eventually Prechtel became a principal member of the village body of spiritual leaders, responsible for introducing the young people to the meanings of their ancient stories and guiding them through their long rituals of initiation. Today Martin Prechtel lives once again in his native New Mexico and is active as a writer, teacher, speaker, musician, and healer. Using ceremony, language, and story, he helps people in many lands reconnect with a sense of place, a sense of the daily sacred, and their search for the Indigenous Soul.
