Welcome to our Tree folklore Course
This course will enable the participant to delve deeply into the Wildwoods of Britain. Each tree essay is packed with information, practical suggestions and meditation practices for you to slowly work through in your own time. I recommend you spend at least a month with each tree.
I invite you to experience rather than learn about Tree lore.
You can explore the depths of your soul right now wherever you live or whatever you do just by allowing yourself to embody the themes presented rather than study them as an academic witness.
I ask you to reach down into your inner worlds, listen and experience the themes each tree has to teach you and to not ‘try’ to understand, just to enter a world where the trees can teach and remind us of our true potential.
Let us start with a poem that was said to be uttered by Sweeney Gelt who ran off into the depths of the woods after a terrible battle, a common theme throughout history where trauma directs us to seek healing in Nature. You may not be able to go out at the moment but you can close your eyes, smell the scents, touch the barks and experience the wooded landscape within you as your own memories enliven.
The poem below invites you to enter into the stories of the Earth and learn the lore of the Forest :
Thou oak, bushy, leafy,
thou art high beyond trees;
O hazlet, little branching one,
O fragrance of hazel-nuts.
O alder, thou art not hostile,
delightful is thy hue,
thou art not rending and prickling
in the gap wherein thou art.
O little blackthorn, little thorny one;
O little black sloe-tree;
O watercress, little green-topped one,
from the brink of the spring.
O apple-tree, little apple-tree,
much art thou shaken;
O quicken, little berried one,
delightful is thy bloom.
O briar, little arched one,
thou grantest no fair terms,
thou ceasest not to tear me,
till thou hast thy fill of blood.
O yew-tree, little yew-tree,
in churchyards thou art conspicuous;
O ivy, little ivy,
thou art familiar in the dusky wood.
O holly, little sheltering one,
thou door against the wind;
O ash-tree, thou baleful one,
hand-weapon of a warrior.
O birch, smooth and blessed,
thou melodious, proud one,
delightful each entwining branch
in the top of thy crown.
The aspen a-trembling;
by turns I hear
its leaves a-racing--
me seems 'tis the foray!
My aversion in woods--
I conceal it not from anyone--
is the leafy stirk of an oak
swaying evermore.
Please find below the links to the tree essays. I recommend that you study them in the order given below for a month at a time by clicking on each of the images.
I really hope you enjoy the course and please feel free to contact me if you any questions.
Many Blessings, Jonathon
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Please click on pictures below to access the tree essays and recordings:
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