Magic of Trees

I've been in love with trees since my childhood. My family bought a home when I was six years old and there in the backyard stood a majestic Live Oak. It had a thick low branch that stretched out from the bough making it easy for me to climb. There I would sit and imagine all kinds of things.

As I grew older and began to understand my family's roots (told to me by my grandmother) my interest in genealogy and in my heritage grew. Together we embarked on a discovery to uncover all the family secrets. There were some doozies. She was the only one who seemed to enjoy talking about relatives beyond the 2nd generation and I was curious. We spent countless hours talking about family.

It was from a old leather bound family Bible she'd stored in a 1950s cedar chest that our shared heritage began to unfold. My great grandmother had written in pencil the entire history of my mothers family. People did that before official records came along-births, marriages, and deaths. There were old family names I'd never heard uttered before, names of strong Irish-Scottish origin.

Thanks to my loving grandmother I can trace my heritage back to 1066, the time of William the Conquer and the creation of the Doomsday Book. I now understand my attraction to owls and why I wander the property with my gnarly carved walking stick.

After my favorite grandmother passed away she left all the contents of that magical cedar chest to her oldest grandchild, she knew I would treasure its contents. Her passing nearly broke my heart, she was a tremendous influence in my life!

So that's the backstory and this is where it leads..the magic of trees. I began to investigate my roots further and had wondered since childhood why there was such an attraction to trees and in particular leaves. I had collections of leaves pressed in the pages of books picked up from Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. My intentions were to do art projects with my collection one day.

Somewhere along the way my research into the past led me to the ancient Celts who had created an alphabet called "the Ogham" based upon different species of trees. It consisted of 25 characters made up of sacred trees each providing names to the letters of alphabet.

Page from Book of Ballymonty (1390) explaining the ogham script Wikipedia

Celtic people made inscriptions on stone and wood based upon this alphabet. They later created a calendar made up of 13 Lunar months named for their most sacred trees.

It was in a sense a language of trees whose symbolic meanings were used in ceremonial magic and healing. The Ogham became the centerpiece of Celtic spirituality. The most significantly spiritual trees were Oak, Cedar, Birch, Hazel, Aspen, Alder, Ivy, Yew, Rowan, Ash, Pine, Willow, and Elder.

Oaks were the most sacred and represented the center of the world, its roots were a doorway to another world. Oak and Cedar are symbolically male as Willow and Hazel are symbolically female.

Birch is the earliest of the forest trees used extensively in cleansing rituals. Hazel was a tree of wisdom and knowledge was gained from eating its nuts. It was also the wood used for locating water (divining.)

Alder was associated with making spiritual decisions and was thought to have power of divination, especially in diagnosing disease and healing. Elder is known as the fairy tree and was thought haunted by fairies or demons. Rowan offered protection against sorcery and evil spirits.

Ash held healing qualities while Ivy was believed to protect from evil. Pine provided fertility, prosperity and vitality. Yew was the symbol of immortality, resurrection, and reincarnation. Aspens held the power to communicate with the next world and its wood protection from harm.

There's a reason why this ends with the Aspen tree. There's an Aspen tree in Utah named "Pando." Pando is the largest and oldest living organism on Earth weighing in at 6,600 tons, covering 106 acres, and is more than 80,000 years old.

That single Aspen is only a small part of a much larger organism. What is seen is only a small part of its existence. A group of Aspens is in reality a single living organism with the majority of its life force underground in its extensive root system. In a single stand of Aspens, each is a genetically identical or a clone if you will.

Thinking about that majestic Oak in our backyard where my childhood dreams were dreamt, I reminisced about my loving grandmother who schooled me on my roots and an undeniable truth was realized.

Although we are all different, we are all the same. Connected to each other in this great fabric of humanity, our roots running deeply into the Earth. Those magical trees of long ago made us become aware of our connections with something much larger than ourselves. It's in your DNA...

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