Right now, in front of me, there is a pepper tree that is 60 years old. Its leaves dance in the wind and often reach the window of my studio where I write, almost like a nudge to say, “Hey, I’m here.” Since last week a beige and brown dog has been coming from the forest nearby and lying beneath it, enjoying the dance of shadows that cool him on a sunny day.
All of us began as seeds. All of us began because of an encounter, a coming together of genetic material, a dance of belonging between cells who chose each other. All of us began as one combined cell and then made our way to life, a process that required tremendous effort and strength.
To ground ourselves in the knowledge that we – as different as we feel and as calcified as we might be within systems of hierarchy – all began as seeds feels like the antidote that is needed to the separation fuelled each day by our world’s leaders and power structures.
Take a moment to look around you and notice. How much of what you see is the result of two or more elements coming together? We ourselves are the result of a coming together, of sperm and eggs, of mouths, of legs, of bodies. The walls that shelter us are formed by the union of bricks and cement, or wood and metal. A seedling comes together with the soil and its minerals; together they grow into the plant, which then comes together with wind, water, and sunlight to continue thriving.
Nothing stands alone; everything emerges from connection, collaboration, and the embrace of separate parts to form a whole. A seed does not grow in isolation. It needs soil, microbes, water, and a particular slant of light. It is, from its smallest moment, already in a relationship.
In Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, author Tyson Yunkapurta writes, “In Aboriginal worldviews, nothing exists outside of a relationship to something else. There are no isolated variables; every element must be considered in relation to the other elements and the context.” Areas of knowledge are integrated and not separate, and the relationship between those who hold knowledge, he says, facilitates shared memory and sustainable knowledge systems.
So, what happens when we forget?
Berkeley Law Professor John A. Powell describes four profound separations at the root of Western civilisation: between humans and the divine, between humans and the planet, between European peoples and everyone else, and between mind and body. We live as if we are cut off from the natural world, from one another, even from ourselves. Many of the practices of a Euro-patriarchal society, intended for expansion and development, are ironically leading to its destruction. As powell puts it, this is a story that has produced “tremendous anxiety, tremendous fear, and tremendous psychosis”.
This shifted something in me: it is not capitalism that created separation – and consequently the systemic crises we face – but rather an environment of separation that allowed systems like capitalism and patriarchy to take hold and thrive. Everything we are experiencing today stems from separation and our compliance with it.
A seed separated from its soil does not become a tree. It simply disappears.
If separation is the condition, then relationality is the medicine. At the basis of relationality is a sense of profound respect – of reverence and recognition of the ways in which we are connected. The word ‘reverence’ stems from the Latin ‘revereri’ — to stand in awe of. Let us rest on awe as a feeling of deep respect, of curiosity, of moving towards life.
Seedkeeping as reverence
Indigenous cultures teach that seedkeeping is not simply the act of saving seeds for the next planting season but that it is a relational, cultural, and often spiritual practice that understands seeds as living relatives, carriers of memory, and holders of sovereignty.
At the most practical level, seedkeeping means selecting, harvesting, drying, storing, and replanting seeds from crops that have been grown within a community for generations. Unlike industrial agriculture, which relies on patented or hybrid seeds that must be purchased each year, Indigenous seedkeeping prioritises open-pollinated varieties that can adapt over time to local soil, climate, and care. Seeds are not treated as commodities; they are treated as kin.
Jessica Hundley, who curated Plant Magick for Library of Esoterica, tells me that in researching the symbolic life of seeds across cultures, she’s come to understand seedkeeping as both a practical act and a sacred covenant. “To keep a seed is to participate in continuity of land, lineage, and imagination. Across agrarian and mythic traditions alike, the seedkeeper is a guardian of memory, preserving not only biodiversity but also cultural identity. Seeds hold encoded stories of migration, resilience, adaptation, and taste. They are tiny libraries of time.”
According to oral histories preserved in parts of West Africa, Suriname, Brazil, and the Caribbean, some enslaved African women braided rice and other seeds into their hair before being forced onto slave ships. The braids, often complex, tight cornrows, were not only cultural expression but, in some accounts, a means of storage. Women tucked seeds into the patterns so that when they arrived in the Americas, they could plant familiar crops and sustain themselves. It was a gesture of hope in the midst of horror.
For many Haudenosaunee seedkeepers, including Mohawk seedkeeper Rowen White, seeds are understood as part of a reciprocal relationship. Humans care for seeds because they feed and teach humans. Seedkeeping becomes an act of cultural continuity. Each variety carries stories – of migration, ceremony, resilience, adaptation, a relationship bound by deep respect to the history of the ancestors and the way they related to the land.
For the Makhadzi, the elder women of the Venda people, seeds are far more than agricultural inputs: they are a foundational component of Vhavenda culture. “We have an interconnection with the seeds, which are for us not just something to plant,” they say. “We respect the traditional protocols about the seeds: before we even harvest, we have seed rituals. It is not just to go and plant the seeds. From when you are a baby, there are rituals accompanied by seeds.”
Ritual is a form of reverence, of time dedicating one’s attention and intentions for something. While working on various Library of Esoterica volumes and researching plant symbolism, Hundley became fascinated by the way seeds appear in ritual objects and artworks, not always literally, but symbolically embedded in pattern and form. “I remember handling a small, hand-painted talisman from Eastern Europe that contained dried grains sewn into its lining. The object was meant to be carried during travel as a charm of protection and return. What struck me was the quiet intimacy of it: the idea that one carries potential harvest in their pocket, a portable promise of home,” she says.
In many archives and private collections, seeds appear in unexpected places, stitched into garments, placed in reliquaries, or depicted in sacred manuscripts. “These discoveries continually reaffirm that the seed is never just botanical, but metaphysical. It represents the unseen architecture of becoming, the belief that within the smallest form lives an entire cosmology waiting to unfold.”
I remember handling a small, hand-painted talisman from Eastern Europe that contained dried grains sewn into its lining. The object was meant to be carried during travel as a charm of protection and return. What struck me was the quiet intimacy of it: the idea that one carries potential harvest in their pocket, a portable promise of home.
Jessica Hundley
Curator of Plant Magick for Library of Esoterica
Another story of reverence is that of the Three Sisters. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer tells the story with incredible beauty and reverence for the lifecycle of the three seeds planted for generations by her ancestors: corn, beans, and squash. She writes, “For millennia, from Mexico to Montana, women have mounded up the earth and laid these three seeds in the ground, all in the same square foot of soil. When the colonists on the Massachusetts shore first saw indigenous gardens, they inferred that the savages did not know how to farm. To their minds, a garden meant straight rows of single species, not a three-dimensional sprawl of abundance. And yet they ate their fill and asked for more, and more again.”
Through deep respect, the “Three Sisters” are not only companion crops but become teachers of cooperation and balance, their interdependence modelling a way of living where difference strengthens the whole.
In a fragmented world, this deep respect and faith in the future is revolutionary. It is a practice of both remembering and imagining a future where life thrives. To know that we are composed of others – of ancestors, of ecosystems, of communities – and that our survival depends on tending those relationships is key. When we return to the seeds, we can understand how to take care of each other, how deep respect can be the foundation of a relationship that is moving towards life – a connection that is meant to last.
A seed is an act of faith. Whether it is the embryo that multiplies into many cells and begins to create life inside a womb or the radicle that pushes through the dark soil into the land, it is a declaration that life wants to continue in relationship.
Words by Virginia Vigliar
Virginia Vigliar is a writer, editor, and curator. Her work weaves together tenacious inquiry, writing, and the hosting of conversations that bring artists, thinkers, and activists into collective exchange. She is the author of the Substack WAVES, read by thousands, and her words have appeared in The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, Atmos, Vice, and World of Topia. She has curated and hosted numerous conversations and led workshops in Berlin, Barcelona, Ibiza, and online, exploring the transformative power of storytelling, creativity, and collective inquiry. She is the Chief Curator at advaya, a leading education platform with a mission to re-enchant the way we view the world and ourselves, featuring courses on ecology, mythology, psychology and more.
