An epic tale of freedom and slavery love and war and the potential futures of humankind tells
of a twenty-first century California clan caught between two clashing worlds one based on
tolerance the other on repression. Declaration of the Four Sacred Things The earth is a
living conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places we name
these things as sacred: air fire water and earth. Whether we see them as the breath energy
blood and body of the Mother or as the blessed gifts of a Creator or as symbols of the
interconnected systems that sustain life we know that nothing can live without them. To call
these things sacred is to say that they have a value beyond their usefulness for human ends
that they themselves became the standards by which our acts our economics our laws and our
purposes must be judged. no one has the right to appropriate them or profit from them at the
expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfeits its legitimacy. All
people all living things are part of the earth life and so are sacred. No one of us stands
higher or lower than any other. Only justice can assure balance: only ecological balance can
sustain freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call spirit flourish in its
full diversity. To honor the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment sustenance
habitat knowledge freedom and beauty can thrive. To honor the sacred is to make love
possible. To this we dedicate our curiosity our will our courage our silences and our
voices. To this we dedicate our lives. Praise for The Fifth Sacred Thing "This is wisdom
wrapped in drama."-Tom Hayden California state senator "Starhawk makes the jump to fiction
quite smoothly with this memorable first novel."-Locus "Totally captivating . . . a vision of
the paradigm shift that is essential for our very survival as a species on this planet."-Elinor
Gadon author of The Once and Future Goddess "This strong debut fits well against feminist
futuristic utopic and dystopic works by the likes of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Ursula LeGuin
and Margaret Atwood."-Library Journal
