What Actually Works in a School of Perception

The last piece I shared here was about Easter morning on Iona: a quiet, descriptive text written out of the moment itself — morning light, sea, stone, presence, and the strange nearness of the sacred when the world is simply attended to.

It became the most-read post so far, with the highest opening rate — 56% — and the strongest response in terms of reads and feedback. Substack gives rather exact statistics, sometimes almost absurdly exact. I do not want to make too much of numbers, but together with your replies, they gave me the feeling that something in this piece had found its way across.

Perhaps because it did not try to argue very much.

It was not theory. It was not clever explanation. It stayed close to perception.

And this gives me a hint — not a rule, but a hint — about the deeper rhythm of this Substack.

Its centre may not be “content” in the usual sense. Perhaps its centre is practice.

A school of perception, if that is what is slowly forming here, probably has to return again and again to direct experience — to the world before it hardens into concepts. I will still write the philosophical pieces, because that is also me. But I would like to let this more immediate mode return regularly: field notes, encounters, places, animals, weather, moments in which something becomes visible.

Not as decoration.

As part of the practice.

This also brings me to the slightly awkward but necessary part: support.

There are now seven paid subscribers here. Seven is not yet an empire — but it is real. It means that some of you are willing to help make this work possible not only by reading, but by sustaining it.

So I’ll place the paid subscription button below. If you can support this work financially, I would be deeply grateful. Reading matters. Feedback matters. But money also matters. It buys time, steadiness, and courage.

And because this Substack is not floating in the air, here is a short map of where the wider work is taking form at the moment.

Most of my practical work runs through Sacred Isles — events in Scotland with sacred landscapes, islands, stones, plants, animals, weather, and the old Western mysteries of place. There are live events coming up through summer, autumn, and next year.

There will also be online sessions beginning in September, which may be the easier doorway for those who want to get a taste of the work before committing to a residential course.

My book, Spiritual Stone Bothering, has now come properly into the world through Sacred Isles Press. It can be ordered directly from me within the UK, or internationally through bookshops and online distribution using the ISBN.

One recent publication feels especially meaningful: my essay on the woodcock has just appeared in Dark Mountain: Issue 29 — Bestiary.

That text began years ago on Mull, with a dead woodcock on the road at twilight. A small brown body. Almost nothing. And yet it opened a whole question: what does it mean to honour an animal?

Not sentimentally. Not from above. Not as “human beings appreciating nature”.

But from within.

The essay moves towards the idea that to honour an animal may mean finding the animal within oneself — the inner woodcock, the twilight creature, the nervous, hidden, earth-coloured intelligence that also lives in us.

I am proud of this publication because it does not rely on anthroposophical language, Goethean terminology, or insider vocabulary. It simply tries to see, and to write from seeing.

That feels like a small milestone.

It also belongs to a larger animal book I am working on — a nature-writing project about animal encounters, animal perception, and how animals may change the way we know ourselves.

Alongside this, I have begun work on another book: a portrait of Scotland through places, plants, and animals. Islands and islandness. Highlands and highlandness. West coast and east coast. Foxglove, bracken, Scots pine, otter, red deer, ticks, midges — the whole beloved, irritating, miraculous company.

The first half of this year is mostly gathering, researching, walking, listening, structuring. The second half, I hope, will become more intensely a time of writing.

So perhaps this space can continue as a mixture: field notes, essays, fragments of thought, updates from the workbench, and invitations into the wider school.

And through your feedback, and through my own sensing into what feels alive here, I begin to feel a little more clearly where its centre might be.

Not content for the sake of content.

Not spiritual commentary for its own sake.

Not another clever newsletter.

But something more like a shared practice of perception.

And from Scotland, this morning, that feels very real. Spring is cold but radiant. The days are suddenly long. The sun has strength again. The swallows are back, the house martins too. I heard the cuckoo the other day. Blackcaps are singing. The apples are in flower.

Everything is alive, and it is almost too much.

With gratitude,

Renatus