Four lectures on the alchemical mandala of earth, water, air and fire, taken as four levels of consciousness. Each lecture describes one level, the trial that belongs to it, and one or two exercises for moving through it.

Dennis begins with consciousness as something that goes out from us and comes back, and with the two poles it swings between, gravity and levity, with joy in the middle. From there the weekend climbs one step at a time. Earth is the level of facts and fixed beliefs, and the way out of it is learning to think a situation backwards. Water is habit and drive, which live in time, and it is worked on by growing a plant in the imagination day by day. Air is the experience that everything is other than me, and the work of turning “you” into “thou”. Fire is silence, and the trust in life that can come out of it.

The exercises are small on purpose. Dennis says they come from twenty years of working with adults who needed something they could do while standing in line at the grocery store. He gave these talks to a farming community, so plants, animals, clouds and the biodynamic preparations are the examples, but they can easily be expanded to apply to other practices.