BIRTH TREES

The Forest and Life’s Journey

The Forester’s Birth Trees were probably based on an ancient belief. They were an early bond of man and nature. This harmony over the generations has frayed to almost breaking point culminating with the climate chaos of today. All the controlling factors that influence life on this planet are due to the cyclic positions of the sun and moon and their authority imposed upon the earth and its tidal seas. This conflicts with the Assyrian zodiac and its galaxy of distant stars holding sway over present and future life.

The foresters believed that the journey through our lives was represented by a journey through the forest. The trees and people’s lives were believed to be inextricably linked to the earth; man and tree both have an invisible silent spirit. Each tree species was believed to have a vague characteristic it shared with mankind.

The forests deciduous trees have a cyclic nature related to the agricultural year germination, growth, harvest and dormancy now commonly known as the ancient agricultural wheel of the year. The unseen spirits of the trees with which we are all individually associated were deemed to bring good fortune into our lives when touched, worn or carried

Our journey begins in life’s fallow meadow. As we travel through life year by year, season by season, day by day, we change as the forest changes. The trees like man are simply a description of a species; they are as individual as you and I. Distinguishable by size shape and habits that reflect their way of life. Old trees die and fall ‘there is no immortality in the forest’ thereby creating the new light for the next generation. To continue the success of the species small seeds will fall and germinate into saplings starting their life in the great forest floor. With each year of growth they seek the light of maturity to avoid being overshadowed. Their spreading roots anchoring deep to secure a foundation for future life. From the meadow of infancy to the gradual increasing maturity of childhood we encounter the entrance to the forest edge. We will pass rivers and streams that gently flow nourishing the ALDER with its mystical rhythmic leaves and the WILLOW with its gentle soft branches. We pass the great ELM that once proudly guarded the forests edges and the fields beyond. Entering into the forest stands the great dominant OAK which gives us our strength, further in we pass the magnificent BEECH as our minds mature and gain and appreciate life’s wishful wisdom. We will enter places of emptiness akin to the forest clearing created by man or nature, not dissimilar to our youth, to a place where the POPLARS grow giving us that intuitive protection from all we have learnt on life’s wandering. Once more we re-enter into the deeper forest, beneath the shade of its canopy we see many other creatures all of which are dependent upon the forests for their life, their home and protection. They too share our environment together with those we depend upon and those who depend upon us. As we stand beside the mighty ASH looking back at our travels through life’s forest journey we realize how all we have seen has prepared us for all we are about to see. As the forest edge becomes brighter and the horizons of our lives appear we leave the forest’s edge passing the APPLE trees that produce the fruit of life displaying the love that is required if we are to fulfill and enrich our lives. Only love of life and love of nature will bring us true happiness as we reach our own age maturity.

Just like our lives the forest and its trees are affected by its environment. Trees reflect life’s spirituality. Since Celtic times trees were thought to be a bridge between the heavens and the earth, their branches in the sky and their roots in the earth. We ourselves are only a bridge between generations. The foresters’ belief was that mans body returned to the earth and his soul returned to the tree. Protected by the bark it was reborn as a bud in the spring growing into a leaf nurtured by the warmth of the summer sun to be released by the autumn chill blowing free in the wind to nourish a new life in the forest that is our world.