Rewilding, or re-wilding, is a form of environmental restoration that seeks to return an ecosystem to a more natural state by removing human artifacts like dams or bridges and returning predators like wolves back to the wild.
Eco-feminist poet and scholar Sophie Strand envisions a rewilding of the masculine psyche by moving it back to a time before guns and swords to an age of magical wands and miraculous staffs, the phallic symbols of magicians and healers and playful gods.
The chapters of this book revisit the archetypes of masculinity through the ages, from Dionysus and Merlin to Orpheus, David and the gnostic Jesus. “Long before the sword-weirding heroes of legend readily cut down forests, slaughtered the old deities, and vanquished their enemies, there were playful gods, animal-headed kings, mischievous lovers, vegetal magicians, trickster harpists, and riddling bards.”