The Holy Wild with Victoria Loorz

Victoria Loorz
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Join author and founder of the Center for Wild Spirituality, Victoria Loorz, as she explores the possibilities of restoring beloved community and sacred conversation with All That Is: human and more-than-human.

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  1. APR 11

    Listening Across Species: What Animals Know with Dr. Vanessa Wijngaarden

    In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Dr. Vanessa Wijngaarden, social anthropologist and founder of ANICOM, a European research project exploring intuitive interspecies communication across cultures and contexts. Vanessa reflects on her years living with Maasai communities in East Africa, where immersive fieldwork cracked open a radically relational way of seeing the world, rooted in the cosmology of Osotua, a word meaning "umbilical cord," in which who you are is defined entirely by your relationships.  Together they explore what it might mean if animals, land, and the more than human world have something urgent and necessary to say to us right now, and whether we still have the capacity to hear them. Vanessa's research brings together indigenous knowledge holders, professional animal communicators, and hard scientists to ask whether other beings might be participants in knowledge making rather than objects of study. The answers emerging are surprising, humbling, and full of hope — and why recovering our ancient capacity to truly listen across species may be one of the most profound spiritual and scientific invitations of our time. Connect with Vanessa: Vanessa's Website: vanessawijngaarden.comANICOM's Website: anicom.uliege.beFilm: Maasai Speak Back (Trailer)Article (osotua): Wijngaarden, V. & Paul Nkoitoi Ole Murero. 2023. Osotua and decolonizing the academe: Implications of a Maasai concept. In: Curriculum Perspectives 43(Suppl 1): 33-46. Special Issue: Narrowing the Gap Beyond Tokenism: Transdisciplinary Search for Innovative Approaches in the Integration of Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Epistemologies in Higher Education. DOI : 10.1007/s41297-023-00190-2. Abstract and full textArticle: Wijngaarden, Vanessa In print. Secularization and decolonization of the academe: In conversation with African faiths and knowledges. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Decolonising Knowledge in Africa.Article (lion and cat): Wijngaarden, Vanessa 2023. Interviewing animals through animal communicators: Potentials of intuitive interspecies communication for multispecies methods. In: Society and Animals 32 (5/6): 519-539. DOI: 10.1163/15685306-bja10122. Full textMentioned in the episode: Wiki: Maasai MaraBook: The Little Soul and the Sun by Neale Donald WalschConnect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: hello@wildspirituality.earthLinktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spiritualityTimestamps: 00:00 — Introduction03:58 — Interview Begins05:39 — The Land Who Raised Vanessa08:30 — Osotua11:19 — Building Trust in Relationship16:56 — Humpback Whale Encounter17:52 — Wallaby Encounter18:26 — Fasting During Deer Encounter20:23 — Normalizing Relationship21:13 — Research in Animal Communication25:17 — Starting with the Experiential26:31 — Unseparating Professional and Personal31:05 — ANICOM34:44 — Lion Says36:09 — The Theme of the Alive World38:38 — Intuitive Interspecies Communication or IIC39:23 — Conversation with a House Cat43:08 — Restoration of Trust and Earth Power51:01 — Victoria Falls Tourists54:12 — Wonder in the Mountains55:24 — Elephant Encounter57:24 — Changing the Ethics of Relational Research61:39 — Reciprocity of Approach66:03 — Next Threshold68:51 — Real and True71:49 — Wild Invitation74:38 — Credits

    1h 16m

  2. APR 25

    The Grief and Grounding of a Climate Scientist with Dr. Peter Kalmus

    In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Dr. Peter Kalmus, astrophysicist-turned-climate scientist, NASA researcher, author, and activist. Peter's radical integrity has taken him from searching for gravitational waves to growing his own food, refusing to fly for twelve years, and chaining himself to doors in acts of civil disobedience. Together, they explore the layers of grief that come with truly loving a planet in crisis and the spiritual disconnection underlying ecological destruction. What does it mean to love the planet not as a cause but as a being? What might it look like to move from the urgency of fixing into the slower, harder work of reconnection? The conversation also wanders into meditation, ego death, the empathy required to grieve a forest, and the strange fertility of not knowing — inviting us to consider that staying in the unknowing may itself be a spiritual practice. This conversation is for anyone sitting with the unknowing of this moment, and wondering if that might, somehow, be exactly where they need to be. Connect with Peter: Website: peterkalmus.netBook: Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution by Peter KalmusSubstack: Climate HumanMentioned in the episode: Movie: Don't Look UpConnect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: hello@wildspirituality.earthLinktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spiritualityTimestamps: 00:00 — Introduction05:16 — Interview Begins09:07 — The Choice To Not Fly12:50 — Integrity Through Life Experiment15:54 — Layers of Integrity Under Systems17:11 — Civil Disobedience22:33 — Unmoored23:52 — The Discipline of Meditation26:09 — Disconnection Belongs In The Cycle28:12 — The Holy Local Tribe30:20 — Aging Into Eldership33:18 — Grounding Practices39:33 — Loving Kindness For Yourself42:57 — Trail Encounter with the Universe45:36 — Encounter with Ego Death48:51 — Expansive Meditation Encounter53:08 — Wild Invitation54:50 — Credits

    56 min

  3. 1D AGO

    Liturgies, Myth, and the Age of the Wolf with Martin Shaw

    In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Dr. Martin Shaw, mythologist, storyteller, wilderness rites-of-passage guide, and author of seventeen books, including his latest New York Times bestseller, Liturgies of the Wild: Myths That Make Us. Dr. Shaw is the director of the Westcountry School of Myth and founder of the Oral Tradition and Mythic Life courses at Stanford University. Together, they explore the tension between wildness and discipline, myth and religion, exile and return. The conversation wanders through Dartmoor folklore, Orthodox liturgy, the role of beauty and ritual in a disenchanted age, and the deep hunger many people feel for forms of spirituality rooted in mystery, embodiment, and the living world. Martin reflects candidly on what has quietly shifted in him since reconnecting  with the Christian story the spiritual consequences of disconnection from land, and a story that didn’t make the final cut of his book — one that illuminates the challenge of this moment: how to ride the "age of the wolf" with courage and faith. Connect with Martin: Website: drmartinshaw.comWebsite: schoolofmythopoetics.comBook: Liturgies of the Wild: Myths That Make UsBook: ScatterlingsMentioned in the episode: Book: The Great Emergence by Phyllis TickleVideo: Ivan and the Grey WolfConnect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: hello@wildspirituality.earthLinktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spiritualityTimestamps: 00:00 — Introduction06:03 — Interview Begins10:56 — Re-exploring The Old Stories13:47 — Living Fidelity of Place18:24 — Discipline of the Wild20:42 — What’s Our Current Story?24:41 — The Age of the Wolf28:31 — The Religious Has a Place31:22 — Eastern Orthodox Expressions34:06 — How Jesus Changes Love39:05 — Martin’s Wild Threshold42:03 — Wild Invitation43:36 — Credits

    45 min
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Join author and founder of the Center for Wild Spirituality, Victoria Loorz, as she explores the possibilities of restoring beloved community and sacred conversation with All That Is: human and more-than-human.

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