Showing posts with label tree-spirituality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tree-spirituality. Show all posts

Monday, July 4, 2022

Where are the Druids when we need them?

There are modern-day Druid groups who gather in England, but everyone everywhere needs to find their inner Druid. 

Although the word means "people of the oak" (the queen of trees), all trees are druidical. 

Ancient Druids considered Nature the sacred Source (note the etymology of nature-native-nativity), the Truth-deity whose name was at first only spoken. It was sung about by the bards but not written down. Later, they did write their wisdom in an ancient Irish alphabet called Ogham, in which each letter takes the name of a tree.

Scholars write that the first Druids named Truth itself a deity, thinking of the sacred word of Nature. It was "hallowed" -- whence the words holy, wholly, hale/hail, haelen, healing and health. We still have the understanding that nature heals and nature speaks; some people hear it speaking all the time. (Next time you pass a tree, give it a greeting: "Hail fellow well met". The trees can hear us, too.)


We need more people who think like Druids, who don't call trees a "resource" or a "product" important to "the economy". They're not a thing that stands in the way when we want to erect a building in its space. To Druidic-folk each tree is inseparable from the rest of tree-society and its companion species, a being that has standing which our legal system doesn't recognize, ours not being as subtle as the Druidic law which was recited throughout northern Celtic and pre-Celtic Europe by the law-singers. That way, everyone knew what the law was. Through repetition it was remembered. 

Unfortunately, as waves of newcomers (Romans and such) marched across the Celtic lands with their own ideas about law and governance, Nature's law was forgotten. Many ancient Roman scribes got the gist of it down on paper however, although -- naturally -- not agreeing with each other about its meaning.

Today we (especially urbanites) must take from Druid lore what we can in the struggle for tree conservation. Science is crucial of course, and science too is increasingly bringing knowledge of sub-cellular, meta-genetic vibrational phenomena pervading the natural world. Gaia Spirituality becomes Gaia Science, in other words -- another way of knowing that keeps breaking through, still, even in a barren, digital, robotic, virtual world. But for how long? Regarding the future: how will Artificial Intelligence be capable of achieving the Gaian "way of knowing"? Quo vadis, Humanity?






Thursday, April 9, 2020

Why trees are no longer considered sacred

Oak in Saanich

Maybe it's because we no longer let them grow old enough.

"The survival of giant oaks which had lasted generations probably lies behind why certain trees became sacred. Oak was a tree which probably started as a recognisable way-marker in the forest and a communal meeting place because they were so massive and old, and became well known over time, respected for their longevity …" -- from Tree2mydoor.com

Maybe this explains why oaks and other trees are no longer given any respect, let alone considered sacred -- they are never allowed to live long enough to become venerable. Even a huge thick-trunked specimen can be removed if a builder wants to take over its living space -- all they have to do is have it declared "unsafe", or showing signs of "disease".

What old trees show signs of are long life, the many winters and summers of harsh weather they endured, the many birds and animals who made use of them, the epiphytes that depend on them all leaving their marks. Like we acquire scars and stiff joints, trees acquire signs of "disease", yet we don't euthanize humans for being old. Instead of killing trees which show signs of a long interesting life, we should venerate them ("consider them worthy of deep respect").

Once landscape is cleared for subdivisions (or worse, for dense multi-use building), a few new trees may be planted on the margins, but will they ever be allowed to grow old? Will they even survive a youth of water-restriction policies? Or the next wave of development? We don't let trees get old enough to attain any level of sanctity. 

Ancient sacred groves were power spaces, which is why in England invading armies (Roman) and religions (the Church) sometimes cut them down. We worship the god of "economic growth" (as finite a thing as ever there was) and our landscape is drained not only of life but of sacredness and the numinous. Cities are sterile, and children grow up in them with nature deficit disorder which is also a form of spiritual-deficiency -- life is drained of (w)holiness because we no longer respect nature and trees -- and the younger they are the less we respect them.

But as Robert Bateman has said, "nature is still magic". So could we re-enchant the CRD? (It would mean setting aside more space for tree-scape, into a future far outliving all of us humans living here today. Plan for Nature.)