How to Talk to Your Yard – The Broccoli Wizard

two cartoon characters walking through a ghost-filled forest in the style of a 1940's cartoon

The Liminal Spirit Oracle Part 1

Did you know you can talk to your yard? You can communicate with a forest, or desert, or pond, or even a shopping mall? All it takes is recognizing that every “location” has its own “spirit,” and that this spirit can communicate with you once you’ve learned how to do it. It’s easy to learn, and doesn’t take any special equipment or long hours of training. All you need is The Liminal Spirit Oracle and some free time!

The spirit I’m talking about isn’t the same thing as a ghost or phantasm. It’s what some cultures know as the Genius Loci, or Tutelary Spirit, or Spirit of Place. The Genius Loci, in particular, originates in ancient Roman religion, where it referred to the protective spirit of a specific place—whether it be a home, a city, or a natural landscape. This spirit was seen as a guardian of the location, embodying its unique personality and qualities within its ecosystem.

Similarly, other cultures around the world have recognized the presence of a protective or guiding force within certain locations, which they honor through rituals, offerings, and stories. Whether it’s the spirits recognized by Indigenous peoples or the deities associated with specific landscapes in ancient cultures, this concept of a location being alive with its own consciousness is deeply rooted in human history.

We’ve already discussed the idea of an “entity” as “anything exhibiting the ability to express sensate quality,” which also lends itself to memorability. What makes a landscape or building memorable? You can call it whatever you’d like, but for the sake of clarity and consistency, I’ll refer to it as “The Liminal Spirit.”

As overused as it’s become, the term “liminal” is relevant here, as it describes something that exists on a threshold, in a transitional or in-between state. The Liminal Spirit exists on both sides of the continuum between the Seen and Unseen, the sensate and the imperceptible. It isn’t bound by the borders or categories we tend to impose on our surroundings; instead, it thrives in the spaces that connect, overlap, and flow between different patterns of experience. This transitional nature makes a Liminal Spirit both elusive and yet deeply present, always just on the edge of perception.

When we talk about The Liminal Spirit, we’re talking about a singular representation of the collective consciousnesses of all the various entities—plants, animals, spirits, rocks, water, soil, etc.—within a physical location. This idea transcends the individual identities of each of these components. The Liminal Spirit isn’t an abstract concept; it is the living essence of a place that holds the memory, life force, and presence of everything that inhabits or passes through it. Each separate entity, whether animate or inanimate, contributes to the greater Entity, influencing and being influenced by the collective.

It’s a Spirit because it’s an Intelligence that exists in both the seen and unseen worlds. This Intelligence is a living network of awareness that consists of an interwoven manifestation of the ongoing interaction of its components. That’s a little complicated, but so is this concept. The Spirit “perceives” in ways that transcend human understanding, sensing changes, emotions, and intentions of each of the individual parts making up its entirety. It can communicate through subtle signs—a fallen berry, a shift in the breeze, the rustle of leaves, the appearance of an animal, or even a feeling that something is “off” in a place. It isn’t constrained by physical form although it can appear as physical, and because it exists in both the seen and unseen worlds, it operates on levels that may not always be immediately accessible to human senses.

Thus, The Liminal Spirit is the deep, underlying consciousness of a place—an awareness that moves through and beyond individual entities, connecting them into a greater whole.

So what exactly is a “location?” This can be defined in many ways, far beyond the boundaries of a geographic space with fixed coordinates on a map. A location can be as tangible as a specific place, like a park, a yard, a mountain range, or a riverbank, but it can also be something more fluid and subjective. It might be defined by the field of experience that extends as far as you can feel, hear, see, or sense in any given moment. In this sense, location becomes not just about physical space, but also about perception—the unique interaction between the external environment and the individual experiencing it. What you consider a location might not have hard edges or fixed borders; it could shift and change with your awareness and presence.

For instance, when you’re in a forest, The Liminal Spirit can manifest in different forms depending on how you engage with that space. It might reveal itself as the entire forest—a vast, interconnected network of life where every tree, animal, insect, and rock contributes to a greater whole. In this case, the forest itself becomes the embodiment of the Spirit, a collective intelligence representing all the entities within it. On another level, the Liminal Spirit might focus its energy on a more specific area, such as a single grove of trees, a small clearing, a petri dish, or even the area immediately surrounding you in your house. In this smaller scope, the spirit can take on a more personal quality, or even steal your socks.

What makes location even more complex is that these different layers of the Liminal Spirit can coexist and overlap. One location might contain multiple Spirits, or one Spirit might stretch across multiple spaces. For example, the Spirit of a grove of trees may also be part of the larger Spirit of the forest, kind of like how a drop of moisture is part of a cloud but still retains its individual essence, even after it falls as rain. The boundaries between these different manifestations of the Liminal Spirit aren’t necessarily defined by human measurement. They aren’t marked by property lines, fences, or maps. Instead, they are determined by the natural relationships within the environment and by the interactions between the seen and unseen forces that shape the place.

Human-made borders—be they political, social, or even conceptual—are often irrelevant to the Liminal Spirit. For instance, a city park may have clear boundaries on a map, yet the Spirit of the place may extend beyond those borders, connecting with nearby streets, buildings, and even the people who move through it daily. The Liminal Spirit can transcend human-made divisions, existing in a fluid, organic state that responds more to the land’s natural energy flows than to arbitrary lines drawn by human hands. These boundaries are porous and dynamic, shifting in response to the movement of life, energy, and time.

Furthermore, location isn’t only a physical “place” but also exists as something like a field of energy. The limits of a location might expand or contract based on your own awareness and engagement. If you are deeply attuned to your surroundings, your field of experience might extend far beyond your immediate visual or auditory senses, connecting you to energies and presences that aren’t immediately perceptible. You might sense the presence of the Spirit in the distant call of a crow, in the sound of children playing in a park, or the subtle vibrations of the earth beneath your feet. In this way, a “location” becomes something fluid and multi-dimensional, shaped both by the physical landscape and by your personal connection to it.

In essence, a location is as much about how you experience and engage with it as it is about where it exists in physical space. The Liminal Spirit moves within this flexible definition of location, adapting to the way life, energy, and consciousness flow through and beyond the boundaries we perceive. Understanding this allows for a deeper connection with the places you inhabit, where the lines between you, the Spirit, and the location itself blur into one seamless, interconnected whole.

The Liminal Spirit acts like a facilitator, or a hinge, or threshold that connects Seen and Unseen experiences. It holds the door open between entities and moderates the discussions that can then occur. One example we can use is the ‘Net Control Operator’ who runs an amateur (HAM) radio net. This is an experienced individual who welcomes other radio users to a conversation and makes sure it runs smoothly for all involved. But, the same sort of position could be seen with something like a President of a Board Meeting, or a relationship counselor.

A Liminal Spirit can nest within another Liminal Spirit. When we say ‘entity’ you may assume that means an individual, but The Liminal Spirit often works more like a council or Commonwealth–an organization of entities working together for the common good. Members of this council can participate in other councils as needed, like if one person holds a position on a local school board and also on the city council, and in a coven or affinity group.

Another of the most helpful images for visualizing The Liminal Spirit is an antler. The points are individual parts of individual members of individual species– say a maple leaf, a fir cone, a Crow feather. The next “branch” are the entities these parts belong to: a sugar maple tree, a Douglas fir tree, a crow. Above those are each spe-

cies to which the entities belong: all nearby sugar maple trees, all nearby Douglas firs, all nearby crows. The next level might be all maples, all firs, and all corvids, and so-on. The specifics are never the same because every area has a different Commonwealth of Entities.

So, this begs the question: why learn to communicate with a Liminal Spirit?

Each location has its own history and energy that shape its present state. The Liminal Spirit embodies this history and the cumulative experiences of the entities within that space. Communicating with the Spirit can allow someone to tap into that historical and energetic knowledge, gaining a sense of how the past influences the present. This can be particularly meaningful in places that feel “charged” or have a strong spiritual or emotional presence.

A Liminal Spirit can also offer a unique perspective that we humans may not perceive on our own. The Spirit, connected to the multitudinous entities and the flow of energy in a location, can offer guidance on navigating challenges or uncertainties, much like a counselor or mediator in a human context. With a far greater context available and a wider view into possible futures depending on all of its known variables, a Liminal Spirit can provide an excellent source for oracular practice or divination.

There may be room for contacting the Liminal Spirit as an act of ecological restoration, or even resistance. By communicating with a Liminal Spirit, someone could better understand the needs of the location and the entities within it. The Spirit might convey the most helpful way to help its landscape, like the Stink Spirit in Studio Ghibli’s “Spirited Away” that needed a bath. Habitat restoration may prove an excellent opportunity to contact the landscape itself and listen to its needs.

This also applies to “Paranormal Investigation.” Every investigation happens at a “location” of some kind. Each location has its own history and energy that shape its present state. The Liminal Spirit is the culmination of this history and the cumulative experiences of the entities within that space. Communicating with the Spirit may allow someone to tap into that historical and energetic knowledge, gaining a sense of how the past influences the present.

Engaging with the Liminal Spirit can also be about remythologizing your landscape. Sure, you love your garden now, but imagine being able to TALK with it! Now that you’ve read this far, the next installment will start to show you exactly how to do just that.