One can hardly be surprised that I hug trees. I call myself a “modern druid,” after all, and isn’t that what druids are supposed to do? Hang around lots of trees? There is a lot to be said for hugging a tree, really. “Tree-hugger,” I know, is a common pejorative for hippies. But really, if you’ve never done it, just let go of your inhibitions and give it a try. When I do it, I feel such a connection to the earth, to the majesty of the living world. I feel the flow of life around me. Trees truly are majestic, noble beings and that is a sense of the tree you can best get by close physical contact.

But there is another form of tree-hugging that I indulge in and that I also invite you to try: tree climbing. It’s great physical exercise for one thing, and I’m all about that. But as a spiritual exercise, it has a lot going for it as well. Take whatever benefit your may get from tree-hugging and about quadruple it.

As I compose this, I am sitting in one of my favorite meditation places. I’m about 20′ in the air, in the branches of a moderately tall magnolia tree on our property. From here, I can look down on the roof of our two-story house, but more importantly, I am in the middle of a swarm of life all around me. It’s a completely different world from that of the ground a mere 20′ below.

You are not only feeling the flow of life, you are in it. Like a baby, cradled in its mothers arms, the boughs support you, gently rocking. You face your fears, climbing higher and higher, growing bolder, stronger, trusting more in the tree to support you.

In the branches of the tree, you are in a liminal space - a “between” place that is not Earth and not Sky, and is thus charged with spiritual potential. The liminality found in the branches of a tree was not lost on the Druids or ancient Norse. Consider the mistletoe, sacred at least in part because it grows neither on the earth nor under it, is not of the earth or of the sky. In Norse legend,  Loki crafted an arrow from the plant to kill Balder. In some tellings of the story, this was possible exactly because of those liminal qualities, having been missed by the Goddess Frigga in protecting Balder from all things of the four elements, or all plants that grow on or under the Earth.

Tree-climbing has grown from a child-hood pastime to something of an “extreme sport.” But it attracts a different sort of person from, say, rock climbing or snowboarding. Unlike other “extreme” activities, it isn’t so much the actual activity itself that engages most practitioners, the climbing into the tree, but the time they spend when they get to where they are going high in the branches. There, they may spend hours relaxing, may even sleep in a specially made hammock, or may just do what I do: commune with nature in an entirely different way than is possible on the ground.

The activity can be taken up relatively inexpensively and safely. It also doesn’t require much physical conditioning. The technical equipment needed costs about $300 or so to get started. That covers the cost of a special harness, rope, and the equipment to protect the tree and the rope from each other. So far, I haven’t used any of that, instead just “free-climbing,” but I’m limiting my options thereby. Unlike in rock climbing, tree climbing gear isn’t so much for safety as it is to open up options and to make it possible to get to places you otherwise can’t reach.

A few good sites for more information are:

Tree Climbers International

New Tribe

Dancing With Trees

Inanna at At the End of Desire wrote recently about a New York Times article which related mental health to the narrative style of the stories we tell about ourselves. Those with mood problems, for example, tell stories in which every major incident is tainted by some dark detail — “notes of disappointment.” Inanna suggests that a storytelling technique using this information could be used therapeutically to change, subtly and over time, characteristics about our selves.

This makes me wonder if a positive form of cognitive therapy could be to “rewrite” the stories we tell ourselves, making ourselves the heroes instead of the victims. I can imagine a therapist, peer counselor, or friend gently pointing out the “notes of disappointment” in a story being told and suggesting ways to change the narrative.
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Of course, it’s not as simple as “thinking makes it so.” (I don’t really understand the Law of Attraction, but I know that that’s not so simple either, The Secret notwithstanding.) If anything, the retelling works more like an affirmation; repeat it often enough, and you can cognitively “rewire,” training the mind to move in a different groove.

The possible connection of such a technique to ritual was, of course, not lost on her and she concludes with the observation that “Ritual and magick could also be powerful tools to aid in retelling.” I would expound on that and suggest that ritual and magic are extremely powerful and useful psychological “self-help” techniques. The connection between the power of storytelling and magic was made clear to me by a passage later in the article, relating how people who found recovery, externalized their problems:

At some level, talk therapy has always been an exercise in replaying and reinterpreting each person’s unique life story. Yet Mr. Adler found that in fact those former patients who scored highest on measures of well-being — who had recovered, by standard measures — told very similar tales about their experiences.

They described their problem, whether depression or an eating disorder, as coming on suddenly, as if out of nowhere. They characterized their difficulty as if it were an outside enemy, often giving it a name (the black dog, the walk of shame). And eventually they conquered it.

“The story is one of victorious battle: ‘I ended therapy because I could overcome this on my own,’ ” Mr. Adler said. Those in the study who scored lower on measures of psychological well-being were more likely to see their moods and behavior problems as a part of their own character, rather than as a villain to be defeated. To them, therapy was part of a continuing adaptation, not a decisive battle.

The findings suggest that psychotherapy, when it is effective, gives people who are feeling helpless a sense of their own power, in effect altering their life story even as they work to disarm their own demons, Mr. Adler said.

A sense of power? Disarming demons? Sounds like ritual and magic to me. I’ve discussed the psychological affect and benefits of ritual here before, and this reinforces my theory: that ritual and magic can be seen as a way to effectively communicate with the subconscious and thus change our lives for the better. If externalizing our problems is an effective therapy, what can be more therapeutic than magic in which our problems are not only externalized but given physical form, say as a poppet or a note on paper, and then manipulated or destroyed?

I am leery of reducing magic to simply a mind-trick we play on ourselves, but I think it helps to recognize that, at least on some level, that’s exactly what it is. The surprising thing I have come to realize, though, is that recognizing the “mind-trick” doesn’t reduce the power of the magic, it only helps us develop better and more powerful rituals! The reason for this is that the subconscious doesn’t know the difference. The distinction is being made by the conscious, rational mind. So, what can we get out of this article that will help us design rituals? Here are my thoughts:

1. “Externalize” the problem you are dealing with. Make it real and separate. Represent it with some tangible object that you can work with.
2. Word spells in terms of overcoming obstacles. Word them with the problem first, then the resolution. Negative, then positive ending.
3. Use third person instead of first person as much as possible.

It would also seem to me that this storytelling angle reinforces the importance of journaling. Journaling lets you see what’s going on in your life from another perspective, lets you integrate thoughts and feelings using both sides of your brain, and, as this article suggests, gives you a narrative you can review and examine in a different light, letting you see how your own “notes of disappointment” are bringing you down.

A new reader recently graced us with her clickage: Ali, a Christian (or Christo-Pagan?) Druid who writes the blog Meadowsweet & Myrrh. She is a skilled writer, a thinker I can respect, and she has honored me with a link from her blog, which I am reciprocating.

Her recent article about why she identifies as a druid is exactly how I feel about it. I especially appreciated her take on depth of commitment to one path:

I have always been reluctant to jump from one spiritual path to another–to become a “window-shopper” of religions or to approach religions with a buffet-style pick-and-choose attitude. I believe that spiritual traditions have an integrity and internal consistency of their own, and that it is often more fruitful to explore a single tradition deeply, than to abandon any belief or practice that seems, on the surface, to be difficult or unappealing.

I have said some less-than-gentle things about modern pagans who seem to treat their faith like fashion accessories. If I were to put it more politely, this is close to what I would have said. Also, her take on the distinction between the Wicca and Druid archetypes is dead on:

One difference that I realized has always been important to me is how I consider myself in relation to the rest of society. The history–both the literal history and the idealized tradition–of Druidry is based on the idea that the Druids were not only priests, but the scholars, judges, advisers, poets and historians of their societies. They were integral to the healthy functioning of their community, and their wisdom was respected, celebrated and utilized openly. On the other hand, the dominant narrative about historical identity for most modern Witches and Wiccans is the story of the Witch Trials. Although we now know that many women who were killed were in no way associated with witchcraft, there is still the general idea at the heart of many witchcraft traditions that wisdom and power–especially that of women–is feared and rejected by society, that this is “just how it is” because society “can’t handle it.” The identity archetype of the “witch” remains the young seductress or old wise-woman living on the outskirts of the village, ostracized and misunderstood even when the community does covertly desire her or utilize her wisdom and influence.

So, welcome aboard, Ali. I look forward to reading more of your work in the future and hearing your comments about mine.

As some readers here may know, I am very interested in emergency preparedness, and I am also a member of ADF. The Personal Ritual Kit, or “PRK” is the intersection of those two interests.

You see, wilderness survival types talk about carrying a small survival kit, often in an altoids tin, at all times (”every-day carry,” or EDC). This kit is usually called a PSK, for Personal Survival Kit. One might also carry a PFK, or Personal First-Aid Kit, along with a SAK, or Swiss Army Knife. As in pretty much any other specialized interest, three-letter acronyms (TLA’s) abound.

Inspired by these examples, and even more so by project ARES, which sends altoid-tin ritual kits to pagans in the military, I set out to create my own altoids-kit that I could easily take with me into the wilderness and have as “EDC” ritual equipment in case of a need to perform an emergency ritual. If something happens so dire that I need the other emergency gear I carry around sometimes, I would imagine I might want to perform a ritual, too.

My kit uses a round altoids tin. When it is opened, and the contents removed, the cover becomes a base for a candle, and the bottom is used as a bowl for water. Any nearby tree becomes the Bile.

Right now, the contents are: a tea-light, a mini-Bic lighter, a length of heavy duty aluminum foil wrapped around the lighter, and a small folded sheet with a chart for taking omens. The aluminum foil is for use as a wind screen. When set up, the ritual kit looks like this:

The kit is not fully “stand-alone,” though. I carry a bottle of water, wear a piece of silver jewelry to “silver the well,” and a stopwatch feature on my wristwatch used to generate random numbers for the omens, which, in conjunction with the chart, can take the place of drawing oghams or runes. Lastly, anything that might be given as offerings has to be carried separately.

There is still some space in my kit, which seems a shame to waste, but I don’t have anything else to stick in there. I am considering a tiny set of dice, or other omen-taking equipment, or very small samples of things for offerings, if I could find suitably tiny containers. Also, if I wanted some back-up silver, a ring or other small piece would easily fit.

I have been trying to find a way to express the concept behind what some call “primitivism,” and what it means to me: why I think it is important.  I found this quote by Edward Abbey which I think sums it up nicely:

The real work of men was hunting meat. The invention of agriculture was a giant step in the wrong direction, leading to serfdom, cities, and empire. From a race of hunters, artists, warriors, and tamers of horses, we degraded ourselves to what we are now: clerks, functionaries, laborers, entertainers, processors of information.- Ed Abbey