The Corn Store (at the top of the High Street), Narberth in the same building as Andrew Glaister's chiropractic clinic.
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Due to an ongoing family health situation, I am not offering any events for the next few months but I am still offering healing. If you would like to make an appointment, please ring me on 01994 240529.
If you would like to request distant healing for yourself or someone else, please click here.
Click here to read a report of a lecture Howard gave to The Body MA Residential Conference on Science and Religion: Is Dawkins Right?
Howard's latest book, The Tao of Holism, was published earlier this year. For more information, click here.
The wisdom of the trees
Written by Jenny Jones
Wednesday, 25 February 2009 15:53
The Wisdom of the Trees
Trees have been on Earth for more than 300 million years. Throughout human civilization they have been associated with magic and ritual because it was believed that they were imbued with spirituality, and spirituality has always been associated with wisdom. Because trees were usually much longer-living than humans it was believed that they retained knowledge from one generation to the next and, as a result, that they were home to the spirits of past generations with the wisdom they possessed. As Karen Armstrong says: ‘Trees, stones and heavenly bodies were never objects of worship in themselves but were revered because they were epiphanies of a hidden force that could be seen powerfully at work in all natural phenomena, giving people intimations of another, more potent reality’. Even in our highly rational day-to-day existence, most of us feel a sense of enhanced spirituality when walking through woodland.
Historical Beauty
Trees, shrubs and plants of all kinds have always been admired as a source of spiritual uplift. The Egyptian pharaohs all had extensive gardens attached to their palaces and the wealthiest in Egyptian society had pleasure gardens on a smaller scale. There were few inhabitants in Roman society who did not have a garden attached to their home, both for the growing of herbs and for aesthetic pleasure.
The ancient Greeks had their green spaces too, but mostly outside of the metropolis because running water was not generally available to Greek urban areas until after the Roman conquest. Beautiful gardens and courtyards embellished with fountains and running water were a feature of the homes of the caliphs and even public areas in Cordoba and Toledo at their zenith during the Moorish reign in Al-Andalus.
In the 21st century, gardening remains one of the most popular of hobbies and city dwellers often prize their window-boxes. The setting up of National Parks and Country Parks is a symbol of our increasing awareness of our need for green spaces that preserve our natural landscape, and psychologists believe that many of the behavioural problems of children today would decrease if they spent more time playing in green spaces.
Trees and shrubs and grasses have thus played a vital role in the social lives of all early cultures as they do for people today. The Celts are just one group who venerated trees as repositories of knowledge and memory and the domicile of spirits. Only their spiritual leaders, the Druids, were allowed to harvest the mistletoe that grew symbiotically on the oak, willow, rowan, maple or hazel; the mistletoe and the oak itself had special spiritual significance. Mistletoe must have seemed a particularly magical plant to early pagans as it grew high up on a tree but had no roots in earth. To kiss a maiden wearing a crown of mistletoe in her hair would bring good fortune, and for a couple to kiss under a bunch of mistletoe would bless their union – a custom we reserve now for Christmas.
The old Scandinavian word ‘vid’ means wood or forest but it has given us a number of words associated with knowledge or wisdom: witan (Old English: to know), wissen (German: to know), ‘wits’, ‘wise’ and ‘wisdom’, and there are other examples of the association of trees and knowledge.
The beech tree has a special claim to be associated with knowledge and wisdom. The beech together with the yew were the woods favoured for the creation of ogham sticks and runes, though the latter more commonly found are made of more durable metal or stone. The ancient ogham and runic alphabets were line symbols carved on wood or stone that were used by the bards for passing secret messages to one another. They were also used for divination by Celts, and by Germanic tribes in central Europe and Scandinavia from at least 1200 BCE. In divination, the Druids would gather together a selection of ogham sticks in their hands, ask a question of the spirits, then cast the sticks or runes on the ground. The Druid would then make a prognostication depending on what combination of symbols were uppermost. The ogham sticks and runes are the European counterpart of the book of I Ching (‘The Changes’) used from earliest times in the East and still in use today in China and Japan.
In Scandinavia and Germany, the different runes, of which up to three were selected in each throw, were associated with one of 24 Norse deities. Again, each rune combination or raedan (which gives us our English words ‘reading’ and ‘riddle’) had to be interpreted by the tribal seer. The etymology of trees, wood, knowledge and wisdom is frequently linked from our pagan heritage. In German, the beech tree is die Buche and the word for book, of the same origin, is der Buch, while a letter of the alphabet is der Buchstabe, literally ‘beech sticks’, indicating their ogham background. In modern Swedish the word bok can mean either beech tree or book.
Specific trees that are native to certain geographical areas often become associated with local myth, folklore and spirituality. The baobab tree is venerated in Africa as the Tree of Life because its massive trunk can hold many litres of water – enough to sustain a small village for some days – so providing a very practical spiritual image.
North American Indians refer to trees as ‘our standing brothers and sisters’. The monkey-puzzle tree, Araucaria, is so venerated by a native tribe in Chile that they take their name, Pehuenche, from the tree (pehuen – monkey-puzzle; che – people). The tree is used as a food source for the tribe with bread made from ground seeds, while the resin is used medicinally – another Tree of Life!
Other trees have significance in other contemporary religions. The banyan tree, one of the Ficus (fig) genera, is linked with Brahma, creator of the universe in the sacred Hindu scriptures, the Vedas and Upanishads. The banyan is therefore the Tree of Knowledge. Before effigies of the Buddha started to appear in the 2nd century CE, the Buddha was represented by a wheel (indicating the unity of all that is) or a pipal tree. The pipal and banyan are revered throughout Asia, as is the ginkgo tree.
After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, every living thing within several miles of the epicentre was destroyed – except for four ginkgo trees, the closest less than a mile away from the epicentre, that survived and began to blossom again in the following spring. All four trees still flourish today and, not surprisingly, the ginkgo is therefore regarded by the Japanese people as a symbol of hope.
Pagan Beliefs
Since the time of the ancient Greeks at least the longevity, the girth and dark density of the yew has been associated with death and transfiguration into immortal soul. The yew tree, Taxus, was associated with the pagan season of Samhain, when the gates between the worlds of the living and the dead were open. This is why so many graveyards to the present day have yew trees growing within them. It also probably has something to do with the fact that most parts of the tree are very poisonous. Because of their longevity through successive human generations, yew trees are also associated with the continuity of the life process. Samhain occurs at the end of October and beginning of November, to mark the beginning of winter: it therefore includes Halloween which we still celebrate with ghostly images.
The juniper tree was regarded by Germanic pagan tribes as a watchful sentinel, no doubt because of its erect habit. It was an intermediary between the mortal and spirit world. The modern German word for a juniper, der Wacholder, reflects this (German: wachen – to be awake, alert).
The tree may be viewed as an allegory of the human individual – the trunk represents the individuated self, the roots are the ancestors and their traditions from which the self develops, the branches are the connections we make with the physical and spiritual world, and the leaves that are shed each autumn to nourish the ground beneath are the thoughts and ideas that we disperse to nourish humankind as a whole. All trees are truly Trees of Life and purveyors of wisdom.
