Seven Kingdoms of Wisdom & Two Kingdoms of Compassion

Kate Southworth, Making & Unmaking, 2025. Powdered charcoal on paper, 21cm x 29cm (Private Collection).

The domains of the Threaded House revealed themselves to me in a dream.

In it, I was shown a kind of list that named The Seven Kingdoms of Wisdom, which I understood at once to be both real and symbolic. They corresponded to human activity that was ordinary, necessary, and also sacred. 

The Seven were:

• Fields/Crops/Growth – labour, calendrical attention, seeds

• Husbandry – animals, buildings, resources  

• Clothing – making things from resources  

• Finances

• Silversmithing – Finding new resources

• Prayer/Ritual/ Spiritual – guiding the activities

• Gold – elixir of life, health, well-being

They appeared clear and distinct with the additional descriptions.  I understood that they were more than practical domains; that they were archetypal modes of knowing and also expressions of how wisdom takes form in the world..

In the same dream,  another list with two more domains revealed themselves—not part of the Seven, but closely bound. These were titled The Two Kingdoms of Compassion.

The Two Kingdoms of Compassion

• Family – Compassion and Patience

• Love / Sexuality – Body and Spirit

These are the relational territories which underlie everything.  I think that the other Kingdoms rely on them, as an ongoing inner practice.  

I don’t know much about any of these realms; how to access them or move around them, but this naming helps me begin to explore. The Threaded House grows around this dream logic. A living cosmology.