In the imagination of the Celtic view, and many other traditions not succumbing to dualistic thinking, the world is alive, all things living in concert in an animated, lively conversation. It's quite unlike how we in our rational and evidence-based view see ourselves. By and large, we believe only we are conscious, the living among the dead, surrounded by animal automatons following an innate instinct, occupying an inanimate world filled with inert, unfeeling objects such as rocks and trees, subject only to inevitable chemical compositions and built-in processes, as such are objects scattered about, posing for us with their beauty. We cannot see them as alive as we are alive, not sentient, conscious spirits as we are.

In the other imagination of older traditions, traditions that seem to live within the world unlike us who stand over the natural world, a brook could in one and the same instance be a stream of water and a conspiring goddess - each as real as the other. How would it be if we walked about High Park or any park, seeing not only species of trees about us, but feeling in fact we were walking among gods and goddesses? What if we believed the trees were wiser than us, knew more than we about the way things are? What if we did not see ourselves as their overlords, but us beholden to them, they being gods and goddesses.