Longtime readers of this blog know of Dana O’Driscoll’s splendid work as permaculturist, author, artist, Archdruid of AODA, blogger at The Druid’s Garden and dedicated “walker of her talk”. It’s a pleasure to explore the rich harvest of this deck and companion book she has illustrated with her own eco-prints, and as importantly, put it to work in my own practice. [You can view images of every card, read more about this 12-year project, and find ordering information here at her blog: https://thedruidsgarden.com/treelore-oracle ]
Direct and to the point, O’Driscoll sets forth the purpose of the Oracle and Compendium in her Introduction:
One of the most important things we can do to address the challenges of today’s age is to build authentic, lasting and meaningful nature-based spiritual practices that are localized to our own ecosystems. We can build deep connections with that land and take up our traditional ancestral role in tending and honoring nature. The nature-based spiritual, divinatory, and magic practices we use are more meaningful if they are rooted in our local ecosystems (pg. 7).
A relationship with the trees of one’s home region is a pre-eminent Druid practice. This gorgeous oracle deck invites both touch and meditation, which if I reflect for another moment is another kind of touch, but with the inward senses. The trees in my yard that I know and work with — black walnut, mountain ash, hemlock, white pine, various oaks — connect with me in ways that Dana’s book highlights for each of the 35 species she covers here. And with the tools she provides, you can extend your work with your own local trees, using the techniques she suggests for your own locale.
The Compendium’s subtitle expands on the material O’Driscoll offers readers here — “Ecology, History, Lore and Divination”. But the author is no ideologue, and finds her own wisdom to share:
One important thing to note is that trees — just like people — have multiple faces and aspects of personality. Thus, a single tree can hold different and sometimes contradictory meanings and no tree represents only one thing … I think it’s useful to consider tree personalities like a person: each person you meet has different sides: perhaps their work persona, the person they are with their closest friends, the person they are with their family, themselves as a parent, and so forth. Many of the trees are like this — they are multifaceted. They may choose to show you different meanings than I have, and that’s OK (pg. 11).
While anyone can deploy the Tree Oracle as a stand-alone divination deck, making deep use of the companion Compendium allows for a multitude of different ways to literally internalize the wisdom that a divinatory spread offers a querent. With recipes, crafts, symbolism, history and more, a reader can work towards profound connections with “neighbor trees”. We eat the nuts from the Black Walnut in our back yard, sharing bags of nuts with friends, watching the rhythms of the tree in productive and spare years. We use the oils to preserve wood surfaces, enjoy the red and black squirrels contending for their share of the nuts, learn more about other moisture-loving trees nearby (like our old willow, at least 100 years old) who aren’t put off by the infamous juglone the walnut secretes to regulate its own environment and drive off pests. We connect with our magical mountain ash in our front yard, which puts on a show in every season, flowering white each spring, fruiting in summer, turning bright red in autumn, and feeding birds in winter. I gather fallen and dead twigs, with permission, and craft them as ogham staves for friends. And I’m learning to make songs to sing to my trees, as one among many ways to connect, with new themes that O’Driscoll’s oracle and compendium suggest.
Recently there was a heartfelt inquiry on a Druid forum asking for suggestions for adapting to a new home in an unfamiliar region. We all face this challenge in some form, either connecting to a landscape with ancestral presences, or finding our way in a new place. And how many times must our ancestors also have faced a similar experience?
Other helpful responses from commenters included making offerings, walking the land, asking for guidance, and — because Kris Hughes’ marvelous new book is still buzzing in my awareness — here’s this edited version of my response.
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My instinct is to begin with individuals, along the lines some others have described. That particular tree, this stone, that stream, and so on. Often they can be an individual welcome-point. (Not all trees pay attention equally, at least where I live. Some don’t talk as much, either, while some talk a lot.)
Kris Hughes writes wonderfully about this in his latest book, Cerridwen: Celtic Goddess of Inspiration:
“I recall quite vividly a workshop where I was given the task to go and speak to a tree and glean any wisdom from it or anything indicative of communication. I failed miserably … How could I be a Pagan if I couldn’t speak to trees?”
“It took one sentence from someone completely unrelated to trees or Paganism to transform the way I perceived communication. It was a Welsh documentary about Bardism, and within it, one of the interviewees casually said that regardless of how different we may perceive ourselves to be from any other life form, we all have one thing in common: we all sing the song of Awen. The Awen’s music is the same in everyone and everything, it is the lyrics that differ according to one’s experience. The resulting song is unique, and it is the tool by which the Awen and, in turn, the universe experiences itself through the countless windows of expression. So I took to thinking that if I contain the music of Awen, then so would that rowan tree I was trying desperately to communicate with. The lyrics, of course, would be different, mine based on the fact that I am a human being … But how on earth would I hear her song?”
“It still didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I needed to do something that would bridge that logical side of my mind with the subtle, invisible spectrum. And the answer to that was to sing” (pgs. 241-242).
So I sing to the trees and the stones, the waters and the land.
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Greetings to a first-time visitor from the Dominican Republic. (I find the flag counter app in the sidebar a great reminder every time I see it that Druidry and an interest in understanding and honoring and celebrating our home are worldwide.)
Oak, shade my path. I welcome your wisdom.
Birch, green my way. I call on your courage.
Hemlock, heal my heart. I fast under your foliage.
Pine, scent my dreaming. I gather your gifts.
Tree companions all, I seek the shelter of your boughs.
May my days make return for your abundance.
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I’m still working on and tweaking and listening to this prayer, as I say it out under the trees. I suspect we’re composing it together.
I invite you to try out this prayer — really out — outdoors, and to post your experiences, revisions, smoother versions, and so on.
This article in an Atlantic of some three years ago about emailing trees resurfaced online recently, and in case you missed it, still offers a fine blend of longing, whimsy, technology and Druid tree references to satisfy a diverse audience. The subheading says it all: “The city of Melbourne assigned trees email addresses so citizens could report problems. Instead, people wrote thousands of love letters to their favourite trees”.
tsuga canadensis, north of the house
Writing to trees may not (yet) be proven to lower blood pressure, but expressing gratitude and affection never hurts. I write to the stand of hemlocks some twenty feet north from where I’m sitting indoors on this cold day in mid-December. “Your bark glows reddish brown in the late afternoon sun. I send you strength and healing against the hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA) that slowly eats at your bark and branches. Live, neighbors. May we learn more about how to help you so that your beauty and height remain to grace the land”.
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And just as the Atlantic article came up for air, so did a positively Druidic sentiment among my Facebook friends: the lovely Welsh idiom dod yn ôl at fy nghoed, which means to “return to my right mind, to my senses, to a balanced state”. But literally it means to “come back to my trees”. (Nghoed is the mutated/possessive form, after fy “my”, of coed “woods, trees”.) A wise admonition coded in language, every time we say it! May we all come back to our trees, the trees that oxygenate and potentially heal us, that feed and nourish and shade us, that transform landscapes, shelter a myriad of birds and beasts, and help make the planet home.
The Tree is a world-wide wisdom-glyph, a potent symbol of connection and energy and life. The Tree features significantly in Druidry, among its many other appearances, with one reasonable explanation of the meaning of the word druid linked to trees, to a derivation from two reconstructed Indo-European roots *deru/*doru/*dru-, with its cluster of related meanings — “tree, oak, rooted, sturdy, true” — and a second root *wid-, “know, see, perceive, wise” [see the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots]. This names — and challenges — Druids to be “wise knowers”, “truth-seers”, “tree-sages” and so on.
So the list of “Seven Trees” in this post is a selection from a vast root-stock alive in a metaphorical and literal First Forest, whose roots reach everywhere. Nonetheless, throughout time humans have found such selections to be useful, because their specificity nourishes inner seeds of creativity and encourages them to germinate. We lift a bucket from the wisdom-well and drink from it, marveling as it answers a deep thirst in us. A sapling puts forth leaves in the human psyche, so that new cultures, discoveries and insights can emerge. Choose your tree(s).
1) The Tree of Dreaming
Dreams often link us in unexpected ways to much that we push out of waking consciousness. Desires, fears, hopes, inner truths we deny or secretly suspect, creativity, inspiration, wisdom and insight and encounters with non-physical beings, enemies and friends, guides, companions, challengers and initiators and teachers. Each night we climb a branch, and we may retain something or nothing on waking. The leaves of the Tree brush against us, we drink from its sap, its branches lead to new possibilities, and we stir and wake and dream again.
I drink each morning from the forest pool, imbibing the wisdom of my dreams. What offering do I make in return? Gifts of self, gifts from my worlds.
As a meditation practice, I can commend this for recall and for wonder. The trees are mirrored in the pool, and their leaves blanket the forest floor beneath my feet. I sit on a tree trunk, and eat from the fruits and nuts around me. Before I return, I give thanks. A favorite tree nearby helps this manifest and concretize in my life.
2) The Tree of Kindred
The image here is obvious: the family tree. Linked as we ultimately are to everyone else on the planet, descended from common ancestors, we are this season’s leaves on the Tree, budding, greening, fading, falling and re-emerging on branches immemorially old. But because it is difficult to do more than express a general love for all things, we can begin more fruitfully if we love this leaf and that twig, slowly expanding our circle as we live and encounter new beings and extend our connections. The individual is a powerful key. Which ancestors have particular resonance and teachings for you in this life?
3) The Tree of Transformation
Humans transform trees into useful objects of wood, wood is a workable substance, and we respond to the beauty of the grain and warmth of wood in our homes and other structures. A tree is a living thing, growing throughout its life, which in some species can be very long indeed. All trees have their seasons, of fruit and flower, youth and maturity. Many species connect with other nearby individuals, and botanists are beginning to discover the central importance of tree species and individuals in the ecology of forests and woodlands. Trees are human cradles and coffins, doorways and walls, and have come naturally to represent all the experiences and choices that face a person in life. Christ was a carpenter, and died on a wooden cross, or in the language of some Christians, “God died on a Tree” — the most incorporeal linked to one of the most physical of living beings. Trees are doorways to other worlds, thresholds (also made of wood) to change and growth. In the distinction between transient leaf and lasting tree we have an image of what immortality might mean, the leaf of one personality among thousands, and the deeper link to the World Tree.
Yggdrasil, one example of the World-Tree
4) The Tree of the Worlds
In many cultures, trees link worlds, three or five, seven or nine. (In Norse mythology the World-Tree Yggdrasil links the Nine Worlds of Niflheim, Muspelheim, Asgard, Midgard, Jotunheim, Vanaheim, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, and Helheim.) We live on Middle-Earth, between upper and lower — or many other — worlds.
Many other regions and cultures also express images of a World-Tree, including Siberia, China, many African tribes, the Aboriginal Americas, and so on. The Tree holds the worlds together, and also keeps them distinct, and as a perceptual image makes travel between them possible. As below, so above: once you know where you are, it becomes a lot easier to go somewhere else. Abandon cultural markers, and I forsake a ready cultural visa — ignoring the admonition of the popular credit card advertisement, I “leave home without it” and not surprisingly, I may run into all kinds of trouble at the borders.
5) The Tree of Wisdom
In the Garden of Eden, the serpent tempts Eve with fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Unlike mere knowledge, wisdom transcends polarities, and is rarer and all the more valuable for that reason. We cannot stay ignorant, but we do pay a price on the road to wisdom, often through pain and suffering, individually and culturally. Because unlike so much knowledge (nowadays increasingly accessible to anyone with an internet connection), wisdom must be earned. In the Biblical story, the two trees of Knowledge and Life grow in the center of the Garden, twinned expressions or manifestations of inner realities.
6) The Tree of Life
The “brain-stuff” of the cerebellum is called arbor vitae, the “tree of life”, in anatomical terminology, because of its branching structure. Several tree species popular with landscapers share the name arbor vitae — they’re ever-greens, always green, and so appropriately named. The medieval arbor vitae, tree of life, was deployed in Christian theology, linking human and divine worlds, the World or Cosmic Tree with the tree(s) of Eden and the tree of the Cross. In the teachings of the Qabbalah, adopted by Western magical traditions, the Tree of Life is a map of creation.
As one of my students once remarked, “Eve’s mistake wasn’t one of eating but one of sequence, paying attention to the right order of things. Eat from the Tree of Life first, and then eat from the Tree of Knowledge”.
7) The Tree of Silence
As I mentioned above, there are many trees we could include in any list like this, the tree being such a powerful collection of understandings, physical beings, symbols, images, experiences, and cultural and spiritual markers and maps. Those on quests often find themselves needing silence, retreat, withdrawal, fasting from superficial human interaction in search of deeper, more meaningful connection.
Both religious and secular literature abounds with stories and images of the sage, wise woman or man, spending a period of time, or an entire life, in a wilderness, desert, or forest. And the young initiate, seeker of wisdom, or adventurer, often must traverse the wilderness, venture into the forest, only to discover she or he is never truly “out of the woods”. The lessons, growth and discovery always continue. But then the rest we seek, the repose and restoration, are so often found in silence. Over and around and in these silences rises a tree, in whose shade we rest, listening to its wisdom. In the rustling of its branches, which only helps the silence deepen, birds and bug and beasts peep out from time to time, kindred on our way.
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Gratitude to you, my readers, for the 401 of you who follow this blog. Numbers both don’t matter at all and also matter deeply. Some of you visit briefly, and some stay longer. Knowing you’re reading and thinking about these things helps me keep writing. A blessing on you and your houses, you and your dear ones, you and your own walks each day and always.
In Tolkien’s legendarium, his two trees of Valinor, Telperion and Laurelin, are silver and gold, both fruit-bearing, and the originals of the moon and sun.
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Either-or? How about both-and?
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The jury’s just heard the last of the testimony. The voices of the four defendants — two humans, one animal, one deity — still seem to echo in the paneled courtroom.
The DA rises slowly from his chair and approaches the jury to give them their charge before sending them off to deliberate. As he stands before them, he leans forward a little, resting his hands on the railing at the front of the jury box. At such close range, they can see shadows under his eyes. His suit is rumpled, and the once-crisp blue tie is stained and hangs loosely knotted. His trim physique looks pale, and his eyes rather glassy behind the heavy metal-framed glasses he has worn each day as this case goes forward. He speaks:
OK, folks. You’ve heard everyone involved tell their side. The facts are clear: God plants a garden in Eden, puts the man there, makes all kinds of trees grow out of the ground, good to look at and good for food. In the middle of that garden stand two trees. Let me refresh your memories here: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The DA pauses and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He looks around slowly, catching many eyes. Then he resumes his summary.
God tells the man, “You’re free to eat from any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When you eat from it, you will die.” Note that God doesn’t say “if” but “when.”
God realizes it’s not good for the man to live alone, and after a dry run with animal companions who just don’t fit the bill, he puts the man to sleep, and from him makes a woman.
The serpent says to the woman — and everyone agrees on his words — “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
The woman answers, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” It’s here that confusion enters the record. Does Eve know which of the two trees to avoid? Or has this all-important distinction already been lost?
I know we’ve arrived at the appearance of “he said-she said,” but it’s important to note everyone still agrees what was said.
“You certainly won’t die,” the serpent says to the woman.“God knows when you eat your eyes will be opened, and you’ll be like God, knowing good and evil.” Again, “when,” not “if.” Up to this point everyone agrees on what was said.
Now the serpent claims he tried to get Eve’s attention at this point, before she moved from her spot in the middle of the Garden, staring at the Trees of Knowledge and Life, and took that famous fruity bite. His words don’t appear in any of our official transcripts, and here’s the first disagreement. But I repeat his testimony here:
“Hey, Eve. Eve! EVE! A piece of advice. Eat from the Tree of Life FIRST! The tree of LIFE!”
Again the DA pauses, rubbing his eyes and cleaning his glasses, which he prefers over contacts. This time he takes so long that the judge is just about to admonish him, when he suddenly resumes, as if startled out of a dream.
When Eve sees the fruit of the tree is good for food and good to look at, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she takes some and eats it. My next question to you is this: how does she know these things before she eats?
Folks, to make short work of the rest of the story, which again nobody contests, God finds them. There’s an ugly episode of shirking responsibility and buck-passing to the serpent who can’t blame anybody else (though you might look again at God).
God curses the three of them, serpent, Adam and Eve. And this is my final observation to you. In spite of what we’ve heard today, neither Adam nor Eve dies for many more centuries.
Consider these things carefully, and you can only arrive at one verdict. All right, ladies and gentlemen. You’re dismissed.
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But what is the verdict? Is there, can there be really only one, in spite of how we often interpret the story? A better question or at least a more Druidic one: what’s the range of possibilities?
My apologies to those of you who know this story well. I taught it in high school for a decade and a half in a “Bible as Literature” unit, and we looked at characterization, at gender, at issues of truth and specificity, and the implications of distinctions like if and when, and what the story may subversively teach below and around and in spite of what we’re traditionally told it teaches. (A small detail: as many of you also know, there’s no apple anywhere to be found.) And we looked at over-reading the story, too, which teachers are infamous for doing, and which I do here.
I’ve also manipulated the story, and added to it, for my purposes. The “if/when” distinction, however, does appear in the New International Version, which comes in for its share of criticism for instances like this, and many others.
Student atheists in my class often didn’t know the story, Jews and Christians who actually did know it (and not all did as well as they thought they did) expressed often widely disparate views on what the takeaway is or could be. It’s safe to say all our eyes were opened. If we left some discussions feeling uncomfortable, it was a useful discomfort.
Among the reasons I like this story as a Druid is that trees are mediators of such potent energies as wisdom, moral law, and life. And as the song “The Wisdom of Trees” says, “Church bells ring, and I’m glad they do, but …”
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Let’s refuse to choose between wisdom and life. Like Thérèse of Lisieux, when presented with a choice, will I say “I choose all”?
So run the final two lines from Charles Simic‘s poem “Letter.”
Except often it’s just not (only) about us. Trees loom and leaf for their own sake, expressions of energy just as valid without any human presence to comment on them or arrogate them for a poem, however talented or honored the poet (Simic won a Pulitzer in 1990). And I say this as a bard, a devotee of words and their crafting. I like some of Simic’s work very much.
Yes, human presences make their trails, but the seasons also have their say, wordless though it is.
Here’s an autumn view of a hill on a neighborhood walk that blesses my wife and me whenever we take it.
And here’s the same path as winter dresses it:
We make our paths through a world immeasurably larger than we are, a great comfort, I find. Sometimes the part of the Druid is listening, without comment. Of course, by itself listening doesn’t get the poems written, the blogposts online, the books and songs and stories heard and known and loved. But listening … oh, listening and looking, may you two always come first, springs of lasting wonder.
This unretouched image of trees and sky, courtesy of Druid Debbie Brodeur, was taken from a moving car. How much glory lies just behind the “ordinary.” Our eyes insist there’s “nothing new,” while all the time endless wonders dance past us. It’s possible to remember to “look again,” to re-vision things, even a few more times a day. Small steps, to see the world new again.
As I mentioned above, there are many trees we could include in any list like this, the tree being such a powerful collection of understandings, physical beings, symbols, images, experiences, and cultural and spiritual markers and maps. Those on quests often find themselves needing silence, retreat, withdrawal, fasting from superficial human interaction in search of deeper, more meaningful connection.
Let’s refuse to choose between wisdom and life. Like 
A Druid Way 
