As we hit midwinter here, the northern folk enjoy midsummer. Whilst I might long for the long daylight hours and sun on my face, I’m also relishing the value of darkness and hibernation time, a turning inwards and a chance to reflect. The three elder trees on the edges of my garden are bare of leaves, but are still so potent in their presence, and their medicine carries me through the winter months. I am thinking of them alot as I approach midwinter.

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Elderberry Cold Syrup

Boil elderberries in water for 5 – 1 0 minutes. To preserve, add honey 1 part to elderberry juice 10 parts. Add another part of brandy or apple cider vinegar to help preserve and bottle. Take 1 tsp daily to boost the immune system.

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As a midsummer remedy, the fruit we have frozen, dried and made into other concoctions carries us through winters dark.

Elderberry has high antioxidant levels and thus helps fight disease. They also offer protection against viruses that might damage cell walls. Theres a whole wealth within this amazing tree!

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There’s a poetry as I look upon the elder and think of how on the other side of the world Steemians like @mountainjewel and @truck-lifefamily are revering her bounty just as I’m contemplating her dark, bare boned magic as the Elder mother rests.

The underlying energy of the Elder tree is connected to the triple goddess – maiden, mother, crone – particularly taking on the wise-woman or crone aspect as she is symbolic of that time in the darkness before potential regeneration and rebirth. So the elders sit outside my kitchen window like thin limbed crones, dormant and resting, waiting for the transformation she will undergo in Spring, but sitting there in a wild and untamed beauty. They are most symbolic at this approach to winter solstice to me, fully embracing the darkness yet having promise in their branches of the Spring to come where she bursts to life.

Like me, she is resting in the darkness. She's part of this beautiful natural cycle and

linked to the eternal turnings of life and death, birth and rebirth...[the elder] represents the end in the beginning and the beginning in the end; life in death and death in life; the casting out of devils of the old year and the renewal and creativity of the new; the timelessness of the cycle by which the fading of old age is always balanced by the start of new birth

When I lived in our truck in England the lore was amongst the folk there that it was bad luck to burn elder wood. That superstition has stuck with me, but it’s come from a gypsy myth I think. However, it’s a reminder that a lack of respect for Nature that can be dangerous. There’s no wonder Elder’s ability to wildly grow represents that aspect of nature that won’t be tamed, and perhaps that’s why she was feared in a way, or at least deeply respected.

Elder, therefore, always reminds me to be respectful to the Earth. I loved learning that it was important to ask the tree spirits before taking any of her bounty, something that Jacqueline Memory Paterson details in her book ‘Tree Wisdom’. An old woodcutters prayer is something we can keep in mind:

‘Owd Girl, give me of thy wood,

An’ I will give thee some of mine,

When I become a tree’

I love this because it takes us away from selfish intent and asks us to be respectful and mindful of what we take from the Earth, knowing that we too will become part of the soil. The elder has always been imbued with a sense of the sacred as she is Queen of the Earth indeed with her bounty – flowers for cordials and wines, elderberries for syrup and medicine, cordials and wine.

Her leaves are used for insect repellent, too - there's a whole plethora of uses for the Elder that make her such a bountiful tree and made us plant three of them when we got to Australia, as they don't grow wild in hedgerows here like they do elsewhere. To be honest, we didn't plant three immediately - we nurtured one and then all we had to do was plant a stick in the ground and thereupon, two trees burst forth!

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In summer, her flowers shake with fertile seductiveness – she’s a pretty maiden at this time. I love the legend that says if you breath in the scent of elderflower on midsummer’s night, you may see the faerie king and queen. On full moon, the elder too can help us see dryads – to drink elderberry wine in an elder grove with no evil in your heart might hasten the process, according to legend. So if you’re close to midsummer, give it a shot and let me know what you see.

And there’s another connection to Elder too that makes me think her and I are alike, connected, sisters. Her ruling planet is Venus, as is true of my sun sign, and associated with air, as am I.

The elder's month is also midwinter, the winter solstice, where we can mark coming return of the sun. As the elder enters the realm of death and endings, she stays for a while and contemplates, hibernates, muses, creates - and then grows again, toward the sun and bounty of life and summer's glory. Like butterflies in cocoons, elder trees are part of this feeling of transformation and cyclic growth.

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So as we approach Winter solstice I honour the Elder, and think of her in Northern climes, full of bounty for you all. Do honour her as the days get darker. Xx

What lore do you have of the Elder tree? How are you celebrating Winter or Summer solstice? Please do comment xxx

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